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31 August 2004

Response to McCain

It’s not enough to swat flies because that’s all we know how to do. Invading Iraq may satisfy the blood thirst of the Christian conservative bloc and the commercial interests of the military-industrial complex, but it will not stamp out the acknowledged foe – international terror. For that, we need to mobilize a true worldwide campaign to expose and eliminate forces which have targeted civilization as their enemy. Not only Al Qaeda, these forces include rightwing fringe groups like those who destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City, drug-lord supported revolutionaries in South America, etc., etc.

Unilateral efforts of the U.S. will not succeed, as President Bush admitted to an interviewer on NBC’s Today Show. Only if a broad coalition of civilized nations uses its technology and human dedication to combat this nihilist threat will it be defeated. Our limited resources, in human life, financial means, and public attention, should not be wasted and diverted on military adventures like regime change in Iraq.

War is a convenient way to strengthen the Administration’s bid for reelection. But it is costly and only temporary. The long battle in which we were engaged on 9/11/2001 must be fought through public diplomacy as well as military force when necessary. This will only be achieved through the marshalling of alliances with leading civilized nations around the world, instead of the cosmetic assembly of client states who support Gulf War II.

19 August 2004

NGOs and Ambivalence re Humanitarian Crises

Humanitarian NGOs are understandably distressed by the public's confusion over the prolific number of crises in the world today. Because the IT revolution has allowed the media to report many more disasters, both man-made and natural, than they could in the past, humanitarian NGOs are called on to deal with demands on their resources that outstrip their resources.

This is not a failure of donors and certainly not the fault of Western governments or UN Agencies. Humanitarian NGOs have different goals. National governments and their cooperative organizations, like the WFO, WHO, WTO, UNHCR, etc., must focus foremost on keeping order among themselves. This means military and political action in regions threatened by terrorist forces -- the Janjaweed in Darfur, the Taliban in Afghanistan, etc. Even powerful governments are able only modestly to contend with the forces of Mother Nature. Just look at the plight of victims of Hurricane Charley in Florida.

NGOs have dedicated their efforts to reducing the humanitarian effects of disasters around the globe where their resources can make a significant contribution to limited national government capabilities. Yes, that creates an alliance of purpose between the NGOs and national governments and their cooperative organizations when the latter define their objective of establishing order in terms of resolving human suffering. But sorting out public confusion of the goals of NGOs with those of national governments does not justifying pulling out of regions where NGO resources are needed. Specifically, Medecins Sans Frontieres has not been prevented from accomplishing its relief programs in Afghanistan by the corruption of its image into a supposed component of the Coalition powers’ political and military programs.

The purity of MSF’s public image can be maintained with PR, if that is so important. It is a fit of pique to pull out of Afghanistan. It will be costly to victims of the humanitarian crisis caused by Taliban rule. A crisis demands MSF’s efforts regardless of how its effects are characterized in the media.

16 August 2004

UAL Bankruptcy and Pensions

The restructuring of UAL is in the hands of its employees because of federal regulation of its pension obligations. The unions that represent UAL’s workers essentially have to choose between keeping their jobs, by allowing the airline to survive, and keeping their pensions, under the guarantee of the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. A PBGC-approved bankruptcy reorganization would probably result in the sale of UAL to a rival airline for pennies on the dollar and at a drastic reduction in the size of its operations.

It is wrong to blame the PBGC for enforcing the rules it was given by the legislation that set it up. It must assume the letter of the pension obligations undertaken by a qualified company that can no longer operate so as to fulfill them. Whether UAL can operate in a way that fulfills its pension obligations is up to its employees. In effect, they must consent to a modification, or reduction, of those obligations if they want their jobs to continue.

Sometimes, life presents hard choices. A few UAL employees may not be vested in their pension plans. Many expected to build up their pension nest-eggs through longer periods of employment than may be likely in a bankruptcy reorganization. Current employees may resent the fact that they are jeopardizing their jobs for the sake of retirees. Those are the breaks.

14 August 2004

Regulation Reform vs. Legislation

According to the New York Times on 14 August 2004, the Bush Administration is apparently using its control over eliminating government regulations of business operations to circumvent the legislative process, which the Democratic Party has the ability to obstruct. This strategy affects the enforcement of standards for the environment, occupational and consumer safety, medical privacy, and media ownership.

It is fair for the Republican administration to resort to changes in regulations to carry out its perceived mandates from the general population to modify government behavior. After all, Congress long ago abdicated the power of regulation-writing to federal departments, subject to its oversight through public hearings. The dangerous feature of the Bush Administration’s regulation-writing is its reserving the process from public oversight, in the purported pursuit of efficiency.

If regulatory reform is to substitute for public legislation, it must also be subjected to at least a surrogate for the electoral process that gives citizens ultimate control over the behavior of Congress. Particular issues are not decided by the quadrennial President elections. Even though the news media are not officially a part of the American system of government, allowing the “fourth estate” to investigate changes in government regulations is a better answer to Congressional roadblocks than evading elected representatives in secret.


10 August 2004

Kerry’s Vote for Iraq War

On 9 August 2004, John Kerry answered President Bush’s Yes or No question by saying that based on what he knows now, he still would have voted to authorize the war on Iraq. However, we know now how the Bush Administration pursued the war on Iraq. Shouldn’t Kerry have answered that knowing how the Bush Administration would use that authorization, he would not have voted the way he did? Kerry’s Vote for Iraq War

If Kerry had known what he knows now about how the Bush administration has served the missionary ideal of his neo-conservative policy-makers with the blind imposition of regime change in Iraq, he “would have moved heaven and earth” to prevent the waste of our nation’s tax revenues and human life that was devoted to the invasion.

Darfur--The Farmer and the Cowman

The Darfur crisis in Sudan should be understood as a classical rivalry between herder and subsistence agricultural cultures. This kind of conflict has bedeviled the histories of many societies around the world. One solution to it was forever immortalized by Rodgers and Hammerstein in their musical, Oklahoma. The theme underlying the play’s story line was summarized in the lyric, “Oh the farmer and the cowman should be friends.”

The Western press has characterized the tragic starvation and migration of the people of Darfur as a racial genocide. It is probably more accurate to describe the suppression of the farmers in Darfur in economic terms rather than racial ones. The Sudanese government has shown itself to be incompetent to maintain order in Darfur. For humanitarian reasons, this may justify international intervention. However, the prism of racial genocide doesn’t clarify the causes of the crisis.

It’s harder for governments in the U.N. and the Africa Union to accept maintaining civil order, rather than genocide, as a justification for intervention. The majority of countries in those organizations struggle with such situations every day, and they would risk inviting intervention when any of them fails. Associations of state governments, like the UN and the AU, are justified in eradicating human suffering through temporary police action; but only if they help the failed state, like Sudan, to educate its population to live peacefully with each other. The motto proposed in the Oklahoma song was the following:

“I don't say I'm no better than anybody else,
But I'll be damned if I ain't jist as good!”

International Organizations should help governments instill that conviction among competing cultures in a lawless region like Darfur.



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