Transparency! Responsibility! Regulation!

America—American society and ruling elite—needs some good, old common sense New Year’s Resolutions. To me, three seem pretty much to sum it up: transparency, responsibility, and regulation.

It is only common sense that a democracy cannot function if officials are allowed to hide what they do from those who hired them; no powerful official can for long resist the temptation in a dark closet to do something he has good reason to hide: the solution is to turn on the lights. Taking responsibility for your behavior is understandable to any well-bred three-year-old. Again, this is common sense: who will consistently behave responsibly when told they do not have to? Finally, not only do most of us fall short of sainthood, there is always a truly evil person in every crowd. For him certainly, but also just to help guide the rest of us to stay on the straight and narrow, it is, once again, only logical that we need regulation.

Transparency by those in power allows democratic political oversight and trains the elite to behave responsibly, while regulation reinforces responsibility. A century ago Lenin won a revolution with the famous slogan “peace, bread, land.” That was a slogan capturing the essence of what Russians thought they should receive from their government. Today, in the U.S., the issue is not about what government should give people but about how the elite that runs both government and corporate power centers behaves. Put briefly, an elite that behaves transparently and accepts responsibility for its actions would revolutionize America but could continue to exist; such an elite would be compatible with democracy. Absent such a revolutionary change in behavior, either the elite or democracy must give way.

Transparency…

In Finance. Four years after the entirely man-made 2008 financial crisis, the carefully concealed government program that rescued both the financial system (justifiable) and the millionaire crooks who almost broke it (unjustifiable) is only now leaking out into the public realm. Someday, a politician must be put on public trial and ordered to explain why bailing out the rich with taxpayer funds should be hidden from the taxpayers.

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Lack of Financial Regulation

…thanks largely to the fact that credit default swaps existed in a totally unregulated area of the financial universe—this was the result of that 2000 law, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, sponsored by then-senator Phil Gramm and supported by then-Treasury chief Larry Summers and his predecessor Bob Rubin—Cassano could sell as much credit protection as he wanted without having to post any real money at all. So he sold hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of protection to all the big players on Wall Street, despite the fact that he didn’t have any money to cover those bets. [Matt Taibi, Griftopia, (Speigel and Grau Trade Paperbacks, 2011), 101.]

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Who led the fight to keep taxpayers in the dark? Naturally, it was the Fed, that so-called Federal regulator complicit in the creation of the financial crisis by its cosy (read: “corrupt,” as in, “don’t forget to give me a nice Wall Street management position after my years in the government, now, good buddy”) relationship with those it was assigned to regulate plus…the banks it was supposed to have been regulating. This is really not very hard to understand: if you were a billionaire who became a billionaire by cheating investors by persuading them to purchase what you knew to be bad investments and the government handed you free money from the pockets of American workers after you got in trouble, wouldn’t you want to keep it secret?!? To find out what Washington was doing with taxpayer money behind the backs of taxpayers, Bloomberg had to file Freedom of Information requests! What was the bottom line?

banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates

Either the Fed was so irresponsible and just plain stupid that it threw away $13B of taxpayer money or…this constitutes outright corruption.

…in Foreign Affairs. Two countries today are responsible for generating a decade-long crisis that could provoke a disastrous war, perhaps even a nuclear war, by their game-playing over the concept of nuclear transparency: Israel and Iran. Regional nuclear monopolist Israel plays the “don’t ask-don’t tell” charade, while Iran appears to be playing exactly the game that got Saddam killed: pretending for short-term status to have the ability to militarize nuclear technology overnight. Both Tel Aviv and Tehran need to grow up and support regional nuclear transparency as the first step toward the establishment of a shared security regime.

As for Washington, it should--as sole superpower--defend the interests of mankind and--as the elected government--defend U.S. national security: both obligations would be better served by promoted stability founded on mutual security than by getting into the middle of a squabble between foreign politicians playing games for personal advantage. Yes, moves to lower regional tensions would put the careers of Ahmadinejad and Netanyahu at risk. So what?

Responsibility…

…in Domestic Affairs.

When corporations are either 1) permitted by a society that provides them a business-friendly environment to enrich themselves or 2) are even assisted by corporate welfare to enrich themselves and their business behavior subsequently endangers the welfare of society, then that society must have a legal process for holding such corporations as entities and the managers of such corporations and their government friends personally responsible. Goldman Sachs executives, despite appearing to have engineered the collapse of AIG only to profit further from that disaster via a monstrous taxpayer bailout [Taibi, 118; Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics (Penguin Books: 2010), 228-9], remain free and rich while the millions who have lost homes and jobs remain homeless and unemployed.

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Responsibility in Financial Affairs

Even though they weren’t really in danger of losing any money by holding on to [WM: AIG executive] Neuger’s securities, they were returning them anyway, just to force AIG into a crisis. [Taibi, 116] …In essence, the partners of Goldman Sachs held the thousands of AIG policyholders hostage, all in order to recover a few billion bucks they’d bet on [WM: AIG executive] Joe Cassano’s plainly crooked sweetheart CDS deals. [Taibi, 118.]

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…in Foreign Affairs. The war party infamous for the savaging of Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Somalia (using Ethiopian troops), Afghanistan, Pakistan should be held legally responsible in open court not only for what it did to foreigners but for the resultant American deaths and the harm to American principles. Were crimes committed (e.g., lying to the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, illegal wiretapping, Abu Ghraib, war against civilian populations in such places as Fallujah)? Let the system of justice reach a decision. Throwing a rug of political denial over the rotten foundation of American democracy is not the way to prepare for the future.

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Responsibility in Foreign Affairs

At the height of what looked like success in Iraq and Afghanistan, American officials fretted endlessly about how, in the condescending phrase of the moment, to put an “Afghan face” or “Iraqi face” on America’s wars.  Now, at a nadir moment in the Greater Middle East, perhaps it’s finally time to put an American face on America’s wars, to see them clearly for the imperial debacles they have been -- and act accordingly.  [Tom Dispatch 1/3/12.]

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Regulation…

…in Domestic Affairs. In 2010 a meek and vague new financial regulatory bill was signed into law, leaving the crucial details to be determined by the very regulatory foxes (e.g., in the Fed) whose irresponsibility and collusion brought us the financial crisis in the first place. We are being conned.

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Regulation in Financial Affairs

We are now in the worst of all worlds, where many TBTF institutions have been bailed out and expect to be bailed out in any number of future crises. They have as yet faced no sustained regulatory scrutiny, and no system is in place to put them into insolvency should the need arise. Even worse, many of these institutions—starting with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase—are starting to engage once more in “proprietary trading strategies,”… [Roubini, 224].

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…in Foreign Affairs. Regulation is relevant to foreign policy in two ways: the establishment of international law, which U.S. presidents have shamefully made careers out of violating in recent years, and domestic efforts to hold politicians to account for the foreign policy they implement. Regarding the latter—the idea of holding senior officials personally responsible for their foreign policy actions--the most egregious trend is the rising ability of the President to make war without the consent of Congress. (Yes, there is something in the Constitution about this.)

What Could Obama Do? Everyone, conservative or liberal, is now aware that Obama has yet to respond to the hopes of Americans for a savior to rescue the country from the combination of the neo-con orgy of empire and government-facilitated financial crime. Yet he can yet become an above-average president in his first term, opening the door to greatness in his second. No, he does not have the power to pass significant new laws; any conversation he has with Republicans in 2012 will be doomed to failure; the stumbling gait of the elite-crippled American giant gives him little power to change the world. All this is sad but true.

Nevertheless, Obama is President. He has the power to defend the 99%. He can, for example, urge the Attorney General to start seriously investigating both corporate crime and corrupt politicians who were either on the take to corporations or exploiting their positions for private gain. There is plenty of time before Election Day to bring some of the obvious suspects--who wrote laws to facilitate bank fraud and then bailed their buddies out or who invaded other countries on false pretensions--to trial. That is just an example. It comes under the heading “Responsibility.”

One of the greatest failures of the Obama Administration was the absence of a clear, public denunciation of the recent practice of giving the finger to international law, a crucial shield defending democracy. Obama does not need an act of Congress to stand up before the American people and speak to us of the principles conducive not to the long-term security of the U.S. empire but of American democracy. Lying to the American people about the reasons for war, making nuclear threats against non-nuclear powers, advocating preventive war as a regular policy option, hiring mercenaries and pushing open-ended authorizations for unilateral presidential action to facilitate presidential wars without Congressional declarations of war are great ways to defend the militarist heart of an imperial garrison state; they are not so good for defending the security of a democratic society of free citizens. This is just a second example; it comes under the heading “Regulation.” A great President is one who will inform the naïve American people that he too must bow before the law; in a word, like those of us who elect the President, he too must be regulated, and a great President would wish to leave behind such a legacy.

The U.S. Government needs three New Year’s Resolutions: transparency, responsibility, regulation. If Obama wants to lead the U.S. proudly into the 21^st century, he can start now.

The American Nightmare

When the American Dream becomes defined in terms of money and force rather than values, then it will fade into "The American Nightmare."

The American Dream, as every American knows, is a gem whose facets are values. We Americans actually don't spend a lot of time thinking about the American Dream, which is a great misfortune in times like these when it is under direct attack. If we do think about it, the thoughts are typically superficial, with jokes about "American as apple pie," crass visions of a big suburban house with a greedy SUV out front, or just the brain-dead assumption that we can take the American Dream for granted. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the concerted neo-con attack on the Constitution's guarantees and the judicial system's protections for those yet to be convicted reveals. Deep down, though, when you slap an American awake, he can see that it is not about money: it is about values. So for Americans, the elephant in the room this election season as we hurl the thunderbolts of sound bites at each other, is the degree to which American behavior is destroying our values...cracking the translucent, shimmering but oh so delicate facets of that gem called "the American Dream."

The latest canary in the moral mine of American society is the recent trend among the most irresponsible and unpatriotic of our astoundingly pathetic crop of current power-seekers to spout the pop soundbite about trying to justify torture as "just part of war." This blatant return to the morality of a Grade B movie about the Dark Ages is ominous enough for those who want to live the American Dream, and these chickens will surely come home to roost, if indeed they are not already doing so in the form of increasingly brutal political and police suppression of democratic activism (not just against the Occupy protesters but also against the teachers and firemen...and, in street clothing, police[!] who protested the right wing attack on union rights and the sanctity of contracts in Madison last winter). It is a lot easier to cheat and brutalize citizens after you have accepted that torturing enemies is suddenly to be considered an "American value."

Far more ominous is the nasty little twist of the term "all options" into a codeword for A) ignoring all the myriad positive, win-win, cautious, moderate, sympathetic options while B) focusing on the most insane of the zero-sum (and indeed in this case negative-sum, i.e., "lose-lose") barbarisms at our disposal, namely unprovoked nuclear aggression. I will not further belabor this, or the ultimate affront to American values of a supposed American ally trying to push us into launching such a war. This case is so extreme that it should be obvious to anyone who thinks. Unfortunately, today it seems difficult for a person who thinks to get access to the mass media, but there are a few Congressmen, believe it or not, who are concerned about this ultimate attack on American values. You will not hear their speeches on the evening news, but reading their websites is well worth the few minutes it takes.

Making excuses for torture and nuclear war are egregious examples of the attack by Americans and others on the American values that form the core of the American Dream, but other examples, albeit less obvious, may be almost as serious...and more dangerous to the degree that they go unnoticed. Goldman Sachs provides an example from the central issue of financial policy writ large, i.e., the rules by which the super-rich and the government itself are allowed to employ wealth to manipulate the rest of us.

In the history of Goldman Sachs Money and Power, William  D. Cohan describes how the company evolved over 150 years from a firm dedicated to providing funds to companies needing liquidity to produce into a company that appears to exist only to maximize its own wealth, with no regard either for its clients (against whom it bets) or society. This picture, in other words, shows Goldman evolving from part of the productive economy into a predator destroying the very system from which it profits: from an institution with a long-term view to an institution with a suicidally short-term view.

Whether or not one agrees with the above image of Goldman, it is all too reminiscent of the winner-take-all attitude that exemplifies the whole course of the corruption bubble that created the 2008 Financial Crisis, the winner-take-all wave of empire-building since 9/11, and the broader winner-take-all addiction that has in recent decades infected all of American society to be easily dismissed. Cohan's book carries the subtitle "How Goldman Sachs Came to Rule the World." He might have subtitled his expose "How Goldman Sachs Symbolized the Attack on American Values." But don't blame Goldman Sachs too much. What Goldman did was just on a larger scale from but morally no different than the Congressman passing a law to make financial fraud legal, the regulator looking the other way, the politician waving the bloody shirt of nuclear war to get elected, or the individual lying about his salary to buy a house on which he knows he cannot make the mortgage payments.

So-Called "Depleted" Uranium Weapons Poison the Homeland

The story of the thoughtless manufacture and widespread use in war of highly radioactive depleted uranium illustrates how a zero-sum attitude in foreign policy impacts domestic policy.

The Appearance of Elite Collusion Against Democracy

Apparent fraud brought us the financial crash of 2008 and resultant, on-going tsunami of (permanent?) unemployment: apparent fraud throughout the whole system of elite rule, which was characterized by government agencies concealing information to prevent open democratic debate, rosy scenarios, conflicts of interest, and failure to hold anyone responsible for his actions. Will those leaders stay under this cloud of apparent guilt for the rest of their lives, staining the name of democracy, or will they have their day in court?

The shocking and sobering expose of corporate-government financial collusion to enrich the rich by stealing from all the rest of us offered by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner in Reckless Endangerment concludes with the following assessment of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010:

It did not insist that large and unmanageable institutions be cut down to size to alleviate their threats to taxpayers in the future. Nor did it increase the accountability of those running institutions that will need government assistance in the future.

Therefore, despite this presumed “reform” of the corrupt U.S. financial system, “will,” they ask, “a debacle like the credit crisis of 2008 ever happen again?” Their answer: “Most certainly, because Congress decided against fixing the problem of too-big-to-fail institutions when it had its chance.” [304-305]

Congress failed the American people. That is the outside peel of the infinitely-layered onion of elite corruption.

As for why Congress failed, peeling back the second layer of the onion makes that question is easy to answer: the foxes still guard the henhouse. As the authors make painfully clear, many of the key individuals in charge of bending and breaking the rules, of looking the other way and of carefully planning and implementing fraud—those there at the creation of economic ruin for millions of Americans—remain either in power officially or active behind the scenes. No real prospect of bringing these men to justice is visible on the horizon.

Ripping one more layer off this rotten political onion, the problem goes well beyond the handful of corrupt, short-sighted, and arrogant politicians, Wall Street executives, and mortgage company managers named in Reckless Endangerment. As the authors make clear, the real rot was systemic: the collusion not just of individuals but of the institutions at the core of the system, including Wall Street, mortgage companies, rating agencies, the privileged semi-governmental Fannie Mae, Congress, the White House, both the Democratic and Republican branches of the monopolistic/elitist political party that runs the whole show, and most shockingly even the actual regulatory agencies designed to prevent such corrupt and apparently criminal governance.

From all sides, the leaders stood shoulder-to-shoulder bulldozing aside every courageous, far-sighted, and patriotic civil servant who warned of the coming disaster. Whatever other lesson one takes away from the financial collapse of 2008, we should all remember this one: it was no surprise. It resulted from the willful denial of truth and a literally incredible inability on the part of everyone who was profiting to remember the warnings of the very recent past (the original Depression, the S&L scandal of the late 1980s, the Long-Term Capital Management scandal, the 2001 Enron scandal, the 2001 crash of the CDO [collateralized debt obligation] market, the 2002 WorldCom scandal) in the interest of maximizing personal profit. And who can blame the thieves? After all, we let them keep what they stole, and it seems that no one wants to know how many layers of the onion are rotten.

It is hard to imagine how faith in democracy in America can be restored unless those members of the elite under the cloud of a prima facie case of criminal behavior can have their day in court to make the case to the American people that they are in fact not guilty. If they by some miracle do not deserve to be jailed, they have the right to clear their names.

Far more important, the American people deserve closure on what must be one of the most egregious betrayals of the American people by a rapacious gang of the ruling elite in American history…or perhaps not. Perhaps if the Geithners, the Raines, the Greenspans, the Blankfeins, the Bensingers, the Weills, the Lewises, the Paulsons, the Gramms, the Leaches, the Blileyes, the Franks, the Johnsons, the Clintons had their day in court, they would explain how they all had our best interests at heart.
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The Appearance of Fraud

Republican member of the House of Representatives Darrell Issa has been trying to protect Goldman Sachs from being investigated while pouring his wealth into Goldman accounts. If he thinks Goldman is a valuable and upright American institution, then why is he afraid of an investigation that could exonerate Goldman and restore its tattered reputation?

Out-of-Control Global Institutions

Big Oil, Big Finance, and Big Atom exemplify global-scale institutions that are out-of-control, focused on self-enrichment at society's expense rather than on making the contribution to society that justifies their existence. Society needs to take charge.

It sounds great to say that modern society is defined by its ability to link everything—trade, finance, international defense, energy nets, but the surge over the past generation in our ability to link all the traditional local or national components into global monopolies threatens our survival: we are learning how to link far faster than we are learning how to manage the monstrous institutions thus created.

One analogy would be dominoes…just knock over one. The Asian financial crisis that became a global crisis a decade ago and the on-going recession are good examples.

Another analogy is this: it’s wonderful when you link up with your friends and have a pool party, but what if you are all dangling your feet in the water when lightening strikes? Everyone gets fried. Sometimes, disconnected means protected.

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Big Oil, Big Finance, and Big Atom cannot regulate themselves: society must do it.

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Among the prime examples of networked institutions on a global scale are Big Oil, Big Finance, and Big Atom (the nuclear energy industry). All three provide benefits to society, but all are increasingly organized not to accomplish that but to maximize profits for CEOs and investors. All three also share another characteristic: they cannot regulate themselves; society must do it.

Linking mandates recognition of a broader responsibility. But that recognition is increasingly difficult for reasons that are only slowly become apparent. One reason is that technology is facilitating, indeed making virtually inevitable, reactions that are faster and faster…too fast to cope with, as Paulson and company discovered to their horror when the financial ground kept shifting under their feet as they tried to cope with the rising tide of financial institution failure. It was not just that the institutions were too big and their way of business too irresponsible but that they were all linked (both by common perceptions on the part of investors who figured that if one was weak then they all were and by investments in each other). Reactions to failure anywhere in these huge global institutions now occur faster than management or governments can react if not faster than an individual can even think.

A second reason why recognition of the need for taking greater responsibility with global institutions is hard lies in time frame. These institutions are gaining such longevity that problems may build up for a period not just longer than the term of an official but for a period longer than a person’s whole career. Decisions made during one’s career may have horrendous consequences that will only become obvious during the career of one’s successor, very possibly after one’s death. The seeds of the recession were planted by Reagan when he popularized deregulation. A deadly example is the terrifying tendency to allow nuclear power plants—aside from nuclear bombs, the most dangerous devises ever devised--designed to be shut down after 25 years to be kept in service for an extra decade or two even while being allowed literally to rust away. Since the people who make those decisions will quite likely no longer be around if a meltdown results, they have trouble caring and, more, have trouble even focusing on the issue. But this is no academic hair-splitting: a nuclear plant in Illinois came within millimeters of disaster from exactly that: a rusting pipe.

A third obstacle to recognizing the degree of responsibility mandated by the global size of our institutions is that as the institutions get bigger, so does the “responsible” bureaucracy. The man who decides to permit a nuclear power plant to remain in business is probably not the same man who decides to ignore some rule that requires regular inspection and replacement of rusty pipes. Indeed, there may not actually be any single individual who even is aware of the necessary details to see the connections that breed disaster. Is the CEO of a nuclear plant informed of every rusty pipe and the action taken? Was the CEO of every out-of-control Wall Street gambling firm aware of the consequences of every new financial product his mathematicians devised? Who has the legal authority to arrest the CEO of BP when he is British but poisons U.S. coastlines?

We need to understand the danger of these institutions on an emotional level and then identify at a theoretical level as many as possible of the obstacles preventing us from analyzing their threat to our security. Only then will we be able to design methods of effectively caging the beasts we are creating. Whether or not we, as a society, will then actually choose to cage the beasts is of course another issue altogether. Everyone always wants to farm the floodplain until the “thousand-year flood,” caused precisely by the levees that enable farming the floodplain, occur. Everyone wants to prevent forest fires until the build-up of dry undergrowth leads to a conflagration. Everyone wants to benefit from a bubble until it bursts. Let’s face it: we need to grow up, but sadly there is little sign of that happening. We are kids playing with bigger and bigger matches.

Further reading:

For work already done to restructure the U.S. financial system away from gambling and back toward stimulating the economy, see the short article  “How to Liberate America From Wall Street Rule” and the New Economy Working Group’s full report.

Erdogan on Stage for the Palestine Play

With Washington decision-makers AWOL as the curtain rises, can Erdogan become the star of the Romance of Palestine?

Erdogan seems to be making U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood a Turkish foreign policy goal. He announced at a press conference on June 23:

Turkey is determined to support Palestine [in its bid] to become a member of the United Nations.

Erdogan has made clear he is referring to “an independent and viable state, whose capital will be east Jerusalem.”

To Tel Aviv, violence and diplomatic campaigns confirming that their minds remain firmly closed constitute the best thinking on how to deal with the problem. Israeli commentator Yoel Marcus warns:

It's crucial that Israel be removed from the discourse about Egypt's election battle. It's important for Israel to be in advanced negotiations for an agreement with the Palestinians at the time of the Egyptian elections, not in a state of stagnation.

Meanwhile, Washington, still in deep denial, is encouraging thuggish behavior on the part of Israel by threatening members of the latest Gaza freedom flotilla and fairly provoking Israel to commit piracy on the high seas. You see, these peace activists who dare to smuggle food and medicine to the people of Gaza are inciting the Israeli two-year-old to play with its matches, so one must punish them, since one surely cannot spank the two-year-old. In the words of Israeli commentator Natasha Mozgovaya:

The Obama administration is stepping up pressure on activists planning to challenge Israel's sea blockade of the Gaza Strip, warning that they will face action from Israeli authorities and that American participants may also be violating U.S. law.

Americans will of course be stunned when these chickens come home to roost.

Given such an attitude in Washington toward the flotilla members, it is pretty clear that the world cannot expect much constructive thinking to come from Washington on the real issue of Palestinian statehood. That, it would seem, clears the stage for Mr. Erdogan.

Is Israel Plotting...or Stumbling toward...Mideast War?

The Arab Spring is heating up, Egypt is gingerly opening the Rafah Gate, Syria is in crisis, the Palestinians are gearing up for a fall U.N. victory. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv, in deep denial, is murdering civilian demonstrators in neighboring countries for approaching its borders, refusing to negotiate sincerely even with its West Bank clients, and searching for a way to continue its campaign of expansion and ethnic cleansing. Are the extremist leaders of Israel crazy enough to launch a regional war, using the specter of an eventual Iranian nuclear bomb as the excuse? Perhaps irrational, perhaps just coldly calculating their own personal, short-term interest.

Israel Never Has a Choice

According to the Israeli spokesperson, the vaunted IDF saw "a few hundreds" of protesters "trying" to reach the border between Syrian-controlled territory and Israeli-controlled territory on the Golan Heights, so "we had to open fire"...on civilians... in Syria.

"We had to open fire." One should feel pity for the poor IDF, which had to open fire to protect the barbed wire from being injured by evil protesters along the border between Syria and the Syrian land occupied by Israel. No other army in the world carries the burden of being forced to fire across international borders at civilians. Imagine how difficult it is to bear this burden!

Of course, Israel had to occupy the land, as well; the fact that Israelis go there for ski vacations is irrelevant. Israel had no choice but to occupy and retain the Golan Heights, just as it had no choice but to kill protesters, just as it has no choice but to run Palestinians out of their homes on the West Bank - isn't the Israeli population increasing? Israel also had to kill those nine protesters sailing in international waters toward Gaza on the Freedom Flotilla from Turkey. Not only were the nine an existential threat to Israel's exceptionalism, but Turkey, lately behaving rudely, had to be taught a lesson.

Now that the Rafah Gate is open (sorta), Israel will surely have to teach Egypt a lesson, too. And once those inconsiderate Palestinians get a victory at the U.N., Israel will no doubt have to teach Iran a lesson.

What Israel did is completely different than Assad murdering his protesters, Saleh murdering his protesters, Quaddafi murdering his protesters, Mubarak murdering his protesters, or Abdullah murdering his...ah...Bahrain's protesters. What Israel did is completely different from East Germany's old Stasi murdering people trying to get over the Wall. Those guys don't know an existential threat from a bagel.

Principles are involved here, and it is time that the people of the world stop whining. Being exceptional is a lot harder than you think.

Selling Tehran's Rejectionist Stance

Having tossed out a poorly explained assertion that Tehran has little attractive ideology to offer the world in its campaign to lead a challenge to the U.S.-centric world political system, I would like to underscore the distinction between an "ideology" and a "policy position." An ideology, I would argue, is a broad construct, much more substantive than a simple policy position. Ideologies include capitalism, communism, socialism, and Khomenei's version of Shi'i clerical dictatorship. I would maintain that this ideology offers little attraction to the rest of the world, even its mistreated Shi'a. Be they Pakistani, Iraqi, Lebanese, Bahraini, or Saudi, Shi'a in general do not appear to find the idea of submitting to Khomenei's particular vision as very attractive. (Comments from those who have more expertise on this issue would be more than welcome.)

Policy is another matter, and Tehran offers the disadvantaged of the world some (potentially) very attractive policies. In a unipolar world, the big guy of course gets blamed for everything that goes wrong, and indeed when you strive to be Numero Uno, you deserve it. Tehran is the world's most open critic of the U.S.-centric global political system. Tehran may not have a very inspirational ideology, but it does offer a clear policy: replace unipolarity with...whatever. More specifically, it has a policy of rejecting Israeli military dominance over the Mideast and Israeli exceptionalism (e.g., only Israel is allowed nuclear arms, only Israel is allowed to maintain occupation forces outside its legally recognized borders).

Tehran becomes a significant player for free simply because it is essentially has a monopoly on that policy line of "resistance." This position is "free" because it does not actually have to do anything except assert the policy position and accrue the benefit of being the only actor in the world with the guts to "say no."

What Washington needs to understand is that this puts Tehran in a fundamentally passive position - its dissident stance is significant only to the degree that Washington takes such a hard-line counter-position as to make Tehran look like Robin Hood to Washington's King John. If King John had been just a bit more generous with the poor and had been a bit more willing to share power with the nobles, he could have pulled the rug out from under his opponents and been a popular king. An Obama calling for Arab democracy and insisting on the rights of Palestinians leaves Tehran rejectionists out in the cold, talking to themselves. An Obama protecting individual Arab dictators against the interests of the Arab people or kowtowing to an extremist and expansionist Israeli faction, however, hands to Tehran rejectionists a degree of global political influence they could never obtain for themselves. Tehran's future is in the hands of Washington, and so far Washington is giving Tehran exactly what it wants: an easy target.

Dictatorship and Religious Extremism: Two Sides of the Same Coin

A popular false dichotomy in the West--promoted partly by those who can see only black and white, partly by those with a private agenda to profit from chaos--holds that the choice in the Mideast lies between dictatorships and religious extremism. Don't fall into this trap: dictatorships and religious extremism are two sides of the same coin.

Arab Leaders Can't Do the Math

Politicians--all self-appointed, one may note--in the Arab world have recently been teaching us all lessons in how to win the love and support of the people. You achieve this by establishing clear rules that create an ordered society.

How To Spot a Hypocrite

How do we distinguish trustworthy politicians from hypocrites? On the budget war, there is a simple test.

Emulating Barbarians

In the global struggle between populations demanding justice and elites defending privilege, it is important to note how the forces of conservatism efficiently share tactics. We must look both over time and across societies to see the pattern of new precedents for oppressing the people being established by virtue of the impunity with which most elites operate and their facility for adopting the worst practices of their peers in other societies.

Civilization vs. Barbarism: Resisting the Abuse of Power

Arabs are fighting for civilization, against the barbaric behavior of politicians abusing power for personal glory, and that is the fundamental battle of mankind.

Mideast Counterrevolution Takes the Initiative

Saudi intervention in Bahrain is sparking a broad counterrevolutionary wave of violence across the Mideast, radicalizing both sides in a dismal process that only a couple weeks ago appeared easily avoidable.

Citizens or Officials: Who Is Helping Yemen?

A country is composed of officials and citizens. Who is helping the nation? In Yemen, today, it seems to be the citizens.

Yemen: The Problem Is the Regime, Not Yemeni Society

Although the rapid progression of events in Yemen give the impression that the country’s political system is collapsing, a slightly more rigorous evaluation suggests a significant degree of system resilience. Anti-social regime behavior should not be misinterpreted as indicative of system collapse; the other side of the coin is the behavior of society.

When society submits, either through hopelessness or naïve trust, the elite (not just the politicians but also the financial and corporate elite) are free to fill their own pockets. Understanding the nature of a country requires consideration of both the regime and the society. For example, an ominously powerful regime, e.g., that of the Soviet Union under Chernenko or Iran under the Shah, may be a house of cards. Yemen, perhaps surprisingly, shows admirable signs of socio-political resilience, all the tension and violence notwithstanding.

Evaluation of behavior harmful to the political system can provide an initial analysis of the situation in Yemen. Two criteria are used here, as illustrated in the ‘Behavior Harmful to the Yemeni Political System’ chart: whether the behavior is individual or social and the status of the actor. The higher the status of the actor engaged in harmful behavior and the greater degree to which the harmful behavior represents a social norm, the more diseased the political system.

Yemen's political problems are caused by the regime.

Although the stream of events might give the impression that Yemen’s political system is about to collapse, harmful behavior in Yemen over the past two months is not centered in Quadrant D, which would suggest extreme system pathology. Rather, harmful behavior is generally the result of the president’s desires, e.g., goon squads sent by his security forces to attack peaceful protesters, attacks on protesters by soldiers (presumably, again, on presidential orders), or attacks by regime supporters in response to regime encouragement. The political system includes not just the regime but also society. Despite the general availability of weapons, violence is the near monopoly of the regime, suggesting that regime change rather than fundamental lack of political system functionality is the solution. Despite all the chaos and tension in Yemen, this, for those aspiring to achieve a more just society, is very good news.

This initial test of Yemen's political system may be thought of as analogous to a quick check of your blood pressure. It is a snapshot of one view of the whole complex system. Additional tests will follow, looking at such aspects as protester behavior and changes over time, as subsequent posts continue the diagnosis of the health of Arab political systems in revolt.

Finding a Positive-Sum Solution: The Bahraini Case

Bahrain is a unique case of the Arab Revolt of 2011, but it is also an example of the common tactic of partisan pleading that the danger of disaster justifies submitting to oppression that happens to reserve privilege for the few at the expense of the many. Never did a greedy politician put forth a more suspect claim than that.

Tunisia: Two Steps on the Long Road to Democracy

  Democracy requires a vigilant, responsible, knowledgeable society asserting control over all its social organs—including political and commercial organs. Tunisia has taken several significant steps recently, including replacement of the prime minister, but the road is long.

Tunisian civil liberties activist Radhia Nazraoui stated in an interview published on March 7 on that:

toutes les institutions sont encore là : d’abord le parlement, la chambre des sénateurs, la police politique de Ben Ali, qui a terrorisé les Tunisiens pendant des décennies, le Conseil supérieur de la magistrature, mais en plus la constitution de la dictature, une constitution que Ben Ali avait amendée régulièrement, pour qu’elle soit sur mesure, pour qu’il puisse éterniser sa présidence. Donc, ce n’est pas du tout vrai qu’il y a maintenant la démocratie….

Les gouverneurs ! Il n’y a eu que des gouverneurs corrompus. Presque la
totalité des gouverneurs désignés par le gouvernement en place –et ils sont
connus- sont des gens « qui ont des dossiers », comme on dit chez nous. Donc,
il n’y a pas grand-chose de changé, jusque là.  

En plus, concernant la corruption et la « famille régnante », à part quelques-uns, les autres circulent librement. Les ministres responsables de la répression et de la corruption, ils sont chez eux. Même si l’on dit qu’ils sont en résidence surveillée –on n’en est pas sûr-, ils ne sont pas en prison.  

In a U.S. context, the principle that the Imperial Presidency is above the law has not been rejected by the Obama Administration. The principle that war can be legally started by lying to the population about the reasons for the war has not been rejected. The principle that the Federal Government can torture not just foreigners but even untried U.S. citizens (e.g., Manning) has not been rejected. The principle that war crimes can be committed by soldiers without either the soldiers or the Commander-in-Chief being held responsible has not been rejected. The principle that citizens accused of no crime can be spied upon by the government has not been rejected. Whether or not such actions occur at any particular moment is far less significant than whether or not such actions are, by precedent, “permissible.”

Tunisia took two major steps toward democracy (a political structure) and liberty (the goal) by abolishing, if the announcements are to be believed, both the Ministry of Security (secret police) and the Ministry of Information (censorship), as Juan Cole pointed out. But Rasaoui illustrates how many levels and organs must be reformed to transition from dictatorship to democracy; it requires, in a US context, not just Washington but Wisconsin, not just Main Street but Wall Street. Liberty is a high bar because liberty requires liberty everywhere: not just at the center but also in the periphery, not just relative to government but also relative to corporations, not just permission to be free but the will to exercise freedom responsibly, not just the freedom to speak but the ability to say something intelligent.

Her husband, Hamma Hammani of the Tunisian Workers Party, continued in the same interview:

il faut faire attention : ces espaces de liberté ne sont pas acquis de manière définitive. C’est-à-dire : ils ne sont pas institutionnalisés.  

Le code la presse est toujours là ; la loi sur les partis est toujours là; la loi sur les associations, le code électoral ; tout l’arsenal juridique fasciste de Ben Ali est toujours là.

Hammani continued by warning of the importance of who organizes the upcoming election for a “new” regime:

Les gens ont commencé à se rendre compte qu’on ne peut pas faire la transition d’une dictature à une démocratie en conservant le cadre de l’ancien système et par l’intermédiaire des personnes qui gouvernaient l’ancien système, par le biais des mêmes appareils, des mêmes institutions, de la même constitution. Cela ne peut pas se faire.  

Effectivement, le gouvernement veut, dans six mois, organiser des élections présidentielles. Parce qu’ils veulent, pratiquement, nous imposer un nouveau
petit Ben Ali. Certainement avec moins de prérogatives, mais un nouveau Ben
Ali. Mais, d’ici six mois, qui va préparer ces élections ? C’est pour cette raison-là qu’ils ont nommé dix-neuf gouverneurs RCD (« Rassemblement constitutionnel démocratique », parti du président Ben Ali) sur vingt-quatre. C’est pour cette raison que la police politique est encore là. C’est pour cette raison que l’administration corrompue, à commencer par ses responsables, est toujours là. Les lois, tout est là. C’est pour cette raison que la majorité de l’opposition lutte contre ces élections.  

For a US analogy, what could one expect of a presidential election for “change” when the whole electoral structure continued to be managed by the same two parties, with each still comprised of officials following revolving-door career paths alternating between Washington and Wall Street or alternating between Washington and arms-manufacturing corporations?

Liberty: Defend It or Lose It

Liberty is a fragile achievement requiring constant care. Some think it should be treated as a gated community, in which “I” should hide, excluding “you.” Others view liberty as a common good best shared. Both groups, however, surely agree that to take liberty for granted is to weaken it. Consider, in this context, the significance of some events currently taking place in the Mideast and the U.S.