Not Housebroken

In a breaking story, the Associated Press is reporting on a raid on a compound of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints.

A young woman had complained of physical abuse; she had become the mother of a child to a 50-year old man. From the story, it appears that 183 women and children were removed from the compound.

This Mormon sect, according to the story, broke away from the main church when it disavowed polygamy (under duress; the U.S. Army troops had seized church property). But polygamy isn’t the real issue here. Rather, we should be concerned with forced marriage, rape, and a system of power relations that places men over women. These are things that can happen in monogamous systems as well.

A draft has been circulating at the NATO meeting that envisions a withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the Taliban are gradually gaining control over larger swathes of territory. But, according to a story originating in Der Spiegel (republished on Salon.com), the paper also specifies conditions for this to occur. “Afghan forces” must reach certain manpower and readiness thresholds. This couldn’t happen before 2015, which given current trends in Afghanistan, means it won’t happen at all.

Jack Mintz writes in Canada’s Financial Post, which of course favors free trade, defending the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA):

The truth is that many of the economic problems faced by the United States have little to do with NAFTA. The 2007 U.S. trade deficit of US$709-billion has grown as a result of Asian and petroleum trade, rather than trade with NAFTA partners.

Mintz also points to job losses in the industrial belt of Canada; but he doesn’t consider maquiladora operations:

With an average of $25-$35 for a 48-60 hour week, maquiladora workers cannot afford to rent housing, and must build their own shacks on land near the companies. The incidence of birth defects, miscarriages, and disease has shot up in these areas where plants have dumped their toxic wastes with abandon.

These companies are largely U.S. subsidiaries, underscoring a point that blaming workers, whether they migrate to the United States or remain where they are, is blaming victims. But of the U.S. victims, Mintz writes, “The U.S. unemployment rate has been exceptionally low since 1994 and exports to Mexico alone have tripled since 1994. Recent U.S economic problems are the result of credit market difficulties, not trade.”

But the unemployment rate is heavily manipulated. I will eventually post an analysis of employment numbers (sorry, this has to be a background project); I’ve previously seen that unemployment statistics both trail and understate the magnitude of employment market changes; it is necessary to view this market as a proportion of population to gain a sense of contractions and expansions. Further, these statistics overlook people whose well-paid (often union) manufacturing jobs have been replaced with low-paid (non-union) service jobs.

Mintz goes on to advocate further free trade agreements. If NAFTA is not the problem, this seemingly exonerates all “free trade,” which of course is only free if you’re on the exploiting side of the bargain. NAFTA thus becomes a symbol, not only for those who oppose free exploitation deals, but for those who favor them. As the experience of maquiladora workers demonstrates, workers lose wherever they are seen as a cost to be cut rather than as an asset to be developed.

Salon.com appraises economic prospects a little more soberly than we saw with the Independent earlier. In the Alice in Wonderland world of economic reporting, we’re technically not yet in a recession, even while experts debate which month in late 2007 it began, but we certainly could be in for another great depression:

In fact, it would be all too easy. All we have to do is ignore what the markets and other economic indicators are telling us right now and continue down the disastrous path we’ve been merrily skipping along for the last 25 or so years. Want to see “The Great Depression: The Sequel”? Here’s a handy three-step do-it-yourself action plan.

1. Continue to ignore growing income inequality and govern the United States for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the many.
2. Continue to whittle away at the safety nets that exist to cushion Americans from economic ill winds.
3. Continue to weaken government oversight of Wall Street.

28 million, that is, something approaching ten percent of the U.S. population, is now on food stamps. The Independent judges this as indicating a “great depression,” but “the increase – from 26.5 million in 2007 – is due partly to recent efforts to increase public awareness of the programme and also a switch from paper coupons to electronic debit cards.”

Ha ha:

Bush’s image is certain to change as White House officials are confirming that the President personally commanded the Special Forces team that tracked bin Laden to his mountain lair, and then executed the daring daylight raid that captured the notorious evil doer. Indeed, in perhaps the most extraordinary twist of this amazing turn of events, it has been established that the “President Bush” who has governed in Washington since September 29th, 2001 – the president Americans have come to loath, despise, and revile – is actually a double. In fact, while Bush’s stand-in was donning a flight suit, bungling Katrina, and mishandling Iraq the real President Bush has been doggedly leading a crack team of Green Berets as they tracked the most notorious terrorist through some of the challenging and treacherous mountain biking terrain in the world.

The appeals court ordered Abu Jamal taken off death row, but “turned down his request for an entirely new trial to prove innocence or guilt in the crime, finding that Abu Jamal’s complaint about racial bias in jury selection was not filed in a timely fashion. Such bias is considered unconstitutional.”

This analysis argues that the apparently unprovoked offensive against the Mahdi Army in Basra, Iraq, may be a prelude to an attack on Iran. A significant part of this thinking is that the Mahdi Army would presumably retaliate for such an attack; therefore, it is better to soften it up now.

An obvious question is whether Iran is so isolated in the Muslim world that the Mahdi Army is its only ally. I doubt it.

Michael Parenti writes of a rather brutal serf society ruled by a theocracy which colluded with the Central Intelligence Agency.

There are very, very few people now who would doubt the constitutional importance of impeaching President Richard M. Nixon. This eventuality was averted only by Nixon’s resignation, as it became clear that even Republicans in Congress, disgusted by revelations of cover-up in the Watergate scandal, had withdrawn their support.

Those Republicans were more honorable than today’s Democrats who cringe at the prospect of impeaching President George W. Bush. But what if one of today’s mainstream Democratic candidates for President, who as senator has been complicit in war crimes and crimes against the Constitution, had had her way in 1974? Jerry Zeifman writes that 27-year old Hillary Rodham (not yet married to future president Bill Clinton) sought to avoid impeaching Nixon. He attributes an apology from John Labovitz, with whom Rodham shared an office, when they all worked on the House Judiciary Committee’s Impeachment Inquiry staff, for “erroneous legal opinions and efforts to deny Nixon representation by counsel — as well as an unwillingness to investigate Nixon.” All this was “to enhance the prospect of Senator Kennedy or another liberal Democrat being elected president in 1976 they hoped to keep Nixon in office ‘twisting in the wind’- for as long as possible. This would prevent then-Vice President Jerry Ford from becoming President and restoring moral authority to the Republican Party.”

But Nixon resigned, Ford was inaugurated, and a rather conservative Democrat–Jimmy Carter–bested Ford in the 1976 election, only to lose to Ronald Reagan in 1980.