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In These Times

In These Times features award-winning investigative reporting about corporate malfeasance and government wrongdoing, insightful analysis of national and international affairs, and sharp cultural criticism about events and ideas that matter.

Remembering Those Other American Dreams In 1977, a Midwestern unionist named Ed Sadlowski made a spirited run for the presidency of the United Steelworkers. An insurgent running against the old guard at a time when the union's election was still decided by a popular vote, Sadlowski seemed on the verge of victory until he granted an interview with Penthouse magazine. As author Thomas Geoghegan recounted in his 1991 book, Which Side Are You On?, the ensuing controversy had nothing to do with the publication's pornography, and everything to do with Sadlowski insisting that America should be "a country where people don't have to work in coke ovens." "A terrible howl went up from the Official Family and from some of the older workers," Geoghegan wrote. Though Sadlowski was railing against intolerable working conditions that most Americans oppose, his political enemies portrayed his remarks as an elitist veneration of white-collar work over blue-collar labor -- at the time, akin to blasphemy. The smears worked, and Sadlowski lost his election. Fast forward to the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. The story revolves around a 20-year-old orphan from working-class South Boston, who opts for manual labor jobs rather than using his math genius to get a professional gig.? Demons Out! The neocons who sold Americans the Iraq War are working hand in hand with the Christian Right to make sure that a McCain-Palin administration will take up where Bush-Cheney leaves off. Building on doubts some white Americans have about electing a black president, their strategy is to stoke fear that Sen. Barack Obama is the Antichrist. Google it and you will find more than 1.3 million Web entries that discuss Obama and Anti-Christ. In early August, the McCain campaign released an online ad titled "The One," that suggests Obama could be the Antichrist. McCain campaign officials denied they were trying to draw parallels, but many Christian fundamentalists understood. The ad portrayed images that are only found in the 16 books of the "Left Behind" series -- 63 million copies sold to date. Tim LaHaye, the series' co-author, is a key strategist of the Christian Right. He is also the founding president of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive organization that brings together leaders of the American right to coordinate political strategy. Prior to the Republican National Convention, the CNP met in Minneapolis, where members watched Gov. Sarah Palin on the stage with Sen. John McCain as she accepted? GOP Dirty Tricks 2.0 In June, The Atlantic magazine's Marc Ambinder reported that some people inside Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) presidential campaign were hoping to soften the GOP's traditionally aggressive campaign against "voter fraud," partly because they thought previous efforts had created a backlash in public opinion. But the next day, the campaign's top lawyer fired back, writing to Ambinder that "any impression that we're not committed to stopping voter fraud is 100 percent false." Of course, federal officials have never found evidence of widespread voter fraud. But that hasn't stopped Republican operatives from exploiting fears of ballot security to build a nationwide campaign of laws, policies and flimsy challenges that ostensibly prevent fraud while actually limiting voting access for the nation's most marginalized citizens. To be fair, many of the barriers Americans face at the polls could stem less from partisan interference than from the enduring holes in the nation's election administration infrastructure. In two recent House subcommittee hearings, election officials from Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia cautioned that a lack of resources and trained poll workers would lead to delays and confusion at high-traffic polling sites. Tova Wang, vice president for research at the nonprofit citizens' lobbying group Common Cause and co-author of? Russia’s Monroe Doctrine By Pentagon standards, Russia's lightning summer conflict with Georgia wasn't much of a war. There was no forced "regime change" and no "shock and awe," merely a swift, armored thrust by Russia's Vladikavkaz-based 58th army that dispersed an ill-advised Georgian military assault on the Moscow-protected statelet of South Ossetia. And though the Russian air force took undisputed control of the skies and targeted some aspects of Georgia's infrastructure, there was no plan to systematically destroy it. The whole thing ended with an internationally brokered deal that secured the Russian army's withdrawal to its pre-war positions and the insertion of European monitors to guarantee the peace. But the Russian military's first foray beyond its borders since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 has triggered political shock waves beyond the region, and threatens to bring on a chill in East-West relations to rival the worst days of the Cold War. After almost two decades of retreat from the former USSR's geopolitical positions, a resurgent, oil-rich Russia appears angry, resentful and unwilling to tolerate further expansion of NATO into its historic region. That mood prefigures trouble ahead. Two ex-Soviet countries -- Georgia and Ukraine -- could join NATO's Membership Action Program as early as? Crony Communist or Businessman? Is Henry Paulson a crony communist or a businessman? The answer could be the difference between economic disaster and recovery. Understanding Paulson's role in stopping -- or fueling -- the credit crisis requires a review of two axioms from Economics 101: 1) A credit crisis occurs when banks stop lending and 2) The amount banks can lend is a multiple of the capital in their vaults. Therefore, ending a credit crisis means prompting new lending -- and that means maximally increasing bank capital. Enter Paulson, the former Goldman Sachs executive and current Treasury secretary. The bailout he fearmongered through Congress aims to waste almost a trillion taxpayer dollars buying banks' bad mortgages -- a scheme all but ensuring a disastrous outcome. If Paulson pays banks exactly what their mortgages are worth, he will not increase banks' capital (or their lending ability) -- he will merely convert one asset (mortgages) into another (cash), making no impact on the credit crisis. If, to protect taxpayers, he buys mortgages at lower prices than banks list them, banks will have to write down their capital and consequently contract lending -- and the credit crisis will worsen. If Paulson overpays for mortgages, he may marginally? An Exemplar of Reconciliation Almost unnoticed, Imam W.D. Mohammed died of heart disease and diabetes on Sept. 9 in his modest home in a Chicago suburb. His death received scant attention, which may have reflected Mohammed's aversion to the spotlight, but it was hardly commensurate with his significance. Mohammed was one of the nation's most influential Islamic clerics and strongest advocates of ecumenical unity, urging stronger links between Christians, Jews and Muslims. His Quranic rigor earned the respect of Islamic scholars worldwide, and he was a passionate American patriot. What's more, he was a potent influence on the African-American freedom movement, challenging the racial essentialism that rose during the Black Power era and transforming a black nationalist cult into a group advocating racial unity. Mohammed offered a model of reconciliation on two important fronts: Islamic piety with Western pluralism and U.S. patriotism with black activism. His example provided a lesson for a world struggling with clashing sensibilities, and his passing hurts prospects for progress. He was born Wallace Delaney Muhammad on Oct. 30, 1933, to Clara Muhammad and the late Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam. When his father died in 1975, Wallace was selected to lead the black supremacist group. This? Framing the ‘RNC 8 ST. PAUL, Minn. -- The city that became a battlefield between police and protesters, who took to the streets during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in early September, is now embroiled in a new fight -- a legal battle over freedom of speech and assembly. In an unprecedented application of Minnesota's version of the federal Patriot Act, eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committee, an anarchist organization, each face up to seven and a half years in prison for charges of "conspiracy to riot in furtherance of terrorism" for their alleged roles in RNC protest activities. The charges against the eight individuals, now known as "The RNC 8," follow a yearlong investigation in which the Ramsey County Sheriff's Department, with the help of state and federal agencies, used an undercover agent and two paid informants to infiltrate and collect information on the organization. On Aug. 30 and 31, the weekend preceding the RNC, the investigation culminated in a series of preemptive raids on several homes in the Twin Cities that the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyer's Guild (NLG) have condemned. "The scariest thing about this is that no one is accused of actually doing anything, they have? The End of Aggressive Ignorance? How surreal is life right now? Between a right-wing, government-loathing president insisting on bringing socialism to Wall Street, a Chatty Cathy doll (Remember those? You pulled a cord and they said the same five things) running for vice president, polls showing that still -- still! -- people give McCain the edge on national security issues. And the TV pundits, against overwhelming evidence to the contrary, claim that the first presidential debate was "a tie." You start to feel like you've shot down that rabbit hole with Alice and may never get out. I mean, really, the country seems to have gone crazy. Nevertheless, there is a war being waged now, in the waning days of the Bush administration and the campaign, against the triumph of aggressive ignorance, a fabulous term I'm stealing from my nephew. Aggressive ignorance defiantly shoves its utter lack of knowledge in your face and brays: "Facts? We don't need no stinkin' facts!" Team Bush has repeatedly asserted that it didn't need to know much of anything -- about Iraq, hurricane relief, science, global climate change or the corruptions of the financial sector, and that we shouldn't know anything about these things either. McCain and Palin --? Engineering Students Talk Trash Student members of Engineers Without Borders (EWB) at the University of Minnesota can be forgiven for talking trash these days: Their effort to turn garbage into economic opportunity for Haitians just earned them a $25,000 advocacy award from Keen Footwear. The student engineers are exploring a way to recycle thousands of used plastic water sachets littering the streets and beaches of Haiti, a culturally rich but materially destitute island country in the Caribbean. (Seventy-six percent of Haitians live on less than $2 per day, and half of all Haitians suffer from malnutrition, according to the U.N. World Food Program.) The students say they hope to use that plastic, in turn, to make composting toilets for urban families. If successful, the project could enhance sanitation, reduce pollution and, eventually, create jobs for Haitians. "We're trying to take refuse and make it into something useful," says Nathan Knutson, a second-year master's student in mechanical engineering. He says the recycling programs used in the United States use large-scale sorting, shredding and injection-molding machines -- all of which use tremendous amounts of energy. In Haiti, the students want to make recycling small enough to be hand-operated. "We've had [the idea of recycling] forever up? Internationalism and the Progressive Movement One of the finest traditions of the American left has been its historic commitment to solidarity with the oppressed and poverty-stricken peoples of the world. In the last few years, however, the progressive movement has become far too insular. As a result, we have too often neglected our internationalist responsibilities?especially when it comes to confronting the ravages of world poverty. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 18 million people die each year due to poverty-related causes. This staggering figure represents about one third of all deaths that occur throughout the world on an annual basis. And these are deaths that could be easily prevented through better nutrition, safe drinking water, and adequate vaccines, antibiotics and other medicines. As Robert Creamer points out in his book Stand up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, "A Manhattan Project to provide clean water to everyone in the world would prevent the deaths of 6,000 people per day ? and 1.4 million children under five each year." Despite this unspeakable scale of human suffering, the United States government now allocates as much money towards military spending as does the rest of the world combined. How many millions of lives could be saved each year? Hip-Hop’s Planet Rocker Afrika Bambaataa is legend in the world of hip-hop: an Afro-Futurist in the tradition of musician Sun Ra; a radical democrat and organizer; a sound-system blaster; a South Bronx DJ; a former leader of the street organization The Black Spades; and father of the gang-structured, nonviolent, community-minded Universal Zulu Nation. Known as the Master of Records -- for his broad musical tastes and rare, hard-to-find breaks -- Bambaataa challenged and changed the sonic landscape of a de-industrializing South Bronx in the late '70s. While midtown Manhattan was sniffing disco, in uptown innovating black DJs with West Indian roots were playing James Brown beats in succession. Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Bambaataa brought new flavor and familiar funk to the block parties, high school gymnasiums and community centers, before spreading their sound to other boroughs -- and soon, the planet. In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa and his crew, Soul Sonic Force, put out Planet Rock, which, on vinyl, captured the blend of genres Bambaataa was creating in New York. He called it Electro-Funk -- a mixture of funk and rock breaks, synthesized melodies, video game explosions, and samples from unconventional sources, such as '50s commercial jingles and the German electro group, Kraftwerk.? Saying “No Deal” to This New Deal The marriage of American capitalism and democracy has always been a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee affair -- stormy and erratic since its hasty wedding. But during the debate over a Wall Street bailout this week, we watched that matrimonial knot unwind into a tangled tale of terror. As a financial crisis became a political panic, capitalism murdered democracy (ironically, while pursuing a vaguely socialist bailout). Only, unlike a typical horror story, the dead body wasn't hidden, it was dumped in the nation's public square. The fiasco started, like most, with unreasonable demands. Under threat of financial meltdown, capitalism's corporate lobbyists asked our democracy to forsake its usual deliberations and hand over $700 billion of taxpayer money in less than a week. Many were surprised when democracy responded with such valiant defiance. As television screens split between the floors of the stock exchange and the House of Representatives, lawmakers initially voted with their constituents and against the bailout. That's when this husband-and-wife argument escalated into a grisly crime of passion. CNN's Ali Velshi frothed that "the banks and the companies don't care about the intricacies" of democratic deliberations. A CEO angrily told CNN that "the money is being held hostage? Hope vs. Fear One thing is certain: either Senator Barack Obama's race will prevent him from being elected president, or it won't. I wonder about this not just as an African-American citizen and voter, but professionally, as the legislative and political director of a union that endorsed and supports his campaign. But this presidential race is particularly personal for me because I am caught between the hope and the fear of the generations before and after me. These generations are not theoretical abstractions or demographic subsets of the electorate; they are my father and my daughter. My daughter is the hopeful one. She decided to support Obama for President back in 2007, urging me via a blast e-mail from the campaign to "join her at the Obama campaign." So much for discussion over the family dinner table. A gregarious 18-year-old who graduated from a very integrated public school in the Maryland suburbs, she was afforded the opportunity to cast a ballot because state law permits 17-year-olds who turn 18 before a general election to cast primary ballots. I tried to temper her expectations, not wanting her optimism dashed in case her candidate didn't make it to Maryland. She not only ignored me, she? More U.S. Meddling in El Salvador? As El Salvador prepares to hold its presidential and parliamentary elections early next year, the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) worries the Bush administration might be drumming up fear to sway results. During a June visit to El Salvador, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte expressed concern over alleged links between the populist opposition FMLN party -- Farabundo Mart' National Liberation Front -- and rebels in Colombia's FARC -- Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. After Colombian troops raided a FARC camp on March 1, the Colombian government alleged it had seized a laptop computer that tied FARC and FMLN. (The FMLN has denied the allegations.) "Any group that collaborates or expresses friendship with the FARC is not a friend of the United States," said U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Charles Glazer, echoing Negroponte's remarks. On June 27, Glazer told a delegation of 12 Americans traveling to El Salvador with CISPES that the United States would not interfere with the country's January parliamentary elections and its March presidential elections. However, CISPES alleges that Glazer also said that the United States had meddled in El Salvador's 2004 elections. According to a CISPES press release, "When asked? Turning a Wall Street Giveaway Into a Rescue for All Americans [Editor's note: The following article provides a summary of the complex issues involved in negotiations over how to respond to the credit market crisis. For the sake of simplicity and navigability, it is broken into five separate parts, which you can scroll to individually: 1) The State of Play 2) Leadership Moves 3) Alternatives 4) Likely Outcomes and 5) The Progressive Bottom Line.] Following the astounding rejection of Henry Paulson's speculator bailout plan in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday, a wave of doomsday propaganda from Washington, both presidential candidates and the media has flooded the airwaves -- all aimed at trying to force public opinion to support handing over $700 billion to Wall Street, no strings attached. But as the Washington Post poll today shows, the public isn't budging. Indeed, after 16 years of aggressive deregulation from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, the country has figured out that when the Establishment in unison backs something for Wall Street, it means taxpayers are about to get fleeced. With the Dow shooting up and down across the nation's television screens, Americans are worried about their jobs, pensions and savings. They are also confused about what their government is going?