Structural Racism Goes Global

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir, the sitting President of Sudan, who is accused of directing and authorizing the genocide in Darfur. Under the concept of "universal jurisdiction," the ICC asserts the right to arrest and imprison those who played a role in crimes against humanity. Al-Bashir responded by tossing out all aid groups:

NAIROBI, March 4 -- Reacting swiftly to the International Criminal Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the government of Sudan on Wednesday expelled at least 10 foreign aid groups that provide food, water, medical care and other assistance to more than a million displaced people in the western Darfur region, according to U.N. officials and aid workers.

The groups include Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, CARE International and others that collectively handle 60 percent of humanitarian assistance in Darfur, where the largest relief effort in the world has reversed a dangerous rise in the level of malnutrition and disease among people stranded in refugee camps. Some groups were given 24 hours to leave; others were told that the safety of their staffs could no longer be guaranteed.

"It's alarming," said a U.N. official in Khartoum, Sudan's capital, who was not authorized to speak publicly because of security concerns. "The humanitarian impact of this is massive."

This will only increase the pressure on the international community to put additional sanctions on the Sudan. Hopefully soon al-Bashir will find justice.

However, there is a data point coming out of this arrest warrant that is quite interesting.

Sudanese President Omar al Bashir is the 12th and highest profile suspect sought by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes — all of them Africans.

The seven-year-old court previously opened cases against a Sudanese official and a militia leader for crimes in the Darfur region, and against rebel leaders accused in long-running conflicts in Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic.

The world's only standing war crimes court, based at The Hague, has been criticized for pursuing only African suspects to this point. Rwandan President Paul Kagame — whose central African nation isn't a party to the court — has described it as a new form of Western imperialism.

Not to hold harmless the actions of any of the Africans that the ICC is seeking to arrest - the continent often succumbs to dictatorships who commit all manner of crimes against their own people. But in the domestic arena, this is called "structural racism." Suspects are sought in the same communities, and the arresting officers have the same biases. The result is not overtly racist, but self-fulfilling. It's not like there aren't horrific crimes in Europe, or Asia, or around the world. The ICC arrest warrant is good news for those who seek justice in Darfur, but they ought to take a critical look at themselves.

...I don't want to minimize the crimes of al-Bashir, by the way. Here's a chilling description from a Sudanese soldier about how he was taught to kill and rape. It's sickening.

Actually, She Was Terrible

The more that you delve into Sarah Palin's Thursday night performance in the debate, the worse it appears, because lots of her statements were outright lies. She stated that John McCain favors bankruptcy judges restructuring the principles homeowners allow on their mortgages - not so. She stated that public schools need additional funding and teachers need to be paid more - that's not the McCain position. She said that she favored divestment from Sudan while Governor of Alaska - sadly, no (apologies to Sadly, No).

"The [Palin] administration killed our bill," said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage. Gara and state Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, co-sponsored a resolution early this year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund  a $40 billion investment fund, a portion of whose dividends are distributed annually to state residents  to divest millions of dollars in holdings tied to the Sudanese government.

In Thursday's debate, Palin said she had advocated the state divest from Sudan. "When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars," Palin said.

But a search of news clips and transcripts from the time do not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska's investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin's administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.

"The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination," testified Brian Andrews, Palin's deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.

Not to mention the answer about how as Vice President she will seek additional authority from the legislative and judicial branches, which is honestly frightening. We already know that Palin is perfectly willing and able to abuse her authority - the machinations to shut down the Troopergate investigation are a perfect example. This is a dangerous person to put into power. The fact that the emergency appeal to the Alaska Supreme Court warns that "the plaintiffs and Alaskans will suffer irreparable harm" if the Branchflower report is released as scheduled on October 10, which is the exact language used in Bush v. Gore, gives you a clue.

All the more reason to work harder and make sure she comes nowhere near Washington.

T-Minus One for San Francisco's Torch Ceremony

San Francisco authorities are justifiably nervous about providing a platform for Chinese propaganda at tomorrow's Olympic torch relay. The number and variety of protests are great and go beyond protesting the situation in Tibet. The Falun Gong will call for religious freedom inside China. Human Rights Watch seeks to call attention to China's deplorable human rights record. The San Francisco Bay Area Darfur Coalition will be massing to call for China's end to its material support for genocide in the Sudan (you can hear Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's talking about this here). There are all sorts of reasons to be concerned for China's ascension to this position of prestige by hosting the Olympics. And recent events along the global parade route, particularly from the pro-Tibet activists, are having a real impact.

As thousands of pro-Tibet protesters cut short the Olympic torch relay Monday in Paris, a new Zogby Interactive poll finds 70% of likely voters believe the International Olympic Committee was wrong to award this year’s summer Olympic Games to China because of its poor record on human rights. Dissatisfaction with the IOC’s choice is strong across the political spectrum, with 70% of Democrats and Republicans, and 68% of political independents who said they disagree with the decision to have China host the summer games. A Zogby Interactive poll conducted in May 2007 found 44% had a favorable opinion of the IOC’s decision to award the 2008 Summer Olympic Games to China, while 39% viewed the decision unfavorably.

So San Francisco ought to be concerned with the scope and force of protests tomorrow. They actually should acknowledge them by canceling the parade. What does it achieve? Will San Francisco cover themselves in glory tomorrow? The protesters will show that the entire city is a free speech zone, and they will show the importance and power of activism. But the city will just be giving a platform to the Chinese to sanitize their image and whitewash the deplorable spots in their record. There's no reason for this and the potential for some ugly outcomes is growing.

Authorities in San Francisco, which on Wednesday will host the only North American leg of the relay, said they had closely watched events in London on Sunday and in Paris.

"We have a lot of concerns," said Sgt. Neville Gittens, a San Francisco police spokesman. "I don't want to identify them, but this is not a contained route security-wise, and there are lots of opportunities for trouble. We're watching what's going on very closely and will make changes to our plans as we figure them out."

Mayor Gavin Newsom met with Chinese officials in San Francisco on Monday to review security measures, which include requiring all rank-and-file police officers to report to work Wednesday. Meanwhile, at least two neighboring police departments have been asked to provide reinforcements, the California Highway Patrol will be on hand and the FBI is on standby, officials said.

I'm not sanguine about the prospects of this relay tomorrow. London and Paris were just a prelude.

Perspective

Quick definition of terms:

Sudan convicting a teacher to 15 days for allowing a teddy bear in her classroom to be called "Mohammed": Regrettable.

Sudan, the same country, enabling the genocide of close to a million Darfurians: Unforgivable and a global tragedy.

Unfortunately, only the first one of these is on the news today.

Hope In Darfur

This is indeed good news, and it was orchestrated by the UK, not the US. This is kind of what I was talking about when I discussed Gordon Brown's visit the other day. He appears to be skilled at getting others to agree with him and also think it was their idea all along:

Gordon Brown scored a dramatic first foreign policy victory last night when the UN security council voted to deploy a 26,000-strong international force to Darfur, with a mandate to stop the massacres of civilians which have driven 2 million people from their homes.

Mr Brown has made Darfur a foreign policy priority, and the UN resolution was an initiative he promoted 10 days earlier with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, aiming to end a year of international drift on the issue. This week he secured George Bush's support for the draft.

The vote was passed unanimously after China, the Sudanese government's main defender at the UN, dropped its objections. British officials said that China's oil interests in Sudan were eventually outweighed by anxiety about a possible international human rights backlash over Darfur aimed at next year's Olympic Games in Beijing.

It looks like Sudan will support the force as well. I'm liking Gordon Brown so far. It's also important for the credibility of the UN to achieve some global consensus on the side of human rights. Though there is reason for reservation:

Human rights activists welcomed last night's vote, but warned that a lot more political will would be needed to ensure the security council decision was implemented in the face of potential obstructionist tactics by Khartoum, which had referred to similar versions of the resolution as "ugly" and "awful".

The resolution had been stripped of any threat of sanctions against the Sudanese government if it blocked the force's deployment, though Mr Brown said his government would "redouble" efforts to impose an embargo if that happened.

"It is not time ... to pop open the champagne bottles. The true test of this measure is not what happens today in New York, but what happens over the coming weeks in Darfur," Allyn Brooks-LaSure of the Save Darfur Coalition said last night.

Incidentally, the breakthrough in Darfur may be coming about due to a giant underground lke recently discovered there. If the resource wars can end there, suddenly there would be less of a need to drive people off their land. It's amazing how much the environment can be linked to gloal security.

More Congressional Progress

The House passed bills supporting divestiture of the governments of Iran and Sudan, which is a unique way of using dollar diplomacy to pressure these regimes to stop their support of actions like genocide (in the case of Sudan) or support for terrorism (Iran).

The House also passed The Fair Pay Act to end wage discrimination in the workplace. This is in reference to a Supreme Court decision whereby a pay discrimination case had to be filed within 180 days to be actionable. This bill would reverse that. But it's likely to be vetoed.

Also the Democrats passed ethics reform legislation through the House despite GOP obstructionism. They refused a conference and so the Democratic leadership simply reconciled the bill on their own and stopped the amendment process. GOP whiners could have allowed a conference if they wanted a place at the table.

This has been a good few months for the Democratic Congress. Whether or not the public will recognize this remains to be seen.

UPDATE: Yes, it is kind of hilarious that Ted Stevens, the guy who had his house raided by the FBI and the IRS yesterday, might block passage of the LOBBYING REFORM bill. It sure makes sense, though. Why would he want lobbying reform?

Exhausting All Nonmilitary Angles

Yes I'm describing the Bush Administration. In Darfur. And it took several years for them to get up the gumption to even do this.

President Bush ordered new U.S. economic sanctions Tuesday to pressure Sudan's government to halt the bloodshed in Darfur that the administration has condemned as genocide.

"I promise this to the people of Darfur: the United States will not avert our eyes from a crisis that challenges the conscience of the world," the president said.

The sanctions target government-run companies involved in Sudan's oil industry, and three individuals, including a rebel leader suspected of being involved in the violence in Darfur.

"For too long the people of Darfur have suffered at the hands of a government that is complicit in the bombing, murder and rape of innocent civilians," the president said. "My administration has called these actions by their rightful name: genocide.

"The world has a responsibility to put an end to it," Bush said.

Of course, it's positive that the White House is learning from a Clinton-era mistake and calling the situation genocide. But everyone knows who is really keeping Sudan afloat, despite this and other sanctions. China is heavily invested in the country's oil reserves, and in return they have provided a substantial amount of arms for over a decade. If you want to really stop the janjaweed killing you must pressure China to divest themselves of these deals which prop up the Sudanese government. That's the only way you can put some teeth into any sanctions.

The other takeaway from this for me is that the United States is perfectly willing to adopt a go-slow approach as it relates to Sudan, probably because it doesn't want to disrupt or anger China, and yet we have no problem going into countries in the Middle East and establishing permanent bases and then wondering "why they hate us."

Long Way To Go In Darfur

It seems like every couple months the Sudanese government agrees to allow UN peacekeepers into Darfur, and then a few months go by, and they agree again, and the peacekeepers never actually get there. But the Secretary-General is hailing this latest agreement:

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has described Sudan's decision to allow 3,000 UN troops into Darfur as "a very positive sign".

The UN contingent will provide support for 7,000 struggling African Union troops there.

Sudan's apparent change of heart comes after months of international pressure to accept UN peacekeepers.

But Khartoum is yet to agree to the deployment of a much-larger AU force of 20,000 troops proposed by the UN.

3,000 UN troops to guard an area the size of Texas is a pittance. And the AU forces couldn't do it with a garrison twice that size. This may be an attempt by Khartoum to get the international community off their backs while continuing the slaughter administered by the janjaweed. Part two of this effort is supposed to include attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers. Until then, I'd say that the UN forces aren't even equipped to do the job.

Countries around the world need to continue to put pressure on the Sudanese government until they renounce the violence, start locking up the militia members, take away their weapons and allow the ethnic Darfurians to return to their homes. That'll take more than 3,000 blue helmets to implement.

The Global Iraq Effect

Even when excepting the death of Kurt Vonnegut, I feel like the entire world is spiraling out of control. And this flaring up of violence in numerous trouble spots is happening in direct connection to a new British report alleging that the occupation of Iraq has spawned "new terror" in the region. The headlines over the past few days show this to be undeniably true.

Just look at what's been happening over the past few days:

• 1,000 people have died in clashes in Mogadishu, where unrest and anarchy still reign after the supposedly successful effort to drive Islamic fundamentalists from the capital. Half of the city's population, well over a million people, have fled.

• Two major suicide bombings have killed dozens in Algeria, where local groups affiliated with Al Qaeda have claimed responsibility. This tracks with increasing fundamentalist activity throughout North Africa, including but not limited to Somalia.

• Just look at Sudan, where Janjaweed militia killed hundreds in eastern Chad by opening fire on villagers, moving the Darfur genocide across the border and threatening a wider war. Incredibly, this came as President Bush's Ambassador to Sudan, Andrew Nastios, claimed that there is no genocide going on in Darfur.

MENENDEZ: Do you consider the ongoing situation in Darfur a genocide, yes or no? […]

NATSIOS: There is very little violence in Darfur right now.

MENENDEZ: I asked you to answer my question.

NATSIOS: I just answered your question.

MENENDEZ: Is the circumstances in Darfur today a continuing genocide? Yes or no?

NATSIOS: There is very little fighting between rebels and the government and very few civilian casualties going on in Darfur right now.

Incidentally. 80,000 Darfurians have fled from attacks in just the past two months.

• And there's a reconstituted, newly resurgent Taliban operating from strongholds in Pakistan, bolstered by members of their group who are returning from Iraq, teaching new techniques like suicide bombing and IED attacks, and pulling off attacks with unusual sophistication and deadly force.

This is EXACTLY the type of global landscape we should expect to see given the total lack of leadership, and the harm caused by the irrational and ridiculous occupation of Iraq. Let's go back to the British report about Iraq spawning new terror:

The countries had tried to "keep the lid on" problems by military force and had failed to address the root causes, the Oxford Research Group warned.

It said Iran, Syria and North Korea had become "emboldened", while the Taleban was on the rise in Afghanistan [...]

"Treating Iraq as part of the war on terror... created a combat training zone for jihadists," it says.

Lead study author Chris Abbott said: "There is a clear and present danger - an increasingly marginalised majority living in an environmentally constrained world, where military force is more likely to be used to control the consequences of these dangerous divisions.

"Add to this the disastrous effects of climate change, and we are looking at a highly unstable global system by the middle years of the century unless urgent action is taken now."

We know the direct results of jihadist training in Iraq and how that relates to a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. In North Africa, the Iraq effect plays itself out in a mix of negligence, bolstered jihadist action, and a neoconservative unilateralist foreign policy which alienates allies to collectively act on behalf of the less fortunate. That we have not yet gotten a hold on Darfur is to the world's undying shame. That we used Ethiopia as a proxy to defeat Somalian Islamists without concerning ourselves with the fact that Ethiopia is hated in Somalia has led to the continued chaos in that nation. That we have given recruiting posters for Al Qaeda and jihadism every passing day in Iraq leads to events like that in Algeria (although it's also home-grown). It's not that the cauldron wasn't simmering already; what we've done is turn the heat up to 500 degrees and closed the lid tighter.

We cannot afford 22 more months of this global anarchy, where Iraq is a hot poker stoking the fires of violence in that country and all over the region. This lack of leadership is actually costing us the war on terrorism, which we are undeniably losing.

Sen. Durbin to introduce Congressional Election public financing bill

(I'm to the left of the real-life Senator!)

This morning several of your favorite Kossacks, along with yours truly and additional bloggers, met for about an hour with Sen. Dick Durbin in Los Angeles for a wide-ranging discussion on a host of issues.

Next month, Sen. Durbin will introduce a bill calling for public financing of Congressional elections. He anounced this on the floor of the Senate in January, and the bill should be ready by March, the culmination of a years-long effort to address the problem. This is long overdue and it's something progressives should be fighting for, as it cuts to the core of all the negatives that flow from politics. And with the #2 man in the Senate pushing for it, with bipartisan co-sponsors according to him, then it's not only a fight worth fighting but one that we can achieve.

The meeting was held in a hotel restaurant in Century City, and oddly enough, the only other time I was there was to interview Peter Frampton. And it was in the same room! (no vocoder available this time out, unfortunately)

Sen. Durbin led off by discussing his Fair Elections bill (working title). Obviously, money is probably the most impossible thing to get out of politics, especially if you buy the legal argument that money equals speech. But if you can level the playing field and make it so that the impact of money is not as great, at least you give everyone a fighting chance. The way to do this, in Durbin's view, is to offer an opt-out, so that critics cannot claim that this violates the First Amendment; however, that opt-out would immediately impact the amount of money any Clean Money opponent would receive. In other words, if you're a publicly-financed candidate and your opponent opts out of the system, you immediately receive DOUBLE the money you would normally be entitled to.

(NOTE: this is not related to the Presidential public financing bill of Russ Feingold's, to which Barack Obama co-signed as a sponsor last week. This is about public financing for elections in the Senate and the House.)

There would be language regulating 527s and IEs in the bill as well, but again, no details yet. Sen. Durbin said it would be closely modeled on the Clean Money laws that govern elections in Arizona and Maine. Under those systems, a candidate who shows viability by collecting a certain number of $5 contributions then qualifies for public financing. This allows for a more diverse set of candidates and not simply ones who can self-fund; frees up those candidates to spend time with constituents instead of constantly being on the phone asking for money (which the Senator described as "all-consuming"); and gets us closer to a system where lobbying money doesn't drive the agenda in Congress.

What's interesting about this is that Sen. Durbin is fairly new to this issue. His pat line before, he said, was that "I don't want to give one cent of my tax money to fund David Duke's campaign." But he has come to understand the corrosive power of money in politics, and how the current system is irreparably broken. Campaign ads are "the biggest cash cow the TV networks have ever seen," so expect them to be the chief detractors of this bill. One positive sign is that the Senator is close to lining up union support for the measure. This is enormous. The unions actively opposed the Clean Money initiative in California, sending it cascading to defeat. Durbin was right when he noted that unions simply cannot keep up with Big Business over the long haul in terms of the money race. Indeed, it's not what they're designed to do. In 2005 unions led the fight against Gov. Schwarzenegger's Special Election in California, and emerged victorious. But it took tens of millions of dollars, forced many unions to ask for extra dues from their members, and took such an effort that there was no way they could repeat the trick for the 2006 gubernatorial election. And they didn't. And we still have a Governor Schwarzenegger. It's unsustainable to expect unions to fight our battles monetarily. We need to pull in the reins and give candidates the option of public financing.

This will not be an easy fight, but the key will come in laying the groundwork with the public. People intuitively understand the influence of money in politics. If they would just be given the facts, that we lose more in tax dollars on quid pro quo corporate welfare than we would ever need to publicly finance elections, I think common sense would dictate that this way is preferable. But right now, the education on the subject is not there. I consider myself fairly well-informed, and didn't know about Sen. Durbin's proposal until today, despite the fact that he mentioned it on the Senate floor a month ago. We need to apply pressure on this. The relevant Senate Committee is the Rules Committee chaired by Dianne Feinstein. She has agreed to give the bill a hearing, but she is not exactly a champion of this measure. She needs to hear from her constituents on this one, and to understand why this is so very important.

There were plenty of other highlights in the meeting. Martini Republic has a good roundup with a pic. I'll add some bullet points:

• Yes, it was amusing when Durbin boasted that Obama has thousands of friends on "MyFace." But give him a break, he's 62.

• Sen. Durbin was eloquent on the subject of Darfur, and went out of his way to mention it. He's got a four-pronged strategy that includes a "Plan B" sanctions-based effort by the Administration; trying to shut down the Sudanese oil market by using financial institutions (they do their oil business in dollars, and at some point we could possibly head that off); divestiture at the state, local, and personal level; and changing US law to allow us to arrest foreign nationals suspected of genocide on foreign soil (as we can currently do with regard to tortue, a la Charles Taylor of Liberia, who Durbin did actually call "Chuckie Taylor"). A lot of this is going through the newly-created Human Rights Subcommittee created by Sen. Leahy in the Judiciary Committee.

• Durbin supports the Dodd-Menendez bill to restore habeas corpus, and called those who ramrodded the bankruptcy bill through the Senate "heartless bastards." You read that right. He did seem willing to put together bills that may fail for the purposes of getting vulnerable Republicans on the record about various issues. This is how habeas and bankruptcy may go, trying to throw wedges in to split the Republicans (and certain Democrats as well, on those bills).

• On Iraq, the Senate appears to be trying to craft a consensus on next steps. They want a consensus Amendment that can get all 49 available Democratic votes. Durbin seemed supportive of Rep. Murtha's readiness strategy, but stressed the importance of the vote count (as you would expect any former Minority Whip to do).

There was more, but I want to re-stress how important it is that the #2 man in the Senate is on board with full public financing of Congressional elections. This could revolutionize the way politics is undertaken in this country. With corruption on people's minds, there's never been a better environment to introduce something like this. But it has to be explained smartly and honestly to the public in order to succeed.