An Unreasonable Man

Ralph Nader stopped by a few months ago to give a talk in which he asked the audience, “How many of you know how to file a freedom of information act request?” I couldn’t say that I did.

Quite a few agencies have available the most requested information:
CIA – Che Guevara
FBI – John Lennon, MLK, Edward Said, Tesla, the KKK, Wernher von Braun, Malcolm X
NSA (so secretive it used to be referred to as ‘no such agency’) – attack on the USS Liberty
NRO

There’s a new documentary out about Nader, “An Unreasonable Man“:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” -George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

It describes how he got trashed by the Democrats for “spoiling” the election for Gore, when in fact every third-party candidate got more than the 537 votes in Florida that made the difference. Harvard prof Barry Burden even analyzed his campaign strategy and found no evidence that he had intended to mess with the Democrats (see paper). Nader’s campaign contends that he was made a scapegoat, when citizens should really be asking why 10 million registered Democrats voted for Bush. Nader was harshly criticized for saying there was no difference between the two parties, that they were two heads of the same corporate entity – but in the end, the Democrats proved him correct by backing down on every issue in Congress and not opposing the war. The influential presidential debates are run by the Commission on Presidential Debates, which describes itself as a “nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation” and is led by the former chairmen of the two parties; funded by corporations, it has denied both Ross Perot and Ralph Nader the opportunity to participate in ’96 and ’00, respectively – so far attempts to reform the system have not made much headway.

Another case in point: John Houbolt, a former NASA engineer who went on a crusade in the ’60s to ensure they used lunar orbit rendezvous for the Apollo missions to the moon. He was a lowly engineer at the time and faced fierce resistance from within the administration to his radical idea; he bypassed regular channels and wrote directly to the second-in-command, was promptly written off by the bigwig (page 4), and opened his response (page 5) with a classic:

“Somewhat as a voice in the wilderness, I would like to pass on a few thoughts on matters that have been of deep concern to me over recent months.” He ultimately prevailed. Document courtesy NASA.

Musings on the Israeli/Palestinian Campus Dialogue

the following piece was submitted to The Stanford Daily for publication. Seeing as how the paper was only willing to print 3 of the 6 paragraphs, I decided not to go through with a watered-down version:

In a rather tragic unfolding of Prof. Huntington‘s ‘democracy paradox,’ the Palestinians, sick of their corrupt leadership, voted the ‘wrong’ way in a free election (Op-Ed, May 3). Bush decided to take a breather from trumpeting the spread of democracy in the Middle East for just long enough to punish the intransigent Palestinians by stanching nearly all essential aid. Not to be outdone, Israel then proceeded to bomb Gaza’s only power station and cut off water sources, plunging the million inhabitants of the world’s most densely-populated area into misery. The intention being, as the New York Times noted, to make the Palestinians “so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will” be forced to exercise greater discretion by “return[ing] to office… a reformed and chastened” leadership. Given that Hamas no longer insists on the destruction of Israel and has expressed its willingness to accept a two-state solution, you’d be excused for thinking the strategy of targeting the citizens of a government for their responsibility in it’s actions is working, and thus, justified. But alas, while these tactics may ring true to the actions of the U.S. and Israel , they are borrowed from the ideology of their morally decrepit erstwhile ally, Osama bin Laden. The emperor truly has no clothes.

Israel’s “concession” (Letter to the Editor, May 2) of forcibly withdrawing settlers from Gaza made for sensational television news, but should not be construed as progress; it occurred alongside an expansion of settlements in the West Bank – some of which, as detailed by the Israeli group Peace Now, are slated to house the very people evicted from Gaza. As Prof. Noam Chomsky stated in an interview, “What is called `the disengagement plan’ was an expansion plan… it was perfectly overt” and later formalized by Israeli Prime Minister Olmert with the express ‘green light’ of our Bush administration.

While the inverse of the statement “Israeli independence = Palestinian catastrophe” (Letter to the Editor, May 2) would correctly imply the Israelis not having independence, it is first of all not logically equivalent to the original statement, and secondly, isn’t the point; there’s no sense in debating whether or not it has a right to exist, because it already does. What it was trying to convey was that it’s offensive to us that the Stanford Israel Alliance should be celebrating this day all hunky-dory, glossing over the simultaneous creation of millions of refugees and the destruction of hundreds of Palestinian villages (“Celebration and protest of Israel,” Apr. 24). It’s akin to celebrating the end of British rule in the subcontinent without recognizing the millions that were evicted and slaughtered on both sides as they crossed the border between India and Pakistan . The reason you don’t see people from these countries protesting the others’ independence is perhaps that they both achieved it, and paid the same price in the suffering that accompanied it. Until the Palestinians gain their independence, it is likely to be the case that Israel’s will continue to be seen as a source of discontent.

The statistics on the violence bandied around by both sides seem to suggest that it’s a non-zero-sum conflict, with tit-for-tat violence leading to increasing suffering on both sides. Assuming both parties are equally committed to peace, the realpolitik way to shift to the other end of the spectrum would be for one side to have the temerity to declare a unilateral ceasefire, and for the other to reciprocate in kind. The Hebrew saying ‘ha possel be-mumo posel‘ implies that if you mistrust people, the tendency is for you to expect others to mistrust you. Yet there is no concept of trust inherently necessary to the model: it is built up over time as each side sticks to their end of the bargain. Unfortunately for the Palestinians, who are currently preoccupied with an internecine power struggle fueled by American military aid to Fatah (not to be confused with Fatah al-Islam, the group the Lebanese army is fighting with American support), the factions not in power keep sabotaging any attempt at striking a peace deal. When the stars do manage to align themselves, the BBC reports that the Israeli government, “consistently rejected ceasefire offers by Palestinian militants, saying it refuses to do deals of any kind with…terrorist organizations.” Such a rejection may make sense if you’re being asked to turn over your first-born child, but an end to aggression would not entail the lowering of Israel’s defensive shields. It would, however, spell the end of the occupation, which can only remain tenable with the continued use of force. It is likely that the potential cost incurred by ending its neo-colonialist ambitions that underlies Israel’s reluctance to put an end to hostilities.

Why is it that we’re constantly accused of ‘singling out’ Israel and whitewashing the other side? This is not the first time a divestment campaign has targeted the policies of a specific government; no one accused the groups pushing for divestment from Sudan and South Africa of having ‘other motives’ – what puzzles me, is that for the most part, our detractors do not deny that the violations of international law (the occupation, separation barrier, settlements, and home demolitions as stated in our petition) are taking place. People have trotted out a litany of facts about how well Israel treats its minorities as opposed to Arab countries; we don’t consider these to be skeletons in our closet, but simply outside our focus on Occupied Palestine and not Israel proper.

If students and faculty feel strongly about changing the status quo in other regions of the globe, we fully encourage them to take up such causes, but we should not be expected to blunt our campaign to accommodate them. As Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu opined, “Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression elsewhere on the African continent.” The reason we choose to focus on Israel is because of America’s direct support of the continuing occupation and the role that Stanford may have, through its investments, in supporting the aforementioned violations.

Hedging Political Contributions

I was under the impression that individual donors are highly partisan, as this page on “soft money” shows, but corporations would want to hedge their bets to make sure they carry some weight in Washington regardless of which party comes to power. Indeed, a look at the top 100 contributors over the past 16 years confirms that a fair share of corporations seem to be following this strategy: those on the fence include AT&T, FedEx, Citigroup, Microsoft, GE, Boeing, and a bunch of Wall Street firms. The exceptions seem to be drug companies (staunchly Republican) and workers unions (largely Democrat). Even firms that lean slightly to one side, such as Goldman Sachs (Democrat) still contribute a nominal amount to the other side (see graph). Though in Goldman’s case, the majority of these donations were not through political action committees but individuals associated with the organization – and again, they are highly partisan.

America’s Gift that Kept Giving

I’ve heard several accounts of how the CIA made the unprecedented move of presenting the Shah of Iran with a few U.S. dollar printing plates so he could churn out as much counterfeit currency as he desired. Except that when he high-tailed it out of his country when the revolution came, the printing presses fell into the hands of a now-hostile regime. Intent on undermining America’s economic dominance in the Middle East, they flooded the market with impeccable greenback forgeries known as ‘superdollars’ – forcing Uncle Sam to redesign their currency; and if you believe the story, you no longer have to wonder where Hezbollah got those crisp $100 bills they were handing out to Lebanese war victims over the summer.

For more, I would recommend “The Laundrymen,” a fascinating book on drug trafficking, tax evasion, and money laundering – the world’s third largest business, it claims. An excerpt:
“

A more brazen approach was used by a South African businessman who faked a badly-sprained ankle and convinced his doctor to put a cast on his leg. He was booked on a flight from Johannesburg to London and asked the airline to supply a wheelchair to help him get from check in to the gate. But, on the day of his flight, an anonymous call came into customs that a businessman with a cast on his leg was smuggling a large sum of money out of the country. When he wheeled up to the immigration desk on his way to the gate, he was stopped. Officers said they wanted to search him. He refused. They insisted. He demanded that he be permitted to ring his solicitor. Senior officials were called in and the argument continued long past the point where the plane was scheduled to leave. He categorically refused a body search and, by the time his solicitor arrived, the flight had left without him. Now he threatened to sue everyone in sight. His solicitor somehow managed to call him down and explain that the officers were well within their right. Protesting to the very end, he had no choice but to sit there while his cast was sawn off. And once it came off the officers found – absolutely nothing. Now the man raised hell. He started ringing everyone he knew in government. Red-faced apologies, though plentiful, were no good. The businessman ordered his solicitor to get everyone’s name and file lawsuits. He intended to sue the government and sue the airlines for allowing this to happen he not only wanted retribution, he wanted blood. He caused such a huge rumpus that the following day, with a new cast plastered over his ankle – and cash stuffed inside – customs & immigration officials personally helped him on to the plane.

”
Sweet.

the Last Great Interview of the Century

Brother Number One = Saloth Sar = Pol Pot. a while back I wrote a paper on the Cambodian genocide and got a chance to interview Noam Chomsky about why the western world didn’t know about what was going on at the time. At the time I came accross an interview by Nate Thayer, a reporter from the Far Eastern Economic Review, of Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge’s “killing fields” responsible for the deaths of millions of Cambodians, but only recently got a chance to get my hands on the article.
Turns out not only was this the last interview ever given by Pol Pot, it was the first – no westerner had seen him since he took power decades ago. Nate doggedly pursued what he called “the last great interview of the century” and finally got his story right before Pol Pot’s death.

the trial: page 1 page 2 page 3 page 4 page 5
the interview: page 2-1 page 2-2 page 2-3 page 2-4 page 2-5 page 2-6