The things that I have said

America's Rich: Taking Their Ball And Going Home

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 15:13:00 +0000

In the 1980’s, Ronald Reagan led the conservative charge in reducing government infrastructure and welfare spending, reducing the tax burden on America’s wealthy, and reducing government regulation of private enterprise. One of the major effects these policies had was to increase the United States’ GDP drastically: the other was to severely reduce the share of the GDP that the average American enjoyed.

The process went something like this: without regulation or taxation, U.S. corporations (owned by a select few Americans, usually older white males) have the freedom to export jobs for cheaper production, reduce wages and reduce overhead by curbing safety and environmental standards. This excess wealth (the increase in GDP mentioned earlier) is concentrated into the hands of the owners, who increase their pay and compensation exponentially.

The gains made by Unions and organized labor at the beginning of the 20th century were wiped out as the jobs were exported to other countries: the average American’s share of national income drastically declined after Reagan was elected while the share by the already wealthy increased further. CEO compensation has increased 425% since 1981, but the national average of income has only increased 26%.

Obviously exporting labor is unsustainable: at some point we can’t ship any more jobs overseas. Unfortunately, because of the disparity of the last three decades the U.S. economy is entirely controlled by these economic elite, so that even when a company’s stock plummets, they’ll still raise executive compensation and tell Union workers that their compensation is the reason that the company’s overhead is high.

With the lack of funding in education, social services and infrastructure building in the last three decades, our work force is unable to keep up with the rising cost of education (leading to decrease in both income and productivity in American workers, mostly due to government policy), our populace is in increasing levels of poverty and our infrastructure is crumbling. As the effects of the decline are felt, more and more people support raising taxes on the wealthy, as a direct response to the disproportionate income, wealth and influence in the government.

The response by the extremely wealthy has been extraordinarily childish: rather than engage in their civic responsibility to build their communities, corporations and wealthy Americans all over the nation are threatening to pack up and move somewhere cheaper. Caterpillar, Jimmy Johns and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange all threatened to leave Illinois because of an increase in income taxes, Twitter threatened to leave San Francisco because of local tax rates, and Standard & Poor’s threatened to move to New Jersey if they didn’t get “special tax breaks”.

The recent trend of threatening to leave might be relatively new, but the concept (the wealthy vacating a community to abdicate social responsibility) is a time-honored tradition. Moving your business to a tax haven (a country with a much lower taxation rate) in order to avoid your tax burden has become so common since the 1970’s that Nicholas Shaxson calls it “the heart of the global economy”. In fact, a single building in the Cayman Islands is home to more than 18,800 firms, including Coca-Cola, Oracle and Intel.

So what can we do about it? Passing laws to restrict the freedom of movement sets a dangerous precedent and reeks of tyranny, but you don’t need to restrict movement to restrict tax shelters (any more than you need to actually move to the Cayman Islands to get the tax break). The people can demand a closure of these tax holes by their Congressional representatives, but what about the moving itself? What can be done when the wealthy take their money and flee to other countries?

The truth is that the wealthy already consume products made in foreign countries and do very little to contribute to the standard of living of the American people. While the GDP would decrease from a mass exodus of the upper echelon of society, it would focus our economy more on providing for the citizens that are left: the American middle class. When the rich next threaten to take their ball and leave, I urge Americans everywhere to call their bluff and speak plainly: we’re better off without them.

Israel's Manifest Destiny

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 23 May 2011 18:42:00 +0000

Nineteenth century America was pockmarked with deplorable actions which were justified with the concept of “Manifest Destiny” (a quasi-religious ‘right’ for America to expand it’s borders across all of North America), notably the genocide of the indigenous Americans. Similarly, since its creation in 1948 (and the ensuing conflict), Israel has expelled Palestinians from their homes, prohibited economic development and annexed Palestinian land- all justified with a religious mandate to return ‘home’.

The first major expulsion of Palestinians (called the “nakba”, or catastrophe, by the refugees) came during the war succeeding the creation of Israel by the UN- over 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes, and Israel quickly passed laws and demolished homes to prohibit the Palestinians from returning. After 1948, Israel continued to expand it’s borders by evicting Palestinians (or bulldozing their homes, if they would not leave). The similarities to The Trail of Tears are striking- an indigenous people forced to away from their homes and prohibited from returning by law.

The expansion is justified several ways. The first of which is the concept, “to the victor goes the spoils,” with the idea being that because Israel won the Six Day War, they have a right to claim land that was previously occupied by Jordan. The Mexican-American war can serve as a very close analogy to the Six Day War- they were both aggressive wars, both resulted in expanded borders for the victor, and both are justified by a predestined mandate to expand their territories. The idea that the annexation of Jerusalem is justified by war would be much more convincing (though still, in my opinion, immoral) if the land was being taken from Jordanian civilians. While it’s true that Jordan occupied Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories at the time of the war, the civilians that were disenfranchised were natives to the land- Palestinians. Through no fault of their own, these citizens were forced out of homes they had been in for years.

Another rationale for both Manifest Destiny and Israel’s expansion is a religious right to the land. The first usage of the term ‘manifest destiny’ said that the North American continent was “allotted by Providence”. In other words, the land was a God-given right. Prime Minister Netanyahu told the Israeli Parliament last year that Jerusalem was Israel’s "eternal and indivisible" capital, and claimed that it’s mention in the Torah 850 times was justification for it’s annexation.

The similarities don’t end there. The Indian Removal Act bears a striking resemblance to the use of "settlement expansion, house demolitions, discriminatory housing policies and the West Bank (Separation) barrier as a way of 'actively pursuing the illegal annexation' of East Jerusalem,” as revealed by an EU in a confidential report filed in 2008. The Indian Appropriations Acts are similar to the measures taken by Israel to prevent economic growth in Palestine, including the sanctions and blockades imposed by Israel, in that they arbitrarily limit trade on certain luxury goods (alcohol and chocolate, for instance) among the indigenous people. The massacres during Operation Hiram by the IDF are similar in nature (though much less prolific) to the massacres of Native Americans by the United States military.

The term “manifest destiny” isn’t very popular in America any more, but our imperialism remains (as demonstrated by our intervention in Iraq and Pakistan, among others). Israel’s expansion onto lands previously occupied by Palestinians is increasingly controversial (with human rights organizations in Israel, such as B’Tselem advocating the cessation of violent annexation), but it remains to be seen if the lasting influence of that expansion on foreign policy and military doctrine will mirror Manifest Destiny’s effect on the United States.

US Drone Strikes Threaten Relationship with Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Sat, 14 May 2011 18:37:00 +0000

Pakistan plays a pivotal role in our war in Afghanistan. Most of the supplies and equipment used by U.S. forces in Afghanistan are shipped in from Pakistan's northwest border (along the Waziristan region and in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province), and that same area is contested by Taliban insurgency. To secure it's supply routes and ensure the defeat of Taliban forces, the US employs unmanned drones to attack suspicious targets. These drone strikes are illegal, immoral and are alienating Pakistan from it's US ally.

The US has no legal standing to removing sovereignty from Pakistan- they pose no threat the the United States (even the Taliban in northern Waziristan pose no direct threat to the US). By launching attacks into Pakistan, the US is committing "a violation of our sovereignty," according to Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit. The UN Human Rights Council's special investigator Phil Aston stated "the Central Intelligence Agency is running a program that is killing significant numbers of people and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international laws". Interior Minister Rehman Malik agreed, stating unambiguously that, "drone attacks are violating Pakistan's sovereignty". Pakistan's parliament voted just yesterday to disallow any drone attacks by the US: "Such drone attacks must be stopped forthwith, failing which the government will be constrained to consider taking necessary steps including withdrawal of (the) transit facility allowed to NATO". Contrast this democratically set mandate to the US' actual policy: US drone strikes are set to intensify in Pakistan, and just one day before the Parliamentary action US officials confirmed that the drone strikes will continue, even after bin Laden's death.

Apart from the illegality of the drone strikes, their inefficiency and inaccuracy are so abyssal that it renders them indefensible. The success rates of the drone strikes are an astoundingly low 2%- at $10.5 million per drone (with the next generation model slated to cost up to $15 million), such a low mission success rate can't be justified. The repeated failure of the strikes to kill the correct people isn't just incompetent and expensive, either- it results in innocent, civilian casualties. Almost one thousand Pakistani civilians were killed by drones in 2010 alone, and Daniel Byman of the Brookings Institution places the ratio of combatants to civilians killed by the drone strikes as ten to one.

The effect that this has had on US/Pakistani relations is made clear by the actions of the Pakistani government, who are understandably concerned with this loss of Sovereignty and are responding with saber rattling by the head of the air force, Rao Qamar Suleman who stated that they "may shoot down US drones". Another (and perhaps more likely) outcome would be a shut down of the supply lines by Pakistan itself (a similar shutdown was threatened in 2008), undermining our military position in Afghanistan. Pakistan's President has repeatedly requested that we share intelligence and stop the drone attacks, and his requests have been ignored. US politicians publicly and directly contradict Pakistani officials about the drone program, and the US military feels comfortable pledging to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan only hours before an unapproved drone strike. It's not clear exactly how far each nation is willing to give, but with the US' steadfast advocation for these drone raids and the Pakistani population's overwhelming opposition to them, it's clear that the escalating tensions must eventually crescendo.

Tunisia and what we can learn

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:57:00 +0000

Tunisia's uprising is extraordinarily interesting. Of course, seeing people stand up against corruption is always heartening, but it also gives incite into what is and is not effective for people advocating for change with limited means to do so legally. In an interview with Democracy Now's Amy Goodman, Jual Cole explains that it's not just an uprising with a singular source:

All revolutions are multiple revolutions happening at the same time. So there’s a strong element of economic protest. There’s a class element. Twenty percent of college graduates are unemployed. There’s extreme poverty in the rural areas. And the regime was doing things that interfered with economic development. They would use the banks to give out loans to their cronies, and then the cronies wouldn’t pay back the banks, so they were undermining the financial system. And that made it—and the extremeness of the dictatorship, the demands constantly for bribes, discouraged foreign investment. So the regime was all about itself. It was doing things that were counterproductive. And it injured the interests of many social groups—the college-educated, the workers. Now, the three ministers that pulled back out of the national unity government today were from the General Union of Tunisian Workers, which is an old, longstanding labor organization. So, it was a mass movement; it included people from all kinds of backgrounds.

Juan Cole continues to impress me. It's easy to think of revolutionaries as a monolithic group, but the reason so few are successful is because the reality is much different than the ideal. Though direct opposition to a revolt often quashes it, the times that violence attain the desired effect of suppression require different tactics.

The Tunisian government is attempting perhaps the most insidious of tactics to deal with the revolution: fracturing. The idea being to give concessions to some of the groups while leaving the rest oppressed. It was particularly effective against the labor movements of the early 1900's whose members were often deeply bigoted white supremacists (though not nearly as violent as generations previous and relatively innocuous compared to violent racists in the same time period).

The Tunisians government has already tried a few concessions. The BBC describes them as "dramatic", but based on the details available they seem quite sparse. The president has promised to stand down in 2014 and to reduce food prices. Investigations have been opened into the President, his bank accounts and his financial connection to his network of nepotism. The curfew has been reduced (though not removed), but that might be the only real, substantial change.

The Tunisian protesters, to their merit, seem unfazed. They seem to recognize that promises made while they are active are unlikely to be followed through upon by the dictator if he's allowed to retake control, and very little has changed since then. If they stay together, I'll be excited to see how far they can take their country with regards to eliminating corruption and obtaining truly democratic representation.

If the citizens of the US with legitimate grievances stood together in solidarity, I wonder what they could achieve. I don't think any US politician would be willing to use physical violence on nonviolent unarmed US citizens without due process (though they felt it was appropriate with armed citizens in Waco, and unarmed citizens abroad like Gulet Mohamed, and unarmed non-citizens like New Americans without legal papers), so the response will definitely be to capitulate to certain interests and leave the others alone.

We've already seen this tactic effectively employed for the last few years. A big ceremonious (and imaginary) closing of Guantanamo while we continue to torture abroad, a repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell while the Defense of Marriage Act stands, pretending to pull out of Iraq while our unmanned death machines reign carnage on Pashtun weddings have all left the progressives in America divided.

Obama, we can all agree, was better than McCain. So, we fought for Obama (and we won)! With that victory, though, came the misconception that Obama was 'on our side'. We had no figure on the left and no venue to reach the level of people that the conservative media (Fox, AM radio) and the government aligned media (NPR, NYT, MSNBC, CNN, etc.) do every day. We have the occasional Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald, but their voices were far eclipsed by the status-quo noise machine.

Our system is dominated by money. It controls how effectively information is spread, how the public is exposed to that information and the 'groupthink' opinion is hoisted off onto anyone who sees a seed of truth and doesn't have the time, motivation or resources to investigate further. We need to stop looking to media figures or even executive leaders for cue and start concentrating on the policy, not the people.

Going through all those quotes by Dr. King yesterday, I was reminded of his triple evils of poverty, war and racism and how connected they are. Poverty would not exist in our world today without excess. Our resources are vast and our production effective beyond belief. Poverty exists because we allow it to exist every time we focus our resources on luxuries for the wealthy instead of necessities for our peers.

War serves only to pad the pockets of the owners of Lockheed Martin, Halliburton/KBR, Blackwater/XE and other war profiteers. Without the profit motive and our glorification of violent conflict, our politicians wouldn't feel so driven to it.

Racism may seem less tied to economic exploitation now than it did in Dr. King's time, but that's only because a veil draped over the connection has been propagated by that same pro-status-quo media machine. The source of the concentration of money can easily be traced to a time when Africans were exploited by wealthy whites (read: all of American History). I believe that the reason 'othering' (not just racism but also sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc) is so prevalent and sustained in our society is the benefit that the 'upper class' (those that benefit most from societies current structure) perpetuate it. In this sense, a sort of Reaganomics of ideas exists; the wealthy reward those media outlets that parrot their opinions with investment and commercial capital and the ideas 'trickle down' to the rest of us.

These three evils are symptoms of the real disease: economic exploitation. Only when everyone who is harmed by corporate, government and societal oppression comes to realize the singular source and fight against it together will the system (which has been built to last and has a myriad of tools and resources to combat change at it's disposal) be formed by the people like a true democracy, rather than by moneyed interests like the plutocracy we're degenerating into.

Global Warming Exists

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Global Warming is one of those hot-button issues that's highly politicized, controversial and somewhat arcane, due to the highly technical nature of the information. This is compounded by the fact that very there's a great deal of money that stands in opposition to the Science; Exxon can't afford for Global Warming to be a Scientific fact any more than Philip Morris could afford for cigarettes to cause cancer. In both cases, the companies funded 'research' that challenges the conclusions of objective scientists in order to create doubt in the public's mind on sound Science. George Monbiot at The Gaurdian shows the conflict of interest (emphasis added);

The website Exxonsecrets.org, using data found in the company's official documents, lists 124 organisations that have taken money from the company or work closely with those that have. These organisations take a consistent line on climate change: that the science is contradictory, the scientists are split, environmentalists are charlatans, liars or lunatics, and if governments took action to prevent global warming, they would be endangering the global economy for no good reason. The findings these organisations dislike are labelled "junk science". The findings they welcome are labelled "sound science".
Among the organisations that have been funded by Exxon are such well-known websites and lobby groups as TechCentralStation, the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Some of those on the list have names that make them look like grassroots citizens' organisations or academic bodies: the Centre for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, for example. One or two of them, such as the Congress of Racial Equality, are citizens' organisations or academic bodies, but the line they take on climate change is very much like that of the other sponsored groups. While all these groups are based in America, their publications are read and cited, and their staff are interviewed and quoted, all over the world.
By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread. For those who do not understand that scientific findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes help to suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.

Of course, without proper education about the peer-review process and the scientific basis of climate change, this strategy has proven quite effective (as it has in the past with other issues). So how can you decide (objectively) for yourself? Fortunately, the information you need to understand the issue is freely available online and ready for private use. I'll try to make the case here with the evidence easily available.

First, let's establish that our Earth is warming; NASA First Goddard Institute for Space Study's direct surface temperature analysis shows a steady increase of one degree Celsius from 1880 to 2000 (usisng Radiosondes). Satellite temperature measurements arrive at the same conclusion (from 1982 on), as do the direct surface temperature analysis at the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia. From here, we need to use more abstract methods of temperature measurement, because we didn't measure temperature in a verifiable way before 1880. Using dendrochronology, the study of the rings in trees to verify temperatures, we can get accurate temperature readings for up to 26,000 years ago. We also get accurate temperatures from the last five centuries by drilling bore holes and analyzing the results. The temperature rise is also concluded by indirect analysis; for instance, glaciers melting, sea ice melting, permafrost melting, sea levels rising, sediments and other proxy reconstructions. Yes, there has been melting in past centuries, but it's always been almost trivial compared to the extreme melting of today.

So, we've established that the earth is warming. How do we know that's it man-made though? After all, climate goes through highs and lows naturally- there's a cyclical process that repeats. The cycles that are often cited (but seldom understood) by climate skeptics are called Milankovitch cycles, after the Serbian climatologist. These cycles are caused by slight changes in Earth's tilt and orbit. Wikipedia summarizes it well;

"The Earth's axis completes one full cycle of precession approximately every 26,000 years. At the same time, the elliptical orbit rotates, more slowly, leading to a 23,000-year cycle between the seasons and the orbit. In addition, the angle between Earth's rotational axis and the normal to the plane of its orbit moves from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back again on a 41,000-year cycle. Currently, this angle is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing."

The temperature change predictions derives from these cycles are fairly exact, and they aren't anywhere near the temperature changes we're seeing in terms of speed and intensity. So why the difference? The claims that in the Middle Ages, warming was just as extreme are patently false, as are claims that we're 'recovering' from a 'little ice age' (I specifically address these because they're such common falsehoods among climate change deniers). So we have an observation; the climate is becoming warmer more rapidly than we can naturally account for. Scientifically, we'll need a hypothesis to explain the observation, then experiment to test the hypothesis.

We have the benefit of hindsight; a hypothesis has already been proposed. Certain gases, referred to as 'greenhouse gases', absorb infrared radiation. These differ from gases like nitrogen and oxygen that make up most of our atmosphere because those gases reflect, rather than absorb, that radiation. So what happens when that radiation gets absorbed? As I'm sure you've guessed, the temperature rises. We can confirm the correlation (but not the causation) of greenhouse gas levels to temperature changes through ice core data and construct a history of the temperatures relating to green house gases. However, it is true that greenhouse gas levels rise and fall naturally; over a 400,000 year period CO2 levels rose over 100ppm (100 carbon atoms, in parts per million atoms). Unfortunately, we've had that same rise (100ppm) in just the last 150 of our history!

So, we have the hypothesis (greenhouse emissions cause the earth to warm), but how do we test? Well. in addition to testing the radiation absorption in terms of heath in an artificial atmosphere with the same particle count of greenhouse gases as our atmosphere, we can use complex calculations of prediction called Climate models that predict what changes our climate is going to experience. Among the predictions that have been made using the models (all of these are confirmed in the links provided); warming trends in the Arctic have been predicted and demonstrated, sharp and short cooling occurs after a volcano erupts were predicted by our Climate models and is now confirmed thanks to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, current levels of greenhouse gases cause an imbalance of incoming sunlight and outgoing radiation (the radiation has been proven to be spent warming the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere), the ocean's surface temperature rose as predicted by the Climate models, surface warming is accompanies by stratosphere cooling as predicted, and the lower mid and upper- troposphere's temperature has risen as predicted.

So, we've established that the Earth's temperature is growing faster than ever before, that it's not a naturally occurring Milankovitch cycle, that the Greenhouse gas rises correlate with temperature rises, that Greenhouse gases absorb infrared radiation (causing temperature rises) at predictable levels over time and that we can predict the warming that occurs as a result. The effects of the rise in temperatures are also widely debated (again, by Exxon shills and honest scientists), but the information here demonstrates the reality of the change itself and it's cause.

For more information, I recommend these resources;

http://www.realclimate.org/

RealClimate Wiki

Global Warming Skepticism FAQ

Disproportionate response to American deaths from the right

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:03:00 +0000

We went into Afghanistan because of a group of terrorists who killed 6,000 Americans on 9/11. We’ve spent 493,800,000,000 dollars on vengeance for these 6,000 people. Last year alone, 44,000 Americans died of lack of health care. Given that these deaths occur every year and we obviously don’t spend a proportionate amount of cash on them, how can we make sense of this? Is it possible that Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain, who both advocate increased spending for the war in Afghanistan, don’t know about this disparity? More likely, they understand that the 44,000 Americans who die every year aren’t “real” Americans like the ones who died in the attack on the World Trade building. They are a lesser, lower class of American who are barely tolerated and constantly under attack by the wealthy. In America, you can kill as many Americans as you want— just as long as they’re poor.

Of course, they're another aspect to this social issue- the money. Joe Lieberman receives money from both the health care industry and the military industrial complex, as does John McCain. They're perfectly aware of how this effects their legislative capabilities- no doubt they rationalize it to themselves as a necessary evil, something that they must do in order to keep their positions. This kind of 'vote for money' trade system works without deviation in American politics. Take, for example, the amendment to the military budget that Al Franken proposed- it limits the ability of groups taking US money to have employees sign contracts that, say, take away legal recourse for being raped. Of course, this means that KBR, previously Halliburton and a huge government funds recipient with a massive lobby, would have to pay financial restitution. 30 Republicans happily sold their vote, even on this blatant issue, and are surprised that the public's opinion is against them.

If we continue to allow the scare tactics of chicken hawk warmongers to control us, we'll slowly be robbed of not only our money, but our rights and means of survival as well. Our social spending policy should be to use our tax dollars in the way that does the most good per dollar- and war is certainly not that.

Free Market for individuals, Government aid for corporations

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:56:00 +0000

We hear propaganda about personal responsibility and the effectiveness of the free market constantly, but that standard is only applied to the poor. For instance; welfare, foodstamps, rehabilitation centers, leniency on crimes involving theft and free medical care are all examples of things that conservatives decry as government interference in the free market. The Feds, they say, take their money in the form of taxes and unfairly redistribute it into social spending. Why, then, is this argument not applied to all other forms of government spending? If the free market is better for rewarding efficiency, then government subsidies to corporations are decreasing the efficiency that conservatives say will be brought to the people by less government. Of course, this obviously isn't the case; the government subsidies allow those corporations to thrive.

One of the best examples of this is the existence of corporations themselves. An LLC (which stands for "Limited Liability Company") is given special government considerations, both legally and financially. No owners can be sued for actions taken by the company, nor can they be prosecuted for criminal acts that the management is responsible for in an effort to inflate prices. On the surface, these investors are detached from the immoral behavior under a guise of ignorance. What can they do about the decisions of management? They control only the capital supply, not the procedure or the operational day-to-day, so how could they be held responsible for firing labor organizers, dumping chemicals or hazardous working conditions for their workers? Of course, this a flimsy, thinly veiled excuse that's easily dismissed simply by seeing the shareholders take action whenever these things are absent; if a Chief of Operations doesn't stop his employees from Unionizing, or pushes too hard on safety or environmental standards, he is easily replaced (and well compensated to ensure loyalty to 'the company', which means not the employees of the company but rather those that make money from the work of the employees).

Another example are the subsidies that large corporations, exclusively owned by the wealthy elite, receiving not only friendly contracts, but subsidies and grants that amount to money being taken from the taxpayer and given freely to military contractors, agricultural lobbies, health care institutions and others in the guise of aiding struggling Americans. Again, this disguise is transparent when you consider that the money spent on these subsidies could go directly to infrastructure, education or general welfare spending rather than being drained through the corporate sifter and the money pocketed by the already wealthy.

Perhaps the most stark illustration are the recent bailouts and low interest rates for large banks. Rather than the owners of these institutions having their property devalued, the tax payer is penalized and the debts of the wealthy covered. Indeed, the government now lends money with no interest rate to large banks, which in turn charges high interest rates to those it re-lends the money to, allowing the rich owners of Goldman Sachs to post record profits while 49 million Americans go hungry.

Capital is not the best motivator

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 16:34:00 +0000

One of the most basic assumptions that we use as a foundation of our society is that positive incentives are necessary for the continuation and propagation of our society. These incentives, almost always in the form of capital, inspire us (or so we're lead to believe) and lead us to innovation.

This line of reasoning allows us to continue our institutionalized policy of 'social Darwinism'. The phrase "survival of the fittest" was coined by Herbert Spence r (rather than Charles Darwin to whom the phrase is often attributed) to explain the self-regulation and sustainability of society. It was Spencer's thought that a potential gain in capital was sufficient motivation for members of society to innovate, advancing society as a whole. At the core of 'social Dawinism' is the belief that the struggle for natural resources (or fiat capital backed by production that utilizes those resources) will force the 'better' humans to succeed while leaving the 'inferior' humans behind. This 'natural' class structure (according to the theory) become more pure the less regulated the distribution of resources is. In other words, without a government welfare state, the best and brightest will eventually come to own the vast majority of the capital we have and distribute it according to their own innovation, while all others will be left with less capital but incentive to do better to gain more. Natural competition between people for this capital leads to better practices, the 'social Darwinists' (who we now call libertarians) argued.

The problem with this is that we know (and have known for some time) that personal gain is not necessarily a good motivational tool. For instance, in this study (published in 1987), we have the following information;

In one study, girls in the fifth and sixth grades tutored younger children much less effectively if they were promised free movie tickets for teaching well. The study, by James Gabarino, now president of Chicago's Erikson Institute for Advanced Studies in Child Development, showed that tutors working for the reward took longer to communicate ideas, got frustrated more easily, and did a poorer job in the end than those who were not rewarded.

Additionally;

The recognition that rewards can have counter-productive effects is based on a variety of studies, which have come up with such findings as these: Young children who are rewarded for drawing are less likely to draw on their own that are children who draw just for the fun of it. Teenagers offered rewards for playing word games enjoy the games less and do not do as well as those who play with no rewards. Employees who are praised for meeting a manager's expectations suffer a drop in motivation.

This leads to interesting conclusions;

Such findings call into question the widespread belief that money is an effective and even necessary way to motivate people. They also challenge the behaviorist assumption that any activity is more likely to occur if it is rewarded. Amabile says her research “definitely refutes the notion that creativity can be operantly conditioned.”

So, if capital is not a sufficient motivator to accomplish things (and it's particularly poor motivation, if not counter productive, in the realm of creativity and innovation), why do we use it as a competitional tool rather than simply as a means to perform the task?

Blackwater, goddamn (also Xe Services LLC)

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:31:00 +0000

If you've read any of my other posts it won't surprise you to discover that the concept of a private company with carte blanch to kill whoever they want so long as the government in the region is too weak to prosecute is pretty abhorrent to me. Blackwater (or Xe, as it's now called) is a particularly abusive organization with regards to human rights violations and extreme incompetance.

I bring this up because I was looking into the infamous Fallujah incident. Blackwater, in it's infinite wisdom,

ignored multiple warnings about the dangers of traveling through Fallujah, cut essential personnel from the mission, and failed to supply its team with armored vehicles, machine guns, sufficient threat intelligence, or even maps of the area. Blackwater’s own employees described its conduct as “flat out a sloppy … operation” and a “ship about to sink.” Another Blackwater employee stated: “Why were they sent into the hottest zone in Iraq in unarmored, underpowered vehicles to protect a truck? They had no way to protect their flanks because they only had four guys.” Even the internal review conducted by Blackwater at the direction of Erik Prince, the owner of Blackwater, found that the team ambushed in Fallujah “[h]ad no time to perform proper mission planning” and “[w]as without proper maps of the city.”

Four of thier own men died, and because of thier own negligence (House Oversight Committe report). Now, the deaths of four Americans left many people outraged, but upon some cursory research, I found another House Oversight document. This one was an examination of Blackwater as a whole in Iraq.

It found that Blackwater "left 11 Iraqi civilians dead and 14 wounded" on one occasion, and on another shot a man whose "brothers reported to the State Department that their brother, a father of six, was "killed as an innocent person standing on the side of the street." According to an internal State Department document, the personnel who fired the shots initially failed to report the shooting and sought to cover it up".

There are so many things in this report that it's hard to chose highlights, but among others there's this;

In recent days, U.S. military commanders havereported that Blackwater guards "have very quick trigger frngers," "shoot first and ask questions later," and "act like cowboys." A senior U.S. military official has asserted that the impact of Blackwater's actions on Iraqi attitudes toward U.S. forces "is going to hurt us badly" and "may be worse than Abu Ghraib."

As well as this;

The Blackwater and State Department records reveal that Blackwater's use of force in Iraq is frequent and extensive, resulting in significant casualties and property damage. Blackwater is legally and contractually bound to only engage in defensive uses of force to prevent "imminent and grave danger" to themselves or others.2t In practice, however, the vast majority of Blackwater weapons discharges are preemptive, with Blackwater forces firing first at a vehicle or suspicious individual prior to receiving any fire.

Blackwater isn't even being regulated by the State Department. The committee found that "even in cases involving the death of Iraqis, it appears that the State Department's primary response was to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments to "put the matter behind us," rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability"

Read the full report, it's only 15 pages long and it's chock-full of disgusting abuses by these guys.

5 Reasons Chavez is so Hostile to the US

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 21:23:00 +0000

Hugo Chavez just came out to publicly support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the Iranian elections, even though a toddler could see why the reported election results are falsified. This leads to the inevitable question of why. The answer is that the state of Iran, under Ahmadinejad, is an ally of Venezuela and right now Venezuela can't afford to lose any allies. Chavez broke the cardinal rule of South American heads of state and disrespected the right to unlimited private property through nationalization of the oil industry. If you've read or heard about this, you're probably confused as to why Chavez takes such an antagonistic stance against the US Government, and in particular the conservative administration of George Bush. What is kept under suspicious silence, however, are the very good reasons for his mistrust of American with regards to left leaning administrations. Let me give you just five examples (although the examples are quite literally too prodigious to enumarate in full). I'll list them chronologically

1) 1954 Guatemalan coup- After winning the Presidency of Guatemala in the second election ever to sport universal sufferage in Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz siezed land from corporations. This land was prime for farming, but it was left completely unused in the hopes that the land itself would one day become more valuable and be able to be resold. Árbenz gave the land to Guatemalan peasants, at which point the CIA decided that Guzman was a communist, and needed to die. Operation PBSUCCESS was enacted to train 400 men to start a revolution in Guatemala. The coup succeeded, a non-democratic government was installed and Árbenz was exiled.

2) 1964 Brazilian coup- João Goulart was the democratically elected Vice-President of Brazil until the President stepped down and he was elevated into the office. His reforms were deemed "too socialist" and Lyndon B. Johnson authorized Operation Brother Sam, which provided the coup with ammunition, gasoline and plane fuel. The coup succeeded, and plunged Brazil into a military dictatorship, rather than a constitutional democracy, until 1985, 21 years later.

3) 1973 Chilean coup- Salvador Allende was the first democratically elected Marxist in the Americas. He pushed for Marxist reforms and was unapologetic in his support for Communism. While you may disagree with his beliefs, he was elected by a majority of Chilean citizens. Although US involvment in this coup is still classified, the Clinton administration declassified documents describing the insertion of CIA operatives into Chile with the goal of destabilizing the Marxist movement there. It's not a stretch to assume US involvment of the coup and Allende's murder, especially as 2 years before Nixon attempted to instigate a coup when Allende took office in 1970 (under the name Project FUBELT). General Augusto Pinochet assumed power after Allende, and established a military dictatorship that lasted until 1990.

4) 1976 Argentinian coup- Isabel Perón was the first female head of state in a democratically elected government in the west. As the Vice President in Argentina, she ascended to the presidency when the current president, her husband, died of heart complications. A military junta was installed with the help and approval of US interests. The Secretary of State at the time, Henry Kissinger, said of the Junta, "Whatever chance they have, they will need a little encouragement" and "because I do want to encourage them. I don't want to give the sense that they're harassed by the United States". The Junta lasted until 1983.

5) The School of the Americas- Perhaps the most striking example is the School of the Americas, what is now known as The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). This facility is located in Georgia and they focus on training South American natives into military personnel that specialize in overthrowing left leaning regimes. Among the alumnus you can count some of Augusto Pinochet's officers, the military dictators that overthrew the democratically elected Isabel Perón, the now-imprisoned military dictator Manuel Noriega, Hugo Banzer the military dictator from Bolivia and the international terrorist (not to mention ex-CIA operative) Luis Posada Carriles.

So, it's easy to see after even the most cursory look into the history of South America, why Chavez is defensive to a fault when dealing with America and desperate enough to ally himself with unsavory (though impotent in South America) nationstates for solidarity and protection.

Native American society was much better than it's European counterpart

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 18:55:00 +0000

The title of this post is pretty self explanatory, but it's also pretty subjective. First, let's define "better" in this context. I don't mean to say that the Natives of America were smarter or more scientifically advanced; quite the opposite. What I'm talking about is the standard of living of the average member of society, as well as the equality of it's citizens (with regards to gender and race). At the point during which the cultural exchange first began between Europe and America (16th century or so), European society was ingrained with an ultra-regressive mentality that included extreme sexism, racism (though in a different manner than 19th century American slavery), classism and extreme religious xenophobia. I'd like to compare and contrast those features with certain Native American cultures to illustrate how horrific the genocide against them was; it's honestly like watching a pulp serial villain ravage an entire continent of cultures.

Before I proceed, I want to be sure I'm not guilty of lumping all of the Natives into the same boat; there were over 150 Native Nations and over 175 Native Languages. Not all of these cultures are going to share traits. On some rare occasions, Natives of the American continent were guilty of atrocities like human sacrifice and slave labor (Aztec society in particular). Because of the diversity in cultures, when I say "Native American", what I mean are Native American cultures from the North and South East areas of modern day United States. Most of these cultures share certain characteristics that the European culture shed a good deal of blood to acquire. The first of these traits is religious tolerance, and it doesn't take very much explanation. Native American religions are not and have never been evangelical; this leads to the conclusion that such religious practice was not forced onto others, as it was in Europe. No Inquisitions, no Crusades, no genocides.

Native American class structure was drastically different as well; rather than a hierarchical system that was based off of feudalism, the class structure was based on group agriculture and tribal hunting and gathering. Although positions of authority existed (Chiefs, etc) they were more positions of arbitration (with regards to which resources are applied where) than positions of ownership; for instance, where a King would own all property on his Kingdom and could tax accordingly, a Chief would own very little (if anything) of his Chiefdom and simply arbitrate the distribution of resource to ensure the community as a whole thrived. Where a King would trade with neighboring kingdoms for personal profit, and tax trading between his denizens and neighboring nations through tariffs, the Chief would initiate and negotiate trade for the benefit of the entire community.

Racism was nearly non-existent in Native American society. Indeed, when Jamestown colonists began dying by the truck load during the Starving Times, many defected to live with the Natives rather than continue to live a harrowing existence for the profit of the Virginia Company. "Race" was not established as a societal construct in Native American culture, whereas within European society, it was already strongly established and used as a basis for cultural assessment. I could elaborate quite a bit about the racism in 16th century Europe, but I don't think anyone needs an explanation of that racism or why the Native American's alternative is superior.

Perhaps the most poignant difference between the two societies is their treatment of gender roles. This includes both male/female relations and homo/heterosexual interactions. I'm not going to imply or suggest that the Native Americans had no sense of gender roles; men were expected to hunt and women expected to gather. This wasn't set in stone, however, and anyone breaking gender norms was labeled a niizh manidoowag, or "Two Spirit" roughly translated (Europeans called such Natives "berdaches", a highly offensive term). It's clear that the Natives had a much more embrasive view of these members of society and often had four or five "gender roles", rather than the European roles which include Male and Female (with anyone not conforming to these norms being executed). It's clear that this threatened the European culture and was one of the first things that America targetted in it's attempt to assimilate or destroy all Native American culture (such as the Dawes Act which required Natives to declare a "head of household" and assemble in a European nuclear family, with a male as the sole property owner and the superior to his wife).

Put in the most general terms, Native Americans were much more flexible with thier social norms than the Europeans. Though they were systematically eradicated (by European use of superior scientific knowledge in the fields of warfare and naval navigation), Natives were much better suited for the average member of society to avoid exploitation and have a high standard of living. Modern day racism, classism, sexism and homophobia would be non-existant if not for the genocide committed against the Natives of this continent.

Why don't we ever talk about the origins of racism?

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:07:00 +0000

We speak a great deal about racism and "slavery" in grammar school, but that's just about the end of our society's education on race relations (excepting the elite who attend college, about 1 out of every 300, and even then a smaller number of them attend classes that deal with race relations). Rarely, however, do our discussions include specifics on either treatment (beyond "whips and chains", which of course are the most palpable and least horrific of the treatment of Africans by slavers) or the origins of the racism that allowed whites in America to stomach the inhumanity.

In order to better educate ourselves, we need to go back to the roots (no pun intended) of slave use in the American colonies. Since Jamestown is the first permanent English colony, we'll use that as an example. The Jamestown colonists were beholden to investors; namely, the Virginia Company of London. These investors expected significant returns in a very short period of time (considering that the trip took around 140 days, and they were starving even as the investors demanded a return). Now, the settlers didn't have much time to try to pay their investors as their Fort Burned to the ground and the winter of 1609 killed 154 of the 214 colonists. So, after relying on 'trade' with Native Americans (largely charity on the part of the natives), John Rolfe (who later married Pocahontas) began to plant and farm tobacco. He was hugely successful in this endeavor and obtained capital so early that it's still alive today in many of Virginia's "First Families". Finally, the investors saw not only a return, but opportunity for further investment. 1617 is largely regarded as the year that the colony became profitable, exporting around 50,000 pounds of tobacco to England. Of course, this growth was completely unsustainable; there simply weren't enough colonists. Like any good capitalists (though the term would not be coined until later in 1792 by Arthur Young), the investors took the next logical step and began to exploit everyone they could in the form of slavery.

Of course, when we use the term "slavery" here, we don't mean the same brutal conditions and inhumane treatment as we do when we use the term to refer to African slavery (that we don't have a name for this specific genocide speaks volumes about how society's elites want us to treat it, as if it didn't happen). What we mean is closer to the concept of serfdom, or indentured servitude. I don't mean to write an apology to serfdom or indentured servitude, but the reality of the service is the difference between being worked to death, and being able to own property. Now, even with indentured servants sent over from England the number required to keep increasing crop output was much higher than was realistic. The colonists tried enslaving the local natives, but they took sick very easily and, with their knowledge of the local terrain, they easily escaped at every opportunity. The answer presented itself in 1619; African slaves. In addition to already being exposed to European germs and diseases around 1/3 of all slaves brought across the Atlantic died en route, ensuring that only the heartiest survived (this also had the added 'benefit' of putting the Africans in such a bewildered, shocked and traumatized mindset that they couldn't resist their enslavement and those that could had no where to go in the brutal and foreign conditions of Virginia in the winter).

Let's fast forward 31 years, to 1650; the African slaves and the majority of the indentured servants in 1620 have earned their freedom. This shows, at the very least, that the institutionalized racism of later years was not in effect at the beginning of the colonies, leading to the conclusion that such an institution is not in any way 'natural', but rather entirely manufactured.

It wasn't until Bacon's Rebellion in 1676 that those in power saw the need to seperate white and black servants and slaves. In fact, before Bacon's Rebellion both white and black slaves got along--there was still racism, but the overriding sense of superiority that existed in whites from the 18th century on was nonexistent. The rebellion is often taught today as a product of aggression between the Native Americans and the settlers (which it was) but teachers neglect to mention that, firstly, the settlers on the outskirts of the colony (the ones who interacted with the natives) were the poor; the rich could afford to live closer to the coast, with the poor as a sort of buffer between them and the natives. They also seem to conveniently forget that economic disparity between the classes was also a major factor (perhaps the most significant one) in instigating rebellion. After the rebellion was narrowly put down (they got as far as burning the capital building and the Governor's mansion), the elite new they needed a new way to control the poor, and keep them from banding together again. A comprehensive plan to enact and excite racism was put into place.

Such concerns, however, were mitigated by intervening circumstances. In the years following Bacon's Rebellion, the distinction between indentured servitude and slavery grew into a pronounced difference. Indenture became less attractive as a source of labor because servants now lived long enough to claim land - as the rebellion had demonstrated violently - and improved economic conditions in Britain reduced the supply of workers willing to come to America and increased the price of their contracts. Africans continued to be readily available, and because many were not Christian, they could be enslaved and regulated in a manner that indentures could not. Virginia enacted a series of laws, constituting a formal slave code that removed many of the rights slaves had previously enjoyed and added further restrictions to slavery including anti-miscegenation statutes. Previously one of several labor sources, slaves became Virginia's primary workforce for its plantations, and slavery an integral institution within its society.

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-02-03.htm

Knowing that they needed some way to keep the poor from rebelling again, this new found race division still casts a looming shadow over the populace and, in fact, still redirects ire away from the wealthy elite and keeps lower class citizens at each other's throats rather than that of the monied interests. This all leads to the answer to my question; we aren't educated about the origin of racism because that education would also require an honest look at how capital is distributed, how it was initially acquired and it would eventually lead us to ask the question-"Why do we allow capital that was aquired by immoral means to remain in the hands of the decendants of these criminals when they've done nothing to deserve it any more than you or I have?"

6 Myths about the Big 3 auto makers

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:47:00 +0000

This is a really great article: http://www.freep.com/article/20081117/COL14/811170379/?imw=Y

The debate over aid to the Detroit-based automakers is awash with half-truths and misrepresentations that are endlessly repeated by everyone from members of Congress to journalists. Here are six myths about the companies and their vehicles, and the reality in each case.
Myth No. 1

Nobody buys their vehicles.
Reality
General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC sold 8.5 million vehicles in the United States last year and millions more around the world. GM outsold Toyota by about 1.2 million vehicles in the United States last year and holds a U.S. lead over Toyota of about 560,000 so far this year. Globally, GM in 2007 remained the world's largest automaker, selling 9,369,524 vehicles worldwide -- about 3,000 more than Toyota.
Ford outsold Honda by about 850,000 and Nissan by more than 1.3 million vehicles in the United States last year.
Chrysler sold more vehicles here than Nissan and Hyundai combined in 2007 and so far this year.
Myth No. 2

They build unreliable junk.
Reality
The creaky, leaky vehicles of the 1980s and '90s are long gone. Consumer Reports recently found that "Ford's reliability is now on par with good Japanese automakers." The independent J.D. Power Initial Quality Study scored Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, Mercury, Pontiac and Lincoln brands' overall quality as high or higher than that of Acura, Audi, BMW, Honda, Nissan, Scion, Volkswagen and Volvo.
Power rated the Chevrolet Malibu the highest-quality midsize sedan. Both the Malibu and Ford Fusion scored better than the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry.
Myth No. 3

They build gas-guzzlers.
Reality
All of the Detroit Three build midsize sedans the Environmental Protection Agency rates at 29-33 miles per gallon on the highway. The most fuel-efficient Chevrolet Malibu gets 33 m.p.g. on the highway, 2 m.p.g. better than the best Honda Accord. The most fuel-efficient Ford Focus has the same highway fuel economy ratings as the most efficient Toyota Corolla. The most fuel-efficient Chevrolet Cobalt has the same city fuel economy and better highway fuel economy than the most efficient non-hybrid Honda Civic. A recent study by Edmunds.com found that the Chevrolet Aveo subcompact is the least expensive car to buy and operate.
Myth No. 4

They already got a $25-billion bailout.
Reality
None of that money has been lent out and may not be for more than a year. In addition, it can, by law, be used only to invest in future vehicles and technology, so it has no effect on the shortage of operating cash the companies face because of the economic slowdown that's killing them now.
Myth No. 5

GM, Ford and Chrysler are idiots for investing in pickups and SUVs.
Reality
The domestic companies' lineup has been truck-heavy, but Toyota, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz and BMW have all spent billions of dollars on pickups and SUVs because trucks are a large and historically profitable part of the auto industry. The most fuel-efficient full-size pickups from GM, Ford and Chrysler all have higher EPA fuel economy ratings than Toyota and Nissan's full-size pickups.
Myth No. 6

They don't build hybrids.
Reality
The Detroit Three got into the hybrid business late, but Ford and GM each now offers more hybrid models than Honda or Nissan, with several more due to hit the road in early 2009.

Five problems with our legal system:

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:09:00 +0000

1) Bad Laws- Bad laws, whether they reflect and outdated mode of thinking or are just plain stupid contribute to a lack of popular support. They weaken the moral authority of the law as well as encourage citizens to ignore or circumvent the law. I've given three examples, but I've tried to stay away from laws that are obviously racist/sexist/homophobic. Unless you're a racist, sexist or homophobe I think it's safe to say we all disagree with those laws (mandatory minimums discrepancy for crack/powdered cocaine, sodomy laws, etc.);

Marijuana is illegal. As long as a completely harmless and immensely popular intoxicant is grounds for hard time, we're going to be putting an unnecessary and extreme burden on our law enforcement.
Cash in excess of 10,000 is illegal to carry. Of course, even if you can prove that the search used to find the money was illegal, or that the money wasn't at all drug related, the US can still just sue the money. Since money isn't a citizen, it doesn't have the same rights you do and the rules that the prosecution plays by get real loose real fast.
Identification is required almost across the board in the United States. This is less on the written law side (though Hiibel v. Sixth set the standard that a state could make it illegal to refuse to ID yourself if you're detained for a crime), but in practice not carrying an ID is almost guaranteed to get you a visit to the local precinct if you're stopped, even on suspicion without hard evidence. Seriously cracking down and stopping this will go a long way to rid Police Officers of the mindset that their responsibilities and authority lies beyond just the law.

2) Inefficient Law Enforcement- Our law enforcement is silly, wasteful and abusive. To ensure the safety of the citizens of the United States, we need to start cutting costs and stopping abuses of power;

There exists an overemphasis on traffic laws and drugs in United States law enforcement. Funding and manpower that should be used keeping citizens safe and good laws enforced is being misallocated in massive amounts.
Getting rid of the "Blue Shield of Silence" is vital. I've spoken in length about this before so I won't elaborate here.
There aren't sufficient checks or balances for local law enforcement. Even without a "Blue Shield" where internal affairs officers and whistle blowers are demonized, hated and punished for their work, local officers have far too much leeway in terms of power of search and seizure, which of course bleeds over into other law enforcement.

3) Overcrowded and Underfunded Prisons- With so many prisoners from bad laws and bad law enforcement, as well as innocent prisoners who are working on appeals or have fallen through the cracks, it's important that we ensure that the human rights of the prisoners are maintained while keeping the prisons secure. We won't be able to do this with the number of prisoners we have now;

There are far too many prisoners. 1 in 131 US citizens is in prison. That means for every 132 people, 131 of them has to pay $22,650 per year for the fourth person to be incarcerated.
Prison rape rates are ridiculous. At least 140,000 people are raped in prison every year. For comparison, there are 272,350 rape cases each year outside of prisons. 1/132nd of the population has more than half of the rape cases of the rest of the country.
The current prison structure generates artificially low standards of performance by keeping closed doors, closed books and punishing both officers and inmates who criticize the administration. Protections for these whistle blowers are vital for a prison to successfully incarcerate prisoners.

4) Misplaced Burden of Proof- The concept of "Innocent until proven guilty" is an powerful and necessary one that we've placed less and less emphasis on as communications technology exponentially improves. We need to keep the laws up to date with the technology to keep this precept in place;

Pedophilia is such a grotesque and horrific crime that we often overlook lack of evidence and skip right to judgement. In "at will" states, employment is often terminated at even an accusation, especially in the case of religious or educational institutions.
Spousal abuse is another such crime. Often the guilt of the husband will be assumed in these cases with just an accusation and he'll spend the night in jail before being able to post bail the next day (if he's able to post at all). This is regardless of the actual evidence at hand.
Public nudity and other "sexual crimes" that include consensual public intercourse and public urination often result in the offender being placed on a sexual predator list or database which is accessible online, even if the offense was completely innocuous. Imagine peeing on a tree and being thrown out of your house because it happens to be within 5 miles of a school.

5) Poor Appeals System- Without a way to appeal the decision of a court, you are completely at the mercy of the Judge, Jury and Lawyers you're dealing with. All too often one or more of these entities have a prejudice, predisposition or conflict of interest, or evidence is found that exonorates the convict, or any number of events unfold that come to light only after the conviction. Our current appeals system seems to have more cracks than the

Recently you may have read about Louisiana's appeals denial- Jarrold Peterson, an aid appointed by Chief Judge Edward Dufresne to review appeals request (he handled over 2400 of these cases) committed suicide. The note he left said he killed himself because of overwhelming guilt. http://www.reason.com/blog/show/129711.html
"He said Dufresne had instructed him to deny every appeal not prepared by an attorney. Peterson said he was instructed to write up and file the denials without ever showing the appeals to the judges"
The Texas conviction overturn rate demonstrates exactly why our appeals system needs to be better. Over 30 cases have been overturned since 2001, including several death row cases and life sentences. Troy Anthony Davis had seven of his 9 witnesses recant (and claim that one of the final two was the real criminal, but he has now disappeared and police are not looking for him), but Georgia still denied his appeal. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals saved his life by less than three days.
Appeals results are almost directly determined by the amount of money a citizen has.

Matt Taibbi brings the thunder

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:14:00 +0000

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/10/matt_taibbi_and_byron_york_but.html

Okay, so Taibbi has his faults, but read this interview and tell me you don't feel like clapping when you get to this part;

M.T.: What a surprise that you mention Franklin Raines. Do you even know how a CDS works? Can you explain your conception of how these derivatives work?

...

B.Y.: When you refer to "Phil Gramm's Commodities Future Modernization Act," are you referring to S.3283, co-sponsored by Gramm, along with Senators Tom Harkin and Tim Johnson?

M.T.: In point of fact I'm talking about the 262-page amendment Gramm tacked on to that bill that deregulated the trade of credit default swaps.

Tick tick tick. Hilarious sitting here while you frantically search the Internet to learn about the cause of the financial crisis — in the middle of a live chat interview.

Hilarious! This guy, Byron York, is a conservative pundit who doesn't know what he's talking about. Matt Taibbi calls him out about it and the guy can't respond.

Conservative Media and the Propaganda Push

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:33:00 +0000

American media is dominated by conservatives. The majority of news outlets are owned by the conglomerates Disney, CBS, TimeWarner, General Electric, and of course Rupert Murdoc's 'News Corporation', the most extreme example. The only voices in the public media are from the mouths of those who can afford it. Unless you're rich enough to pay the price, you can't have the ear of the public which, of course, leads to ideas that benefit only the wealthy (trickle down economics is the most biting example, being a philosophy that literally consists of giving more money to the wealthy and nothing else). This, of course, passes onto thier political donations. Rupert Murdoc donates massive amounts of money to the Republican party as does Richard Parsons, CEO of Time-Warner.

Fox News is the most striking example of extreme conservative bias. They often lie to their audience and cover their legal liability by adding a question mark at the end. I know it's not a news outlet, but watch this segment from the Daily Show. If you like, turn the sound off and just watch the Fox footage. It's pretty telling.

The website http://www.fair.org is for the organization "Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting". They had a really great article up written by John K. Wilson called "The Myth of Pro-Obama Media Bias". It reports that Obama has, in fact, received more coverage but the coverage has been very negatively stilted. Contrariwise, McCain's coverage has avoided the same type of negative coverage (the example Mr. Wilson gives are many, this being one of them; "Obama’s distant acquaintance with Bill Ayers (whose role in the 1960s’ Weather Underground Obama has condemned) became the basis of absurd accusations of “terrorist” connections, while the press ignored McCain’s trumpeting the endorsement of Oliver North, whose Iranian-financed Contra war killed far more innocents than ’60s radicals ever did.") Addionally, the disparity in media coverage has been shown in the past to be fairly non-partisan ("Measuring the first six months of each election year, Democratic challenger Michael Dukakis got only 32 percent of the coverage garnered by then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in 1988; incumbent Bill Clinton got only 28 percent of the coverage Republican challenger Bob Dole got in 1996. Incumbent George W. Bush got 85 percent as much coverage as Democratic Sen. John Kerry in 2004—the closest thing to parity in early campaign coverage since Tyndall has been keeping track.").

Why, then, do we constantly hear about the media's radical left-wing tendancies and their extreme liberal bias? Well, my guess would be that you hear it because the actual media (not this nonexistant straw-media that's been fabricated as a dummy to easily attack) creates and propagates the myth.

I'll leave you with just a few of the screenshots of extreme-right bias in Fox News. This took about 5 minutes of Googling to find, by the way;

The Republican party is still the party of racism

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:22:00 +0000

http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-09-28-gop-remarks_N.htm?csp=34

"We don't want (Hispanics) to become the new African-American community," Lima told The Associated Press. "And that's what the Democratic Party is going to do to them, create more programs and give them handouts, food stamps and checks for this and checks for that. We don't want that."
"I'm very much afraid that the Democratic Party is going to do the same thing that they did with the African-American culture and make them all dependent on the government and we don't want that," she said.

Didi Lima (pictured left), a Republican spokeswoman for a large county in Nevada and co-chair of McCain's Nevada Hispanic Leadership Team (or ex-co-chair, after these remarks) just stated what you can hear Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage spouting. The time of Republican double talk is quickly coming to a close as the free media on the internet inspires major news organizations to actually report the news, instead of sensationalize current events for entertainment value.

I feel obligated to post this part of the article as well;

"Didi Lima is no longer a part of this campaign, her comments don't reflect Senator McCain's beliefs and are not tolerated on his campaign," McCain spokesman Rick Gorka said after learning about her remarks.

Of course, the article also says;

The chairman of the Republican Party in New Mexico's most populous county resigned Thursday, nearly a week after saying "Hispanics consider themselves above blacks" and won't vote for Obama.

And, of course, let's not forget McCain's own words.

"I hate the gooks...I will hate them as long as I live."

There's no doubt which party gets the vote of racists across the country.

The Blue Shield of Silence

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:12:00 +0000

To establish that there are, in fact, many corrupt police officers in the United States I'd like to cite some examples;

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/91097/92_year_old_grandmother_killed_by_the.html

Last Tuesday a 92 year old woman was shot and killed by Atlanta Police officers.Kathryn Johnson was alone in her home waiting with her gun on Tuesday night when a group of plainclothes officers with a warrant knocked down her door searching for drugs, police said.

She opened fire, wounding three officers before she was shot to death.

Assistant Police Chief Alan Dreher called the killing "tragic and unfortunate" but said the officers were justified in returning fire.

http://www.kidk.com/news/local/11676076.html

A Teton County, Idaho family is outraged after they say a sheriff's deputy tried to murder their dog in their own front yard.

The Barboza family has owned their dog Bobby for five years. A few days ago they say a Teton County Idaho Sheriff's Deputy knocked on their door demanding to see the dog.

Leonel Barboza, Dog Owner: "He says, 'I'm here to put him down. I'm here to kill him.'"

The officer told Leo Barboza there had been a complaint Bobby had bitten someone.

Barboza: "I said, 'Do you have any proof or anything?' He says, 'I don't need any proof.'"

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004032283_alleybarnes24m.html

The city of Seattle has agreed to pay $185,000 to a man who filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the police department after he was beaten, kicked and arrested by officers outside a Capitol Hill nightclub in 2005, according to court documents and an informed source.
...
A photograph of Alley-Barnes taken in the jail shows him with blood running down his swollen face. An internal investigation later showed that an officer also rammed the handcuffed Alley-Barnes' face into a wall at the police precinct.

Alley-Barnes was charged with assaulting an officer and interfering, but the case was dismissed because the city failed to turn over the video from the arrest.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-071205cops-htmlstory,0,2906787.htmlstory

• Nearly every shooting in last decade 'justified'
• Investigations ignore witnesses, forensics
• Shot-in-back findings raise questions

On a summer night in 2003, two patrol cars pulled over a driver in front of his South Side home for running a stop sign. Thinking police had chased the car earlier that night, four officers drew their guns and ordered the driver out.

The man's mother screamed from the sidewalk: "He can't walk! He's paralyzed! He can't get out of the car!"

When one officer thought the driver raised a gun, he opened fire, shooting the driver five times before reloading and shooting him once more.

Eight hours later, as Cornelius Ware, a 20-year-old paraplegic who drove by pushing the pedals with a wooden cane, lay gravely wounded in the hospital, police supervisors cleared the officer of any wrongdoing.
...
She [the investigator] also took no notes, she said, committing each witness statement to memory and sometime later recording those words in what would become the main report on the shooting.

Three of Ware's brothers who witnessed the shooting -- a 15-year-old and 13-year-old twins -- all told detectives at the scene that their brother had his hands up.

VanWitzenburg could not be reached for comment.

A cop shoots a Veteran complying with orders.

http://www.theagitator.com/2008/03/14/the-new-professionalism-9/

An Albany woman was stopped for no apparent reason, then, with no apparent probable cause, was subjected to a humiliating public search for drugs in which an officer inserted two fingers into her vagina. They also seized her cell phone, and made a random call to one of her contacts, again without a warrant or probable cause. They found no drugs.

The woman filed a complaint, but it was never forwarded to the city’s civilian review board, whose entire purpose is to investigate complaints against the police. The police chief explained that the police aren’t required to forward every complaint to the board, particularly if the complainant requests that it not be, as the chief says happened in this case. This apparently came as a surprise to the city councilman who actually wrote the review board legislation.

As for the woman not wanting her complaint forwarded to the review board, that’s apparently because an internal affairs officer “persuaded” her to let the complaint be handled internally.

Okay, so there are some bad apples. That's not really the point of contention here, as it's a sentiment almost universally accepted. My friend Chris, when we spoke about this the other night, made a good point. Why penalize or even criticize the majority of police officers for the actions of a fringe minority? After all, if we want police officers to be trained from a pool of civilians (and, as a free society, we definitely do), then there's going to be roughly the same level of corruption and crime as the average civilian community. The problem doesn't really stem from the criminal behavior itself, but rather what happens after the crime.

In other words, the complaint against the police officers is that they cover up and lie about criminal actions of other police officers. Take a look at this case:

http://www.theagitator.com/2008/01/03/cop-of-the-year-2007/
A man named Al Unser is arrested and charged, but according to both him and an officer named Sam Costales, the police "were rude to him, refused to tell him why he couldn’t drive home, then pulled him out of his car and tossed him into a thorn bush before arresting him for resisting arrest". Officer Costales testified as such in court, and as a result Al Unser was released, cleared of all charges.

That's how the system is supposed to work with bad apples. Unfortunately, the officers in question were never investigated or even under suspicion of wrong doing. Constales, however, was. The charge was "improperly wearing his uniform while testifying in court". This is particularly cruel when you read that Constales retired three years prior to this event, because he has witnessed too much corruption for him to handle, and was asked back when the police department needed personel very badly. The head of the Police Union in Albuquerque sent a letter to the Bernalillo County Sheriff, which read;

As Secretary of the APOA i feel it is my duty and responsibility to apologize to you and your officers. Ofc. Sam Costales does not represent APD/APOA. The majority of our officers look at the BCSO as our brother and sisters in blue. We are embarrassed and ashamed of Ofc. Costales’s testimony in the Unser trial. If there is anything we can do to rebuild the damage caused by Sam please let me know.

If we continue to let this happen, this "Blue Shield of Silence" threatens to remove any civil protections we have left against police who continue to conduct no knock warrants in which civilians die, execute household pets with no oversight and falsly charge innocent civlians with crimes they did not commit.

Voter Disenfranchisement

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:35:00 +0000

In 2000, there were many, many reports of voter disenfranchisement (see here and here for more details). I just read an article in the Michigan Messenger (found here) saying that in the elections, the Republican Party are compiling a list of houses that have been foreclosed on, and putting “election challengers” at the polling stations to ensure that no one from those addresses can vote. On the surface, it's somewhat offensive, but you can see that the law allows it because the idea is to ensure no one's voting from defunct addresses.

Looking deeper, however, you'll see that most of the houses that have been foreclosed on are still inhabited; the people inside are either refinancing or trying to work a deal out with the owners of the debt. Of course, this is only being done in Democratic districts which are mostly lower class and minority districts.

Party chair for Republicans in Genessee County Denise Graves admitted that the Republican party is "gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign," indicating a wider based strategic attack against middle and lower class voters in Michigan (which is archetypal of the Republican party nationally).

Finally, and what I find most troubling, is the following (which is sourced in the document I linked at the beginning of the post);

McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

Protesters at the RNC get beat like they stole something

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:39:00 +0000

I'll start off with what I think is the best summation of events with a CNN link and a short quote from the article;

The protesters were noisy but peaceful as they approached the convention. Once they arrived, a police officer read an order to disperse, CNN reporters on the scene said.

But almost immediately, officers along the exit route opened fire with gas and projectiles. In one instance, a CNN producer said, an officer stepped out of line to hit a young woman with pepper spray as she ran for the exit.

Amy Goodman is a well known reporter who was covering the RNC when she got a call about the police arresting her producers. They're beaten by the police, and when she tries to stop and explain that they're journalists. She's thrown to the ground, her press jacket and press credentials are taken from her and she and the producers are charged with "inciting a riot". Video interview

In the interview, she mentions the Police Raid of Protester's Headquarters, so I think it would be appropriate to talk about that along with the actual brutality. The Police use a warrant, the cause of which "is not public at this time," to disrupt plans for protests, then accuse them of making plans for violent and illegal action against RNC delegates (accusations that weren't verified by the raid and were later withdrawn on the basis of not having a shred of evidence), then charge the organization with a violation of city fire code.

Here's a journalist who was shot with tear gas point blank in the face.

It's not just the journalists and protest leaders getting thier shit kicked, either. Read this;

My 17-yr-old son, Keith, was attacked by a group of police officers last night, September first, while peacefully attending a protest at the Republican National Convention. He was reaching into his backpack to hand a man a lighter when 5 police officers leveled him to the ground, beat the crap out of him, and arrested him. They told him that he is facing three criminal charges, one of which is a felony. They did not read him his rights. They did not give him a phone call. They searched his person and his belongings without his consent. They destroyed his shirt and put holes in his pants when they took him down. They took his belongings and did not return everything when they released him. He was so bloody at the time of the event that the officers covered his torso with someone else's shirt. I hope all the blood on that shirt is only his! The emergency room personnel were very understanding and kind and I'll be going to the records division of the hospital tomorrow to get copies of the records and the ER photos. You can go to my pictures to see the damage.

Be careful out there.

~LittleMom

The pictures on his Mom's Myspac e give you a better idea about how badly he was beaten. This is a 17 year old pacifist, who was hospitalized by the police. Disgusting.

Sarah Palin, Jeremiah Wright and the conservative media

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 17:39:00 +0000

There's a great article in the Monthly Review entitled Jeremiah Wright in the propaganda system. I really recommend reading it, if only for the fun coverage facts with Wright vs. other extreme and controversial preachers and how the media treats them (take a look at the table following).

This raises an interesting question because Palin is extremely religious and asserts that her political views are "God's will". Take this speech, for example; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1vPYbRB7k&. Palin is at her old Church and asserts, among other things that "God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that Gas Line built" and that "our national leaders are sending [our soldiers] on a task that is from God". Where's the coverage here? Where's the controversy from those statements? I guess as long as it's not a liberal African American saying it, it's not that bad.

Update: Watch This.

Obama's Gustav Donation Drive

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 17:58:00 +0000

Obama is known for his "grass-roots" internet support. Most of his money comes from middle class private citizens who donate over the internet, mostly in amounts of 200 or more, but often just 10-50 dollars. He sent out another email today, which I was expecting to be another request for money. It was, but not in the way that you'd guess. Hurricane Gustav is set to shear through Louisiana and parts of Texas and Obama sent an email out, to his most lucrative support base, asking them to donate to the Red Cross. Here's the text of it;

Jonathan --

Today, the thoughts and prayers of all Americans are with those in the path of Hurricane Gustav -- and many of you are asking what you can do to help.

We do not yet know what the impact of Hurricane Gustav will be, and we hope with all our hearts that the damage will not be as great as it was three years ago.

But we know there will be damage, and there is something you can do right now.

Your financial support will strengthen organizations like the American Red Cross that are evacuating Gulf Coast residents and planning to help communities get back on their feet.

Make a donation to support the American Red Cross today.

At times like this, it is our compassion and resilience that define who we are as a nation.

Please give whatever you can afford, even $10, to make sure the American Red Cross has the resources to help those in the path of this storm:

https://donate.barackobama.com/redcross

Thank you for your generosity, and I hope you will join Michelle and me in praying for the safety of those in the path of the storm and the first responders who are doing all they can to ensure the safety of their communities.

Barack

Wow. I honestly did not imagine this from any politician. I'd be very surprised if John McCain would go to his largest support base, corporate lobbies, and ask them to donate money for Gustav support.

Anyways, Obama is too much of a class act to put his own donation links in an email like that, but I'm kinda trashy so here it is: https://donate.barackobama.com/page/contribute/

We're Finally Leaving

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:37:00 +0000

The US will have all combat troops out of Iraq by next June and all remaining forces out by 2011.

This is obviously great news for everyone interested in stopping the war and it's cost to Americans in lives and tax payer money. The interesting thing about this is how it's being spinned by the Bush Administration. They're keeping media coverage (as best they can) to a minimum, and after all that bluster about not wanting to "cut and run" and that the democrats all want us to lose in Iraq I understand why. I can't imagine voting for any of these people, and I'm at a loss as to why others do.

Sarah Palin

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 20:20:00 +0000

So, McCain's chosen Sarah Palin as his VP. Sarah is best known for being the Governor of Alaska (the State which is the 48th least populated and has the least population per kilometer, .48) for two years, one of which she took off. She's also been the mayor of a small town of 5,000 for five years before that and she won a beauty contest once. If you're not sure if Barack Obama has the experience to be President, why would you choose her as a running mate?

Here are some tidbits about Palin that turned me right off to her;

Sarah Palin doesn't know what the VP actually does.
She supports teaching Creationism in public schools.
She wants to overturn Roe V Wade.
She wants to ban gay marriages.

Of course, my resources are extremely limited as the Republicans choose a conservative who will fully support all conservative stances without actually having a record to run on.

Israel and Human Rights- Bulldozing Houses

noreply@blogger.com (Jonathan Cunningham) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:12:00 +0000

Some links:
Human Rights Watch in Israel/Palestine
B'Tselem (Israeli Human Rights Organization)
Wikipedia Summary
Israel Factbook
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

Israel is a country couched in controversy, and not without reason. Since 1947 when the UN displaced Palestinians in order to create what we now know as Israel, the violence between the Arab states and the Jewish settlers has escalated. It didn't start there, though, so let's back up to the earliest I can look up on Wikipedia; the Jebusites were settled in Jerusalem (capital of modern day Israel) until 1000 BCE when, according to Hebrew religious records (with some architectural evidence supporting the account) King David invaded and took the City (this is the beginning of Jewish tradition in the region).

300 or so years later, the Assyrians took it over, followed by the Babylonians. 50 years after the Babylonians gained control of Israel Cyrus the Great, a Persian king, allowed the Jews to return and rebuild their lost temple in Jerusalem. Alexander the Great then came along, and the area now referred to as Israel (then called Judah) fell under Greek, Roman then Byzantine dominion until in 638 when the Islamic Caliphate claimed it for their own (this was the start of Islamic control of the area, which did not change until 1947). Richard conquered Jerusalem (and Saladin then took it back), then the Ottomans took control until 1917 when the British took control and partitioned the area into two parts, Israel and Palestine. Well, the Arabs in the area didn't like that at all, so they picked a bit of a fight with Israel and, by most accounts, lost. The newly formed boundaries lasted until 1967 Egypt called for Arabs to "unite against Israel". Well, Israel didn't wait for them do to so, and struck first. After just six days the opposing forces were defeated and Israel ended up with, among other territories, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Sinai Peninsula.

So, that established what are called "the '67 Borders", which pretty much speaks for itself. In 1972, a group of Palestinian terrorists massacred a group of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, which was followed by a 1973 war (Syria and Egypt launched an attack against Israel on Yom Kippur, the Holiest Jewish Holiday), which lasted only 20 days before Israel emerged victorious. Up until this point, Israel has been, for the most part, blameless.

Now we come to the part where Israel loses the moral high ground. In the early 1980's, Israel begins to take certain measures to stop attacks by Palestinians that go beyond conventional counter-terrorism. The most notable example, as well as the most easily proven, is Israel's house demolition policy. There were mass detentions and deportations (and the legal system in Palestine still isn't the model of Just action) as well, but there are enough examples and enough damage is done by the demolition that I'll try to concentrate on that.

So here's the ideal scenario for Israel; a terrorist attacks either the IDF or (worse) an Israeli civilian. They find the person's house and destroy it, leaving any family members, friends or other relatives homeless. That might not get across the devastation caused so let me explain; the Palestinian people are generally poor. They can't really all afford a home to themselves, so they often share with 4-5 (at least) other occupants. In the summer, Jerusalem can get above 100 (record high is 111.2 degrees) and in the winter it can get below freezing (record low is 19 degrees). So, you're a poor woman with no rights in the middle of the desert in the summer with three children and no husband (assuming he was a terrorist and the IDF doesn't have the wrong house, as it sometimes does, but even if it does Israel doesn't help get the family a new home), and you have no shelter. Assuming you live by finding someone kind enough to take you in, what do you think the rest of your life is going to be? And how about your children, how will they be fed?

You can imagine the hatred it can generate. Those children grew up, and in 1987 started what is known as "the First Intifada" (Arabic for "upheaval" or "shaking off"), a mass Palestinian uprising against Israel. This brought to light on the international level the injustices committed against the Palestinian people and caused many to criticize Israel's policies. Unfortunately, the uneducated Palestinians' violence against the IDF and ignorant racism against Israelis served to divert attention from the reprehensible actions of their enemies.

Well, the First Intifada ended with relatively little Israeli blood shed (160 deaths versus the 2,100 dead on the Palestinian side), but the message was received and Israel stopped bulldozing Palestinian houses. For a while. In 1994 Israel began once again sealing (and later destroying) homes belonging in part to criminals and terrorists. It's not surprising, then, that in 2000 the Palestinians began their Second Intifada.

Once again, as with the First Intifada, the Palestinian people resort to violence. They suicide bomb the IDF, they fire Qassam rockets at Jewish settlers (though this is a bit misleading; they aren't just shooting at civilians, they're shooting at settlers who have taken Palestinian home that were sealed and land that was bulldozed), and general strikes and protests. This lasted until 2006, when a treaty was signed that Hamas (the elected government of the Palestinian people) generally abides by.

Now, take a look at these two studies and what they say; The cycle of violence and Palestinian public opinion in the Second Intifada. Basically, when the Palestinian people attack Israel, Israel responds by killing more Palestinians in the weeks following. When Israel kills Palestinians...no real response. The violence against Israel remains a steady anarchic, erratic mess. The Palestinian people don't get intimidated any more; they can't. They can't be deterred by violence any longer, every act of violence simply reinforces in their children the idea that all Israelis are evil, that Israel is the enemy. Not only are Israel's actions inhumane, they're keeping themselves in the senseless cycle of violence.