FYI

If anyone out there is still paying attention to this blog, I have a new blog updated daily, and this one will no longer be used:

http://jeffstilley.worpress.com

Pakistan and India

With President Obama’s Marjah Offensive in full swing in Afghanistan, representatives from Pakistan and India officially talked recently for the first time since the Mumbai terrorist attack in November of 2008. While the talks yielded little substantively between the two nuclear-armed enemies, they are a timely reminder of the fact that the future of America’s goals in Afghanistan is dependent on Pakistan and India.

At the talks, India expressed concerns that Pakistan has yet to arrest Hafiz Saeed, founder of Laskhar e-Taiba, the organization accused of carrying out the Mumbai attacks.

Anger in India has only increased since the New Delhi talks, when suicide bombers in Kabul caused the deaths of at least six Indians, fueling suspicion that Pakistan was behind the bombing in order to try to get India to stay out Afghanistan. S.M. Krishna, India's foreign minister said, "These are the handiwork of those who are desperate to undermine the friendship between India and Afghanistan, and do not wish to see a strong, democratic and pluralistic Afghanistan."

Pakistan, on the other hand, tried to keep the focus of the talks away from terrorism. Mr. Salman Bashir, Pakistan’s foreign secretary, said it was “unfair, unrealistic and counterproductive” for India to try to concentrate entirely on Pakistan’s counter-terrorism efforts.

Pakistan’s government is under constant threat internally from extremist elements, and relies heavily on American military support to stay in power. Domestically, it is a political tight rope that Islamabad must walk, especially given the dramatic upswing in U.S. drone attacks within Pakistan since President Obama took office. Yet Pakistan must never appear soft on terror on the world stage, as that is the nexus for Pakistan-U.S. relations.

To Islamabad’s chagrin, New Delhi wanted to mostly discuss concerns about terrorism. India’s foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, accused Islamabad of not going “far enough to unravel the full conspiracy behind the Mumbai attack.” Mr. Bashir responded defensively while recognizing the validity, and tried to refocus the talks on Kashmir and Indian dam projects that Pakistan says results in the theft of Pakistani water.

While the talks in New Delhi were not particularly productive, they did once again open up dialogue and future contact between the rivals. How this relationship plays out in the future could prove vital to U.S. interests in Afghanistan.

Because the Afghan-Pakistan border is so porous and tribal in nature, international and local extremists alike have been able to work in both countries for quite some time. This is a main reason why America has worked closely with Pakistan in its Afghan endeavors since 2001.

There have long been extremist elements in Pakistan’s security and intelligence forces, but at the top of most Pakistani’s priorities list is Kashmir and India. This is has led Islamabad to ally itself closely with Washington in its fight against terror in South Asian, in the hopes that it would gain a powerful ally in maneuvering against India.

Not to be outplayed, New Delhi has also pledged large amounts of money and help to Afghanistan. The problem for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, however, has become political attacks that he is the puppet of U.S. interests. Mr. Singh has reaffirmed his commitment to Afghanistan since the Kabul bombings, but was careful to add that in regards to the New Delhi talks, President Obama “not once has sought to pressurize India into taking one position or the other.”

Ultimately, Afghanistan cannot be controlled by military might. Whether the Marjah Offensive is effective or not in the short term, Afghanistan must be able to both stabilize internally and fit into the context of the region. Both levels will be contingent upon Pakistan and India.

If President Obama would like to gracefully leave Afghanistan during his presidency, he must find a way to navigate this rivalry to his advantage. Islamabad and New Delhi will not cease to be competitive anytime this generation, so an easing of tensions would likely be in Washington’s best interest.

If diplomatic channels can be used to create a situation where Pakistan and India have long term aligning interests in the stability of Afghanistan, that would be a far bigger victory than anything the military could hope for during the Marjah Offensive.

The Lefty Response to the State of the Union

Empty nationalistic rhetoric ruled at the State of the Union tonight. President Obama continued to hone his skills at bouncing between conciliatory and tough, liberal and conservative, partisan and bipartisan, humanitarian and militaristic, and so on. As far as substance goes, even W through more math and specific bills into his speeches.

Tonight, I remember Howard Zinn and his views toward political slogans and justifications for war. May his precise and authentic words continue to inspire for generations.


Rhetoric: Obama begins the speech by recalling the days of WWII and the Civil Rights era to try to inspire nebulous American values in order to accomplish.... something. I have a suggestion to inspire political courage... fire Rahm Emanuel!

Economy: Obama says he has never been more hopeful than now, but fails to say why. Politicians still have no explanation for how giving money to big business somehow 'trickles down' to 'main street.' The ghost of Reagan lingers. He goes on to claim that most of the bank bailout has been recovered, that's a new one to me and I find it extremely hard to believe. He claims the economy is getting better and that retirement funds are back on track.... for who? Obama finally introduces one of the only semi specific proposals of the night -- give $30Billion to community banks. Might not be a bad idea, but more details needed. Starts to hit his stride as he talks about closing tax breaks for companies moving over seas, only to jump off the Free Trade cliff into quasi economic nationalism/neoliberal ideology.... We must open global markets, blah blah blah.


Health Care: Obama says that if you have a better plan, he's wants to know. This after continuously shutting out the massive single payer movement from the political process. This, the only solution that realistically reduces the deficit and delivers health care to all.

Style: Jumps around the entire speech between taskmaster and joker, but holds one thing through most of the night -- pandering to Republicans. After over a year, he is still trying to get Republican votes for legislation that they will not support because of who would sign it. Leadership is hard to define, but whatever it is, Obama has shown remarkably little of it. You set the agenda Mr. President, and try to drag as many along as are willing without sacrificing the whole project.

Environment: Yikes!!!!! Offshore oil, 'Clean' coal, 'Safe' nuclear, OH MY! Can someone please enter some science/logic/logistics into this discussion?!

Education: The best tool to fight poverty is education. I can agree with the statement. Almost no substance once again, though. He proposes vouchers for college, but you have to afford to pay for the school before you get the tax credit. Can we just subsidize higher education more and forget about tax code nonsense?

Deficit: According to Obama, our huge deficit is 'mostly' from two wars not paid for. When can we stop having wars that we have to pay for? When can we stop increasing the Pentagon's budget year after year and bring it to within range of domestic spending? When can we stop paying billions to fraudulent private contractors? Obama also wants to institute a spending freeze on most everything BUT defense. HELLO! Our budget is almost exclusively spend on "defense", and now you want to cap domestic spending to somehow save the budget?!

Nuclear arms: Obama calls out Iran without pointing out that we are not following international treaties ourselves. Just because we are UHmerca, does not mean we get to play by different rules.

Iraq: This whole 'Combat Troops' euphemism is starting to make me nervous.

Haiti: Yes Americans are generous and want to help people in crisis. Too bad the government is slow. China, Ireland, and Cuba all beat us to Haiti by a couple days, and when we got there, we militarized the whole affair. You don't get to take responsibility for the good things that have happened there Mr. President.

All in all, our President says a lot of right things, but he is so frustratingly vague that not much gets done. Much better than whatever the Virginia Governor was trying to communicate after. They still haven't found a coherent platform. But if the Democrats are ineffective unless working for big business, what difference does it make?

Thanks you, god bless you, and god bless Antarctica!

A Rap on Sanity in Empire

As our imperfect experiment in republican government corrodes under the stresses of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, it may be helpful to think about what your definition of sanity is while listening to the news and political discourse. It is important because while you may personally feel more comfortable with the rhetoric of one party over the other, almost zero of our federal leaders are attempting to halt our government's descent to desperate empire.

The first thing to go in imperial societies is the precision of language. When there are no logical defenses of despicable actions (war, torture, deception), empty patriotic slogans become the rather sparse lexicon that all politicians must work with. "Support the troops", "God bless America", "Mission accomplished", "Axis of evil" are all meaningless phrases meant to stop people from thinking too much. These phrases tap into a - perhaps - natural group psychology that makes violence quite palatable.

Slogans get repeated ad naseum, politicians acquiesce to war and corporate interests, and political philosophies - not to mention facts - must be fixed around the policy.

Now you find yourself in a society whose definition of insanity is peace over war, humanity before flag, and wisdom instead of fear. If your philosophy fits this definition of insanity, you just might actually go insane listening to the news and pundit media.

You may go insane because you realize you have 23 choices of ice cream at Baskin Robbins, but only two serious choices for imperial president. You may go insane because there is more ink spilled on Tiger Woods' 9th mistress than on war profiteers. You may go insane because the flag you are supposed to worship, has come to represent Madison Avenue and Blackwater.

The truth is, empires only last so long. Our economic hegemony is on the decline, and as many bases and weapons as the USA has, we cannot occupy the whole world. As our nation's leaders try to grip the world tighter, they will get more insane and desperate. With a fundamentally unsustainable economy, it is only a matter of time before our nation as we know it collapses. It will be slow, but for all the might and chest beating, we will either change the way we treat ourselves and the rest of the world or face collapse.

In an era of glossy materialistic empire, real sanity turns out to be a desire for our nation's leaders to fail in their imperial endeavors.

Peace

Righteous Indignation in a society of new age feel goodism

I recently went to a training through work put on by Bach, a flower oil company. Among other hippy dippy remedies, they sell essence of Elm. Elm is intended to dull the energies of "Those who are doing good work, are following the calling of their life and who hope to do something of importance, and this often for the benefit of humanity."

In a society of shallow individualism/consumerism, we have a whole separate industry for people who are looking for more out of life. CDs, books, magazines, yoga accessories, and so on for people who need a little extra self-help to dull their senses to the outside world. A cornucopia of prepackaged personalized philosophies and tonics that can help you feel better about yourself and your place in a crumbling and immoral dedemocratized empire.

Plenty of happy pills to go around for the dissonance you may feel as a logical person in an era when the corporate free market ideologies are repeated 24/7 on TV as those ideologies simultaneously destroy the lives of so many millions and billions of people in America and around the world. Woe be to the person who feels anger for they must have psychological dissonances. They must not own enough candles or Deepak Chopra books. They must need more quiet alone time away from others in order to conform - or become accepting - to society's values. Society's values never being questioned as functional or otherwise. Society's values never being questioned as distractions to issues of humanity.

I believe it is possible to have both an outraged outlook on life, while leading a perfectly happy one. But it cannot happen if you listen to people who only want to talk about you, you, you. It cannot happen if you believe that if you only focus really hard on your dreams, you can achieve those dreams. It cannot happen if you think happiness comes from separating yourself from the world.

It can only happen if you feel a connection to others that allows you to fight for them, enjoy life with them, and be outraged by them. Accepting others' lots in life is a form of disconnect that can lead to happiness only through delusions and a dulling of your own humanity.

Opportunities for outrage are everywhere. Family, work, community, politics, education, and so on. As such, opportunities to speak out about those injustices arise often. From telling an employer they need to get their act together, to sitting at a lunch counter, to rioting outside a WTO meeting, these acts take courage but can be done by anyone.

This is courage I rarely have myself, but have been known to have moments of when part of a group of fellow trouble makers. Some cynics may call it mob mentality, I would call it group courage. This is why individualism and disconnectedness are so dangerous.

It is also why pseudo- and neo- liberals are so dangerous. People like Thomas Friedman would have you believe that the Battle of Seattle in 1999 against the WTO were a bunch of punks who wish they grew up in the 60's. In fact, the Battle of Seattle was probably the most important and biggest stand against injustice in my lifetime. It was something outside the philosophy of individualized feel good spirituality. It was angry, it was organized, it was incredibly diverse, and there weren't any products to sell afterward. It was something that happens far too rarely.

We need to get angry about drones killing hundreds of people in Afghanistan. We need to get angry about free market mercenaries like the WTO and IMF. We need to get angry about corporate pollution/welfare/unaccountability. We need to get angry about corporate media. We need to get angry at private health insurance.

But most importantly, we need to feel good about our anger and get angry with each other. My biggest complaint about blogs and the internet in general, is that we are still getting angry alone in our underwear. We feel good about ourselves when we write snide comments on the internet, when we sign internet petitions, when we write e-mails to politicians. Feeling good can be a powerful opiate. It is one I find myself under the influence of even as I type these words.

It's time to get angry and it's time to get angry together.

Peace

Afghanistan

As support for the war in Afghanistan diminishes rapidly, the desire and power to influence the White House's policy is held almost exclusively by fans of war in general.

Even assuming President Obama is a generally liberal guy, his track record so far in Afghanistan is troubling. He has been killing Afghanis with predator drones at record pace - a form of sanitized and deodorized warfare that is deeply saddening to all peace-loving people.

If "our" goal in this war is to democratize and stabilize this country, "our" only chance is to forcibly indoctrinate its citizens for generations upon generations. About the only shared history of this country of many nations is the fact that it is a grave yard for civilizations. It is an isolated place consisting of fiercely proud warriors who do not take kindly to strangers with guns. This is not a place with a shared culture or values system.

The very simple-mindedness that thinks war is a tool of peace, is the same mind set that believes democracy can be spread through the world as easily as carbon dioxide. Our own democracy was founded by, spread by, and held on to through violence and political cunning from a homogeneous class of rich white males. Only through a shared culture and indoctrination has our pseudo-democracy taken root; and quite recently. Our history is littered with dead Native Americans, dead Mexicans, dead African-Americans, dead Unionists, dead Socialists, and even presently tens-of-thousands of dead poor people lacking health care. This was easy compared to Afghanistan.

Goals of democratization were made even more difficult - by one or two orders of magnitude - by our strategy the last 8 years. Our strategy has been to prop up war lords who have traditionally been the enemies of the Taliban. This is why Hamid Karzai is in power. He is a corrupt person with ties to powerful war lords. Even as such, he carries little power outside of Kabul. Even as such, he blatantly stole the last election, further decaying the brittle democracy that was started. Even as such, Sharia Law was codified by the Afghan Parliament in the summer.

These war lords have no problems using violence to intimidate their fellow Afghanis, including fellow parliament members who dare try to work for the people. They also have no problems spreading the Poppy economy in Afghanistan, something the Taliban are also reportedly getting into.

If one of the main goals is to rid the country of the Taliban and al-Qaida, we have funny ways of showing it. Unquestionably, the motivations to join these organizations are hatred for Western culture, fear for family safety, and economic hardships. Our militarized strategy has caused much hatred for the West, and our lack of focus on creating an economy, infrastructure, and an educational system is hard to fathom.

Now President Obama is being convinced by General McCrystal - a man central in the PR strategy of lying about Pat Tillman's death - to send more troops to Afghanistan. We already outnumber the Taliban 4-1. I cannot see any reason to send more troops, except perhaps, for the war profiteers' benefits.

A soldier here in Colorado just shot himself in the shoulder in order to avoid going back to Afghanistan. We are doing irreparable damage to the minds and bodies of our fellow American soldiers with a terrible strategy, and misguided global mindset.

It is time to awake from our Obama-coma, and break through The Bubble, because we know The Bubble loves every war it is ever encountered.

We the People need to demand a focused strategy with a timetable that has education for girls, infrastructure for everyone, and a sustainable economy at its heart.

We the People need to demand getting out of Iraq now. We the People need to demand that our government stops funding Israel's war machine. We the People need to demand that our government stops funding OUR war machine. We the People need to demand that we remove ourselves from the IMF, the World Bank, and any other imperialist institution masked as an aide organizations.

We the People need to demand a media and a political culture that places peace, justice, Truth, respectful discourse, and wisdom on a pedestal.

Peace.

The Case for Socialized Health Insurance

Let's start with three assumptions. If you don't like my assumptions, you probably shouldn't bother reading this.

1. Good governments should be based on the Social Contract. ie, government is for the people and by the people.

2. Social Contracts should, at the very least, ensure the safety and basic necessities of those who enter into it. ie, American citizens.

3. Safety and basic necessities should include national defense, food, clean water, justice system, access to medical care, education, infrastructure, fire and natural disaster aide, and so on.

If you are still with me, hopefully you also think that access to health care is a fundamental right to any citizen of an advanced country based on the Social Contract theory. Due to the insane political discourse and media in this country, this is now considered a radical idea.

Switzerland ensures universal health care through the private sector, and while that is light years ahead of the US, I still think the only sensible option is single-payer/socialized insurance.

To all the capitalist ideologues, I have one question: "What good or service do health insurance companies provide?" .....................

I can wait....

The answer, of course, is nothing more than pooling money together to pay doctors and pharmaceuticals. The idea that we should all pool our money together with different businesses who skim off 29% for themselves is rather ludicrous.

As an advanced country based on the Social Contract theory, why don't we all pool our money together and get rid of the profit motive, thereby putting the administrative portion of our money to 3%, and lowering the cost of care and pharmaceuticals?

Let's apply the current framework to currently socialized institutions.

+Defense: We all pay exorbitant fees to separate mercenary groups who skim off 29% for Wall Street. In the event of an attack, we all must go to pre-approved community centers where the mercenaries are told what procedures they can and cannot do in order to protect us from the invaders. If you got the cheap plan, you must be paired with the mercenary that looks like me who was given a pocket knife.

+Clean water: Actually we have a good example with bottled water. We pay 17,000X as much for bottled water than tap, and guess what, bottled water has zero regulations. I know many people think tap water is a good example of government not working, but tell that to an African.

+Infrastructure: You are required to choose a road provider with the best coverage for your everyday needs. Of course, only 71% of your money actually goes toward building the roads, and it takes 3 hours to get to work because you have to stay on UnitedRoadGroup's roads the whole way, but at least Joe Stalin didn't win.

+Libraries: We all choose separate book providers who are happy to confuse the will to live out of us with their contracts and applications. They, naturally, send Wall Street their 29% cut and buy a few books with what is left over. When you arrive, the librarian needs to get approval before allowing you to view certain books. Like War & Peace, that seems a little too expensive. Plus you didn't admit that you like long winded Russian authors when you applied. Denied.

The point is, health insurance is a public right and public interest. That should fall exclusively in the realm of government. Why are old people, and those connected to the Fed the only ones good enough?

If you really think private insurance is the best this country offers, then get in the street right now and demand that our nation's military personnel and veterans be handed over to the whims of Blue Cross Blue Shield.

We have 18,000 Americans die every year from treatable causes. Private insurance is literally killing thousands of Americans each year, and so many people want to wait or keep the status quo.

Shame on them. Shame on 24hour news channels. Shame on the town hallers and teabaggers. Shame on right wing radio. Shame on Joe Wilson and Max Baucus and all the other private insurance enablers in Washington. Shame on Wall Street. Shame on the CEOs that President Obama said aren't bad people. Shame on every doctor who speaks in favor of the status quo, who are more worried about tort reform than insurance reform. Shame on all the Democrats who are willing to compromise with these people.

Shame on us for not demanding better from our government.