Avuncular American

Faraway Fields of Lake Wobegon

Checking in after my Christmas-New Year's hiatus far from internet connections.  Actually, far from publicly-available internet connections that were not closed over the holidays.  I've been in provincial France.

On our drive back towards Brussels, we got into range of BBC on our car radio, and a couple of reports provided food for thought.  One was on Britain's (or, I should say Britons') self image in years of late: rather glum, with a tendency in the media to dwell on bad news (teenage knife crime, binge drinking, loutish behavior, etc).

But to a large number of Germans, who gather for such rituals as Scottish country dancing and other rites connected with Great Britain, the United Kingdom is the promised land.  We all know the old Irish expression "Faraway fields look green."  Sometimes you have to travel beyond the confines of your own borders to appreciate your country for what it's worth - or to see it as others see it.  That's a running theme in this blog, of course.  An expatriate view of America and the world from Europe.

So if the BBC report showed Brits how much their low societal esteem is unjustified, another BBC report showed how individual Brits have a rather high regard for themselves.  In part, this is the "Lake Wobegon Effect," Garrison Keillor's imaginary place "where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

According to the BBC, in matters of intelligence, civility, and driving skills, 60% of the population place themselves in the top 20%.  I would guess that this doesn't happen exclusively in Britain or in Lake Wobegon.

But if people put themselves (or their children) in the top bracket, why do they often sell their country short, or think that things have to be better elsewhere?  Though it can be carried too far, a bit of international comparative shopping is healthy.  Especially if you live in a state of mind that makes you think your country is better than anywhere else.

So why don't we resolve to do this in 2009: use those "sister city" links for some real world uses.  LIke looking for best practices?  American city planners could check out how European cities are taking on the automobile and making downtowns accessible by public transportation.

French people, fond of complaining about everything, including their world-class medical system, might be sent on an internship to the US, where they could navigate America's health-care "situation."

Short of these exchanges, maybe we should all just admit that other people/countries might do things better than we do, or conversely that sometimes things just aren't so bad in our own countries as we've convinced ourselves they are.  Either way, we just have to open our minds that there is no monopoly on ways to run a country or society properly.

African Reputations: Ghana & Zimbabwe

There was never a better time to prove the point - Governor Palin, are you paying attention? - that Africa is a continent and not a country.  The news coming from two widely separated corners shows the contrast:

Ghana: the country's fifth democratic, contested presidential elections are taking place today, and the country is debating how best to manage an oil bonanza due to start in the next two years

Zimbabwe: starvation has exacerbated the cholera epidemic, which is added to the endemic hyper-inflation and political violence.  Now even some African leaders are calling for armed international intervention to save the country from Robert Mugabe's calamitous rule.

If you are looking for the latest information on Ghana's elections, check this wonderful page from the BBC World Service, which provides audio and text background and results starting 1830 GMT on Sunday.  For local flavor and minute-by-minute updates, read "Think Ghana" and its Decision '08 blog, by three enterprising young Ghanaians.

Personally, I want Ghana's winning streak to continue, for it is a very impressive country.  Airports tell you something about a country, and Accra's international airport is clean and calm - extremely reassuring in a region where air travel is sporadically deadly.  Ghana - even before the discovery of oil - was fast on its way to becoming a regional center; French is increasingly overheard, thanks to francophone businessmen seeking a safe place to do business near sometimes war torn Ivory Coast.

But it was not always so.  I returned from a series of trips to Ghana a couple of years ago, and was enthusing about the country's progress with a friend who had served in the Peace Corps in the French-speaking Sahel in the Eighties.  She was surprised at the change from her time in the region, as Ghana's reputation then was one of military coups, corruption, instability, and firing squads.  Today, an interested visitor might see the seaside firing ranges that the very professional Ghanaian Army now only uses for target practice.  In 1979, that's where they carried out the execution of the losers in a military coup.

This oscillation in the reputation of African countries is nowhere more evident than in Zimbabwe, which was known as the "jewel of Africa" in better days.  Before its 231 million percent annual inflation rate and $200 million Zimbabwe Dollar note (AFP photo at left from yesterday is already outdated).  For an idea of the extent of the paradise that was lost, read "How To Kill a Country" in the December 2003 Atlantic by (current Obama State Department Transition Team adviser) Samantha Power:

The country's economy in 1997 was the fastest growing in all of Africa; now it is the fastest shrinking. A onetime net exporter of maize, cotton, beef, tobacco, roses, and sugarcane now exports only its educated professionals, who are fleeing by the tens of thousands. Although Zimbabwe has some of the richest farmland in Africa, children with distended bellies have begun arriving at school looking like miniature pregnant women. How could the breadbasket of Africa have deteriorated so quickly into the continent's basket case? The answer is Robert Mugabe... who by his actions has compiled something of a "how-to" manual for national destruction.

Dr. Power likely thought that five years ago Zimbabwe had reached its nadir; today it's impossible to say just how much lower the country can go.  And unless Mugabe himself contracts the rampant cholera, it's hard to imagine what - short of his army turning on him - can put an end to the misery.

"Nation branding," or the cultivation of a country's reputation, requires more than a marketing effort for African countries.  No PR campaign on CNN International or BBC World can erase the total failure of governance and the evident misery of Zimbabwe's population.  But Ghana, which returned from the precipice of failed statehood, offers hope to a post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.  The question is: what will be left to govern?

The Pride of America, The Joy of the World

Turning on the BBC this morning after a very short sleep, John McCain's voice provided the good news (from The Telegraph):

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him but offering our next president our goodwill and earnest effort to find ways to come together.  Whatever our differences, we are fellow Americans.

With that, the incredible journey of Barack Obama to the White House became fact.  John McCain ended his campaign in a very honorable way; francophones would call it "très fair-play."  Now the challenge will be to enlist him and his supporters in the monumental task of rebuilding America after the lost Bush years.

TV audiences saw the emotion on the faces of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathering in Chicago, Washington, and in lots of small towns across the country.  Joy, hope, pride, relief.

Last night a few thousand of us gathered in Brussels for an election-eve party - expat Americans, Belgians, but also people from every corner of the international diaspora present in Europe's capital.  My job as the "Obama cheerleader" (debate would be too dignified a term for our performance in front of such a crowd) was made easier by the numbers; Obama's landslide in the US looked mild compared to the overwhelming support he had in the hotel ballroom last night.

The after-action interviews of us expat Americans will soon taper off, and the brainstorming now begins: later today I will attend one of what will be many sessions in European and other capitals on prospects for renewal of American ties with the world under an Obama Administration.  My plan: go into Obama mode: listen to my European hosts - Green think tank The Heinrich Boll Foundation - and hear what they prescribe for bringing the United States into the fold of countries seeking solutions to the world's grave environmental problems of climate change and resource constriction.

Wonkiness will abound, and I will be as active a participant as my couple hours' sleep permits.  But my heart will be in places like Chicago - or Nairobi, where Barack Obama's victory has been declared a national holiday.  It's party time.

I don't care if some commentators want to downplay the Obama-JFK connection.  For millions in the US and around the world, Barack Obama's election to the US Presidency surpasses the historical milestone of Irish Catholic Kennedy's election in 1960.

In my parents' native Ireland, for years thousands of homes sported photos of a sort of holy trinity: the Pope (whoever he was at the time), hero of Irish independence Michael Collins, and President John F. Kennedy.  I expect that President Barack Obama's portrait will be ubiquitous - and not just in Kenya - in simple homes the world over for a long time to come.

And birth registries throughout the world: get ready for a deluge of little ones named Barack!

(photo: Bridges For Obama)

Hope May Not Be A Plan, But It Sure Beats Fear

You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It's there at your command

"Get Together," The Youngbloods, 1967

You can hear it on the great "Forrest Gump" soundtrack, this call for brotherhood that Clear Channel Communications tried to ban after September 11 from its 1,200 radio stations, along with other songs that were "lyrically questionable."

You're probably not going to hear the song at any John McCain - Sarah Palin rallies, where fear is the order of the day.  You know the mood is mean when Senator Arlen Specter, considered a "moderate" Republican, openly touts the Bradley Effect as a McCain secret weapon:

There are a "couple of hidden factors" in this election, said Specter. "The first is that people answer pollsters one way, but in the secrecy of the ballot booth, vote the other way."

As Rebecca Traister says in her "McCain Gets Mean" report from Pennsylvania today in Salon.com, here is Specter "crossing his fingers and hoping for racism."  This is exactly what Europeans fear about Tuesday's election.  I am more concerned about polling place confusion, accidental or planned.

I have been in overdrive the past couple of weeks, helping spread the word on Barack Obama to radio, TV, and press audiences in Brussels.  My wife has, in her words, become an "Obama widow."

Not that Obama needs any help over here: about the only European political parties that are against him are on the racist extreme right.  Today on Belgian TV, socialists and free-marketeers were united in wishing for an Obama victory.  Everyone wants a clean break with the party of George W. Bush.  But in my debate mode, enumerating Obama's and the Democrats' strong points on foreign policy and the economy, I think that I am neglecting the key factor in why his campaign has caught fire. Hope.

"Hope Is Not A Method" is an excellent 1996 "business" book by retired Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan and Michael Harper.  I fully subscribe to the General's counsel, as would Barack Obama.  But while hope alone will not bring America out of its Hobbsian obsession with fear, it serves as a nice capstone to why the Obama campaign has captured the imagination of America and the world.

I fully expect the McCain - and especially Palin - camp to continue their hammering on the theme of fear, whatever the outcome on Tuesday.  If elected (which I certainly do not wish for), their administration would be a Bush/Cheney fear-fest on steroids.  In opposition, they will feed the right-wing talk radio circuit, now abetted by thousands of internet crazies, busily concocting videos proving that Barack Obama is [fill in the blank for whatever makes people most fearful].  Bill Clinton put up with the crazy fringe for his entire eight years in office.  What he had to endure will probably seem tame compared to the frenzy provoked by the thought of an Obama Administration.

Meanwhile, in the real America that just might elect Barack Obama president, hope will be rekindled.  Hope that America can once again urge countries to respect human rights without fear of ridicule, and without dictators justifying their torture by citing George W. Bush's caveats.  Hope that America's economic well-being will not be jeopardized by Wall Street sharks who take their bonuses and run.  Hope that freedoms won by generations of sacrifice will not be trampled by leaders who divide in order to rule.

Last month in the Washington Post, columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote about the 2008 Presidential campaign in terms of hope and fear.  He reminded us that in 1932, Herbert Hoover tried to "sow fear and panic" about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, just like McCain/Palin are trying to do now with Barack Obama.  If you are wondering how the Depression might have panned out under a re-elected Hoover, check out the McCain Spending Freeze solution.

"You hold the key to love and fear, All in your trembling hand.  Just one key unlocks them both, It's there at your command." The key is a vote for Obama.  A return to Constitutional governance, a 21st century New Green Deal in the wake of a 1929-like meltdown, and an engagement with the world from a vantage point that does not look down the barrel of a gun.  No, he's not the Second Coming.  But he may be the last, best chance in a long while that America has to redeem its good name and to recover its spirit.  No need to be afraid of that.

Foreign Fixation With US Election: Free Public Diplomacy, Citizen Style

If the reaction of Belgians to the US presidential campaign is typical of publics throughout Europe and the rest of the world - a recent multi-country poll commissioned by The Guardian and other papers shows that Belgians are among the world's most pro-Obama and anti-Bush - then the United States is enjoying a massive public diplomacy bonanza.  For free.  Thanks to overseas Americans.

For the past several months, but especially in the last weeks leading up to November 4, the services of the Democrats Abroad Belgium (DAB) "Speakers Bureau" have been much in demand.  It might sound impressive, but the "bureau" is just a handful of regular American citizens who happen to be conversant in one or more of Belgium's three official languages: Dutch, French, or German.  English too: in this international atmosphere, it is often the lingua franca of think tanks, educational institutions, discussion groups and news media following the US election.

If we've been swept up in the media frenzy (last night it was the multilingual TV channel "Euronews" filming a bunch of us at a local pub), imagine the toll that this is taking on the Republican.  I say "the" Republican, since the stalwart head of the GOP group in Belgium seems to be a one-man show, trotted out to debate Democrats who put forward one of at least a half dozen debaters who share the burden.

The questions naturally betray the pro-Democratic bias of many of the audiences.  Weary of eight years of Bush unilateralism, terrified at the prospect of a US-led worldwide depression, Europeans want to see an invigorated America under new management.  Luckily for us Dems, this coincides perfectly with our point of view.  European audiences have to be reminded, however, of the ugly underside of American democracy: voter suppression.  Greg Palast and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who have written "Block The Vote" in the current Rolling Stone, have also recorded a BBC documentary where they show the myriad ways in which millions - millions - of Americans are prevented from voting.

To Europeans, where in countries like Belgium voting is mandatory, this anti-democratic shrinkage of the electorate is inconceivable.  People receive notices inviting them to vote, and turnout exceeds 90%.  Belgium may have more than its share of political complexity, but gaming the actual voting system is not one of them.  In France, a much larger democracy with far-flung overseas territories, somehow millions of people vote with paper ballots in boxes with slots at the top, which are tabulated by citizen volunteers in time for results announced on the evening TV news.

In the US, meanwhile, the State Department's Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy is organizing the I-VOTE program to promote foreign understanding of the immensely complex and seemingly jury-rigged US electoral system (image above from I-VOTE).  Good initiative, the kind that is done every four years in the US and abroad at its embassies, where local officials, academics, and journalists are invited to straw polls, election night parties, and - depending on the time zone - morning-after breakfasts.

This year, the positive impact of the Obama phenomenon is being multiplied many times over by the kind of citizen public diplomacy us Democrats (and that sole Republican!) are waging on our own dime here in Brussels.  If the Democrats led by Obama win - and especially if the election is shown to be fair and square - the beneficiaries will be all Americans, for the world will see that American democracy is not just a PR story.

"With liberty and justice for all" - so ends the American Pledge of Allegiance.  In his essay on the subject for the Heritage Foundation, libertarian Ward Connerly wrote in 1996 that in America, "we are guaranteed the right to vote."  Would that it were so.  Ten years later, Constitutional lawyer Garret Epps in Salon wrote "You have no right to vote," a sad chronicle of the ambivalent American approach to that most fundamental of democratic practices.

My wife and I have just sent in our absentee ballots.  I wish I could say that we had a good feeling, but our sense of patriotic duty is marred by a realization that many things can go wrong, just like they did in elections past in our benighted County in Florida - Broward-of-the-hanging-chads. Maybe her hyphenated name lacks a crucial hyphen - disqualified!  Maybe our Belgian postmark will be smudged - suspect... discard!  Maybe, as in 2002, the county will just lose 100,000 absentee ballots.  For the sake of American democracy - not to speak of the US image in the world - there has to be a better way.

Trillion$ To Go: Remember The Iraq Bill

[T]his financial disaster will end the war in Iraq and limit significantly the choices that both Obama and McCain might have before them as President.

Steve Clemons, The Washington Note

Sorry to bring it up at this delicate juncture, but there is the matter of that other bill.  For Iraq.

As Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz ("The Three Trillion Dollar War") reminded Congress earlier this year

Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war.

There are only so many trillions that a nation can run up in debt and printed paper currency before things start to happen.  Just ask Zimbabwe, where the 40 million percent inflation rate is no joke.  There have been others: people in inter war Germany used wheel barrows to cart their money around.

That's probably not in store for the US - yet - but one thing is for sure: just like having your house repossessed will cramp your shopping style, so too does financial profligacy have a way of delimiting your strategic options.  That is the message of noted national security scholar Andrew Bacevich in his new book, The Limits of Power.

In the blame game that will only get worse, we will hear much about the responsibility for the financial crisis.  Should, as I hope, the Democrats win not only the White House but large Congressional majorities in November, I will make this prediction: Republicans in opposition will rediscover "fiscal responsibility."  The last time the Democrats held the White House, when Republican Sam Brownback had not yet moved from House to Senate, he worried greatly about the national debt: "we're $5 trillion in the hole, so we have to start doing things in a different way."

Now that the - pre-bailout - debt has reached $10.6 trillion, I guess Senator Brownback's party has truly succeeded in "doing things in a different way."  But one thing is for sure: as Steve Clemons has said, America's abysmal financial straits will "limit significantly the choices" for the next president.

Update: In Salon, Gary Kamiya shows us what our money has got us, and reminds us where we are in Iraq today: on the side of Iran's allies.

November 4: Can Ridicule Trump Race?

"Ridicule," the title of a film that portrayed life in the pre-Revolutionary French court, showed how wit could bring politicians down.  Humor, sarcasm, and irony are tricky weapons, and can sometimes backfire.  I am not advocating that the Obama campaign deploy 18th century French sophistication on an audience more used to soundbites, but I am suggesting that there are reams of material in the McCain, Palin, and Republican campaign that should get them laughed out of the court of public opinion.

Did you hear the one about the sub-prime king who received an $18 million bonus for masterminding billions in “asset repackagings and credit-linked notes” and further billions of “mortgage-backed and other asset-backed” securities?  His name is Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and current Treasury Secretary, and now he wants to sell Congress $700 billion and says, "trust me."

And then there's McCain himself, who has called Social Security "an absolute disgrace."  He might want to revisit that, now that Social Security might be the only thing left for millions of Americans who just lost their homes, and whose 401 (k) or individual retirement accounts have been wiped out by Wall Street.  And anyway, what can someone who has 7 or 8 houses and 13 cars know about normal people?

And then there's Palin, carrying on the time-dishonored tradition of Bush & Cheney, who so wanted to show how different they were that they gave the Clinton budget surplus away to their cronies - wouldn't those billions be handy now?  But wait, isn't she Governor Thanks But No Thanks?  Not really, but she was mayor tax-and-spend: she came into an office that had paid its bills, but left it $19 million in debt, which for Wasilla's population is about the same per capita debt that Paulson is now tying to ram through Congress.  See above.

But, against all that, we have this: have you heard, Barack Obama is... black?  Factually speaking, his mother was a white American and his father was a Kenyan, where most people are, in fact, black.  Being African, that is.  This, apparently, is the one overwhelming pigmentation problem that many Americans have difficulty overcoming.  We have the Bradley effect or the Wilder effect, which Gary Younge describes in The Guardian.  In which people purport to be open to black candidates, but cannot bring themselves to vote for them on election day.  "So we have racism but no racists," concludes Younge.

I've been getting reports of this from friends in the US.  In Florida, a volunteer campaign worker canvasses a hundred neighbors, but only a handful are for Obama.  In rural Virginia, a friend is appalled at her parents' neighbors' inability to conceive of a black president.  Even in suburban Chicago, a longtime Obama supporter sees her neighbors - professionals in a wealthy neighborhood - sport "Yes She Can" signs on their properties.

Read Brent Staples' excellent piece on race and the presidential race in Sunday's New York Times, and marvel at the utter brazenness of racism in 2008 America:

A blatant example surfaced earlier this month, when a Georgia Republican, Representative Lynn Westmoreland, described the Obamas as “uppity” in response to a reporter’s question.

Or how about this one:

Representative Geoff Davis, Republican of Kentucky, succumbed to the old language earlier this year when describing what he viewed as Mr. Obama’s lack of preparedness to handle nuclear policy. “That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” he said.

The only way of countering a culture where elected representatives can still get away with such behavior is to turn them into a minority.  Much of this will depend on the turnout in November, which is itself under threat from racism.  If you doubt that, please read "Obama: The Price of Being Black," by Andrew Hacker in the New York Review of Books.  In which Hacker documents the deliberate effort across the United States to suppress the vote of black citizens.  Says Hacker: "Barack Obama can only become president by mustering a turnout that will surpass the votes he is not going to get."  He then proceeds to outline why that is such a monumental task, given all the barriers.

I take small solace, but solace nonetheless, from a friend in South Carolina, where attitudes on race are - what shall I say? - both blatant and nuanced.  Blatant since you can find raw racism the likes of which you thought was long over.  Nuanced, in that some white people have found in Barack Obama a man of color for whom they can vote.  These people may be racist (or at least racialists), but their racism is directed at those black Americans who have lived in their midst for generations.  In the case of Barack Obama, maybe they apply the same kind of racial typology that used to list people by their degree of non-whiteness: "quadroon" and "octoroon" and such slave-era terminology.

So why are these same people open to voting for Obama?  They agree with his policies, and in their finely-tuned racial consciousness, they make a distinction between this man who they choose to classify as an American of African ancestry, as opposed to an African-American.  Repugnant, and probably ridiculous.  But next to the ridiculousness of voting in a near-depression for the people and policies who brought America to this sorry state...

Public Diplomacy: Danger Of Protesting Too Much

In a very laudable initiative, the US State Department's Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy James Glassman engaged with bloggers the other day (I was invited, but the conference call machinery didn't succeed in reaching me in Brussels).  The exchange has been covered by others, notably Matt Armstrong of "Mountain Runner," who participated.  The transcript is here.

Prior to the round table, Glassman's office had sent invitees a link to a fascinating exchange between an anonymous State Department person (or persons) from the "Digital Outreach Team," and Ali Akbar Javanfekr, media adviser to Iranian President Ahmadinejad.  As Undersecretary Glassman had told the blogger round table, "we want to be a facilitator, a convener; we want to bring people together."  A noble cause, not terribly different from a Clinton era appointee I once worked for, who was always trying to "triangulate" people from different spheres.

In the case of the State Department - Iranian Presidency dialogue-by-blog, it was more a question of trading accusations.  Mostly cool and polite in the case of the State team, which seemed to increasingly infuriate the Iranian, who was troubled by the lopsided dialogue with nameless American counterpart(s).  When the State person says, "the United States government does not have any blood feuds with the people of any other nation, nor is it in the nature of American society to hold grudges against others," that may sound reasonable in a Stateside context.  Iranians and other Muslims might question the sentiment, especially given calls in some American quarters for "crusade" and "battling Islamo-fascism" in misplaced efforts after September 11, 2001.  To much of the world, it does indeed sound like the US has a blood feud going.

Pat Kushlis of Whirled View, who participated in the Glassman round table, puts her finger on part of the "dialogue" problem in her post on the latest world polls showing massive distrust of the United States.  When the messenger represents a country - or an Administration - that is almost universally disrespected, it is very difficult to "bring people together."

Important as public diplomacy is, of "being a facilitator, bringing people together," it's hard when your country is not a neutral party.  Good offices, shuttle diplomacy, sharing, caring - all the touchy feely sounding accouterments of soft power - come up against the hard steel of the US image in the world.  Matt Armstrong, who speaks of undoing "the voluntary militarization of public diplomacy by the Bush Administration" is on the right track.  So too is Undersecretary Glassman, who gets points for attempting a mighty hard task: convincing the world, despite much evidence to the contrary, that America wants to listen.

Jennifer - Not Condi - Is The Key US Secstate

Jennifer Brunner, that is, Secretary of State of Ohio.  The person whose Number One priority is to

Restore trust to Ohio elections...
We want citizens to have faith that Ohio elections are free, fair, open and honest to encourage the highest level of participation in our democracy.

Secretaries of State, you see, only get public attention every election cycle, usually in hand-wringing stories, after the fact, of elections gone horribly wrong (see Florida 2000; Ohio 2004).  The Secretary of State Project - "Support Secretaries of State who will protect the election" - has a home page picture of one who didn't protect the election: Katherine Harris of Florida, the Cruella of vote suppression.  The Secstate Project supported Jennifer Brunner's election over, as they say, "the Cheney/Bush crony who was on the brink of buying the election."

When Secstate Brunner says she wants to "encourage the highest level of participation in our democracy," please do not dismiss it as a boring mission statement or platitude.  Because that is exactly what the Republican Party in states like Michigan want to prevent:

The Obama campaign yesterday went to court to block what it alleged was an attempt by Republicans in Michigan to stop people who lost their homes in the mortgage crisis from voting in November's election.

The suit, filed in a Michigan court yesterday, is the latest sign of contention over voting procedures. Voting rights activists in several battleground states have reported an aggressive push by Republican elected officials and activists to make it harder to vote.

In Macomb county, Michigan, a swing constituency, Republican officials for the first time tried to use America's housing crisis as a way of striking people off lists, the Obama camp told reporters yesterday. "There is no doubt that there is an immediate threat to the voting rights of citizens in Michigan whose names could appear on a foreclosure list," said Bob Bauer, an Obama lawyer.

The situation came to light last week when the Republican party chairman of Macomb county told a local newspaper he planned to draw on publicly available lists of home foreclosures to bar people from casting their vote.

The blood boils.  As the Secstate Project commented, "it doesn't get much lower than this; lose your house, lose your vote."  The story is in today's London Guardian, datelined Washington by Suzanne Goldenberg.

But, as we saw in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 and several places in 2006, vote suppression doesn't always need nasty Republican Rovians manipulating the lists, ensuring the machines have no paper trail, or disseminating disinformation on the scheduled day or venue for the election (see the excellent film "The Uncounted" for a full accounting of the trickery).  Sometimes, you just need mass confusion.  Consider this, from yesterday's New York Times:

For more than two weeks, Palm Beach County [Florida] voters have watched with dismay as a local election has devolved into a small-scale sequel of the presidential recount eight years ago, with disappearing ballots, lawsuits and confusion over who won and lost.

The big discrepancy: Roughly 3,500 ballots that disappeared between Election Day and the recount, and an additional 176 that do not appear to have been counted at all.

“We felt cursed or jinxed,” said Mary McCarty, a Palm Beach County commissioner for 18 years who served on this latest election’s canvassing board, reviewing and counting ballots. “At least in 2000 we had all our ballots.”

In my diplomatic days, I observed elections in places like Algeria and Egypt, where the stakes are usually high and where simply having parties, NGOs, and interested citizens watchdog the process can sometimes make a difference.  In many technologically advanced countries, ballots are still paper, and are hand counted.  They still manage to have uncontested outcomes that are announced on the election day evening news.  It's not rocket science.  And yet...

I'm glad that the Obama people are standing up for the evicted Michigan citizens who just want to vote.  Maybe, if they can retain their voting rights despite bad luck in receiving a dodgy mortgage, they'll make a connection between the people who want to disenfranchise voters and the party that made their eviction inevitable through dereliction of its regulatory duties.

Which may be why the Republicans want to deprive them of their vote.

La Zona: Islands of Suburban Paranoia

In its first few minutes, you might be excused for thinking that La Zona (subtitled in the French release "Propriete Privee") is shot inside a California gated community.  The neat-as-a-pin lawns, the cookie cutter housing, the American style vehicles - everything in the opening shot except the glimpse over the security wall: sprawled out over the neighboring hills and valleys is a Third World barrio.  You're on the divide between poor, urban, desperate Mexico and its wealthy, suburban, and desperate elite.

Uruguayan-born director Rodrigo Pla and his screenwriter wife Laura Santullo have given us a harrowing picture of a world that, as Pla says in an interview on the film's French website, represents "a future that, in large part, already exists."  And not just in Mexico.

As Beth Accomando of KPBS said at La Zona's showing in March 2008 at the San Diego Latino Film Festival

Calling this a "gated community" is not entirely accurate. It looks more like a fortress with massive metal gates protecting the rich homeowners from the riff raff outside.

Director Pla admits that his wife's story, while drawing on the reality of socio-economic polarization, violence, and corruption, is a cautionary tale, and the notion that a wealthy island in the middle of a sea of poverty would have its own legal code stretches reality.  But only a bit.

Since this is a universal tale, think about the millions of Americans, Israelis, and South Africans who would find themselves right at home in La Zona.  Maybe not its atmosphere of impunity in the face of corrupt law enforcement, but certainly in the attitude of "there's never too much security."  Consider this USA Today report from 2002 on America's gated millions, who if anything have increased over the last six years.  TC Boyle, in his 1995 novel Tortilla Curtain, visited this terrain with his withering wit (see the Penguin Book Club site for an interview with Boyle on building "impregnable" walled communities that are anything but).

"Stand Your Ground" - or, as critics say, "Shoot The Avon Lady" - laws allowing the use of deadly force by individuals, even on the suspicion that an alleged intruder is intent on doing them harm, is another Norteamericano concept that would be familiar to the citizens of La Zona.  Of course in Pla's depiction (his first feature film, by the way), much depends on who is using the deadly force.  It's a world where the notion of a "Witness Protection Program" has a sinister twist, and omerta is usually the safest and most lucrative course of action.

I'm not sure whether La Zona will have a release beyond the art house circuit in the US, but it is due for release next month in the UK.  It deserves a wide showing, for though it is a suspense film par excellence, it's one with a message.  But don't expect nonstop ultra violence; what bloodletting there is is rather quiet, like the pop of pistols muffled by air conditioning and wall-to-wall carpeting.  And no easy answers either; there are victims on both sides of the wall.  La Zona has won a number of film festival awards.

My thanks again to the ladies of the Brussels group Cinefemme, whose eye for good film is always evident in their Sunday morning sneak previews.

(Film poster credit: LaZona-lefilm.com)