Tomorrow the world will mark a day set aside to raise awareness of the epidemic AIDS has been. It will be time again for responsible leadership to draw attention to the easily available ways that the killing illness can be avoided.

In this country, responsible adults will be silenced by the occupied White House in its campaign to enable right wing religious organizations that refuse to acknowledge prevention that does not set abstinence as its major tenet. A celebration last July made a point of showing the harm done.

NAIROBI, Kenya — On July 5, Beatrice Were, the founder of Uganda’s National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS, stood before hundreds of other HIV-positive women in Nairobi’s vaulted city hall and denounced the Bush administration’s AIDS policies.

Like many in attendance, Were contracted HIV from her husband, a common occurrence in a region where women make up the majority of new infections and marriage is a primary risk factor. For those like her, the White House’s AIDS prevention mantra — which prescribes abstinence and marital fidelity, with condoms only for “high risk” groups like prostitutes and truck drivers — is a sick joke.

“We are now seeing a shift in recent years to abstinence only,” she said. “We are expected to abstain when we are young girls and to be faithful when we are married to men who rape us, who are not necessarily faithful to us, who batter us.” The women in the audience, several waiting to share their own stories of marital rape, applauded.

Were exhorted her audience to “denounce programs that are not evidence-based, that view AIDS as a moral issue, that undermine the issues that affect us, women’s rights. I want to be very clear — the abstinence-only business, women must say no!” Again, there were hollers and applause.

There were lots of voices like Were’s in Nairobi last week, where the YWCA sponsored a massive international conference on women and HIV. Yet they rarely seem to break through in the United States, where the conventional wisdom holds that the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is a bright spot in an otherwise execrable presidency, one that only the ideologically blinkered refuse to credit. Nick Kristof seems to repeat this notion in The New York Times every other week, and Bono affirmed it when he insisted on putting Bush on one of the 20 different covers that graced Vanity Fair’s special Africa issue. “USA TODAY’s Susan Page just got off the telephone with Bono. She says President Bush can count the rock star as a fan today,” the newspaper’s blog reported in late May. “The Grammy winner was singing the praises of the American president for his announcement today that he would propose spending an additional $30 billion over five years to fight AIDS in Africa, doubling the U.S. commitment.”

For many toiling in the trenches of the pandemic, though, opinions about PEPFAR are far more ambivalent. It’s a moral conundrum: how do you weigh lives saved by treatment against lives lost through policies that sabotage prevention?

In less than two months the bizarre figures who have stamped out rationality in the U.S. executive branch will leave. The responsible adults will return. They will face a huge barrier in the personnel implanted in this government by the departing bottomfeeders.

We can celebrate a return to respect for intelligence while taking the lesson learned, that indulging the deficient to the point of giving them power can be fatal.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Terrorism is asymmetrical warfare in more ways than one. Small groups of terrorists can cause disproportionate damage and fear and become harder and harder to track as they blend in with the civilian population, but terrorism also crosses borders in asymmetrical ways. The attacks in Mumbai are just a recent example of the fact that the world can no longer be divided into neat geopolitical areas like it once could during the Cold War.

Current evidence is pointing to the conflict in Kashmir as the political cause for these attacks. But they have other direct and indirect causes and effects. By all accounts, the terrorists were targeting American and British citizens as much as possible. While America and Britain have certainly played a role in the Kashmir conflict, it’s hard not to see our war in Afghanistan as part of the underlying tapestry of causes. Evidence is saying that Pakistani militants were responsible:

American intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Friday that there was mounting evidence that a Pakistani militant group based in Kashmir, most likely Lashkar-e-Taiba, was responsible for this week’s deadly attacks in Mumbai.

The officials cautioned that they had reached no firm conclusions about who was responsible for the attacks, or how they were planned and carried out. Nevertheless, they said that evidence gathered in the past two days pointed to a role for Lashkar-e-Taiba or possibly another group based in Kashmir, Jaish-e-Muhammad, which also has a track record of attacks against India.

Now a picture is emerging with India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Britain, and America all connected in a series of long-running conflicts. Historical tensions and human rights abuses in Kashmir by both sides, high civilian “collateral damage” in Afghanistan by NATO forces, and cross-border raids by NATO into Pakistan all cause anger among various ethnic and religious groups in the area. Sometimes that anger expresses itself in the form of local militia forces like the Taliban. Sometimes it breaks free of borders and turns into global terrorism.

Most people don’t go on suicide missions for no reason. If we want to reduce terrorist and militia attacks, we need to lower the temperature, not only in Afghanistan but in Pakistan and India as well. As Alex Thurston has repeatedly urged, NATO needs to stop killing civilians and invading Pakistan to root out militants. At the very least, we cannot send another 20,000 troops to Afghanistan - beyond the fact that in these times of financial crisis we simply can’t afford it, escalation will only raise tensions.

It’s always going to bring a snarl from me to hear the business reporters pinning fault for the poor economy on consumers’ holding back on spending. Black Friday was the occasion for a new spate of conjecture about what it will take to get those meanspirited consumers to open up their pockets… ignoring that there’s nothing in those pockets when they are opened. Hint: lack of salary means loss of consumption. When eight years of right wing reverse Robin Hood policies prevail, there is a loss of buying power by the consumers. Somehow that logic escapes financial planners for the corporate section.

Seems like a simple enough equation to me, but somehow that relationship continually misses the followers of Ayn Rand who seem to be dominating our corporate realm at the moment. Good prevails, what to do, what to do when the American shopper disappears?

Good sense may be returning out of sheer desperation to policy makers. (However, I have gained over the past eight years a growing confidence in the power of abstinence (pigheadedness) on the part of those who are wealthy by the accident of birth.)

In the midst of all the bailout madness, we keep hearing the same mantra from those who defend the trillions of dollars that are being laid out by the federal government:  We have no choice.  If we don’t prop up the Citibanks and the AIG’s (and possibly the GM’s and the Chryslers, too), then the consequences will be devastating for the American work force and for the entire world economy.

And therein lies the crux of the problem.  Corporations like these have become so large and so powerful, they simply cannot be allowed to fail, even if free market forces dictate that they should.  Paradoxically, our economic system has promoted the growth of these giant companies to the point that the laws of capitalism are being superceded by the necessities of corporate welfare. 

Imagine if a locally-owned five and dime store hit hard times because a Wal-Mart moved into town and undercut all its business.  Would the government rush in and bail it out?  Of course not!  That would put maybe a dozen people out of work, and it would be chalked up to the realities of doing business.  We like to glorify small businesses, but we’re also used to them coming and going with regularity. 

But just imagine if Wal-Mart was in trouble.  What if they were in the position that the Big 3 auto makers are in today?  Do you think they’d be allowed to fail?  Do you really think the government would let the corporation that represents 1.6 million employees, 13% of the nation’s productivity, and 20% of all US grocery sales go under?  Not a chance!  They’d have no choice but to prop up a company that has made itself indispensable through its sheer size.

The government has no choice.  But we, as consumers do.  The often untold beauty of the capitalist system is that it depends on the choice of the consumer.  And if we are collectively aware enough, we can see the danger in letting corporations get too big, and we can prevent it.  We can refuse to give our money to the largest corporations.  I call this practice “Shopping Small.”

“Shopping Small” means favoring smaller companies over larger ones when you have a more or less equal choice.  Go to a locally-owned pharmacy instead of Walgreen’s.  Buy a regional soft drink such as Cheerwine instead of Coke or Pepsi.  Purchase toys that were handcrafted by a domestic mom and pop operation instead of by some large corporation in an overseas lead-paint producing sweatshop.  If needed, make a sacrifice and pay a little bit extra in order to favor a smaller company.  And if nothing else, never darken the doors of a Wal-Mart again. 

Of course, “Shopping Small” is only one piece of a larger effort that is needed to reduce the size and influence of our corporations.  There will also need to be some serious work done in our legislative and corporate cultures as well.  But we as consumers play a big role.  Perhaps the biggest is just to sound the alarm and to let it be known that we won’t stand for corporations so large that they can’t be allowed to fail when, in all fairness, they should.

(cross-posted at Discipline for Justice)

American’s have the “lowest expectation levels of any society in the Western world.”  These were Ralph Nader’s sentiments soon after Obama’s electoral landslide victory.  In three days, in a three mile radius, in three lives I witnessed the veracity of his assessment.

On the eve of day one I walked out of the church office planted between Main & Fannin in Houston, Texas.  The woman I am dating and the sexton flanked me as we ambled toward the car.  A screech pierced the darkness  filling the night air with paranoid obscenities.  Through the   shadows of the streetlights I saw a man slogging down the middle of the road where my car was parked.  

As a Chaplain who has worked in psychiatric settings I recognized the nature of the utterances.  My awareness sharpened like the point of a diamond as my body  instinctively readied itself for fight or flight.  The sexton spoke the man’s name forcefully and walked toward him.  In an instant the tortured soul snapped into a calm reality.  As they conversed we drove away safely, our pulse rates on a steady decent.

Late morning on day three I went to the Chevron at the intersection of Southmore and 288 to buy a Houston Chronicle.  A man with a toboggan and green jacket quizzically studied me.  I took note but averted eye contact.  He approached me as I left the convenience store.  “Does a blond haired woman drive this car sometime?”  “Yes” I replied.  “This is my car, but she has been driving it while I was on a trip.”  “I knew it” exclaimed the man.  “I recognized the red car with the bird droppings!  She is a real nice lady.”    

Presenting a sqeegee from the service station the man offered to make my windows sparkle like new.  He needed seven bucks for the day.  “I have been keeping your car clean while you were gone” he assured me.  In the “God works in mysterious ways” category, I had been thinking 5 minutes earlier, “I need to clean that bird crap off of my windshield.”  My gut told me he was an honorable person.  I agreed to let him do the job.

Jonathan introduced himself as he swabbed all of my windows including the moon roof.  He told me how he and his wife are homeless and have been living under the bridge around the corner.  He confessed that they were mentally ill, but were “getting it together.”  The young man who does the custodial work around the Chevron saw what was going on and angrily demeaned Jonathan.  “Put that squeegee back where you found it BOY.”  My body felt  an ancestral jolt from toe to brow emanating from my white Great, Great Grandfather.  Both Jonathan and the custodian are black. 

The transaction went according to homeless Hoyle. Jonathan needed ten dollars now so he could pay five back to an elderly man he borrowed from down the street.  He asked me to take him to his house.  When we arrived I gave Jonathan a ten spot.  He bounded back to the car jubilant that he had settled his debt with the infirm man.  “God won’t bless me if I take advantage of old people.”  

Jonathan asked me to drop him off at his new digs, an abandoned house.  He reported that the owner was letting him stay there in exchange for working on the place.  After letting me know he needed some size ten and a half shoes we parted as Jonathan gave me the culturally coded benediction, “God bless you.”

It is nighttime now on day three and I am back at the church office.  I bump into “Lamar” the sexton.  I asked him about the incident from a few evenings ago.  He knew the man from helping him at a homeless shelter nearby.  “It was wild how he snapped and became a totally different person when you called out his name” I said.  “Yes”, Lamar answered, “that’s the way he is when he takes his medication, but as soon as he gets on his own he doesn’t take it all the time.  Sometimes he sleeps behind the church, by the bank, or the office next door.”

Lamar then began to tell me how his adult son is locked up in Angola prison for life because he is mentally ill.  “He never hurt anyone or committed a violent crime.  It was  one of those three strikes and your out laws.”  

“Our mental health care is so primitive,” I stated flatly.  “I remember when Reagan turned people out from the mental hospitals onto the streets.  We have never recovered from that.  I wonder what percentage of the homeless and those in prison are mentally ill?  They need treatment not the streets or jail.”  Lamar agreed with resignation.  

He then confided in me that he wanted to become a Minister but the money he borrowed for his son’s care and his own health issues have kept him from it.  I encouraged Lamar,  “At 62 you are still young, don’t give up on your vision for the ministry.”  With a warm gaze we parted.

In the interview I heard with Ralph Nader he recounts a story about Eugene Debs at the end of his career.  Debs was a great labor leader who fought desegregation and the giant industrialists.  A reporter asked, “What’s your greatest regret?”  Debs replied, “My greatest regret is that, under our Constitution, the American people can have almost anything they want, but it just seems like they don’t want much of anything at all.” 

Earlier this day Jonathan the window washer eyeballed me and said with firm optimism, “Chuck, there are worse places to live than under a bridge.  I could be in prison.” 

I agree with all that is within me.  There is one place that is worse than living under a bridge.  The place of terminally low expectations.

Karl Rove opines today in the Wall Street Journal:

But, overall, Monday’s announcement of Mr. Obama’s economic team was reassuring. He’s generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers. Investors, workers and business owners can only hope that, over time, this new administration’s economic policies bear more of their market-oriented imprint.

Now, I’ll admit I have no idea what arc Obama’s economic policy will take. Nobody does - he’s not President yet. But I think two points bear repeating.

First, so far, Obama’s policies have been nothing but progressive. 2.5 million new jobs. Trillions in stimulus. I’m not sure you could ask for much more.

Second, Karl Rove comes from the Lee Atwater school of Republican operatives. They believe that perception is reality. If Rove decides Obama’s economic team is conservative-leaning, and progressives back him up, a perception is created. It should surprise few if that perception then becomes reality.

Now, it would be unwise to give Obama a free pass on everything he does - he should get criticism when he deserves it, just like any other politician. It would be equally unwise to brand Obama as an enemy of the left. The fact that progressives like Mike Lux and Jesse Lee are well positioned in the transition team means I have an ear willing to listen my ideas. It remains to be seen, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t a few real friendlies to talk to in the Obama administration as well. And as Jane Hamsher points out, we’ve got some progressives on the policy team as well.

All in all, Obama’s Presidency isn’t written in stone. He’s susceptible to pressure from organized outside progressive groups, and as David Sirota points out, Obama may be hiring “centrists” to get his progressive agenda passed:

As I told Rachel Maddow this week, his initial moves suggest a president who hired ideological free-market conservatives, and who will order them to push ideologically progressive policies - all under the mantra of “pragmatism.” And doing that is certainly very pragmatic. Assessing the Washington landscape and the economic situation, Obama - in a very pragmatic way - seems to have determined that the practical thing to do is pass progressive legislation, and that the most practical way to do that is to have that legislation carried by free-marketeers whose conservatism gets them painted by pundits as “pragmatists.”

Indeed, if Obama can and does do that, he would be both the most pragmatic and progressive president in contemporary history - proving once and for all that “pragmatism” is no substitute for progressive ideology, but in these tough times, a synonym for it.

Barack Obama may well end up being a conservative Democrat as President. If so, I’ll unhappily eat my words. But I’m not convinced just because Obama appoints “centrist,” “mainstream,” “conventional,” or “pragmatic” people to administration posts means his Presidency will be any of those things. However, the unhappy outcome is much more likely if everyone, from the old media to Karl Rove to progressive bloggers, are repeating it.

Last night, I was watching Rachel Maddow recount the dozens upon dozens of scandals that pock-marked the last eight years of the Bush Administration, and for some reason, I started hearing the “Major-General’s Song” in my head. I have no idea why a mind-bogglingly long list of greed and corruption made me think of The Pirates of Penzance—OK, it’s not that big a stretch—but anyway, my confusion is your, um, gain(?).

So how about a Thanksgiving sing-along. . . .

The Major Criminal’s Song

I am the very model of a modern major criminal
I’ve tortured everything in sight, turned animal to mineral
I’ve stripped men naked, chained them up, and blasted heavy meteral
I recognize no laws on me unless they’re extra-federal

My dad once ran the CIA, he told me it was just good fun
My veep will back me up on that—look out, he’s got a birding gun!
Those treaties of Geneva type should not be taken serious
The prohibitions there within are quaint if not mysterious

I lied the country into war to boost my numbers in a poll
Ignored advice of everyone from grunt to four star general
When Wilson tried to show me up, I said hey it’s your funeral
I’ve ruined oh so many lives, my staff assumes it’s protocol

I’ll hunt them down and smoke them out as long as I am vertical
You don’t have to take my word, just ask my old friend Richard Perle
No terrorist will walk this earth beneath my robot predators
So what if I kill innocents? (How’d that get past my editors?)

It’s the president who makes the laws, so I don’t need an alibi
I decide what’s right or wrong, that’s why I’m the decider guy
Don’t need to recognize the courts or documents historical
My explanation’s ironclad if not un-categorical

My attitudes about your rights are bold and unconventional
Don’t whine at me about the law, I don’t need you to concern troll
In short I am the president who won with RATS subliminal
I am the very model of a modern major criminal

I think it’s still a work in progress—for instance, I’m still trying to find a rhyme for “strategery.”

Funny enough, it was almost exactly two years ago that I was also looking at Bush and thinking Gilbert and Sullivan. Must be type casting.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

——
(cross-posted on guy2k)

To pick up on Jim’s meme, here’s what I’m thankful for today, short and sweet:

1. I’m thankful that Barack Obama won the Presidency. He’s not the solution to all of our problems, and he will never live up to all of my and others’ expectations, but competency, intelligence, and real liberal potential has returned to Washington.
2. I’m thankful for the imagination of the American people. As Alex Thurston has remarked to me, facing an incredible economic crisis, Americans are starting to come up with extremely liberal - and sometimes straight up socialist - solutions seemingly out of thin air. Ideas like the government buying homeowners’ mortgages or people being able to trade in their old cars for new GM cars on the government’s dime are radical ideas that are making more and more sense.
3. I’m thankful that the right-wing in this country has been so thoroughly discredited that we have a chance at solving real problems again. Sure, there will be voices calling out for lower taxes and less regulation and government intervention to solve the economic crisis. They will be laughed out of the room.

I hope everyone out there is thankful for some things non-political as well, and enjoys the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving!

It’s Thanksgiving morning, and since I’m not allowed to cook anything for the big family dinner, I’ve got some free time to think about the things I’m thankful for this year:

(1) The tears streaming down Jesse Jackson’s face as he heard the news that an African-American had been elected President of the United States.

(2) The fact that out of the five biggest players in the presidential election (Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin, and Clinton), only two were white males.  Truly an astounding moment in American history.

(3) That the election produced a decisive winner with a minimum of controversy over voting procedures, meaning that we can immediately focus our attention on fixing the economy.

(4) The fact that Obama will be the first post-modern president, a revolution in the way the Oval Office thinks and acts in the world.

(5) The blogosphere - The way the world distributes news and information is changing right before our eyes, and more voices than ever are being allowed into the conversation.

(6) The fact that even though several states have expressed their bigotry and hatred toward the LGBT community, that community has become energized and galvinized in its civil rights struggle, a struggle which I am confident will be victorious.

(7) That Obama is not putting together a bunch of cookie-cutter ideologues on his cabinet. (Although I do wish he’d put more progressives in there)

(8) That Sarah Palin continues to be a bountiful source of comic relief, keeping the comedians off the back of Obama as he begins his most serious of tasks.

(9) That gas prices are so low. (I know, I know, I’m an advocate for higher gas taxes - but I just love it when I can fill up for $20.)

(10) That I was born when I was born, allowing me to be a young man during this most incredible period of American history.  Someday, for better or worse, we will be telling our grandchildren about what it was like to be alive in 2008.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

When Putin announced in September that he has ‘no doubt that the ’safety cushions’ that have been created in the Russian economy over the past few years will do their job’, it was meant to restore Western investor confidence and give credence to the idea that Russia enjoys relative immunity from the economic slowdown gripping the rest of the world.

This optimism was always questionable (who is immune from a crisis of the current magnitude? Above all, how can a major commodities exporter be so smug?) and the events of this month have proved Putin doubters right. As of November 15th, the Russian government had spent a massive 222 billion dollars (that’s 14% of Russia’s GDP) fighting the recession, but its economy seemed to be sliding alongside those of Western nations. Soon after, Russian finance minister Alexey Kudrin announced that the Kremlin had accepted there will be a long term drop in oil prices. A veritable admission of defeat; of course this spells disaster for a major exporter.

In claiming Russia was immune, Putin pointed to the very early measures taken to prop up liquidity (the ease with which assets can be exchanged, without devaluing), the small size of the Russian stock market and Russia’s experience dealing with similar crises. In other words, his good preparation would see the country through.

Other commentators argue that Russia has shown great clumsiness and naivety, particularly in its geo-political maneuverings. Western investor confidence in Russia took a tumble after the war in South Ossetia, and the global downturn followed about a month later (to be fair, the Putin/Medvedev administration didn’t know, when it invaded Georgia, what was around the corner). Russia was on shaky ground even before the rest of the earth started to quake, and it has its own rogue-ish behaviour to blame.