As the papers daily remind us, there is an ongoing Republican primary. Romney has slipped up a bit this week and some on the right are even imagining a deadlocked convention. But that seems unlikely to me. Though unloved, Mitt will duke it out and be the candidate. I think other, more popular Republicans – Christie, Daniels – stayed out of the race sensing an inevitable Obama victory. At this point, though, they may be thinking they should have gone for it. Obama looks vulnerable in this economy.

So naturally he’s been happy to see halfway decent job numbers for several months in a row. If that kind of thing continues, he will be tough to unseat. There has just been a small uptick in Obama’s approval ratings, to 46%, which may or may not be a historically significant level.

Meanwhile, the banks have just signed what looks to me like a speeding fine with a bit of community service. For their warehouses full of fraudulent documents, robo-signed by the thousands at ten dollars an hour, the five big boys mentioned will give up a total of about $5 billion in cash. The rest will be in principal writedowns that will cost not the banks, but the big money they got to invest in mortgage backed securities, namely the mutual funds, pensions and IRAs, i.e., us. To top it off, it would seem that those who have been diligent in paying their bills and lucky enough to keep their jobs will get nothing from this deal, while those who have been wrongly foreclosed on will get about one month’s rent. Will America buy Obama’s story on this? What will the Republican line be?

Does anyone think it’s a bad idea that “someone” is assassinating civilian nuclear scientists in Iran? (The Junta knows one person who thinks it’s a very good idea, indeed). I have to agree with Glenn Greenwald that these are clearly acts of terrorism, so we can get into that if you want. (And check out this very interesting angle on both Rudy Giuliani’s and Howard Dean’s active material support for “terrorism”.) I don’t like the increasing media drumbeat I’m seeing about how Iran is a mortal threat. Syria is also a potential target for those with the war itch, as al-Assad is gunning people down. Clearly it’d be better if he left, but that doesn’t mean clandestinely supplying arms through Turkey is a good idea.

All of these things and more will be part of the discussion, and the wine will flow. Meet us in the back room.

• Andrew Moon Bain
• Andrew Graham
• Devin Powers
• Emet Sosna

The Junta starts the party early. Before the masses show up for the gallery affair, we have the opportunity to discuss the works on display with the artists who created them. The open bar starts at 7pm with the discussion, and the full party and gallery opening begins at eight. Drinks are on the house, but if you are so compelled, donations to support the arts (and the booze) are welcome. No obligation.

Venue: Culturefix, 9 Clinton St, LES, Manhattan
Date: Friday the 13th of January, 2012
Time: 7pm sharp

That was the thing about Hitchens, he took no prisoners. He had this total clarity of his beliefs, but unlike many dogmatists he truly had a deep reserve of knowledge about the things he felt strongly about, and even more importantly he wasn’t afraid to revise his views as he grew. He did this most famously after 9/11, when he broke from the Nation and the Left generally and supported the war on Iraq and other aspects of the Neo-con agenda. Regardless of how you feel about that break, and how it looks over time, you have to admire his chutzpah.

But to my earlier point, to hear Hitchens speak was stunning, he was so utterly confident, had so much knowledge at his disposal, had such confidence without the blemish of hubris, that he was always the smartest person around, always the best debater, and would always take on all comers.

He died, of course, last week, and I can’t help but feeling it is really a true loss. This was one of our greatest intellectuals, fierce, passionate and searching. More than the death of anyone I can imagine I feel this loss as something that is really profound because of the rich writing, debates and ideas we are deprived of had he lived longer.

And just a few days later another one of my heroes, Vaclav Havel, passed on. Havel had been sick for many years, on and off, and reports of his demise were common. He was a former chain-smoker, imprisoned many times under harsh conditions, and he lived a wild, Bohemian life, none of which is associated with longevity. At 75, he had a pretty good run and the man certainly achieved a lot.

Havel personified a small nation’s struggle against a faceless, souless form of tyranny. Even after he was thrown in jail repeatedly, denied his occupation, and forced to do menial labor, he refused the authority’s efforts to force him into exile, even though he was celebrated in the west and would have lived well. He saw things through, continued to put himself out there and on the line, forming Charter 77 in the late 70s, a landmark human rights campaign that preyed on the consciousness of the Communists and certainly helped bring about their demise. When the events of 1989 unfolded “Havel na Hrad” (Havel in the Castle) was the battle cry. And soon there he was, the philosopher/playwright and reluctant politician. The Rolling Stones and Frank Zappa were admirers and stopped by to see him. He reportedly rode a scooter through the castle’s corridors. He helped a tiny country, which had just split in half (after Czechoslovakia became the Czech Republic and Slovakia), manage incredible transitions in a peaceful manner. And he enabled that tiny country to punch above its weight because of his moral authority, addressing the US Congress and winning the Presidential Freedom Award, just a few of the countless awards and accolades he earned and which brought a spotlight to the Czech Republic and broadly to the Eastern European countries transitioning from Communism. He helped stimulate the imaginations of many young people who saw a beautiful, newly liberated country and wanted to try something new, just like the Czechs were doing.

I was one of them. I arrived there in the spring of 1998 with a backpack and a guitar and started reading Havel. His idea of speaking truth to power, of “living in truth”, was one of the things that lingers with me the most. To this day it reminds me that not denying our nature, being honest with ourselves and others, being a good person, are essential characteristics to leading a decent life. Reading Havel and following the arc of his life helped me be a better person.

I also had the chance to meet him on a few occasions through the work I was doing at the time. He was shy and didn’t speak English well, and he didn’t seem comfortable in the limelight. I interacted with him and his office on numerous occasions when he had something to say to the world about injustice or human rights and it was an honor and a privilege.

But by the time I had arrived the Czechs had soured a bit on Havel. A rather crabby and envious people, they seemed to hold him responsible for the country not realizing after the Velvet Revolution the utopian vision that was crushed by the Soviets during Prague Spring in 1968. They were displeased that he married a b-movie starlet a year after the death of his beloved wife Olga. I remember reading Havel saying the Czechs were in a “bad mood” in the late ’90s. They almost always are, and I still feel that they didn’t quite appreciate how special he was for a country like theirs.

And then there is the death of Kim Jong Il. The death of a tyrant coming right after these almost incredible men…. I’m reluctant to lump it together yet feel like it warrants inclusion. Kim Jong Il was a man who received everything in life solely because of who his father was and because of the despotic, hereditary system he set up. He was famous for his cruelty and his tastes for luxuries, even as millions starved in his country. It’s probably wrong to look for meaning in the timing of these deaths, yet I wind up always doing that kind of thing because I have this conviction that things are linked in ways we can’t know. Perhaps the link is that if you have these brave men, who fought passionately for their beliefs and the dispossessed, you have the other side that needs fighting against.

I’ve posted a few times about that relationship, and argued many times with Rindy–on the blog, by email, over drinks, we may have even text-argued about it, mainly about the use of drones. I’m pretty unsympathetic when it comes to the Pakistani point of view. There’s no doubt that it stems in part because of a conviction that the Pakistani security forces bear some responsibility for the horrible murder of Daniel Pearl, a killing I felt very closely.

But mainly I just find it exasperating that we are paying billions of dollars in aid to a country that takes our money and helps our enemies, all of which has led directly to loss of American lives.

On the day that the US officially declares its war over in Iraq, we are also moving towards ending our war in Afghanistan. I fully support this–sick of propping Karzai’s bizarre and corrupt government, spending billions that is much needed at home and, most of all, still losing American lives in that barren graveyard of a country.

But this essay did what good journalism can do at times: educate and demonstrate a different point of view. There is much to be gleaned from Keller’s piece about the Pakistani point of view, some of which was new to me (the details on how effective the Pakistani military has been in Swat and the loss of life it suffers when it battles the Haqqani clan, for instance) and some of which wasn’t (its all-consuming obsession with India and how that drives its policy).

It may have gotten me thinking a bit more broadly about Pakistan and how it views its relationship with the US, but I still support what former CIA official Bruce Riedel wrote in this op-ed about the US pursuing more of a “containment” policy when dealing with Pakistan. And I definitely support both opening the textile trade in the US while drawing down on the amount of direct financial aid we are giving to essentially a military run country that enables the people that kill US soldiers and undermines our policy.

In the interest of bringing discussions like this out of email and into the public, let me expand upon my argument and respond to some of Jeremy’s points. For brevity’s sake, I’ll keep it to two points.

Obama continues torture

“I’m under the impression that we have stopped waterboarding and most forms of enhanced interrogation.”

Jeremy’s impression is technically correct; President Obama signed an order on his first day in office to ban waterboarding and other techniques. But forces in the field can still employ prolonged isolation, sleep and sensory deprivation, and force-feeding, techniques which have been cited as cruel and unusual. Moreover, the rendition program, in which we transfer prisoners to other countries (like Libya) to be tortured, continues uninterrupted. Most troubling is a report that the CIA has a complex in Somalia, where it directly pays guards’ salaries, and to which it brings prisoners from all over the world, god help them.

Beyond the policies themselves, the fact that Obama gave a pass to the enablers and architects of the torture program means that those choices remain open to future administrations. Because he refused to prosecute them as crimes, they have now become policy positions, on which respectable people can disagree. You have a Republican field saying they would bring back waterboarding, but if Obama were honest about how hard and dirty he’s fighting the terrorists he’d win every red vote in the country. Which brings us to our next point.

Drone bombing continues

“I support the drones, mainly because I don’t want US troops on the ground.”

This presumes that we need to attack or invade any country in which a so-called “terrorist” is found. And it blindly ignores the fact that so many civilians, even children, are killed by these sky robots of death. It is a heartless and backward policy, which is bound to result in deadly blowback for America.

“You never come up with anything as an alternative to drone strikes, you only reply with the same tired bumper-sticker ideology of ‘killing a terrorist creates more’. How will you feel when [someone] succeeds in blowing up a truck bomb in Times Square?

Sadly, something terrible like this is very likely to occur as a result of these strikes. The failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, very nearly pulled off the trick, and cited American drone attacks in Pakistan as one of his motivations. The drones “don’t see children, they don’t see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody,” he said in court.

At a meeting last month, Pashtun tribal elders described the sounds of drones hovering over their villages during the day, and launching Hellfire missiles at night. A teenager who volunteered to gather evidence of civilian deaths was killed by a drone one week later. My “alternative” to drone strikes is the absence of drone strikes. I do not believe in a military solution to the problem of terrorism; I would point out that ten years of war in Afghanistan did not prevent Faisal Shahzad from acting, but 3 years of drone strikes compelled him to act.

These are some of the foreign policy failures of Barack Obama, a president who ran on a platform of restoring America’s reputation in the Muslim world. As Jeremy said, Obama’s election bought us much goodwill in the Middle East. But that has all been squandered by his policy decisions. The evidence shows a clear and steady decline. I would argue that these trends will eventually lead to more, not less, terrorist attacks against the US.

I’ve noted a few of these places before and their similarities. To me the baseball steriod scandals and the failure of banking regulators to adequately police risk prior to the financial crisis are analogous. There was bad behavior on both sides but it’s more the failure of the groups that were set up to regulate those industries and administrations that are there to safeguard their integrity. Call me a cynic, but I just don’t think we can depend on people to do the right thing. We have to adequately police them.

So while it may seem distasteful to read about Lauder’s various tax-dodges, they are all legal and I could easily see him justifying them with his philanthropic activity.

I’m about a third of the way through Treasure Islands, a book about tax havens. It’s truly disgusting the way the rich and corporations have been able to set up myriad ways for them to avoid paying their fair share. This to me cuts right to the heart of the matter.

I’d really like to see some of the OWS outrage get focused on the issue of taxes. Focus first on reforming the US tax code, and then start to move more aggressively against the global system of tax shelters and the countries that provide them.

But with Washington seemingly at a standstill, unable to do anything productive for the country, is there anyone that thinks our politicians are up to the task of taking on the extremely wealthy special interests that benefit greatly from this system?

60 Minutes, most definitely one of my favorite things on television, did something the previous week on Jack Abramhoff and lobbying that also almost turned my stomach. I feel like our system has been almost fatally corrupted. I also support the idea raised in that segment that if you’re an elected official or work for one then you have to then agree to not work as a lobbyist, at least for a set number of years. Abranhoff was able to buy the influence of key staffers by offers of employment when they leave Congress, and those are very lucrative positions.