Opinion
Can the Democrats really win back the House in the 2014 midterms?
The word "spin" can mean many things. One definition is to present information in such a fashion that it makes people see something that isn't really there. A classic example would be a memo from the Democratic firm Democracy Corps on a recent poll they conducted in "competitive House districts" for the 2014 midterm elections.
The memo's authors want readers to believe that the Democrats have a chance to win back House of Representatives in the midterms based on Democracy Corps data. History and their own polling data, in fact, suggest the very opposite.
The president's party rarely picks up seats during midterm elections. It has occurred only three times since the American civil war: 1934, 1998, and 2002. All three featured presidents who were very popular. President Clinton in 1998 and President Bush in 2002 had approval ratings into the 60s in most surveys. Despite that high approval, their parties picked up only five and eight seats respectively. The Democrats need to pick up 17 to gain control of the House in 2014. The president's party has not picked up more than nine seats in a midterm since 1865.
In order for that to occur, we would almost certainly need to see an extremely popular president. We don't.
Among registered voters, President Obama's approval rating is in the mid 40s. No poll since the middle of May has had President Obama's approval rating above his disapproval rating among registered voters. The best estimate I have is that President Obama has somewhere in the neighborhood of a -4pt approval among registered voters. It's probably slightly worse among those who turn out to vote in midterm elections.
Indeed, the Democracy Corps survey shows that President Obama's approval rating in the swing districts is a measly 44%. His net approval among these 2014 likely voters is -8pt. This is despite the respondents saying that they voted for President Obama by a 3 pt margin in 2012. It's very difficult to imagine that Democrats can win back many seats when Obama is this disliked in these districts. In the last two midterms, the percentage of the vote won by the president's party was pretty much equal to the percentage who approved of the president's job performance.
You might say that the Republican brand is so toxic that House Democrats can overcome a relatively unpopular president. The Democracy Corp poll demonstrates the opposite. The tested Republican candidate in the poll has a 2pt advantage over the Democratic candidate. That's little changed over the 3pt margin by which respondents said they voted for Republicans in 2012. Such a difference is worth a few seats at most, but certainly not 17.
A closer look illustrates more problems for a possible Democratic takeover. In the seats that Democracy Corps identifies as the most vulnerable, Republican candidates are 1pt ahead. In this same category at this point in the 2012 cycle, Republican candidates were actually down 1pt. A few months before the 2012 election, Republicans were down 6pt in this category.
So, the most vulnerable Republican candidates are actually in a stronger position now than they were for the 2012 election. When Republicans were far more at risk in 2012, they lost only 11 seats in this category and eight overall.
The reason Republicans lost fewer seats overall than just the Republican vulnerable category is because it isn't just Republicans who are vulnerable. The poll also asked 500 respondents in Democratic districts how they planned to vote. Democrats lead in these districts by 2pt. This certainly does not spell a Republican wave, but it's worse than the 4pt edge these same respondents said they gave to Democrats in the 2012 elections. This could lead to a few Democratic seats actually falling to the Republicans.
The overall picture the ballot test points to, at this point, is a status quo election. That matches the Washington expert ratings of the Cook Political Report and Rothenberg Political Report – both of which have a near equal number of Democratic and Republican seats up for grabs, with, in fact, a few more Democratic-held seats in play.
Could the political environment change to favor Democrats? It can, but I doubt that would be enough. Joseph Bafumi, Bob Erikson, and Chris Wlezien have shown that the president's party position in the ballot test deteriorates as you move closer to the actual date of the midterm election. It's why the Democrats lost all of their Democracy Corp-designated most vulnerable seats in 2010, even though they had a 4pt lead in them at this point in the cycle.
Given the president's approval rating at this point, it's more likely for the Democrats to lose ground than gain it. Only an unlikely 15pt improvement in Obama's approval might conceivably reverse it.
The truth is that Democrats face a very uphill battle to take over in the House of Representatives. The actual data from Democracy Corps, whose polling I trust, proves Democrats are quite unlikely to take back the House. No amount of spin will change that fact.
Top 10 things you should probably know about Ramadan
Do all Muslims have to fast? Isn't it a bit hot to do it in July? How do you know when to start?
It's the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and Muslims have been fasting throughout it for more than 14 centuries. And yet non-Muslims are always full of questions. Here are the answers to some of the most common:
So you don't eat at all? No, we only fast during daylight hours – from dawn until sundown. This year in the UK, that means over 18 hours of nil by mouth – we can't eat, drink, smoke, or have sex during those hours. Easy, tiger.
Don't you get hungry? Is the Pope a Catholic? Yes, we get hungry and thirsty, but that's the point. We eat Sehri, a pre-dawn meal, and at sunset we break the fast (called Iftar), usually with a date and a glass of water.
A date with whom? A date with introspection. Ramadan is an opportunity to focus on the soul rather than the body, so we get through the day trying to be more spiritual, as well as seeking to improve our behaviour. We empathise with those in need and give thanks for having food at the end of the day, when millions of people don't have that luxury.
Surely kids don't have that kind of self-control? Children don't have to fast, but they can if they really want to. Although once puberty hits, there is no escape. Also exempt are the elderly, the sick, and anyone who has a medical condition.
Isn't it a bit hot to fast in July? Muslims follow the lunar calendar, so every year it moves back 11 days. The last time Ramadan was in July was 1980. Go figure.
So it all started on Wednesday? Well, not quite. Every year there is a bit of chaos, because of the different ways of measuring. Generally speaking, Muslims follow the traditional method of sighting the new moon with the naked eye and we look to Saudi Arabia to declare it. Then there is the local sighting issue – do we follow the moon being sighted in the UK or do we follow the opinion that the first Muslim to see the new moon, no matter where, means the rest of the world can start Ramadan? Or there is the argument for astronomical calculations rather than naked-eye sightings.
I'm confused. Do you celebrate it every time you see the moon? No, that would be ridiculous. But it is confusing. Especially when it comes to Eid.
And who is this Eid? Eid is basically a rave-up at the end of Ramadan, when families and friends get together to feast after fasting. It starts with a prayer at the mosque and then we eat as if we haven't eaten in a month.
Can I say Ramadamadingdong? Sure, we love a sense of humour, though "Ramadan Mubarak" might be more appropriate.
As in former Egyptian president, Hosni …? As in the Arabic for "blessed". It's a traditional greeting.
© Guardian News and Media 2013
[Young woman reading the Koran at the mosque via Shutterstock.com]
Why is ALEC protecting animal abuse?
Muckrakers and activists have been working to expose the brutality of industrialized meat production since Upton Sinclair’s writing of The Jungle in 1906. But an ALEC model bill known as “The Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act” would make it…
The George Zimmerman trial is the worst fear of every black family
The Trayvon Martin case has been nothing short of heartbreak from the very beginning. Regardless of what anyone believes about Trayvon's past, his innocence or George Zimmerman's, the fact remains that a teenager is dead. I honestly didn't think I would get emotionally broken up more than I was over the story that Rachel Jeantel's friendship with Martin stemmed from the fact he was one of the only people who never picked on her. The story painted such a tragic picture of friendship and two people whose lives will never be the same.
Then came this week's testimonies and reactions from Trayvon Martin's parents to leave me – and so much of America – floored. On Friday morning, Sybrina Fulton took the stand to talk about her son. As part of her testimony she had to identify her child's screams in his finals seconds of life. Later in the day, Tracy Martin had to sit in court as the medical examiner, Dr Bao, explained how Trayvon died in severe pain and was alive for minutes after getting shot in the chest.
Essentially, Friday – almost as much as the day Trayvon was shot – was any parent's nightmare. Trayvon's parents had to come face to face with their son's murder while Fulton got questioned over whether or not her son actually deserved to get killed. Tracy had to sit in the same room as the man who shot his son in the chest, unable to retaliate or let the rage he has to be feeling out.
Yes, this is the worst imaginable day for a parent. But it's one the parents of an African-American child has been conditioned to accept as a possibility.
I have a son who was born in October, a couple of weeks before the prosecutor and defense met in court to argue if Martin's school records should be admitted so the case was in the news again. As I watched more details about the case emerge and the argument that a child's prior school record may be used to justify his death, I would feel a sense of hopelessness.
There are always fears about being a parent, but raising a black male in America brings about its own unique set of panic. Growing up, my parents and older siblings made sure to warn me about places where I'd be profiled and could face danger as often as they warned me about neighborhoods known for crime. But in the end, no planning or words of advice can save me or my son from getting wrongfully gunned down while trying to buy a bag of candy.
While most parents are up at night wondering how to protect their children from the uncontrollable like drunk drivers or muggings, Trayvon's parents, my parents and parents of black males across the country are also living in fear that their children won't come home because someone thought they were dangers to the community.
So there they were, two parents of a black male, sitting in court living out the culmination of that fear. And the realization that the man who shot their child could get off for killing him. To make things worse, they had to hear the defense question their parenting, whether or not Fulton actually knows what her son sounds like and field online reports that Tracy may not have been the best parent.
Since Martin's death, the boy these two people raised, loved and saw for his beauty as a young male has been portrayed as a thug. A violent kid. A pothead who couldn't behave in school. Someone who, according to the defense, caused his own death.
It's all just excruciating to watch. My heart breaks for Trayvon's parents and watching them in court this week has brought all of my fears of being the parent of a Black male to light. We've watched them look at a picture of their son's dead, bloody body sprawled out on the Florida pavement. We've watched Trayvon's mother struggle to compose herself while hearing her son's last screams.
As my son gets older and out into the world, I'll always have the memories of Trayvon and his parents. And the fear that one day, America will put us through what the Martin family is enduring.
How we 'other' sexual assault to ignore our own norms of abuse
On 30 June, as "the Coup That Must Not Be Mentioned" was being celebrated in Tahrir Square, Cairo, news of over 80 reports of mob sexual violence and harassment emerged as a reminder of an ugly undercurrent behind the two-and-a-half-year-long anti-regime uprising. Sexual harassment and violence in Egypt is a daily occurrence – an epidemic, even – with 99.3% of women (pdf) claiming to have suffered some form of it.
Mob sexual violence, however, carries a certain brand of particularity as a near-explicit political tool used to discourage women, who make up nearly half of the total population, from attending demonstrations. Maria S Muñoz, co-founder and director of the anti-sexual assault initiative Tahrir Bodyguard, traces the advent and use of organized mob sexual assaults to the days of Mubarak, pointing to the 2005 assault of journalist Nawal Ali by hired "thugs" during a demonstration. Despite being aware of the risk of attending political demonstrations, women, Muñoz notes, "have continued to share the public space in protests, becoming an essential part of the opposition's voice and presence."
The culture of sexual violence and harrassment, in Egypt, has received considerable media attention, often highlighting the efforts of groups such as Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault, HarassMap and Tahrir Bodyguard as people-powered initiatives tackling sexual violence and harassment head-on. Despite this, it is apparently still difficult to have an honest discussion over why it happens.
On 5 July, US author Joyce Carol Oates (whom I know primarily from her having never written this) decided to join in with the sea of insta-Egypt Twitter experts and opined:
If 99.3% of women reported being treated equitably, fairly, generously--it would be natural to ask: what's the predominant religion?
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) July 5, 2013
Despite the brevity of "Oatesgate", the rhetorical question of a well-respected literary figure highlights popular characterizations of sexual violence and harassment when it takes place elsewhere. Rarely does sexual violence and harassment in our own societies – as it is perpetrated, prosecuted and cultured – allow the sort of cultural reductionism that seems to come with ease when sexual violence is associated with "the other".
When a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern is brutally gang-raped and beaten in Delhi, we speak of "India's woman problem"; when an incapacitated 16-year-old student is raped, photographed and filmed for six hours by peers – who share the images on social media – the incident is treated as an isolated act of unfortunate deviance and not part and parcel of a larger endemic culture that normalizes rape and the appropriation of women's bodies as public property.
Child groomers of Muslim and South Asian backgrounds become cultural ambassadors raised on a steady diet of "savage" notions of sex embedded in anti-white biases and misogyny. Revered coaches and university administrations hiding decades of child sex abuse, on the other hand, become their own victims.
Thus there are no protests, no calls of a "woman problem", no "natural" inquiries into the predominant religion when a country has ranked 13th in the world for rape, 10th for rapes per capita (pdf) and where 26,000 military service members reported sexual assault in 2012 alone. There are no popular anthropological undertakings by stiff-haired anchors of the inner secrets and dark forces of American culture, religion and society. No white American woman asks why the white American male hates "us".
None of this is to provide a level playing field for discussing sexual violence. It is to highlight how understanding of sexual violence is reliant on how it is reported and how this, in turn, is reliant on who is involved. In the case of Egypt, the extent to which there is sexual harassment and violence is abysmal and even unique in how it occurs. Yet, this violence did not emerge overnight, nor does it occur in a political and socio-economic vacuum. It is the result of decades of state, legal and political decay. It is the result of a state that itself has created a culture of acceptability of violence and torture, often sexual, inside its own walls.
In the explicit act of violating bodily sovereignty, there is an active search for the conquest of power and control in a space where these have become vulnerable. This requires no sermon, book or belief to legitimize it; it only needs submission.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
[Woman covering face with her arms via Shutterstock]
Wall Street Journal says Egypt needs a Pinochet
The Chilean dictator presided over the torture and murder of thousands, yet still the free-market right revers his name
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial entitled "After the Coup in Cairo". Its final paragraph contained these words:
Egyptians would be lucky if their new ruling generals turn out to be in the mold of Chile's Augusto Pinochet, who took over power amid chaos but hired free-market reformers and midwifed a transition to democracy.
Presumably, this means that those who speak for the Wall Street Journal – the editorial was unsigned – think Egypt should think itself lucky if its ruling generals now preside over a 17-year reign of terror. I also take it the WSJ means us to associate two governments removed by generals – the one led by Salvador Allende in Chile and the one led by Mohamed Morsi in Egypt. Islamist, socialist … elected, legitimate … who cares?
Presumably, the WSJ thinks the Egyptians now have 17 years in which to think themselves lucky when any who dissent are tortured with electricity, raped, thrown from planes or – if they're really lucky – just shot. That's what happened in Chile after 1973, causing the deaths of between 1,000 and 3,000 people. Around 30,000 were tortured.
Presumably, the WSJ hopes a general in the mold of Pinochet (or generals, as they didn't break the mold when they made him) will preside over all this with the assistance of Britain and America. Perhaps he (or they) will return the favour by helping one of them win a small war.
Presumably, eventually, the Egyptian general or generals – and we should let them have a junta if they want one, so long as it isn't like that beastly example in Argentina – will willingly relinquish power. After all, democracy cannot "midwife" itself. Presumably, the WSJ is sure a transition to elected government will follow, as it did in Chile. (Although, in 15 years' time the Argentinian writer Ariel Dorfman's words will, presumably, ring as true as they do now: "Saying Pinochet brought democracy to Chile is like saying Margaret Thatcher brought socialism to Britain." More of her later.)
Such quibbles notwithstanding, I'm presuming the WSJ envisages that the Egyptian general or generals will then be allowed to retire, unmolested. Possibly to Wentworth, where the golf's good. But if any molestation does occur, perhaps by some uppity human rights lawyer, they will receive further assistance from the governing classes of Britain and America. He or they will then retire and, unlike his or their victims, die a free man – or men – in bed.
And presumably, after another 20 or 30 years, when some other group of generals removes a democratic government upon which the Wall Street Journal is not keen, the people of the fortunate country in question will be told what is good for them in the same breathtakingly ugly way.
I am not an expert on Egypt, or Chile – most of my knowledge about General Pinochet comes from a book by a Guardian writer, Andy Beckett. But I know enough that when Margaret Thatcher died, reminders of her enduring support and praise for Pinochet left a nasty taste in the mouth. While people are dying in the streets of Cairo, to read an expression of the same sentiment from a respected, globally-read newspaper is repellent.
So just why does General Augusto Pinochet attract such nostalgic, unquestioning support from some on the free-market right? Do they simply overlook the accepted fact that thousands were tortured and killed under his rule?
Perhaps this might be a case of "Say what you like about Mussolini, but he made the trains run on time"? Bernie Ecclestone, the chap who runs Formula One motor-racing, tried it a couple of years ago – albeit he said it about Hitler (and Saddam Hussain), and we don't stand for that. Even Britain's Daily Mail was upset.
Does the Wall Street Journal's editorial board believe that because Pinochet "hired free-market reformers", he should be excused the excesses of a few death squads. Do they seriously think a business-friendly cold killer in the Pinochet mold is who Egyptians want now to manage their "transition to democracy"?
There must be some sort of justification for such a statement. I just haven't the slightest clue what it is.
When is a coup not a coup?
By Patricia Zengerle and Warren Strobel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Egyptian military's overthrow of elected President Mohamed Mursi left President Barack Obama grappling with a difficult question of diplomacy and language in dealing with the Arab world's most populous nation: was it a coup?
At stake as Obama and his aides wrestle with that question in the coming days is the $1.5 billion in aid the United States sends to Cairo each year - almost all of it for the military - as well as the president's views on how best to promote Arab democracy.
If the United States formally declares Mursi's ouster a coup, U.S. law mandates that most aid for its longtime ally must stop. And that could weaken the Egyptian military, one of the country's most stable institutions with long-standing ties to U.S. authorities.
Further complicating Obama's calculus is the fact that millions of Egyptians rallied in favor of Mursi's departure, and that the military announced a roadmap for return to civilian rule that was blessed by Egypt's Muslim and Christian religious leaders.
But Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood retain backing from a broad swath of Egyptian society, even as he alienated many of his countrymen.
Obama, after meeting top advisors at the White House, said in a statement that he was "deeply concerned" by the army's actions and had directed the relevant U.S. agencies to review the implications for U.S. assistance to Egypt.
But he did not use the word "coup" and stopped well short of advocating for Mursi's reinstatement, suggesting Washington might be willing to accept the military's move as a way to end a political crisis in a nation of 83 million people struggling with severe economic difficulties.
Recent history suggests Obama might take his time on deciding the future of U.S. aid to Egypt, and by extension, Washington's relations with the country.
U.S. law bars "any assistance to the government of any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup d'etat or decree."
When Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in June 2009, Washington temporarily suspended aid, but did not cut about $30 million in assistance until more than two months later.
Even then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not determine as a matter of law that a coup had taken place.
Eric Trager, an expert on Egyptian politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Obama should not label Mursi's ouster a coup, nor cut off U.S. aid.
"The Obama administration should recognize that as undemocratic as a coup is, it was the result of the basic fact that President Mursi had completely lost control of the Egyptian state," Trager said by telephone from Egypt.
"Democracy was not the primary thing at stake in Egypt these last few months," but rather Mursi's mismanagement and fears of collapse of the Egyptian state, he said.
In announcing Mursi had been deposed and the Egyptian constitution suspended, Egypt's army commander promised a quick political transition. The military laid out plans for elections and a constitutional review.
CALLS FOR QUICK TRANSITION
The U.S. chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, warned Egyptian military leaders of consequences if Mursi's overthrow were viewed as a coup.
"At the end of the day it's their country and they will find their way, but there will be consequences if it is badly handled," Dempsey told CNN.
Obama also warned against further violence, indicating that Washington's ultimate decision on aid to Egypt will depend on how Egypt's armed forces handle the transition in coming weeks.
Mursi, in power for a year, was widely blamed for presiding over a steady decline in Egypt's economy and for failing to form a broad-based government that included other groups that had joined in the 2011 revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak.
U.S. lawmakers also welcomed Mursi's departure but called for a quick transition back to democratic rule - with a close look at the aid budget.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, who heads the Senate subcommittee that oversees foreign aid, on Wednesday promised a review of the $1.3 billion in military aid and $250 million in economic aid sent to Cairo each year.
Washington has cut off aid following military coups several times before. In April 2012, the United States suspended at least $13 million of its $140 million in annual aid to Mali following a coup in the West African nation.
Programs that did not go directly through government ministries were not affected.
Any Obama support for Egypt's new government is unlikely to face opposition from Republicans in Congress, who had been skeptical of Mursi's Islamist government.
"Mursi was an obstacle to the constitutional democracy most Egyptians wanted," said Republican Representative Ed Royce, the chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee.
Republicans also voiced strong support for Egypt's military, whose close ties to Washington stretch back to the 1979 Israeli-Egypt peace accords.
"The Egyptian military has long been a key partner of the United States and a stabilizing force in the region, and is perhaps the only trusted national institution in Egypt today," said U.S. Representative Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House.
"Democracy is about more than elections," he said.
(Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton. Editing by Stacey Joyce)
[Members of the Muslim Brotherhood and supporters of Egypt's President Mohamed Mursi hold his picture as they react after the Egyptian army's statement was read out on state TV, at the Raba El-Adwyia mosque square in Cairo July 3, 2013. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah]
To those who say 'trust the government' on NSA spying: Remember J. Edgar Hoover's FBI?
Those who tell us to trust the US's secret, privatised surveillance schemes should recall the criminality of J Edgar Hoover's FBI
It's a fine thing to see mainstream American media outlets finally sparing some of their attention toward the cyber-industrial complex – that unprecedented conglomeration of state, military and corporate interests that together exercise growing power over the flow of information. It would be even more heartening if so many of the nation's most influential voices, from senator to pundits, were not clearly intent on killing off even this belated scrutiny into the invisible empire that so thoroughly scrutinizes us – at our own expense and to unknown ends.
Summing up the position of those who worry less over secret government powers than they do over the whistleblowers who reveal such things, we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that we can trust small cadres of unaccountable spies with broad powers over our communications. We must all wish Friedman luck with this prediction. Other proclamations of his – including that Vladimir Putin would bring transparency and liberal democracy to Russia, and that the Chinese regime would not seek to limit its citizens' free access to the internet – have not aged especially well.
An unkind person might dismiss Friedman as the incompetent harbinger of a dying republic. Being polite, I will merely suggest that Friedman's faith in government is as misplaced as faith in the just and benevolent God that we know not to exist – Friedman having been the winner of several of the world's most-coveted Pulitzer Prizes.
If Friedman is, indeed, too quick to trust the powerful, it's a trait he shares with the just over half of Americans, who tell pollsters they're fine with the NSA programs that were until recently hidden from their view. Why, our countrymen wonder, ought we to be disturbed by our state's desire to know everything that everyone does? Given the possibility that this surveillance could perhaps prevent deaths in the form of terrorist attacks, most Americans are willing to forgo some abstract notion of privacy in favor of the more concrete benefits of security.
Besides, the government to which we're ceding these broad new powers is a democracy, overseen by real, live Americans. And it's hard to imagine American government officials abusing their powers – or at least, it would be, had such officials not already abused similar but more limited powers through repeated campaigns of disinformation, intimidation and airtight crimes directed at the American public over the last five decades. Cointelpro, Operation Mockingbird, Ultra and Chaos are among the now-acknowledged CIA, FBI and NSA programs by which those agencies managed to subvert American democracy with impunity. Supporters of mass surveillance conducted under the very same agencies have yet to address how such abuses can be insured against in the context of powers far greater than anything J Edgar Hoover could command.
Many have never heard of these programs; the sort of people who trust states with secret authority tend not to know what such things have led to in the recent past. Those who do know of such things may perhaps contend that these practices would never be repeated today. But it was just two years ago that the late Michael Hastings revealed that US army officials in Afghanistan were conducting psy-ops against visiting US senators in order to sway them towards continued funding for that unsuccessful war. If military and intelligence officials have so little respect for the civilian leadership, one can guess how they feel about mere civilians.
Not that anyone need merely guess. Discussing the desirability of such "information operations" in his 2001 book, retired USAF Lt Col George Crawford noted that voters tend to view these sorts of programs with suspicion. "Consequently," he concludes, "these efforts must take place away from public eyes."
And so they do. If we want to learn a thing or two about the latest round of such programs – that is, if we are willing to disregard the Thomas Friedmans of this world – we must look not just towards the three letter agencies that have routinely betrayed us in the past, but also to the untold number of private intelligence contracting firms that have sprung up lately in order to betray us in a more efficient and market-oriented manner. Our lieutenant colonel, scourge of "public eyes", is among the many ex-military and intelligence officials who have left public service, or public obfuscation – or whatever we're calling it now – to work in the expanding sphere of private spookery, to which is outsourced information operations by the Pentagon, spy agencies, and even other corporations who need an edge over some enemy (in Crawford's case, the mysterious Archimedes Global).
So, how trustworthy is this privatized segment of the invisible empire? We would know almost nothing of their operations were it not for a chance turn of events that prompted Anonymous-affiliated hackers to seize 70,000 emails from one typical firm back in early 2011. From this more-or-less random sampling of contractor activity, we find a consortium of these firms plotting to intimidate, attack and discredit WikiLeaks and those identified as its key supporters, including the (then Salon, now Guardian) journalist Glenn Greenwald – a potentially illegal conspiracy concocted on behalf of corporate giant Bank of America, which feared exposure by WikiLeaks, and organized under the auspices of the Department of Justice itself.
We find several of the same firms – which collectively referred to themselves as Team Themis – involved in another scheme to deploy sophisticated software-based fake people across social networks in order to infiltrate and mislead. For instance, Themis proposes sending two of these "personas" to pose online as members of an organization opposed to the US Chamber of Commerce, another prospective Themis client, in order to discredit the group from within. Yet another revelation involves a massive cross-platform military program of disinformation and surveillance directed at the Arab world; still another relates how one NSA-inked firm can monitor and attack online infrastructure throughout the world, including western Europe, and will rent these capabilities out to those with a few million dollars to spend on such things.
And Booz Allen Hamilton, which has received some belated scrutiny as the eminently powerful employer of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, was apparently in talks with Themis participant HBGary Federal regarding its own still-secret "project" involving, again, WikiLeaks. These are simply a few of the revelations stemming from a portion of the email correspondence among a handful of major contracting firms – a tiny, serendipitous sampling of what such firms are doing for their government and corporate clients as they compete for contracts.
Hundred of these sorts of companies have come about in the last few years, operating in close partnerships with the state, yet existing beyond the view of Congress, the media and "public eyes". Even in the unlikely instance when their activities come to light, potentially illegal behavior goes unpunished; even calls by congressmen to investigate the sordid Themis conspiracy were ignored by the Department of Justice, which, of course, set the whole thing in motion to begin with through its recommendation.
This, then, is the environment in which public officials and Beltway insiders like Friedman are asking us to trust the intelligence community and its private partner firms with increasing power over information. It's an age in which even the limited rules in place can be broken with impunity by the powerful – even as journalists and activists who cross them are targeted for destruction by state-corporate alliances armed with increasingly sophisticated cyber weapons, propaganda techniques and surveillance authority.
This is the world we accept if we continue to avert our eyes. And it promises to get much worse.
Florida's governor wants you to go to work sick
Florida's Governor Rick Scott is the latest Republican to block any initiatives in his state to enact paid sick leave for workers
As attempts to dehumanize the workplace go, few could be more sadistic than forcing workers to come to work sick, but that's precisely what the Florida legislature and Governor Rick Scott recently did.
This throwback to the Satanic mills era of industrial relations came in response to a successful petition by 50,000 voters in Orange County, Florida, to place on the ballot an initiative to guarantee a certain number of paid sick days to all workers in the county. The state bill nullifies the ballot measure by blocking local governments from enacting any standards on sick leave, voter preferences be damned.
Governor Scott and the state legislature did this at the behest of some of Florida's largest employers, including Disney World, which might otherwise have suffered the inconvenience of employees being able to go to the doctor without losing their jobs. Ostensibly, legislators say it's to maintain "uniform regulatory standards" throughout the state. But Florida legislators have never been particularly devoted to uniformity in other legal matters. This is, after all, a state that allows its counties to ban the sale of alcohol and come up with their own interpretations of the First Amendment by erecting gigantic monuments of the Ten Commandments outside of courthouses.
But when it comes to worker protections, Florida is a stickler for centralized authority, as long as that authority assures no such protections exist. The reason corporations are calling on the state to override local initiatives is precisely due to the popularity of such initiatives among voters, not just in Florida – where polls show 80% of residents support setting sick leave standards, consistent with national surveys, but also in several other states including Wisconsin, where Republican Governor Scott Walker threw out a sick leave law in Milwaukee that passed in a voter referendum by 69%. Prior to Walker's nullification, Milwaukee was one of a growing number of cities – San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Washington DC – and one state, Connecticut, which guarantee some number of earned sick days – typically one hour for every 30 or 40 hours worked. There is often a maximum amount set according to business size, which workers can take in case of personal or family illness without losing pay or their jobs.
New York City will likely join the list soon, with the city council set to overturn Mayor Bloomberg's veto of its paid sick leave law. Thus in Florida and elsewhere, Republican-controlled statehouses have been scrambling to either overturn or preemptively bar such initiatives with copy-and-paste bills drafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, which for good measure also nullify other protections that, for example, prevent workers from being fired for being gay, another issue many states feel is best left up to employers.
The fact that sick leave protections enjoy increasing public support speaks to their broader health and safety implications for consumers. Workers most often denied sick leave are concentrated in certain service industries, particularly hospitality, retail and food preparation. A survey by the advocacy group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United found 64% of food service workers have reported working while sick. One dishwasher interviewed in New York testified:
"I don't have health insurance and I don't get sick days. If I get sick, I take painkillers and continue working. ... Once, I was washing dishes when I cut myself on a piece of broken glass. Because the water was hot, the bleeding just wouldn't stop. It was so busy that day and I didn't want to be sent home without pay so I kept on working."
So far, any job-killing side effects predicted by sick leave opponents have failed to materialize. San Francisco, the first city to enact a sick leave bill, saw both employment and the number of businesses grow in the years following its implementation, while both declined in neighboring counties. And consumers seem to agree that whatever costs may be borne by businesses or passed on to them are outweighed by the benefits of not eating food that has been sneezed and bled upon. Were this not the case, there would be no need for such preemption laws in the first place.
The political football between state and local governments is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon at the federal level. Unlike every other rich country in the world, ours is a nation that prides itself on upholding the traditions of our founders by not offering things like paid vacations or maternal (or paternal) leave. And so workers groups will continue their piecemeal efforts to drag the US, city by city, into the last century, while Republican state lawmakers – the same ones who routinely restrict access to abortion in defiance of federal law, refuse to implement Obamacare and claim the right to draw up their own immigration enforcement schemes – find themselves in the awkward position of intervening against local control in the name of central government.
An old saying about consistency and hobgoblins comes to mind.
© Guardian News and Media 2013
["Stock Photo: Sick Woman.Flu.Woman Caught Cold. Sneezing Into Tissue. Headache. Virus" on Shutterstock]
Paula Deen's racism is no joke
But the celebrity chef is not unique; some Americans still haven't adjusted to the racial realities of the 21st century
Paula Deen wants you to know she's really, really sorry about the "n-word" thing. In a bleary, teary video apology she said: "Inappropriate, hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable ... please forgive me."
Paula Deen's lawyer wants you to know she's a victim of her culture: she was "born 60 years ago, when the south had schools that were segregated, different bathrooms, different restaurants and Americans rode in different parts of the bus."
The celebrity chef, famous for her high-calorie, near-parody recipes (deep-fried balls of butter) admits to using racist epithets in jokes and perhaps in talking to her husband about the time she was held up, but, come on, that was "a long time ago".
Wait: does 2007 count as "a long time ago"? A former employee of the Deen food empire is suing Deen and her brother Earl "Bubba" Hiers, charging racial and sexual harassment. Lisa T Jackson claims, among other unsavory things, Deen wanted her to design a "plantation style" wedding for Bubba, which would ideally include "a bunch of little niggers" in bow ties to act as servers, like the ones that used to "tap dance around" in "Shirley Temple days".
Jackson, who is white, says Deen laughed and said, "That would be a true Southern wedding, wouldn't it? But we can't do that because the media would be on me about that."
For his part, Bubba Hiers addressed Jackson as "my little Jew girl", supposedly because he was impressed with her bringing the business into profit, subjected his employees to porn in the workplace, called his kitchen workers "coons", and, well, here's an extract from Jackson's complaint:
In Ms Jackson's presence, Bubba Hiers said to his African-American security guard and driver, "don't you wish you could rub all the black off you and be like me?" The security guard responded, "I'm fine the way I am", whereupon Mr Hiers replied, "You just look dirty. I bet you wish you could."
Undelicious as this is, it's not about only a couple of undereducated white people spouting rubbish worthy of an Imperial Wizard on a bender. We're talking about Deen because she has a huge following and because she's on TV – or was, before the Food Network declined to renew her contract – and because she's not unique. This stuff is said every day and not just down here in Dixie. A century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation, 50 years on from the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, the assassination of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers, and former Alabama Governor George Wallace's "Stand in the Schoolhouse Door", too many Americans still haven't adjusted to the racial realities of the 21st century. Or even the 20th.
The president of the United States continues to be subject to coded language – he's not really American. Remember Mitt Romney's attempted quip at a 2012 campaign stop in Michigan: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate." Barack and Michelle Obama still get called "uppity" out loud and in public. Recently, a school board official in Virginia thought it amusing to email colleagues pictures of bare-breasted African women and caption it "Michelle Obama's high school reunion".
The Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity with chapters at more than 100 colleges nationwide, throws an annual party called "Old South" at which the young men ride around campus on horses with faux swords to collect their dates, who wear Scarlett O'Hara hoopskirts. The boys used to wear Confederate officers' uniforms, but the fraternity recently banned the practice, along with the flying of the Confederate battle flag, citing modern racial sensitivities. Progress!
Yet the country still swoons for moonlight-and-magnolias, the South as a land of gents, belles, white-columned houses, down-home folks, honeyed accents, sweet tea, fried chicken and cakes so tasty you'll want to slap your mama. Paula Deen's South.
The trouble is, that South never existed. Deen and her brother grew up in Albany, Georgia, a famously vicious little burg where the local sheriff famously broke his cane over the head of an African-American lawyer simply because "he is a nigger and I am a white man". Deen was about 15 when Martin Luther King Jr spent several days in the Albany jail and when some black kids jumped the fence and dove into the white-only municipal pool, causing the town to drain it and scrub it, and then sell it rather than integrate it.
Deen doesn't acknowledge any of this. She sticks to the Gone With the Wind-y fantasy that, as she told reporter Kim Severson during as TimesTalks conversation, "Black folks were like our family". She proudly presents her African-American friend, "black as this board", and makes him come up on stage: "Come out here, Hollis: we can't see you standing against that dark board!"
Although her many fans are outraged and threatening boycotts, Deen has lost her TV program, Smithfield Foods, the world's largest pork producer, has dumped her as its spokesmodel and QVC, the home shopping empire, is "reviewing its business relationship" with her. All the banana split brownie pizza in the world can't sweeten Deen's casual racism. Stick a fork in her: she's cooked.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
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