Category Archives: Politics

Chalmers Johnson, influential scholar and critic of US foreign policy, dies at 79

Some 20 years ago, I was a visitor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies on the U.C. San Diego campus. My office was across the hall from that of Chalmers Johnson. This was just before he did something that all too rarely happens in academia – he walked away from the field of political science because he saw the malicious influence of narrow rational choice theory.

A decade before 9/11 he lamented the deterioration in qualitative analysis and area studies that “rat choice” had caused in the field. In part this was linked to a wider problem: an obsession with quantitative and empirical analysis in the social sciences generally.

His perspective influenced my approach to human rights theory expressed in this review essay on the impact of realism on human rights.

More well known is Johnson’s transition from a fairly conservative figure – one who was known for an occasional crude and politically incorrect joke when he was on the Berkeley faculty and served as an advisor to the CIA – to a bold and provocative theorist of the left, strongly critical of global U.S. military power.

Chalmers Johnson obituary: Chalmers Johnson, influential scholar, dies at 79.

“The Big Fail” – a legal black hole in the economy

Adam Levitin explains why the legal problems at the heart of the real estate crisis may end up making the last three years look like a speed bump.

The problem is that our banks turned themselves into designers of loans that they then were supposed to have sold off in packages to outside investors. Now that that homeowners are failing to pay their mortgages it turns out the banks may not have ever really transferred the mortgages as they promised.

So who is going to have to cover the losses now?

Here is one tantalizing clip:

The banks are in serious trouble if there are widespread securitization fails. If the loans weren’t transferred to the securitization trusts, then they are on bank balance sheets, which means that (1) the losses on the loans are the banks (to be sorted out with the investors), and (2) the banks need to be holding capital against the loans that haven’t gone into foreclosure.  Depending on the scale of the problem, the banks might not have enough capital to cover the securitization fails….

The Big Fail – Credit Slips

Burmese Victory for Human Rights Movement: Aung San Suu Kyi is Free

a-national-league-for-dem-006The international human rights movement can claim an important victory today with the release from a long house arrest of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the Burmese democracy movement. Coming as it did in the wake of the granting of this year’s Nobel Prize to Chinese imprisoned human rights activist Liu XIaobo it is a sign of the weakening of China’s hold on Asia generally. China has been a big financial supporter of the Burmese military dictatorship and had reacted harshly when Xiaobo was given the Prize.

Many thousands of people around the world took part in the various campaigns to support Suu Kyi’s release.

Here in the US, I helped out in a small way during a legal battle against oil giant Unocal which relied on the Burmese military to dragoon Burmese workers into helping build a natural gas pipeline. The suit led to a successful financial settlement to benefit the Burmese people. The international labor movement pressured the regime through the ILO and the UN system. And so on. This loosely organized but global effort has shown it can face down the most repressive of regimes.

It can only be hoped that the emergence of a democracy movement in Burma can in turn encourage efforts in Vietnam, China and elsewhere in Asia.

Lessons from the election: “Why center-left parties are collapsing”

Michael Lind of the New America Foundation puts his finger on something deeper afoot in the wake of the electoral debacle for the liberal left.

He points to the tension between class politics that animates working class voters in Europe and the US versus the “multikulti” politically correct green politics so much in favor with the Democratic Party elite.

Here is one snippet:

“In general the parallels between the U.S. and Europe are striking. In
the U.S., as in Europe, the right is divided between a pro-business
right promoting policies of austerity and a populist, nativist right
energized by opposition to immigration and multiculturalism,
particularly where Muslims are involved. In the U.S., as in Europe,
the upper-middle-class activists and intellectuals of the center-left
devote far less energy to traditional social democratic issues like
social insurance and the minimum wage than to non-economic causes like
renewable energy, mass transit, the new urbanism, gay marriage,
identity politics and promotion of amnesty for illegal immigrants. On
both continents, conservatism is becoming more downscale while
progressives are increasingly upmarket.”

Why center-left parties are collapsing – War Room – Salon.com.

5 Miners Hoisted to Freedom in Chile

Tears certainly came to my eyes as I watched the rescue effort tonight.

I recalled working side by side with an exiled Chilean miner on an assembly line in the late 70s in northern California. A refugee from the Pinochet dictatorship, we worked together in an electronics plant for several months.

I helped him get the job, as a gesture to friends in the Chilean solidarity movement, and he could ill afford to lose it, but when a battle broke out with management – intent on shutting down the plant and shipping our jobs to a non-union state or overseas – he stood with us, without any doubts.

He spoke no English and only a little Spanish, as he was of Indian descent. But we understood each other. There was a toughness about him that I knew you could only be born with.

I am not surprised that his brothers have survived this ordeal.

5 Miners Hoisted to Freedom in Chile – NYTimes.com.

The Myth of the Non-State Actor: Taliban/Pakistan Links Clearer

Ever wonder how the US can evade the longstanding principles of international law and use assassination, torture and secret jails to fight the “war on terrorism”?

By creating the myth of what security studies folks call the “non-state actor.”

The idea is that terrorist groups like the Taliban and al Qaeda are somehow capable of organizing a global war against US interests as free standing movements functioning independently of the existing state system. Since in large part international humanitarian law is about how states go to war against each other, it frees states from many constraints when acting against so-called non-state actors.

There is indeed a war of sorts underway against certain aspects of US power on a global level but as this report in the Wall Street Journal indicates that war relies heavily on state support from nations like Pakistan.

Proxy Access Rule Issued by SEC

After years of hard work by organized labor, pension activists and, finally, friendly politicians, the SEC has bit the bullet to allow shareholders under (very) limited circumstances to spend their own money to participate in shareholder democracy!

I am being ironic but also accurate. Until now managers use corporate resources to help directors get elected: they control access to the proxy statement that accompanies the proxy card that shareholders inevitably submit back to management who then vote onto boards their hand picked director candidates.

Now however shareholders can piggy back on the proxy material sent out by management and use that material to nominate independent candidates for corporate boards.

Much like the market for corporate control it may well be that the mere threat of the rule will be enough to change corporate behavior – event studies galore will no doubt emerge soon!

The link below is to a law professors’ site that is debating the issue and here is a link to the rule itself on the SEC website.

The Conglomerate Blog: Business, Law, Economics & Society.

Pundita: Ah I see from this map of Mexico that we’ve had everything backward.

_48659365_mexico_cartels_464map1An important post by Pundita this AM. There is an insurgency underway in Mexico today – but the question is, who are the real insurgents?

Folks, forget Somalia, forget Yemen, forget Afghanistan, we have a failing state right on our southern border and as our economy continues to flail it will only get worse.

An earlier post here made an important point about the fecklessness of today’s global elite – and the consequence that crime bosses increasingly fill the gap in today’s world.

Pundita: Ah I see from this map of Mexico that weve had everything backward..

Inside a Foxconn sweatshop

Steve Jobs says Foxconn is a “pretty nice” place to work. If he thinks that will stand up to even a cursory examination of life for China’s industrial workers, he is kidding himself. And if he thinks that can shield Apple from a big hit to its fragile brand image he is also kidding himself.

There are decades of academic and NGO research on the horrific conditions faced by Chinese workers. And this report by Bloomberg makes clear that Foxconn is no exception.

I recall a meeting I had a few years ago (in Steve Jobs’ hometown Palo Alto no less where he said so callously the other day that Gunn High School kids commit suicide, too) with a visiting workers compensation lawyer from China. He described the thousands of Chinese workers who return to their rural villages minus eyes and limbs or suffering from neurological or respiratory diseases, all the result of working in plants like those managed by Apple/Dell/Sony subcontractors.

I thought at the time that he was describing something resembling the return of wounded soldiers after the American Civil War.

Apple should publicly call for an independent investigation of conditions in Valley subcontractors and support the formation of independent trade unions and the establishment of enforceable labor laws.

Inside a Foxconn factory.