Much has been made of the recent Russian spy swap, in which ten Russian infiltrators were exchanged for four American infiltrators. The overall reaction has been one of amusement. Russian spies combined with Desperate Housewives? Straight out of a Cold War movie thriller!
In fact, the reaction to the spy scandal reveals far more about American attitudes towards Russia than most classified information would. Simply put, the United States no longer regards Russia as its number-one nemesis and rival. In the days of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union had ten thousand nuclear missiles pointed at America, the reaction would have been far different - far more hostile, and far less amused.
This weekend's New York Times article was a wake up call to Microsoft and the entire Information and communications technology industry about the dangers of complying with government actions aimed at limiting freedom of expression and stifling dissent.
To date, the most publicized repression has been censoring web content or surveillance of Internet users. The Russians took a different tack, using anti piracy laws to crack down on independent non-governmental organizations and non-violent government critics. Microsoft has a vested interest in anti piracy enforcement - piracy is rampant in Russia. But targeting human rights activists and news organizations for enforcement is clearly aimed not at protecting Microsoft's intellectual property, but at crippling political opponents and curbing basic freedoms. And Microsoft's representatives in Russia cooperated in those proceedings, providing the legal pretext and evidentiary basis for raids, criminal and civil charges and penalties that effectively closed down the targeted organizations.
One of our human rights colleagues in Russia was a victim of this practice, and we reached out to Microsoft to try to find a solution, both to this specific case and to the wider pattern of abusive enforcement over the past several years. Microsoft's recently announced policies to address several of these concerns.
Importantly, Microsoft will undertake an independent investigation of its Russian anti piracy team and its role in collaborating with Russian authorities. We encourage Microsoft to ensure that the individuals and civil society groups targeted for selective enforcement are interviewed as part of this review. We have also recommended that Microsoft maintain headquarters level oversight of its Russian anti piracy efforts to ensure that its responses to future Russian anti piracy investigations do not facilitate repression. As our letter to Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer points out, and as our Russian colleagues have cautioned, local representatives will likely remain vulnerable to pressure from Russian authorities to collaborate in politically motivated proceedings.
Our Russian human rights colleagues would welcome a working relationship with Microsoft. As defendants in these cases, and targets of potential abuse, they are well positioned to advise on risks and development of new policies. Microsoft should make every effort to consult with them as it develops new practices and procedures to respond to the concerns. The Global Network Initiative can also play an important role in helping Microsoft and other companies at risk to develop strategies to address government abuse of intellectual property laws to curb dissent, and to respond to such demands appropriately.
We welcome Microsoft's commitment to extend access to its free software problem. But as the New York Times story makes clear, without Microsoft's continuing leadership and engagement, civil society will remain at risk of selective prosecution. We have recommended that Microsoft join with Human Rights First to host consultations with Russian civil society for the purpose of obtaining their insights on the best way forward.
Two years ago, Human Rights First joined with Microsoft and other stakeholders to launch the Global Network Initiative. We believed that companies could not "go it alone" in confronting government demands to curb online speech. Russia is not alone in using technology and selective prosecutions to crack down on civil society. We now know that these threats can come from many places, and that companies need to work in partnership with civil society to address them.
On April 12, Eduard Chuvashov, a federal judge of the Russian Federation was gunned down in front of his apartment building in Moscow in a contract-style killing. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev denounced the killing as "cynical" and vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. Police officials stated that the murder may have been an act of retribution for the sentences Judge Chuvashov handed down against neo-Nazi skinheads convicted in violent hate crimes that targeted Russian minorities.
Another bad campaign finance ruling: Federal Appeals Court unanimously strikes down the $5,000 contribution limit to Federal PACs.
Senate Adjourns with unfinished business: In addition to not passing an extension of unemployment and COBRA benefits, the Senate left town without passing a Medicare doc fix. This will result in Medicare doctors receiving a 21% cut in pay starting on April 1st. The Senate plans to solve this problem by passing an extension in mid-April that will restore the lost benefits and pay retroactively:
Meanwhile, COBRA benefits expire April 1; a 21-percent cut in Medicare doctor payments is scheduled to take effect that same day; and the filing deadline for UI benefits arrives April 5.
Senate lawmakers will tweak the bill to make the extensions retroactive, Reid's office said.
The money will come, but having it come late will still cause problems for a lot of people. Not good.
New foreclosure prevention program announced: The Obama administration is revamping their program to prevent foreclosures. Once again, it takes money from TARP (which is good) instead of appropriating new funds. I don't pretend to understand this policy very well, but Wonk Room is impressed. It better work, because this program is probably the last best chance for Democrats to improve the economy for average Americans before the midterm elections.
Nuclear arms reduction treaty: Russia and the USA have signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty. Details on the treaty can be found here. It is a good first step, but it will face the hurdle of ratification in the United States Senate. Anything that requires approval from that chamber is pretty much always in danger.
Democrats getting riled up?: Democrats might be narrowing the voter intensity gap, according to the weekly Daily Kos poll tracking poll. Whether this holds up as the year goes on, and in other polls, is another question. Kos is absolutely correct when writes, in his press release for the poll, that "this intensity gap will bear tracking the rest of this cycle."
The dangers of over-promising and relaxing on health reform: David Dayen responds to my article from earlier today touting the expansion of public health insurance and public care for low-income Americans as a major progressive accomplishment in the far from perfect health reform legislation. He is worried about complacency and overpromising:
Student loan reform is smart and 100% defensible in concept. The Affordable Care Act involved legislative compromise and must be watched carefully to ensure it achieves the promise that many liberals are touting this week. Rather than labeling it, we have to work to make it actually operate properly.
I don't disagree. In fact, analogously, I think there was far too much complacency in the center-left after the 2008 elections. Everyone was tired and happy after the election, and didn't want to work to prevent bad transition appointments like Larry Summers and Tim Geithner. Those appointments resulted in bad policies like an ineffective foreclosure prevention program that helped far to few people, and which the Obama administration has now had to entirely revamp. And, those bad policies have resulted in an economic environment that is worse than it had to be for average Americans, which has in turn resulted in an electoral environment that is far worse than it had to be for Democrats. And, that will result in even worse policies down the road, as Republicans and conservatives accrue more power.
We have to always keep pushing. I just don't think that is incommensurate with feeling good, and pointing out that we have made some gains, too.
It must be a strange feeling for many of the participants in the 2010 Washington Human Rights Summit to be coming to the capital of the United States where the government seems unable to decide whether upholding the rule of law and respecting human rights is a good idea or not. The summit participants are representatives of human rights movements that have struggled for decades, often at great personal cost, to end torture, detention without charge or trial and unfair trials in their own countries. What are they to make of a country where Congress is threatening to withhold funding for efforts to close the Guantanamo detention center, or where the former Vice-President goes on national television and proudly boasts of his role in authorizing torture?
The United States media often - and for good reason - portrays China and Russia as reluctant to implement sanctions on Iran. Rarely (too rarely), however, does it attempt to view the issue through a Chinese or Russian lens. Americans nearly never try to understand the complex motivations behind Chinese and Russian lukewarmness.
I will attempt to do that now. How do China and Russia think of Iran?
Probably in the same way we thought of Honduras. The lukewarm American opposition to the coup strikingly paralleled China and Russia's stances on Iran.
While Washington is glued to the drama over health care, over the past few days, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been in Beijing meeting with Chinese leaders including Premier Wen Jiabao and President Hu Jintao. In a series of communiqués, they celebrated the "strategic partnership" between the two countries and charted a course of future close relations.
Among others things, Putin - Russia's man behind the curtain who has also been spending considerable time in front of the curtain - signed off on six billion dollars worth of trade deals Chinese counterparts, including moving ahead with a natural gas pipeline to open up the vast Chinese market to Russia's equally vast supply of natural gas. The two sides also discussed policies to contain and manage North Korea. Trade between the two countries is approaching $60 billion a year, and while that is a faction of the more than $300 billion a year between China and the United States, it is hardly negligible.
In a week, President Obama will travel to Moscow to meet with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The agenda items of the summit in Moscow are of course numerous and complex, but it would be a mistake to let human rights concerns get lost in the mix. High among those concerns is the troubling rise in hate crimes in Russia, the government's inadequate response to this trend, and increased harassment - including at times murder - of human rights defenders. These and other outstanding human rights issues could make Russia a far less reliable partner in addressing economic, security, and other issues.
Memo to all you right-wingers talking about "Going Galt" by quitting your jobs and leaving the country: just friggin' do it already.
Give Russia a try. It is just the sort of right-wing, pro-private sector country with lots of wide open spaces that you would love.
You have destroyed five million jobs and are trying to cause another eight million people to lose their homes. The jobs you quit, and the homes you leave, could be put to better use by the people who you made unemployed and homeless.
You titans of industry did such a bang-up job running the country, that I am sure we will struggle without you. However, it is no less than we deserve. After all, it was our own irresponsibility, not yours, that led to this crisis. We no longer deserve to share a country with people who are so utterly superior to us in every way.
If Russia isn't to your liking, and you would prefer a small island nation like the original John Galt, then maybe you could try Singapore. It is pretty right-wing and pro-capitalist. Give it a shot.
Just do it already. The only thing more irritating than people who are constantly threatening to leave the country but never actually leave are when people who actively destroyed the country are threatening to leave but never actually do. You already shat on us, now either get off the pot or stop talking about getting off the pot.
So seriously, just go to Russia already. You have no idea how long this left-winger has been waiting to tell you right-wingers to do that.
The Summers-for-Treasury rumors are a good chance to draw attention to an incredible, but little-known story: how a gang of Harvard professors stole vast sums from Russia and escaped any form of punishment. The full, incredible story was published in Institutional Investor Magazine, but here's the summary:
In 1991, Lawrence Summers was on leave from Harvard (where he was an economics professor) to be chief economist for the World Bank. As the Soviet Union collapsed, he had the US send his protegé, Andrei Shleifer, to teach Russia about privatization. And Shleifer did -- US-style: he privatized Russia right into his pocket.
With things apparently heating up between the U.S. and Russia, we need to be on our guard everywhere, including in the Arctic region, where we are separated from Russia only by the Bering Strait. Our own state of Alaska sits astride that strait, due east of the Big Red Bear. Do we have the kind of leadership in Alaska we need to face down the supposedly reformed Commies, if the situation goes critical? If that red phone rings at 3am, do we have the right people in place to answer the call?
Sadly, the answer to that is, 'apparently not'. Governor Sarah Palin is hiding from the U.S. media. If she is too cowardly to face our lapdog corporate national media, how can we expect her to face Putin and his forces of world domination? For the safety of the nation, not only should she not be a heartbeat from the Presidency, she should be impeached by the state legislature of Alaska for failure to show adequate courage in the face of the threat to Alaska, and our nation.
Please, Senator McCain, do the right thing, and find someone brave enough to take that position of being "one heartbeat from the Presidency", who won't whine about her treatment by our docile media puppies (what, is Gov. Palin afraid of being licked to death?).
You have proudly noted your past record of working with Democrats. Replacing Sarah Palin with the braver and tougher Hillary Clinton would demonstrate both bipartisanship and resolve, and serve as yet another supreme act of patriotism in your long career as a public servant. The applause Senator Clinton received during mention of her name at the Republican National Convention tell me that this would be a winner, and would bring us together as a nation.
Senator McCain, I ask this as a concerned American. Be the patriot you have always been. Remember, Country First!
UPDATE: Hah, Gov. Palin has decided to let a media puppy dog lick her face after all! Charlie Gibson of ABC News gets to do the honors. Steve Benen speculates that internal polling by the McCain camp showed that too many folks had noticed.
Personally, I still think exchanging her for Senator Clinton would send a better message of bipartisanship and Country First!-ism. Wolverines!
UPDATE #2: More on the upcoming interview of Governor Sarah Palin by ABC's Charlie Gibson - this from Josh Marshall:
...it's pretty clear this farce is going to be close to unwatchable. Set aside that this comes just on the heels of McCain campaign manager Rick Davis saying Palin would not sit for any interviews "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference." The tell comes high up in the AP story by David Bauder. The second graf reads ...
Palin will sit down for multiple interviews with Gibson in Alaska over two days, most likely Thursday and Friday, said McCain adviser Mark Salter.
Political interviews are never done like this. Because it makes the questioning entirely at the discretion of the person being interviewed and their handlers. The interviewer has to be on their best behavior, at least until the last of the 'multiple interviews' because otherwise the subsequent sittings just won't happen. For a political journalist to agree to such terms amounts to a form of self-gelding. The only interviews that are done this way are lifestyle and celebrity interviews. And it's pretty clear that that is what this will be.
My guess is that ol' Charlie may stop wagging his tail and licking Gov. Palin's face long enough to ask whether a McCain-Palin Administration will cut his capital gains taxes. Once he gets the answer he wants, he'll resume tail-wagging and face-licking.
Fortunately for Sarah Palin, she's not a Democrat.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (cont) Wallace Stevens4
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
This is my second installment in this series, exploring six different ways of looking at John McCain's recent meddling in the Georgian/Russian conflict-as well as their affairs leading up to it. For reference, all six ways are presented in Part 1.
This part deals with The Republican's "October Surprise". Named for a long-suspected, and now virtually certain clandestine plot by the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign to prevent the release of American hostages by Iran prior to the 1980 election, thus ensuring Jimmy Carter's defeat.
A similar effort by Richard Nixon, to sabotage the 1968 Paris Peace Talks, and prevent the election of Hubert Humphrey, has been solidly confirmed. Thus, deliberate interference in foreign affairs by the McCain campaign would be part of an established pattern of GOP lawlessness in manipulating the outcome of presidential elections, and there is increasing reason to think that McCain's campaign--or at least individuals associated with it--played a role in precipitating this crisis. They have certainly involving themselves in trying to keep it alive, and even escalate it. Details on the flip.
In order to fully grasp what he's up too, there are five analytical frameworks that are particularly helpful to employ. I'm going to write about them more extensively this weekend.
Before plunging into John McCain's warmongering delusional matrix later in the day, I think it's important to take note of how unfortunately bipartisan the current mess is. This is not to blame Democrats equally, but to highlight, once again, the moral corruption of supposedly saintly bipartisanship. The bipartisanship in this case consists of the Clinton Administration's continued hostility to Russia and its penchant for facilitating the wishes of the petrochemical industry with scant thought for other consequences.
These issues were brought into focus on Friday, when peace studies and global security expert par excellence Michael Klare appeared on Democracy Now yesterday, in a segment titled, "Russia-Georgia Conflict Fueled by Rush to Control Caspian Energy Resources" And extended excerpt, followed by my coments can be found on the flip.
IT'S WAR, FORGET THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN THIS FALL
No need to bomb Iran, the Neocons got the Georgian conflict to play hard ball. This is George Bush's Berlin moment, US goods airlifted into Tbilisi with Russians and American troops facing off at 30 miles. The US Mediterranean fleet seeking confrontation by passing the Bosporus into the Black Sea and surrounded by Russia, Turkey and the old Soviet bloc of satellite states. Bush and Cheney are going to protect the Georgian 'fleet' and port city of Poti on the Abkhazian coastline.
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