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This is the End
By Ari Berman
Dear Readers,
I have some good news and bad news. In keeping with the spirit of this column, I'll give the bad news first. The Daily Outrage is retiring today. I would like to thank Matt Bivens for starting it; Katrina vanden Heuvel for recruiting me; Peter Rothberg for his daily edits; and three ace researchers, Sam Graham-Felsen, Liliana Segura and George Zornick.
Now the good news: I'm relocating to Washington to take on more substantial projects for The Nation as a contributing writer. I'll be writing frequent web dispatches and longer pieces for the magazine--a great opportunity I couldn't pass up. The Nation's web site will continue to grow, with high-profile guests and Nation writers blogging.
(40) CommentsAugust 26, 2005
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Five Ideas That Matter
By Ari Berman
Readers have often written over the past year and asked, what are the alternatives to the outrages chronicled in this column? What would you do differently? So I'm taking up my friend Laura Rozen's suggestion and contributing five innovative policy ideas--not my own--that I believe could immediately benefit this country and the world. Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments section below.
** End the War: No issue is more important right now than an end to the war in Iraq. Russ Feingold and Chuck Hagel punctured the pro-war establishment in Washington last week. Leading defense experts are now boldly advocating withdrawal. The political leadership in both parties must now speak up, and the mainstream media must pay attention. For those who believe that war critics lack an alternative approach, read Tom Hayden's "An Activist Guide to the Exit Strategy." "The real defeatists today are not those protesting the war," former Senator Gary Hart writes. "The real defeatists are those in power and their silent supporters in the opposition party who are reduced to repeating 'Stay the course' even when the course, whatever it is now, is light years away from the one originally undertaken." This week Dr. Raja Kuzai, a secular Shiite member of the Iraqi Assembly who once met with President Bush, declared, "I am not going to stay here." If she's leaving, so should we.
** Eliminate Poverty: The developed world could end poverty in the developing world if it wanted to. And it would cost only $150 billion per year, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs. The notion that the resources don't exist, Sachs says, "is the greatest hoax of our time." The $2 billion the US gives to Africa every year is equivalent to what the Pentagon spends in 36 hours. Bush's much-hyped Millennium Challenge Account, his signature foreign aid initiative, has spent only $400,000 of the $2.5 billion allocated by Congress two years ago. In coordination with comprehensive debt relief, real investment in basic services--agriculture, health, education, power and sanitation--could alleviate extreme poverty in one generation. And nothing would improve the worldwide image of the US more.
(109) CommentsAugust 25, 2005
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Still Dying in Darfur
By Ari Berman
Here's a sad little secret: Every time I write about Darfur in this space, traffic drops by at least a third. So here goes nothing.
A few months ago I asked a veteran news producer why television had devoted so little attention to such a significant humanitarian crisis. The producer cited budget constraints and added, "Plus, the villages aren't burning anymore." When they were burning, as Nick Kristof has so poignantly documented, the media hardly cared. NBC spent 5 minutes on Darfur coverage last year; CBS devoted 3 minutes. This June, the major network and 24/7 cable news stations aired 126 segments on Sudan, compared to 8,303 segments on the runaway bride, Michael Jackson and Tom Cruise.
The world says "never again" to genocide and then it happens again. Ethnic cleansing by the government-backed Janjaweed militia has killed nearly 180,000 native Darfurians, mostly black Africans populating an arid region the size of France. Almost two million people have been displaced from their homes (not counting four million more displaced by the 21-year, North-South civil war).
(59) CommentsAugust 24, 2005
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Memo to Democrats
By Ari Berman
"Split" seems to be the new buzzword in Democratic Party circles.
"A split over the war, the wimp thing, and how to win," read a Philadelphia Inquirer headline on Sunday. "Democrats Split Over Position on Iraq War," followed the Washington Post yesterday. "Democrats are Split on Questioning Roberts," the New York Times wrote the same day.
Since we wrote about the "split" over Roberts last week, let's turn to Iraq. The mainstream media are playing the story as a stereotypical conflict between the Democrats' liberal base and centrist establishment. That's partially true. But what the Iraq debate really exposes is an insulated, timid, unaccountable DC elite ("The Strategic Class") that is unable to spot its mistakes and correct them. "The difficulty of coming to a unified position is that for a lot of people who voted for it, they have to decide whether they can admit that they were misled," says party strategist Steve Elmendorf, a former chief of staff to Rep. Dick Gephardt.
(170) CommentsAugust 23, 2005
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They Shall Be Released
By Ari Berman
There's a new batch of photos from Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, and these are reportedly far worse than the sickening originals. Naturally, the Pentagon is trying to block their release.
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in October 2003 to make public 87 photographs and four videos depicting prisoner abuse in Iraq. The Pentagon originally argued that releasing the images would violate the Geneva Convention rights of the detainees; a supreme irony considering that the US originally denied these very prisoners Geneva Convention protections. The ACLU agreed that the Pentagon could black out "identifying characteristics," but a federal judge in New York ruled last week that DoD must explain publicly why it's concealing the images. "By and large, I ruled for public disclosure," said US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein. A final ruling is expected on August 30.
In court proceedings, General Richard Myers argued that releasing the pictures and videos would give aid to the enemy: boosting Al Qaeda recruitment, destabilizing governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and inciting riots throughout the Muslim world. But a number of high-ranking officers and civil libertarians countered by noting that much of what Myers predicts is already occurring on the ground, fueled in large measure by past and present US behavior. "The attacks will continue regardless of whether the photos and tapes are released," testified former US Army Colonel Michael Pheneger. Myers, he said, "mistakes propaganda for motivation."
(80) CommentsAugust 22, 2005
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Outrageous Outtakes
By Ari Berman
** As a majority of Americans increasingly turn against the Iraq war, hawks in both parties still refuse to change their warped pro-war tune. Over the weekend both John McCain and Joe Biden once again called for more troops on the ground. Where the additional forces will come from, the hawks can't reliably say. But without hesitation they continue to dismiss reasonable calls for withdrawal. "The day that I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmed car down the highway to the green zone is the day that I'll start considering withdrawals from Iraq," McCain told Fox News. The longer the US stays, the less likely it is that that day will come.
** Don Young, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, wants to become chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. So he gave $1.8 billion in special projects to 19 members of the House Steering Committee, which decides the chairmanship next month. As part of the $286 billion transportation bill Congress passed recently--the most expensive public works legislation ever--Young doled out $499 million in pork projects to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, and $867 million to three influential congressmen from Southern California. (Rank-and-file members received $12.8 million on average.) But Young saved the best for himself, allocating $1 billion for his home state of Alaska, a fourth of which will go toward a massive bridge connecting a town of 8,000 with an island of 50. Another $230 million will build a bridge in Anchorage, aptly titled "Don Young's Way."
** Amid the orgy of swine-barrel politics, lobbyists on K Street continue to drown in record profits. Number one lobbying firm Patton Boggs saw a $2 million increase in revenue over the past six months, while all-Republican firms flourished across the board. Barbour, Griffith & Rogers, started by Mississippi's Republican Governor Haley Barbour, grew by 21 percent, with $9 million in revenues. "More companies are recognizing a political and government risk to doing business," says Federalist Group lobbyist Drew Maloney, a former legislative director for Tom DeLay. Only Greenberg Traurig, the recent home of indicted uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, saw a drop in business.
(47) CommentsAugust 19, 2005
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The Accommodation Party
By Ari Berman
John Roberts is hardly a swing justice in the mold of his predecessor, Sandra Day O'Connor. Just ask his pro-confirmation PR firm, Creative Response Concepts (CRC), who last year promoted the mendacious Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign.
On Tuesday the National Archives released a trove of documents from Roberts' tenure as associate White House counsel under Ronald Reagan. "The documents released today show that as a White House lawyer John Roberts was a forceful proponent of Reagan administration policies on abortion, school prayer, criminal justice and other hotly contested issues," said a CRC statement. "Those who try to paint Judge Roberts as a squishy moderate will not find any supporting evidence in these documents."
During the Reagan years Roberts endorsed a memorial service for aborted fetuses, mocked the "so-called 'right to privacy,'" balked at equal pay for women and blurred the line between church and state. As a corporate lawyer Roberts routinely defended the worst of big business and undermined common sense regulation. Recently, sitting on the DC Court of Appeals, Roberts issued rulings reinstating the Bush Administration's military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay and ordering a 12-year-old girl to jail for eating a single french fry on the DC metro.
(85) CommentsAugust 17, 2005
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Honor Thy Neighbor
By Ari Berman
As the Bush Administration deflates its expectations in Iraq, Iran is raising them.
"US Lowers Sights on What Can Be Achieved in Iraq: Administration is Shedding 'Unreality' That Dominated Invasion, Official Says," read a Sunday Washington Post headline.
Physical Security? Thirty-eight US troops died between August 3 and August 10, the fourth-worst week of the invasion. August has been the worst month for the over-stretched Army National Guard and Reserves. Attacks on the new Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Four thousand civilians have died since the interim government assumed power April 28. Parents refuse to let their children play outside. "Do not expect us to defeat this insurgency," Bush Administration officials reportedly told National Review's Byron York.
(68) CommentsAugust 16, 2005
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A Democracy In Name Only
By Ari Berman
"The drama of the legislative process is never in the broad strokes," journalist Matt Taibbi writes, "but in the bloody skirmishes and power plays that happen behind the scenes." That is where the Republican leadership, bolstered by an army of lobbyists, sinks its teeth into the arm of democracy.
Taibbi exposes the spectacular corruption of the current Republican Congress in a shocking, maddening and revelatory report in this month's Rolling Stone magazine. Luckily, Taibbi has an expert tour guide: maverick Independent congressman and soon-to-be-Senator Bernie Sanders. Taibbi charts how over one month Sanders introduces four amendments, all of which pass floor votes by comfortable margins. None of them become law. "How Tom DeLay and his cronies subvert the popular will," could have been story's subhead.
Sanders' first two amendments target a controversial provision in the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to search libraries and bookstores without a warrant. The first amendment permanently outlaws such searches; the second denies the Justice Department the funds to conduct them. Sanders wins a vote on the latter by a margin of 238-187.
(59) CommentsAugust 15, 2005
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The Insurgents' Bellwether
By Ari Berman
"The city has been seized," Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told the Washington Post on November 15, 2004. "We have liberated the city of Fallujah."
Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi called the US siege "a clear-cut victory over the insurgents and terrorists."
The first raid of Falluja undertaken by the US military, following the brutal killing of four private security contractors by insurgents in April, 2004, left 40 marines and hundreds of Iraqis dead. Insurgents quickly regrouped after the cease-fire, using the city as a launching point for escalating attacks. The November siege, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, killed 70 Americans and 1,000 insurgents.
(94) CommentsAugust 11, 2005
Ari Berman
The Daily Outrage aims to shine a spotlight on the forces that corrupt our democracy. The outrages come from all over these days: lobbyists stifling reformers in both parties, defense contractors profiting off pre-emptive war, the mainstream media echoing government deceptions, and a rightwing attack machine defending neo-imperialists and distorting progressive values. These stories rarely make the front-page, penetrate talk-radio, or appear on the evening news. So let The Daily Outrage guide you through the tangled web of media, money and politics at home and abroad. And click here to let us know of any outrages you think we should be covering.
Photo Credit: Michael Lorenzini
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