Nation Topics - Disaster | The Nation

The article looks at the role of medical professionals in coercive interrogations conducted by the United States military. According to the author, various military psychologists and psychiatrists were on duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq and sat in on interrogations of detainees in Guantánamo Bay. It is suggested that aggressive interrogations are based on models that seek to employ extreme levels of stress in order to erode established patterns of behavior.

Discusses the issue of global climate change in light of the forthcoming Group of 8 (G-8) summit meeting in Scotland. View that humanity is drifting toward unparalleled catastrophe because climate change is on track to kill millions of people in the twenty-first century by increasing temperatures, causing sea-levels to rise, parching farmlands and crashing ecosystems; Suggestion that British Prime Minister Tony Blair's dream of an historic breakthrough on climate issues will come only if G-8 leaders are willing to defy the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and plot their own course.

Looks at the issue of torture in the United States. Author's views on the influence of the Patriot Act on Muslims in the U.S.; View that fear of torture restricts complaints against alleged human rights violations on the part of the United States government; View that the U.S. Defense Department strategically leaks information regarding its practice of torture.

The article argues that disaster relief masks a form of colonialism in which the United States moves its organizations into other countries in order to bring capitalism and change. On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate "post-conflict" plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict. Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction. The office's mandate is to create "democratic and market-oriented" states. Ever-larger portions of the globe are under active reconstruction: being rebuilt by a parallel government made up of for-profit consulting firms, engineering companies, mega-nongovernmental organizations, aid agencies and international financial institutions. There is a rise of a predatory form of disaster capitalism that uses the desperation and fear created by catastrophe to engage in radical social and economic engineering. And on this front, the reconstruction industry works so quickly and efficiently that the privatizations and land grabs are usually locked in before the local population knows what hit them.

The article reports on United States Congressional hearings on the use of steroid drugs by Major League Baseball players. The Congressional hearings on steroid use in baseball turned into an orgy of self-promotion as committee members told gushy stories about their love of the game. After eight hours of this, six subpoenaed multimillionaires delivered pointless testimony. Although slammed for stonewalling questions about his own drug use, baseball player Mark McGwire took a position in the tradition of noncooperating by refusing to implicate others for personal advantage. And player José Canseco, who wrote a book about big-leaguers' drug use, inherited the role of money-grubbing snitch.

The article focuses on changes needed within the United States Democratic Party. On November 2, 2004, half the voting public supported a President who would be sending their sons and daughters to die in an imperial quagmire, handing over their hard-earned Social Security contributions to his scandal-ridden Wall Street cronies, blocking access to cheaper prescription drugs and accelerating the catastrophe of global warming. Republicans have steadily consolidated their control of the electoral process. That said, Democrats must also gain ground on authenticity (character) and quality of life (culture). On culture, it is not "god, guns and gays" the Democrats should address but the quality-of-life issues that cross the right-left divide--excessive working hours, loss of community, commercialized childhood and rampant materialism. Eighty-five percent of Americans believe society's priorities are "out of whack," and they are not all in blue states. But to be authentic on these issues Democrats need to give up corporate money and remake themselves as the party of small donations.

Reviews three books about the AIDS epidemic. "The Secret Epidemic: The Story of AIDS and Black America," by Jacob Levenson; "The Invisible People: How the U.S. Has Slept Through the Global AIDS Pandemic, the Greatest Humanitarian Catastrophe of Our Time," By Greg Behrman; "The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice and Unfulfilled Expectations," by Lawrence O. Gostin.

The article describes the dire situation in Columbia, and the attempts of the United States to address the nation's longstanding problems. In May of 2004, Jan Egeland, the United Nations Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs, called a news conference in New York to declare publicly what he had been warning people about for some time: that the nation of Colombia had become "by far the biggest humanitarian catastrophe of the Western Hemisphere." Chronic and intractable warfare among paramilitaries, the army, cocaine traffickers and leftist guerrillas has so wreaked havoc on the countryside that, Egeland pointed out, 2 million of its 36 million inhabitants had become refugees. Colombia's problems are of long standing and are deeply tied into the country's tortured and violent history. They do not appear to be amenable to quick fixes--especially military ones. But over the past few years, while the world's attention has been transfixed by events in Iraq, the United States has become deeply involved in a military buildup in Colombia and is rapidly becoming more so.

The author explains what he learned about the Bush administration from Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack." Well, Bob Woodward has partially redeemed himself. His last book, "Bush at War," read like a superhero comic book mistranslated from its original Serbo-Croatian. Because Colin Powell and his aides evidently decided to tiptoe off the reservation in preparation for their long-overdue departure, the new book, "Plan of Attack," has texture.There are conflicts. Not everybody can be right about everything. And while the book does gloss over many of the Administration's most nefarious characteristics, the trust Woodward earned with his hagiographic first account put him in good stead to expand our understanding of how these people go about making their catastrophic decisions and then denying them. Here's what I learned: For foreign policy purposes, Dick Cheney is President. 2. That's too bad, because unfortunately Cheney is nuts. 3. Rumsfeld's Pentagon, led by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, caught Cheney's nutty fever too. 4. George W. Bush cannot be bothered to listen to the views of those with whom he disagrees, even (particularly?) people who clearly know a great deal more about the topic than he does and hold Cabinet responsibility for it. 5. Which is also too bad, because Bush lives in a dream world. 6. The United States Constitution is meaningless to these people. There's plenty more in Plan of Attack, like the Saudis playing with our elections and stuff, but those are the lowlights. Read it and weep.

The author comments on calls by U.S. Republicans that the 527 soft-money organizations that have appeared in the wake of the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law be banned. What should be done about 527s--those new organizations used primarily by Democrats (so far) to skirt the McCain-Feingold legislation passed in 2002? Republicans and Democrats have been tussling over this for months, with the GOPers ludicrously pretending to be the voice of reform and clean government. But what the fate of 527s should be is no easy question. First, some history. When Congress passed McCain-Feingold, advocates of true reform--as well as Democratic partisans--had reason to worry. With soft money zeroed out and hard-money limits raised, it wasn't too hard to foresee what McCain-Feingold would yield: Republicans raking in the hard money, and Democrats scrambling. Seeing the hard-money writing on the wall, Democratic activists in late 2002 began pulling together an assortment of groups unconnected to the party or any candidate. These 527 outfits (named after a provision in the tax code) could accept soft money and run the sort of ads previously produced by the Democratic Party--spots that would attack Bush and hail the attributes of the Democratic nominee without specifically recommending a vote for anyone. Naturally, Republicans complained. The GOP complaint was a move to score PR points and protect its financial advantage. The 527s are a problem, but not the only one in a system overrun and contaminated by big money. As much as members of Congress may hate to hear this, they need to get back to work on campaign finance reform.