Americans want health care reform with a strong public option, as poll after poll after poll has shown. So we might expect that if roughly 70% of Americans want the public option, 70 US senators would line up to vote for the kind of solid, cost-effective legislation that will soon come out of the Senate HELP Committee. Unfortunately, even with the Democratic caucus soon to hit 60 votes in the Senate, we still don’t know where many Democrats stand on the critical question of support for a strong public option.

Democrats who waver on this issue need to hear our voices telling them to stand with President Obama and their party’s leadership to back a strong public option. Pressure from constituents can help make the difference in this battle.

One of those wavering Democrats is Arksansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, and a group of activists have come together to air ads telling her to support the public option. Please consider making a donation to help them place these ads, and be sure to vote for your favorite ad of the three they’re considering.

Why target Lincoln? Two reasons: “Blanche Lincoln is on the health sub-committee of the Senate Finance Committee and she’s running for re-election in 2010.”

John Amato and Jane Hamsher have more background on the campaign.

Please consider donating. The fight over a public option is critical for building a progressive mandate to govern, for Democrats’ electoral chances, for public debate over the role of government in our country, and for defining the role of grassroots progressives in the current political climate.

To expand on that last point, all the good guys are playing an important role right now - the President, Senators Kennedy, Dodd, and others, think tanks and organizations in DC like the Center for American Progress and Campaign for America’s Future, unions like SEIU and the groups in the AFL-CIO coalition, and brave progressives in the House. Grassroots activists have their own unique but crucial role to play: criticizing and pressuring the wavering Democrats that others cannot openly target. Supporting grassroots campaigns like this is the best way that citizen activists can affect the debate and support progressive champions and causes at this pivotal moment.

Part of a new campaign for the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR):

As the latest in the ongoing saga of Alvaro Uribe’s potential third term, Defense Minister and loyal Uribista Juan Manuel Santos resigned from his position Tuesday in order to prepare for a presidential bid in 2010. That bid, however, comes with an important caveat; “if the president decides to run, he can count on my support,” said Santos. “If he does not do it, I will be a candidate.”

Uribe, for his part, is still playing coy on the issue. He has previously called the decision a “personal dilemma,” adding that he is “convincing his soul” not to run. Some prominent publications, including The Economist, are trying to convince him of the same.

Although Santos has an “intuition” that Uribe will seek a third-term, he has doubts about the prudence of such a move. Back in January, he told the Washington Post that “history will judge him much better if he leaves now than if he risks staying for four more years,” Santos said.

**a variation of this post originally appeared at Americas Quarterly

On Tuesday, former Mexican President Vicente Fox added his name to a growing list of prominent political figures urging the legalization of marijuana. He painted the current militarized approach as misguided and ineffectual, saying “it can’t be that the only way is for the state to use force.”

It’s not the first time Fox has publicly supported legalization. During his term in office, Fox urged the Mexican Congress to pass a similar measure, only to veto it when it reached his desk. Pressure from Washington, it is speculated, compelled the change of heart. At present, however, Fox’s position alligns with notable politicians this side of the border.

Back in November, both Michigan and Massachusetts voted to slacken marijuana laws, and in California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has acknowledged that “it’s time for debate” about legalization. For many in the Sunshine State, that debate is already decided: medical marijuana is currently the state’s largest cash crop, and Democratic state congressman Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would legalize the drug, generating billions in revenue via a $50 levy on every ounce sold. In the middle of an economoic recession, in a state with a sizeable hole in its budget, the opportunity seems too good to pass up.

And the benefits don’t end there: legalization would not only swell state revenue, it would shrink expenditures. It’s estimated the bill would save $1 billion a year by reducing the number of arrests, prosecutions and inmates from possession charges. Given the US’ world-leading incarceration rate, it’s small wonder officials in the federal government are also questioning the logic behind our drug war, if only in rhetoric.

Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration’s Drug Czar, told reporters Thursday that he wants to “banish the idea that the US is fighting a ‘War on Drugs.’” Though the position is largely one of semantics at the moment, it does signal a new, more liberal approach to drugs and criminal justice.

The significance is no doubt apparent to Former President Fox, who acknowledged that any effort by the Mexican government must “be done in conjunction with the United States.” Nevertheless, the Mexican congress has taken the lead, passing a bill that decriminalizes simple possession of marijuana and cocaine. President Felipe Calderón, a conservative, is expected to sign it soon.

Fox is not the only prominent Latin American politician to come out in favor of legalization this spring. In April, three other former Latin American presidents – Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Cesar Gaviria of Colombia, and Fox’s predecessor Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico – urged the same as a means of staunching drug cartels’ principle source of revenue and mitigating Mexico’s rampant drug violence.

“The problem is that current policies are based on prejudices and fears and not on results,” said Gaviria.

(Originally posted at Americas Quarterly)

“It makes no sense for us to buy rice from Asia when we could buy it from the United States,” Cuba’s ex-Foreign Trade Minister Raul de la Nuez

Acting on the water-tight reasoning of the recently deposed de la Nuez, US Senator Max Baucus is expected to announce legislation this week that would increase US agricultural exports to Cuba. Those working to drop the embargo no doubt appreciate the agricultural interests at the heart of Baucus’ move.

Indeed, for all the contradictions of the Cuban embargo, this is perhaps the most novel: the grassroots and big business share a common ground. But where activists see a moral issue, big business sees a lucrative market — before the 1962 embargo, Cuba was the top destination for US rice. If trade circumstances become favorable once again, the industry predicts that exports to Cuba could reach 400,000 metric tons per year.

Most have no doubt already heard that Obama lifted travel restrictions to Cuba for Cuban-Americans, as well as restrictions on remittances to the island. What’s getting less attention, however, is the following:

Specifically, the President has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to take the needed steps to…

• • Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.

• • License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.

For some time now the Cuban government has been claiming that the US restrictions, and the resulting inability to get widespread internet access, have hamstrung the country’s development. Now, with US telecoms allowed to run fiber-optic cable to the Cubans, Castro & Co. are in a position to prove the point.

That is, if they want to. Most likely they don’t.

In a country where citizens are allowed access to one news source - the state rag Granma - it’s hard to believe structural and technological obstacles alone barred the way to widespread Cuban connectivity. The notion that Cubans will now be granted unfettered access to an unregulated medium such as the internet is ludicrous. The majority of Cubans will remain strangers to the web.

Of course, there is the possibility that the Cuban government will allow access to the internet while severely censoring sites and content it finds unsuitable, a la China or Vietnam. This, however, is unlikely, given the complexity of such a task; the proliferation, and geographical diversity, of Spanish-language sites far outpaces that of Chinese and Vietnamese sites.

So, rather than interpret this as a harbinger of better things to come, I’m playing it pessimistic. A sober analysis of the situation justifies the position; the economic embargo on Cuba benefits two groups; the Cuban government, which consolidates and justifies its power on the back of the embargo; and the hardliner Cuban-Americans in the United States. What incentive does the former have to embrace this opening? The most conspicuous, and foreseeable, effect would be diminished control of the Cuban government.

For all the hope of this moment, in reality it is little more than a return to pre-Bush policy. Unless there is some further, more significant step yet to come, this is small potatoes. The brass in Havana has every reason to act grateful on the surface, seeking opportunities to poison the embargo debate behind the scenes. One way to assure their continued iron grip on the island is by stirring up the hornet’s nest that is the anti-Castro community and coaxing them into blocking further legislative reform.

I did not watch the game last night and I have no emotional investment in college basketball, but I was sorry to see this morning that the Michigan State Spartans lost the NCAA championship game. The state, more than most, needed something to hang its hat on…

From an article in Standard Weekly, quoted in a friend’s blog, Michigan Expat:

How bad is Detroit? It once gave the keys to the city to Saddam Hussein.

Over the last several years, it has ranked as the most murderous city, the poorest city, the most segregated city, as the city with the highest auto-insurance rates, with the bleakest outlook for workers in their 20s and 30s, and as the place with the most heart attacks, slowest income growth, and fewest sunny days. It is a city without a single national grocery store chain. It has been deemed the most stressful metropolitan area in America. Likewise, it has ranked last in numerous studies: in new employment growth, in environmental indicators, in the rate of immunization of 2-year-olds, and, among big cities, in the number of high school or college graduates.

Men’s Fitness magazine christened Detroit America’s fattest city, while Men’s Health called it America’s sexual disease capital. Should the editors of these two metrosexual magazines be concerned for their safety after slagging the citizens of a city which has won the “most dangerous” title for five of the last ten years? Probably not: 47 percent of Detroit adults are functionally illiterate.

On the upside, Detroit ranks as the nation’s foremost consumer of Slurpees and of baked beans on Labor Day.

May this once proud city find its way out of this mess.

This post is part of Get Afghanistan Right’s Break the Silence campaign

Latin American and Middle Eastern politics rarely intersect; Chavez’ dalliances with Ahmadinejad, protests of Israeli aggression in Palestine, and the list (off the top of my head) concludes here. In conversation among policy wonks, however, another connection is frequently overheard: Colombia and Afghanistan. Last Sunday, journalist Scott Wilson addressed the similarities between the two from his Washington Post soapbox:

The Taliban have caves and Colombian guerrillas their triple-canopy jungle and mountain hideouts…Afghanistan’s opium poppies fund the Taliban, just as coca fuels Colombia’s guerrillas. As Pakistan does for the Taliban, Venezuela and Ecuador provide sanctuary to Colombia’s insurgents.

Perhaps the most important parallel, though, is the lack of a strong central government. Colombia’s government has rarely held sway beyond Bogota’s nearly two-mile high plateau, and the frail Karzai administration in Kabul has a similarly short reach. As a result, Colombia has relied on brutal paramilitary forces to support a weak army, alienating much of the population in the process. In Afghanistan, that role is played by U.S. forces, which, although by no means as savage as the Colombian irregulars, have cost Afghanistan’s government support among a people famously hostile to foreign invaders.

Extrapolating the lessons learned in Colombia (still a class in session — no matter how improved Colombia may be from a decade ago, it has much more improving to do), Wilson reaches some conclusions that are explicitly contrary to the escalation policy:

First, a surge of U.S. combat forces to Afghanistan may be less useful than further increasing the number of military trainers being deployed to help build a viable Afghan army. Second, the administration should focus less on stopping the heroin trade and more on establishing functioning state institutions — from schools to health clinics. Third, efforts to seal off border sanctuaries do not work and divert military resources from the central job of protecting civilians.

Although he balks at rejecting escalation in so many words, reading between the lines we can extract the following; more troops will have a negligible impact; building up state institutions, not killing insurgents, is one of, if not the, most important task; and protection of civilians is paramount.

Many will no doubt argue that drawing lessons from Colombia is deceptive a priori; though the similarities between the situations are many, the differences are more. Two distinctions stand out; Plan Colombia does not call for brigades of combat troops, while Afghanistan has an ever-increasing appetite for them; our underlying motives and projected aims in the respective regions are distinct. At least ostensibly, Plan Colombia is part of the War on Drugs. Afghanistan is part of our War on Terror.

Nevertheless, we should not disregard the wisdom Wilson gleans from our Colombian experience, the most valuable piece of which I’ve saved for last; “it will take time.” In Colombia, with a competent and tremendously popular government in place, it’s taken over a decade to reach the very much relative success it’s enjoying today. In Afghanistan, as we all know, the government is far from approaching any adequate level of competence and coherence. Throwing more soldiers into the mix won’t change that.

After Raúl Castro sacked three popular and prominent Cuban ministers there was much speculation as to the motive. It was mostly idle - many theories but little clarity. Of all the theories proposed, however, that of Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister of Mexico and a distinguished professor at New York University, succeeding in raising the most eyebrows.

From the previously linked piece, which ran in Newsweek:

The problem, of course, is that, as in the Soviet Union when Stalin died, or in China after Mao’s death, we don’t really know what is going on. Yet there are solid reasons to believe that something along the following lines took place: for at least a month or so, Lage, Pérez Roque and others were apparently involved in a conspiracy, betrayal, coup or whatever term one prefers, to overthrow or displace Raúl from his position. In this endeavor, they recruited—or were recruited by—Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who in turn tried to enlist the support of other Latin American leaders, starting with Leonel Fernández of the Dominican Republic, who refused to get involved.

Well, those “solid reasons” referenced by Castañeda were never explicitly given in the piece, and many people in the Latin American policy community were naturally incredulous. Since Newsweek showed no initiative on the follow-up story, another major US media company swooped upon the scene. From the always irreverent “BoRev—Dispatches from the Bolivarian Revolution”:

Yesterday CNN (CNN!) dispatched an investigative reporter to look into that OMG so-obviously sketchy Jorge Castañeda column in Newsweek about Hugo Chavez plotting to overthrow Cuba, I mean really, Cuba? And duh yeah it turns out that he just made it all up. How do we know this? Because they ask him (taking notes, Newsweek?) His reply is just nuts.

From that CNN column:

“He resorted to a baseball metaphor on the occasion of the World Baseball Classic to praise Dominicans for not participating (the team’s plans had been unclear) and to claim that Chavez’s baseball players, ‘as good and young’ as they might be, were no match for ‘Cuba’s seasoned all-stars,’ “… Castaneda says Castro was thanking Dominican President Fernandez and sending a veiled message to Chavez.

Always happy to critique a voice they consider to their right, BoRev indulged in a little schadenfreude with its poll, “What kind of liar is Jorge Castañeda, exactly?”

This is, no doubt, amusing, but before we accept or applaud BoRev’s ridicule of Castañeda, we should question their own background information. Do they know that Jorge Castañeda Gutman, the Jorge in question, is the son of Jorge Castañeda y Álvarez de la Rosa, the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs from 1979-82? Does the author know that de la Rosa was one of the few, if not the only, Latin American official on good terms with both the US and Cuba during that Cold Warrin’ period? Does the author know that Jorge Castañeda Gutman trained as a guerrilla in Cuba for a brief period during his youth, and has close contacts in the Cuban intelligence community?

I’m guessing the author did not, and does not. Rather, this seems to be a case of sentimental allegiance trumping informed speculation. I’m not saying Castañeda’s right, but I am saying he has a much better view of the playing field from his position.

In a move that puts an end to one of the few remaining Cold War relics in our hemisphere, El Salvador’s leftist president-elect Mauricio Funes vowed a change in his country’s anti-Cuba policies.

The Latin American Herald Tribune provides some context:

El Salvador broke diplomatic ties with Havana in 1959, after Castro came to power, and incumbent Salvadoran President Tony Saca has repeated during his five years in office that he would not authorize relations with the Cuban government because of its communist ideology.

In its recent election, El Salvador opted against the conservative ARENA party for the first time in 20 years - a watershed moment in a country where, throughout the eighties and into the early nineties, the Cold War got hot. In that conflict, guerrillas backed by the Cuban government fought a US-backed, right-wing military government.

Funes’ announcement came just hours after Costa Rica announced they too would resume relations with Cuba, and just hours before he met with US Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. As Cuban-American Jorge Gonzalez put it: with those two rapprochements, “the isolation of the United States vis-a-vis Cuba is now completely total. The U.S. continues with its head deeply stuck in the sand.”