Avuncular American

Obama: No Crying Over Spilt Oil

Poor President Obama.  All those pundits trying to get him to become the Emoter-In-Chief.  At least Frank Rich in today's New York Times advises him to take a course more in keeping with his character: "Don't Get Mad, Mr. President.  Get Even."

Once the leak is plugged (you see, I'm the incurable optimist), once the cleanup is underway, then is the time for systemic action.  It has to do with oil people embedded in the Interior Department and Monsanto people writing safety regulations in the FDA, and lobbyists in bed with politicians in Congress.

Thanks, by the way, to IdiomsByKids.com for the great illustration above. As we already know thanks to Malia Obama, the kids get it.

No use in crying over the disaster caused by, as Frank Rich calls them, the "corporate corner cutters."  That CCC of corrupt conniving capitalists - as opposed to virtuous capitalists, who really do exist - has to be kept under the thumb of regulators.  But that is for the aftermath, once BP (aided, perhaps, by the US Navy's deep sea specialists) plugs the flood of oil spewing from the ocean's floor.

Meanwhile, deploy the CCC.  You thought that the Civilian Conservation Corps went the way of the Depression and the ensuing New Deal.  Well, you're right.  And wrong.  The CCC lives.

Under a glowing photo of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the California Conservation Corps, consisting of 3,000 18 to 25 year olds (with over 100,000 alumni since its inception in 1976), is able to deal with many environmental disasters, including

Oil Spills, Search-and-Rescue, and more --There are specially trained oil spill cleanup crews and search and rescue crews.

That is just what we need, at least until the Obama Administration creates and trains a similar Federal corps.  Maybe Arnold will allow Barack to Federalize the CCC - the state needs all the revenue it can get, and BP could be made to pay the bill.

Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida - what are you waiting for?  Write to the CCC's Director David Muraki (david.muraki@ccc.ca.gov). 

Bubba Gump Wept

With due deference to the people at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Restaurant and Market®, and to the creators of Forrest Gump, Bubba, and Lieutenant Dan©, attention must shift - urgently - to removing the millions of gallons of crude that is floating around (or suspended under the surface of) the Gulf of Mexico.

As a good friend in Sarasota Florida reminds me, there is the matter of hurricane season.  Airborne "oil spray" is added to the toxic mix, according to this report.  Now BP can put that on its growing list of liabilities.

While I am no expert on the esoteric world of crude oil and its properties - though I've stepped on my share of it on the world's beaches over the years - I do know about VLCCs.  Very Large Crude Carriers (photo, DNV "Managing Risk"). Or how about ULCCs - the nec plus ultra in crude carriers.

These behemoths can carry some 2 million barrels of crude, and according to a recent Wall Street Journal trade item, there seems to be no particular urgency in whether these giants spend their time in the Gulf or in the North Sea.  It's just a market matter.

Well now, how about the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration, MARAD.  Look at their site, and try to find some reference to the unfolding Gulf BP disaster.  For an agency that just celebrated "National Maritime Day," about its historic achievements, how about a little contemporary activism?

Why not commandeer some of these VLCCs and ULCCs to go off Louisiana and pump up some of that sludge, even if it is a mixture of crude oil, golf balls, and seawater?  At 2 million barrel capacity, you can suck it up and sort it out later at the refinery.

In the time-honored Washington phrase that usually gets bureaucrats moving - "DO SOMETHING!"

Loaded Lexicon: Genocide, Apartheid, Fundamentalism

Bet you thought the US Congress was busy sorting out health care last week, or tackling unemployment.  Well, they may one day return to those rather crucial domestic issues, but not before dealing with pressing foreign policy matters, such as condemnation of the four decade-old occupation of Cyprus, and labeling almost century-old massacres of Armenians as genocide.

The point in common is casting Turkey as the bad guy.  The other point in common is Israel.  As MJ Rosenberg noted in Media Matters Action Network, Israel had heretofore taken the Turkish view that the Ottoman-era bloodletting should not be labeled as genocide.  In any case, Israel has always looked askance at others' attempts to appropriate the terms genocide and holocaust.  But, says Rosenberg

since the Gaza war, Turkish-Israeli relations have deteriorated.  The Turks... were appalled by the Israeli onslaught against the Gazans. And said so. Ever since, the Netanyahu government has made a point to stick it to the Turks. That battle is now being carried to Washington.  The Israelis are trying to teach the Turks a lesson.  If the Armenian resolution passes the House, it will not be for purely compassionate reasons, but rather, to send a message to Turkey:  if you mess with Israel, its lobby will make Turkey pay a price in Washington.

The Obama Administration opposes the resolution, and it may not go beyond the Committee stage.  But the point is that, like the noise about Cyprus, the pro-Israel lobby can wag the Congressional dog with impunity.  For Turkey, like for Israel, and for the US, words do matter.

Like the word apartheid, which Israel would like to see relegated to the history books concerning South Africa, period.  It bristles at the notion (anytime, but especially this week) that there is a parallel between its separation walls, checkpoints, bypass roads, ethnic ID cards, segregated housing on occupied land... and similar practices that ended with majority rule in South Africa.  Use the word apartheid and Israel in the same sentence (oops, just did) and you'll incur the wrath of its formidable PR machine.

Word association test: if I say fundamentalism, what word immediately flashes through your brain?  Be honest: "Islamic," of course.  As if Muslims, in their infinite variety, had a corner on the market for religious extremism.  We know to our chagrin that Christians include a fair number of end-days fundamentalists in their midst, including in the person of a certain FOX  News personality.

And ask Palestinians how it is to live in ground zero of inter-religious fundamentalisms, where home-grown Islamists attempt to crowd out secular Muslims and Christians, and where Jewish settlers claiming Biblical rights to the exclusion of all others get succor from millennial American Christians, who see the Holy Land as a convenient setting for rapture.   The Palestinians know that "fundamentalism" is ecumenical in its application.

So next time Congress tries to be helpful in throwing around loaded terms like "genocide" and threatening relations with longstanding allies like Turkey, or condemning "occupation" in Cyprus but ignoring a longer occupation in the West Bank, maybe it should consider the utility of sticking to the facts on the ground, instead of words that can be defined according to the political beliefs of the interested parties. 

Clowns To the Left, Jokers To the Right: Stuck in the Middle?

The old song was swimming around in my head, and I knew I'd have to turn it into a post: Stuck in the Middle With You, a 1972 hit by the Scottish group Stealers Wheel (lyrics available here).   Some may remember the refrain.

President Obama was only about 9 years old when the record came out, so it may not have been on his mind when presiding over the Bipartisan Health Care Meeting this past week.  But the man deserves sainthood for his calm.

Actually, the line about "clowns to the left" is not fair, and may not be accurate, if The Nation's John Nichols is to be believed: he calls them and other advocates of Medicare-for-all or single-payer the "Missing Voices at the Healthcare Summit."  I agree that single-payer should have been seriously considered all along, but it never had a chance after "death panel" voodoo had taken hold last summer.

But "jokers to the right" there were aplenty, and like Dana Milbank, I wish that the moderate Presidential moderator had smacked some of them down when they got ornery.

Here's one of the things that bother me about the post-summit spin coming from the Democrats: the notion that

At the meeting, both sides found common ground on critical issues including

o   Eliminating waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid

o   Reforming medical malpractice laws

o   Providing more choices in coverage for individuals and the option to pool coverage for small businesses

o   Reforming the insurance market

"Common ground?"  Why should the Republicans be given any credit for seeming reasonable, when all indications are that they will continue to oppose any changes to the broken system?  If reform passes, it will be thanks to Democratic votes, and Democratic votes alone.

When the Republicans say "start over" on health care reform, that is not "common ground." It's code for grind to a halt.  Pass the bill, then go on to these nice "common ground" points in Step 2, from a position of strength.

Around the World In International English

Before the blogosphere, there was the ionosphere.  Actually, it's still there (image: NOAA), greenhouse effect or not.   And thanks to the ionosphere, you could listen in to the world of shortwave radio.

Thanks to the Taiwanese, who seem to be the only ones making SW radios, you still can - if you want to fool around with frequencies.  There is a certain adventure in zapping around and landing up in Cairo, Moscow, or Rio de Janeiro, even if you can't understand a word they're saying.  I know you can do the same thing with live streaming on the internet, but you might miss the crackle of the radio waves.

But from the comfort of your computer, you can discover a whole world out there - in English.  You and I already know that, but how many of us stick to our favorite sites, bookmarking our way through the usual suspects?  So let me propose a tour of the world, a random journey across time zones that I'll make up as we go along.

First stop, Burma, and the Irrawaddy News Magazine.  The Irrawaddy, based in Thailand and named after Burma's main river, is written by exiled Burmese journalists.  How often do you get an objective (well, anti-regime) glimpse inside one of the world's most secretive societies?

Staying on in Asia, wander over to Pakistan - rather important to know how things are developing there, n'est-ce pas?  No better place than The Dawn, where yesterday's editorial on "Secularism vs. Islamism" described a very outspoken debate on Pakistani TV.

You'll note how random this is: our next stop is the landlocked African country of Uganda, where the Daily Monitor has an interesting story about Fort Patiko, which dates back to the time of Arab slave traders.  Ugandans speak several languages among their ethnic groups and tribes, but the national language is English.

English is widely spoken in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country, so it is not surprising that Al-Ahram has an English-language weekly, where you can read a report about "Fatah-gate," a developing scandal over corruption in Palestinian Authority circles in Ramallah.

Europe has scads of English-language media resources, so I'll cite a very unrepresentative sample of one: "A Fistful of Euros," a memorably-named blog by 15 writers.  Good stuff, and despite its name, not entirely devoted to economics.

Skipping over to Latin America, the Buenos Aires Herald is a 124 year old English-language daily, as befits a country of immigrants, a good number of whom hailed from England, Scotland, and Wales.

If all of my channel-hopping has been too demanding, you might just try WorldFocus TV's "Blogwatch," which has a changing blog roll of worldwide scribblers (including me).

American expats wanting to stay in touch with the "homeland" have a multitude of resources, and podcasts from Democracy Now and NPR are much appreciated.  But tonight, if I'm feeling a bit insomniac, I just might reach for that shortwave dial...

You Say Demagoguery, I Say Demagogy...

... but the meaning is the same: today is the 60th anniversary of the beginning of an era: "1950: McCarthy Launches Anti-Red Crusade," on the helpful BBC site "On This Day."

Actually, the red scare had already gotten underway, but Senator Joe McCarthy simply capitalized on the hysteria.  After needlessly ruining several careers among the State Department's Foreign Service, he was eventually censured by the Senate, but not before the greatest reproach to McCarthy was uttered by Joseph Welch, counsel for the US Army: "Have you no sense of decency?"

How convenient, this McCarthyite anniversary, while we consider this past weekend's populist fest, the Tea Party convention.  For you can't have demagogues without populists, and that's what Tea-Partyism is, our latest outburst of populism.

Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture by Benjamin L. Alpers (2002, UNC Press) reminds us that

The American populist tradition divides the world into "us" and "them." It typically imagines the great, virtuous mass of hardworking people arrayed against a small group of distant elites, bankers, bureaucrats, and the like.

If "virtuous" and "hardworking" sound innocuous enough, Alpers then cites the kind of "us and them" that went on under populist demagogue Father (yes, a Catholic priest) Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic rabble-rouser in the 20s and 30s.

Now we have the likes of Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh, who dangerously hark back to the "us and them" theme, and yearn for the days when "us" took no lessons from "them."  Their targets may be different - Muslims, Latin immigrants, Democrats - but they thrive on division, exclusion.  Dangerous daydreaming in the world of 2010, when not only the world has changed - just check the "Made in China" labels on everything from undershirts to the national debt - but the US has too.  The Palins, Tancredos, and Limbaughs are in denial.

Ms. Palin poked fun at the "hopey changey thing" that inspired people to vote for President Obama, but the truth is that her kind of populism is changeless, and hopeless.  Father Coughlin's rants about Jews were drowned out by repeated re-elections of FDR, the man he called a "betrayer and a liar."  Twenty years later, Senator McCarthy's hounding of some of the same "them" victims was shown for what it was, and he left the public scene in disgrace.

Demagogues and populists.  Can't have one without the other.

In the World, Like It Or Not

FYI, fellow Americans: Europeans who care about maintaining close ties with the US administration are starting to get worked up over the likelihood of a no-show by President Obama at the May EU-US Summit in Madrid.

There may be many reasons for the White House to consider skipping this pow-wow, but most of them are probably purely domestic - reinforcing among populists that the President is totally focused on economic matters, job creation, etc.  None of which are unimportant matters.

But as the New York Times' David Sanger reminded us today, there is a direct correlation between American economic standing and its ability to wield power in the world.  "In the world," that Vietnam era GI phrase to mean everywhere other than their soggy rice paddy, is where we live, and everything from deficits to crude oil to climate change links Americans to everyone else, whether they are Chinese, Africans, or Europeans.

Yes, by all means cancel the Bush era Moon/Mars boondoggle, where money was to be borrowed (more deficits) on a whimsical return to manned Moon exploration, leading perhaps to Mars "colonization."  Meanwhile, back on Earth, the colonization that we really need to be concerned about is that which is going on in the West Bank.  Which brings me back to the US-EU Summit.

Here's what I wrote in Euractiv today:

- - - - - - - -

When Israel-Palestine merits not a word from a president, you know the United States is turning inward.

Roger Cohen on the SOTU, New York Times, 28 January 2010, “Exit America“

The same Cohen op-ed indicates that only nine minutes were devoted to international affairs in President Obama’s first State of the Union message last month. And now we hear about how intra-EU wrangling over which of its several “Présidents” will shake Obama’s hand first at the US-EU Summit may mean that none of them will get to do so - if the US President doesn’t attend.

Sorry, folks, this just won’t do. Adult leadership is required on both sides of the Atlantic if the warring parties on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean are ever to be encouraged to make peace.

It’s not a problem that needs more time - Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its siege of Gaza have lasted the better part of a half century. 90 years ago this month, in February 1920, the “powers” were meeting in the Conference of London - one of a series of conclaves to divvy up the defunct Ottoman Empire - and we know how that turned out.

Last month, a few days before the SOTU speech that ignored the Israel-Palestine situation, I chaired a panel in Brussels that looked at the unsatisfactory state of Western efforts to bring about a lasting peace. Despite the hope this time last year (Inauguration of Obama, his appointment of George Mitchell), the anniversary of the Israel campaign against Gaza reminds us how little has changed, except that Israel now has a government bent on expanding its settlements throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem. But in our conference, what was clear was that both sides of the pond needed to keep each other engaged.

The United States remains Israel’s primary security guarantor, and the European Union’s financial assistance allows the Palestinian Authority to remain in business. It would appear that the US and the EU have many things to talk about, and might want to better coordinate their use of what should be considerable leverage with both parties to the conflict.

What better way than to end the “egotistical wrangling” over lining up to shake hands? And for the US, to use the EU-US Summit to show Europe that the Obama Administration is not going to “go local.”

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Medevac Diplomacy Requires Public Diplomacy

"Not our finest moment"

One of the main developing stories on BBC and other international media over the weekend is the mystery surrounding the apparent freeze - since Wednesday, 5 long days ago - of US military medevac flights from Haiti to the US, meaning Florida.  It's time to get a grip before this becomes a major calamity, human and diplomatic.

[UPDATE I, 1 February: the White House has announced that flights will resume Monday.  UPDATE II, 2 February: according to the New York Times, the Federal government will now reimburse hospitals for Haitians treated under the emergency.  The doctor whose outcry galvanized concerted action said the system was back "in sync."]

The White House has told the BBC that the suspension is due to "logistical issues," but the Miami Herald indicates that state-federal wrangling over reimbursement of medical costs has played a part in the confusion. A Florida doctor on the ground in Haiti said that "it is not our finest moment right now."

One Florida official referred to confusion over having to deal with multiple federal agencies.  Oops, there we go again, despite years of work and millions spent on "interagency" coordination.  Granted, well-intentioned people of numerous nationalities and organizational affiliations are pitching in during this dire emergency, under daunting conditions.  But that is exactly what interagency planning is for - coordination.

The decision to have the US military go in with overwhelming numbers, take charge of the Port-au-Prince airport, and regulate the flow of relief supplies and medevacs means that that the US is solely responsible for making this work.  When it doesn't, it shouldn't be up to Florida officials and US Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) spokesmen to trade charges over who is responsible for the holdup.  In addition to unblocking the jam, let's exert a little message control here.

Despite the destruction and the initial rush to help, things started out promisingly - hell, even Cuba granted special flight clearance for US military planes to fly through its airspace.  If Florida is having trouble admitting a few hundred additional Haitians, why not expand on this diplomatic breakthrough and work with Cuba's ongoing Haitian medical program to land patients there?

Image from the Commission for Aviation Regulation.

If Not Obama, Who? If Not Progress, What? Regress?

A fellow expat friend reported back from his trip to the States on the ubiquitous "I Voted for McCain/Palin" mugs in airport souvenir shops.  Maybe that's a function of Washington being such a political town, but I find it odd that the Democratic Party Store online has no equivalent stuff.  You have to go to Democraticstuff.com, a commercial venture, to get anything close, and then the message is mixed: "I Voted For Change" in big print, with Obama/Biden as a footnote.  If you wear that these days, does it mean that you didn't get enough Change, or that it hasn't come fast enough?

Another friend sees Obama as "our last, best, hope" - there it is, Hope, along with Change.  Hard to imagine that it's only a year since the incredible feeling on the Mall, with the hundreds of thousands of people gathered for the historic Inauguration.  Since a Cajun group captured the magic of "Yes We Can" put to zydeco, "Oui, on peut."

Okay, the campaign is over, the election won, and the Inauguration a year ago.  Reality is, well, rather daunting.  But then we said it before the Inauguration, when then President-Elect Obama was in the unenviable position of being The One Who Everyone Is Waiting For, even while there was an actual President still in the White House.  How was Obama going to deal with the legacy left by George W. Bush?  Two wars, one near-Depression, and a national image that was a photo montage of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo?

Back then, Americans knew that the weight of all of these simultaneous crises was going to be almost too much for one man to bear.  A year later, why are many Americans disillusioned?  Why are some Massachusetts Democrats considering venting their frustration by abstaining or even voting Republican?  Did they forget their relief at the election of an honest, intelligent President, a pragmatist who needed to walk his country back from the brink?

During the 2008 Presidential primary campaign, I wrote a post "Trop Beau Pour Toi," a play on the title of a French film from the Eighties.  "Does America Deserve Obama?" was my subtitle.  I have to ask now: who, and of what political stripe, do people think would better be able to tackle the monumental work left to be done?  Climate change and retooling the United States for a resource-challenged future?  Building a resilient society where paying medical bills no longer puts you in the poor house?  Harnessing international cooperation to face the threat of instability in the Middle East?

Are Americans going to jettison someone who can actually inventory the problems, take in world-class opinion, and craft solutions that are workable?  In favor of what - a Sarah Palin or a Rush Limbaugh?  Again, let's go back to that moment in late 2008 or early 2009, when we all recognized the task facing Obama.  How can people even consider bringing back the same crew that brought America Abu Ghraib, sub primes, surplus splurging... the list goes on.  Do you fix that in a year?

"Rome wasn't built in a day," so goes the old saying.  I'd give it eight years.  And Change is an ongoing condition, contrasted with status quo.  And no, I do not want a return to the world as seen by Dick Cheney or as imagined by Sarah Palin. I'll take pragmatic over Paleolithic any day. 

Climate: Earth's Recirc Button Still On

Whatever just happened in Copenhagen - and I reserve judgment 'til I've read a comprehensive debrief - the underlying problem of carbon overproduction hasn't gone away.

One thing is for sure: this post and millions like it, and the millions of emails and spam mails sent daily, will add their share of greenhouse gases to our planet's already full atmosphere.  I read somewhere that the spam sent to Hotmail accounts alone consumed the equivalent of the production of 5 nuclear power plants.  Only they're more likely to be coal-fired plants...

It's like we're in one big airplane, folks, Earth Airlines, breathing in that stale air constantly recirculated around us.  The flight never ends, and fresh air is a relative concept.  So am I going to cease blogging?  Hardly.  I'm already using public transport for most movement throughout Brussels, and I try to climb the staircase vice using the elevator in my building a good half of the time.  But I still am dependent on electricity coming - in the case for Belgium and France - from a mix of nuclear and coal-fired power plants.  I"m in the grid.

For Brussels and its surrounding countryside, the solid waste equivalent of the closed circuit effect was illustrated this past week with odoriferous obviousness.  The private sector contractor in charge of the city's main waste treatment facility decided, apparently without consulting the city (capital region) authorities, to shut down the facility and dump Brussels' untreated effluent into the rivers flowing through and out of the capital.

Into someone's back yard, that is. The backyard being the Flanders region, already prickly about the presence of the million Francophones, expatriates, and immigrants who make up Brussels, in their midst (Brussels is entirely surrounded by Dutch-speaking Flanders).  Every time I flushed the toilet, I felt like saying "excuseer mevrouw en meneer" or some such thing.

The Francophone Brussels environment minister even had to scurry home from Copenhagen to handle the PR mess, since all she could do about the other mess was to frustratedly order the contractor to re-open the plant, which will be done - eventually.

The affair shows, with visual and nasal effect, how no man is an island, or how "down the drain" doesn't end when you flush the toilet.  Homeowners with septic tanks know that the honey-dipper must come or the system backs up; for those with municipal sewerage systems, it gets more complicated.  But someone else always lives downstream.

Maybe politicians weren't the right people to send to Copenhagen.  How about some HVAC technicians to explain that polluted recirculated air remains polluted unless filtered?  Better yet, stop polluting the air in the first place.  Or plumbers, who know that garbage in will result in garbage out, unless purified to an acceptable level.

When it comes down to it, perhaps even in the hearts of the most die hard climate change deniers, it should be common sense and a sense of self-preservation that forces us to do the right thing.  But as last week's ballyhoo in Brussels over solid waste flowing downstream should show us, governments cannot count on their contractors to do the right thing or even the most basic of civic-minded actions.  Not without controls, oversight, rules and regulations.  The job of governments, and the people who elect them.