Post-Racial Indeed

Last night a recent Indian immigrant told me "You are a white man in a brown man's skin".

Eighteen Months

This weekend I was flown across the country for a final interview at a major environmental organization. The rallying call of the weekend was eighteen months. This is how long that environmental advocates believe they have to lobby the Obama administration for strong legislation on climate change.

Unsurprisingly given this framework much of the rhetoric of the day contained the well worn motif's of the campaign as battle. Its a narrative that a lot of the progressive organizations I've worked with have used for self-definition, and one that I think is well due for critique. It pictures politics as an all or nothing struggle between public and private interests who stand irreconcilably opposed. The progressive organization and the corporate entity vie in a battle of mobilization and resources for control of policy makers. Their agenda's are diametrically opposed, and any victory for one is a loss for the other. Staff and volunteers are described as "foot soldiers" and the campaign as a "war" or a "fight".

Many critiques of this narrative would point out that politics and interests don't operate on only one plane, but rather, that different groups have a matrix of intersecting and opposing interests. With this in mind politics shouldn't be viewed as a one dimensional battle, but rather as a cooperative process in which groups and representatives develop policy that maximizes overlapping matrices of interest. Some have argued that it is exactly this kind of paradigm shift in the way we conceive of the task of governing that Obama described and which resonated with so many people.

Yet if you genuinely believe, and I will admit I'm inclined to, that you have eighteen months to enact legislation before irrevocable and untold damage is done to the entire planet, how do you avoid the battlefield narrative? Is it even a good, in the normative sense, to do so? So many people view the issue of climate change as just another pet project of the left, but the existential nature of the threat demands a different moral weight be considered for it.

In fact there's a strong case for saying that the entire modern narrative of single issue politics on the left grew out of the similarly existential threat of nuclear weapons embodied in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) who's logo is now widely known as the "peace" sign.

So how do we reconcile a view of collaborative politics with the existential threat of some policies? Or do the implications of some policies justify the "battle" narrative, and the problem is only that it is overused and applied to every issue? Honestly its an issue I'm still working through, and one that I think is critical to how the progressive movement understands itself.

Dude where's my extradition?

One of the other bloggers over at Heartless and Brainless alerted me to this story about three BC residents facing extradition and possible life imprisonment to the United States.

I'll quote out the relevant passages...

Marc Emery, Michelle Rainey, and Greg Williams are Canadian citizens who were heavily involved in Canadian and American anti-prohibition activism for over ten years, though they remained in Canada at all times. The US Justice Department wants to have the BC3 extradited to the USA to be charged with conspiracy to produce marijuana, conspiracy to traffic marijuana, and conspiracy to launder the proceeds of crime. However, "Marc Emery Direct Seeds" was a marijuana seed business; the BC3 never sold any marijuana...

Marc Emery sold marijuana seeds in a store in downtown Vancouver BC and through the mail for over ten years. Numerous other seed selling businesses do the very same every day. Marc had no business outlets in the USA, and never went to the USA to conduct seed transactions. Everything was done openly and transparently; Marc is a media magnet and explained how he did it all. He spent the proceeds from all sales on ending the drug war: he financed numerous ballot initiatives, election campaigns, court challenges, medical user legal fees, conferences, events, and more in Canada, the USA, and all over the world.

On face value I think Marc Emery's arguments seem solid. If what he did, sold marijuana seeds like many head shops here in Chicago do, is and was illegal than there are many more implicated parties. The city of Vancouver, which allowed him to operate his storefront for many years, the Canadian revenue service which not only approved the formation of his business, with full disclosure of storefront and online seed sales, but collected taxes upon that business for years. Every political candidate or party that received funding from Marc, or attended one of his conferences, or used his media to disseminate their name and platform would have knowingly been accepting funds from illegal activity. As the head of the Marijuana Reform Party of BC, Marc was a public figure, and a relatively high profile one in the Vancouver community, it would be ridiculous to argue ignorance on their part.

The entire debacle serves as a clear example of the tangled mess that is Canadian and American drug laws. Noone is quite sure if what Emery did was illegal, and Canadian authorities definitely didn't think so until the DEA alerted them to their concern. In the end neither country is willing, nor has the capability to lock up the supposed millions of casual users, so intead we're left with an arbitrary and seemingly random enforcement of a convoluted law.

On top of this enforcement of Marijuana laws is always a safe fall back tactic for the "hard on crime" wing of the conservatives. Its a lot easier and cheaper to lock up a few hundred kids on mandatory minimums than it is to really combat violent crime, and voila instant conservative credibility.

Seeing as the incident was started under Martin's parliament and continued under Harper's, it'll be interesting to see what happens to Marc if the government falls and we get a new justice minister.

And another American family is destroyed

I try to incorporate a diverse set of opinions into my Blogroll. I figure, what's the point in constantly reading analysis that instead of challenging me merely restates what I already believe to be true. I think its important for us all to look at and understand not just the individual arguments across any particular policy or issue, but the narratives and worldviews that people on all sides are rooted in. Having spent four years in a University Debating Union, with people who like to entrench themselves in a position and defend it to the death for fun, I've exhausted my romance with the oppositional style of decision making and, though I know this sounds cliche, feel that the only way we can make real progress is by listening and understanding.

So when I came across this post on Ladyblog, enumerating the detrimental societal effects of Single Sex Marriage on heterosexual couples, I controlled my initial anger, my desire to launch into a point by point dissection of her post, and tried to think of what lay under this line of argument. Helen Rittlemeyer say this (bold my own).

I can’t revolutionize the debate over gay marriage in one post (only Eve Tushnet can do that), but there’s one thing I wish supporters of same-sex marriage understood better: You can change the institution of marriage without changing its definition. In other words: There are things that logically follow from the extension of marriage to gay couples, things that follow from the plain and literal fact that both parties are the same gender. There are also changes that gay marriage is likely to bring about, things that follow from the integration of gay culture into the institution. To focus merely on the former effects is equivalent to reading a poem exclusively for its literal meaning.

I suspect that I will sound less crazy if I preface further explanation with this analogy to welfare reform. (That sentence did not sound helpful, but trust that it is.) In a perfect world, charity would be handled by private institutions; liberals point out that some people fall through the cracks in such a system, so we might as well supplement private assistance with public aid. The next step in the debate is the important one: Liberals, thinking literally, say that there’s no reason why government welfare can’t exist alongside private charity; conservatives understand that, when organic institutions stop being a necessary source of public services, they wither. Public welfare does not forbid private aid, but it does prevent it.

In much the same way, the integration of gay couples into "marriage" does not forbid strong and healthy heterosexual unions; that doesn’t mean it won’t affect them...

To opponents of Single Sex Marriage like Helen the issue is not an abstract about the rights of other people, people I suspect she has relatively little personal contact with. To Helen, this is an extremely personal issue. Motivated by fear yes, but not the kind of ultra-bigoted fear of the other, demonizing the LGBT community as a slobbering mob preying upon our children that Lewis Black so aptly parodied. No, while Helen may have some very misguided views of "the Gay community" as she puts it, and may stereotype LGBT relationships, I don't think she's really worried about the "Gay Banditos".

Instead Ms. Rittlemeyer is worried about what this would mean for her own marriage. For that of her friends and of her children. What does it say about her if I would be allowed to marry another man? And while this is a fear I don't share, I think its a fear that we all can understand. Love, marriage, being part of a couple or a family are not only difficult endeavors but terrifying things. Even more so in this day and age, when we can look at the statistical evidence and see how pathetic our chances of success are. Every person who decides to get marriage has to do so with the knowledge somewhere in their mind that it is dramatically more likely to end in pain and tears and bitterness than happiness. And if that's the case now, what does that say about our parents marriages and the ages past when divorce was not so equally attained. Does it threaten our image of a better past? Does it challenge the myth of happiness and love that we all grew up with? Does it bear its head and say that in all the history of the world people have always been unhappy and relationships have always been dysfunctional and we have always in the end been alone, clinging to a broken institution.

But if you don't want to face these implications then you have to construct a narrative in which relationships in the modern age are significantly different from those of a past one. You have to be willing to believe that had divorce been as easily attainable in the 18th century as it became in the later half of the 20th that those couples wouldn't have broken up. And that's why we get all this rhetoric about the decline of society in the past fifty years.

Of course Helen Rittlemeyer also seems to believe that we should shame unhappy heterosexual couples into marriage instead of allowing them to separate.

Will gay marriage reinforce the modern fiction that gender doesn’t matter? Will it inhibit society’s ability to shame breeder couples into growing up and tying the knot instead of persisting in ad hoc, temporary, and conditional cohabitation?

The implication from this seems to be that unhappy, potentially abusive or adulterous marriage is better than separation, a belief that I don't think all people on her side of the SSM debate hold.

Still I think the overriding narrative is one in which opponents of Single Sex Marriage, who usually happen to also oppose abortion rights and lament the ease of divorce, are more afraid of what it does to their past relationships than what it could do to their future ones.

The Glorious Soviet System of Corrective Labour!

It seems that the Russian government has allowed a number of reporters a supervised two day visit to a "model" prison about 500 Kilometers north of Moscow. Both the New York Times and International Herald Tribune have put up articles making the obligatory references to the writings of Solzhenitsyn. I'm shocked by how willing these journalists seem to be to take what they see in this prison colony at face value.

Under the Soviet Union foreign and domestic visitors alike were only ever allowed access to special "model" prisons, whose conditions differed dramatically from the rest of the GULAG system. Even in these facilities visitor's access was sharply controlled, and administrators were careful to ensure that the prisoners who were seen were vetted to protect the illusion. GULAG literature is rife with examples of this sort, I will quote one from the Memoir of Alexander Topolski...

The living conditions in the colony were marked by erratic ups and downs. The only explanation I can offer is that this labour colony was perhaps a showpiece, a pearl of the Soviet Correctional Labour system and therefore recieved many important visitors. Before every visit by a high ranking party official, food would become better and plentiful, and such luxuries as cookies, fruit, candy and cigarettes would appear in the prison store. Most of the time, though we lived on thin cabbage soup, a few spoonfuls of kasha, sweetish ersatz tea and 650 grams of dark bread per day.

Other supplies also came and went. Suddenly, for example, soap would appear and new clothing would be issued - at least for some inmates. But all that would disappear even faster as soon as the visitors were gone.

It seems to me that with hindsight commentators often forget how incredibly effective these very simple propoganda tools were. Through the twenties and even into the mid thirties the "enlightened" system of prison reform in the Soviet Union was hailed as an amazing success by the western intelligentsia and their media. Thousands of Romanians and others attempted to illegally emmigrate to the Soviet Union, believing the tales of a workers paradise just across the border.

And now it seems that Putin's (pardon me Medvedev's) Russia is using the same propoganda techniques to the same effect. From the IHT story...

The visit to Pankovka, 300 miles from Moscow near the historic town of Veliki Novgorod, by a reporter and photographer from The New York Times/International Herald Tribune required layers of permission, including from Yuri Kalinin, chief of the federal corrections service, and the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB.

Many of the prison administrators, including Vladimir Karagodan, the administrator of Prison Colony Number 7, have held their positions since the mid 80s and initially rose within the GULAG administration.

Furthermore human rights activists like Lev Ponomarev have already documented this phenomenon...

A “Potemkin village” policy is in practice, allowing visitors to the prisons to view several “model” penal colonies. Access to “torture colonies” (also known as press-zones, described in greater detail below) by human rights advocates and even Justice Ministry employees is completely cut off. In order for ombudsmen to visit detention centers without special permission, it would be necessary to amend Article 24 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (UIK-RF). The right to prison visitation will not be acknowledged until Article 24 is amended.

But what is perhaps even more disturbing is the growing relationship between the FCS and the FSB. Since Putin's appointment of Yuri Kalinin to head the prison system in 1992 it has become increasingly unnaccountable to the civil government and like the FSB an extension of Putin's personal power. Ponomarev continues...

Materials obtained by human rights advocates indicate that in recent years a fundamental change has occurred in the Federal Service for the Enforcement of Punishment of the Russian Federation (FSIN RF, formerly GUIN), which, since 1992 has been headed by General Yuri Kalinin. The FSIN system has slipped away from public and even law enforcement control almost entirely and increasingly bears the hallmarks of a repressive camp system of the totalitarian type. Consequently, considering the high level of lawlessness and violence inherent in Russia’s penal system, it is frequently compared to the Soviet-era GULAG.

And the Associated Press certainly cannot claim ignorance of these claims. Earlier this year Ponomarev toured the U.S. giving interviews to among others, the Boston Globe, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, where he explicitly discussed this phenomenon.

Next comes what Ponomarev called "the torture camps": a re-emerging gulag of some 50 prison colonies, closed to the outside world, where prisoners are subjected to systematic violence and abuse. Ponomarev's group has documented these practices in photographs and videos smuggled out of the camps, many of which are controlled by the same officials or clans that managed them in the Soviet era.

That the NYT and IHT could display photographs taken while they were ushered around a propoganda piece by FSB agents on the front page of their website without so much as a comment about this is dangerously naieve. But the reporters who visited the prison seem to have been completely taken in by the ruse, writing

To many, images of Russian prisons have been formed by literature, from Dostoyevsky and Chekhov to Solzhenitsyn's devastating portrait of the gulag. Prison Colony No. 7, a high-security jail 500 kilometers northwest of Moscow, stands in stark contrast.

Presumably western journalistic standards hold that you ought to make an attempt at presenting a balanced report of your subject. If Russia wants to try to make a show of its model prisons the New York Times certainly has a right to take a look and write about what they see. But when they refuse to even mention the mountains of evidence that what they've seen is far from reality and merely tow the party line, that is when journalism turns to a tool for propaganda.

As we usher in 2009 have we learned nothing from the mistakes of the 20th century?

"I was dismayed by my voting record"

The quote above is a particularly bad choice of words from this interview with Caroline Kennedy on NY1 last night. Kennedy was speaking to the fact that she's missed voting in a number of New York elections since registering in NYC in 1988, including Chuck Schumer's 1994 reelection bid. But what does that mean that she was "dismayed" by her own record? Did it surprise her to find that she had not been to the polling place? This is the kind of language that makes me more and more certain that Kennedy is completely out of touch with both New York and the American people.

It seems like Kennedy's goal with this interview was to take the focus off of her name and her family and make it more about her personally. Unfortunately with her education "credentials" fraying there's not much left to examine. She continually returns to her family, to defend her understanding of the commitment public office holds, to explain her rationale for seeking appointment and even to highlight her political contacts.

Dominic Carter: Now, I want to make something very clear to folks that are watching us right now, that I have found very interesting about this interview. There were no preconditions whatsoever. We were told we could ask you anything and that you would be here as long as we wanted you and that you would deal with every issue. So I think that folks should, they should know up front that you agreed to come on and not, without a single pre-existing condition. So to folks that say, and I wanna repeat to the theme, " Is Caroline Kennedy, one, is she really ready for this? Does she really understand what-- A woman that has been so private, does she really understand what this entails?" And again, I want you to give us some specifics that folks will say, they may say, " Hey, I love Caroline Kennedy, but she's not qualified for the Senate." To folks that may say that.

Caroline Kennedy: Well, first of all, I understand what this entails, because I've grown up in a family where, you know, three members have served in the United States Senate, including my uncle Teddy, who is, you know, still there working hard every single day and is hoping to really accomplish finally his lifetime goal of health care reform. So I do understand what is involved. And I wouldn't, and that, is too important to me to be not taking this seriously. So I understand exactly what's involved, and I would work as hard as necessary to deliver for the people of New York. But at a certain point, it isn't even about me, it's about who can best represent New York in Washington, and I feel like I do bring a lot to that. There are many other qualified candidates, so I'm not saying I'm the only choice, I'm just saying, I'm just telling you what I bring, and I think that's a lifetime of experience and commitment to public service. It's a deep respect for the constitution and knowledge of that. It's work for education for families. I'm a lawyer. And you know, I think I have relationships in Washington that I would like to put to work to benefit the people of New York. You know, I ran, helped run the vice-presidential search process for Barack Obama. I have a good working relationship with him. And you know, I saw, I know what, you know, people in Washington, and I want to be able to be part of the team that uses all my relationships as well as, you know, my hard work and my judgment to help this state.

Now what Kennedy is doing here is actually rather politically astute. She's attempting to phrase her qualifications in the same "Lifetime of Service" rhetoric that Obama did in the second half of his presidential campaign. The difference is Obama actually had a record as an organizer, lawyer and state legislator to point to, unconventional but not unprecedented if you think of people like Woodrow Wilson. Kennedy on the other hand gives us next to nothing.

Lastly we should consider Kennedy's comment that she would not run in 2010 if not selected and would support whoever the governor picks. Another potential political gaff. If Kennedy wanted to show that she really felt committed to serving the people of New York, and that she had something to offer them, she should definately put that decision to them by running in the primary. Instead she comes off as opportunistic , deigning only to vie for the seat if she only has to hobnob with the political elites of the state and can avoid all that nasty campaigning.

But beyond that Kennedy embodies a view of the appointment process that is characteristically less democratic than that of many in the blogosphere. She seems to be implying that whoever is appointed should recieve the unquestioning support of New York Democrats in 2010 and beyond. As someone who views the appointment as a placeholder until a real contest can be held, and who recognizes the incumbant advantage any appointee will have I find this view extremely disturbing.

Now more than ever I will be dismayed if Paterson selects Kennedy.

Clean Coal?

I've put a post up about the Tennessee coal spill disaster up at the blog I contribute too, Heartless and Brainless. I'm too lazy to cross-post it in full here, but the gist is that the anti-coal movement is doing everything it can to turn this into as much of a PR disaster for the TVA and ACCCE as it is a human and environmental tragedy. Considering the very little access to real information the media has about the spill and the important work of United Mountain Defense in covering it, the blogosphere has an obligation to get some of this information out.