The Forgotten Muslim Freedom Fight

In 1947, Britain released its sovereignty over its Indian colonial holdings, allowing its former subjects to choose between Muslim Pakistan in the north and Hindu India in the south (commonly known as ‘partition’). While some Muslims remain in what is today India, an exceptionally violent and bloody migration between these states resulted in a massive relocations of millions along religious lines as the partition redefined the subcontinent. Hatred between these once united peoples has seethed over the years, fomenting periodic violence along the way, terrorism – mostly directly from north to south with al Qaeda joining the mix in later years (after 2000) – merged with all other forms of war and conflict over the disputed land of Jammu and Kashmir along the shared northern border.

Pakistan, which controls portions of Kashmir (that portion is virtually all Muslim), felt that the balance of Kashmir should have opted for Pakistan. After all, 95% of the Kashmir Valley, currently part of India, is Muslim, not a big difference from the way it was at partition. How in the world did such a large part of India?

“British rule in India ended in 1947 with the creation of a new state: the Dominion of Pakistan alongside the Union of India, the successor state to British India, while British suzerainty over the 562 Indian princely states ended. According to the Indian Independence Act 1947, ‘the suzerainty of His Majesty over the Indian States lapses, and with it, all treaties and agreements in force at the date of the passing of this Act between His Majesty and the rulers of Indian States.’ States were thereafter left to choose whether to join India or Pakistan or to remain independent. Jammu and Kashmir, the largest of the princely states, had a predominantly Muslim population ruled by the Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh. Following partition, Pakistan had expected the annexation of Kashmir to its territory.

“Hari Singh, the maharaja of Kashmir, initially believed that by delaying his decision he could maintain the independence of Kashmir, but, caught up in a train of events that included a revolution among his Muslim subjects along the western borders of the state and the intervention of Pashtun tribesmen, he signed an instrument of accession on 25 October 1947 to the Indian union. This was the signal for intervention both by Pakistan, which considered the state to be a natural extension of Pakistan, and by India, which intended to confirm the act of accession.” Wikipedia. Pakistan lost that war with a U.N. resolution implementing a ceasefire.

Two more wars, in 1965 and 1971, failed to loose Kashmir to Pakistan. In 1989, waves of Islamic terrorism exploded in Kashmir against Indian targets. Freedom fighters, purportedly financed and supported with Pakistani funding, have raged within Indian Kashmir, occasionally mounting attacks to larger civilian largest deep within India itself, including the infamous attack on Mumbai in 2008 (pictured above). If you read the headlines, you’d think that this struggle between two nuclear powers was continuing at full tilt. Pakistani army chief, Raheel Sharif, recently admonished: “Pakistan and Kashmir are inseparable.”

Officially, Pakistan agreed to de-escalate tensions between the two nations in 2003, but since 2012, tensions have returned. So we should expect another resurgence of terrorism and insurgency? Not if the local freedom fights are the lynch-pin for success. It seems that too many of the fighters have either grown old or simply gone weary of a lifetime of instability and violence.

The BBC (July 6^th) delved into this phenomenon, speaking to former participations, asking vital questions, including of a stateless Kashmiri tea brewer who fled to Pakistan for safety. He once carried his AK 47 in the ‘war of liberation’ within Kashmir. Today, he looks at the struggle from a very different perspective, reflecting the feelings of so many of his former ‘freedom fighters.’ “[The BBC interviewer pointed] to some recent attacks by militants on Indian positions along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border dividing Kashmir, and ask[ed] him if he expects to be recalled to duty by the militant outfit he enrolled with as a fighter.

“He gives me a long, blank look… “There's no mobilisation, no queues to enlist for training, no hustle-bustle at the offices of [jihadist] organisations, like the old times…I left my home because I wanted to win this war; but Pakistanis only wanted to needle the Indians. They agreed to a ceasefire, and allowed the Indians to build a fence along the LoC [Line of Control – border]… “So I think time to liberate Kashmir [from India] by force is up now."

“‘Besides,’ he adds after some brooding, ‘I don't want my children to turn out like the children of Afghan refugees, making a living by scavenging on garbage dumps in Pakistan.’… There are some 3,000 to 4,000 former militants from the Indian side in Muzaffarabad [a border town] - leftovers of approximately 30,000 people who abandoned their homes in Indian-administered Kashmir during the decade following the 1989 uprising, crossing into Pakistan to receive training and arms…

“Nearly all of them are now middle-aged, and are raising families. And the war funds that once sustained them are drying up… Pakistan stopped paying for militant field operations in Indian Kashmir in 2006. In 2012, it halved administrative expenses to jihadist organisations for running their offices in Pakistani Kashmir, forcing all but a few to close shop… These expenses have been further slashed during the last year… The former militants are forced to eke a living out of running road-side businesses or doing day jobs at car washes, construction sites and restaurants.” The struggle has lasted well over half a century, and there are no guarantees that a new generation may against take up arms. But there is an undercurrent that perhaps, given enough time, Islamic militancy even by the most dedicated fighters, can wither and die, particularly if the money supporting the militancy dries up. Is there a lesson in this? Only time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and perhaps this is a bad story or perhaps this is a ray of hope for the longer term.

German Punishers

Germany violates Eurozone rules all the time. Maybe its violations of debt-to-GDP limits and other restrictions pale in comparison to those of Greece, but Germany is hardly pristine in its adherence to the very rules it is accusing Greece of having violated. And folks forget about the big German default of their post-WWI reparations debts. The outright malevolence towards Greeks of a majority of the German electorate seems both cultural (“they’re not like us; they have no self-discipline”) and based on the lingering resentment that Greece had to fudge its financial statements to get into the Eurozone in the first place.

“More than half of Germans think the planned deal with Greece is bad and many would have preferred that the crisis-stricken country left the euro zone rather than getting the chance for further aid, according to an opinion poll… In the YouGov survey seen by German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, 56 percent of respondents said they thought the plan for such a deal with Greece was bad, with just over one fifth of those saying it was very bad.” Reuters, July 18^th.

There are few outside of a minority of Germans and their Teutonic followers who believe that Greece will ever be able to comply with the bailout requirements that Germany literally forced its EU partners to impose on Greece. Greeks aren’t remotely likely to be able to service their massive debt with an economy that shrinks with every new austerity measure slapped on Greece by the EU. But then, most savvy folks believe that Germany never imposed such severe measures to help Greece come back; rather, it was kicking the can down the road to prepare for Greece’s eventual departure from the Eurozone.

“[W]ith its handling of Greece’s bailout package, Germany is at risk of losing that trust, some European analysts say. By taking what sounded to many as an aggressive, punishing, contemptuous tone toward Greece, the German leadership may have undercut its moral authority, they say. And by floating the notion that Greece might be better off leaving the common currency, Germany displayed its national interest more nakedly than in the past and made it clear there are limits to its willingness to put European unity first…

“[Finance minister, Wolfgang] Schäuble [pictured above], after helping to negotiate a deal expressly intended to keep Greece in the eurozone, has suggested several times that Greece would be better off leaving. He has come to represent, in many eyes, the hidden face of German power. In Greece, he is portrayed as a Nazi. Even an Italian weekly, L’Espresso, showed him on its cover with the headline: ‘This man scares us, too.’

“It may be too soon to say for sure whether the harsher German tone signifies a turning point in its role within Europe or if it is the transitory result of circumstances. But for many in Europe, especially on the center left, the Greek crisis ‘revealed a more brutal Germany, embodied in Schäuble,’ said Hans Kundnani, the author of ‘The Paradox of German Power.’

“‘But we see, with this crisis, a qualitative transformation of the European Union into a more coercive bloc, different from the one the founding fathers had in mind, or even the creators of the single currency,’ he said. ‘And Germany is at the heart of that.’” New York Times, July 17^th. One of the guiding principles that gave rise to the European Union in the first place was to reduce tensions in that region, democratize the relationships among EU nations to prevent the divisiveness and wars that had plagued Europe for centuries. The subtext may also have been to coral Germany, the driving cause of two world wars. All of these values seem to be slipping away. Kindness and empathy have left the building.

The bigger question being asked behind closed doors is whether Germany itself belongs in the EU. With it coterie of allies in the Eastern Bloc, it is impossible to envision Germany being asked to leave, but a slow reconfiguration of the Eurozone – starting with a projected departure of Greece and eventually followed by the exit of other weaker countries like Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and even Italy – could effectively splinter Europe into hostile subparts of haves and have-nots. That the currency of the remaining powers would rise is a foregone conclusion, but that too would have deeply negative consequences for the survivors.

To maintain an export economy, their resulting relative labor costs of the rich nations would force them to move manufacturing off-shore, costing millions of local jobs, creating the kind of economic polarization they decry, the American model if you will. German assumptions of economic basics – predicated on a morbid fear of inflation and a tolerance for recession as I have blogged before – are at severe odds with the expectations of most of the balance of Europe, and most particularly in the southern half… including France.

Reeling from NAZI years, Germany shoved patriotism down the value chain for a very long time. They had been shamed in the eyes of the world… and to themselves. They became European. But with the reunification of East and West Germany, with the growth of the German manufacturing machine, attitudes toward self-pride have returned in spades. Add to this mix that is was primarily Germany’s wealth, her success that enabled Europe to muddle through the Great Recession. And it was her money that was the biggest part of the Greek bailout.

“In the past, Germany was willing to provide the glue — whether the money or the deal — to hold Europe together and go forward, though to some degree European unification has only progressed through crisis. But national interests are becoming more visible everywhere in the enlarged European Union. When it came to the latest flare-up over Greece, [Chancellor Angela] Merkel again negotiated to keep Europe united, but perhaps with less conviction, because few expected the deal to rescue Greece to work very well.

“In fact, while portrayed as the man trying to push Greece out of the euro, Mr. Schäuble is considered more of a European federalist than Ms. Merkel. But in his view, federalism means not an open-ended commitment to rescuing neighbors but a willingness to abide by accepted rules…

“Germany was hardly alone. In its tough stance toward Greece, it had support from northern European countries like the Netherlands and Finland, and the newer countries of central and Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Even the French and Italians, who fought to keep Greece in the eurozone, were reluctant to push too hard, given the behavior of [leftist] Syriza, Mr. Tsipras’s political party.

“‘For the moment, blame is put on Germany, but the Germans believe that the Greeks were not playing by the rules,’ said Daniela Schwarzer, director of the German Marshall Fund office in Berlin. ‘Merkel now has a double fight — at home, to bring along Parliament, her party and the public for another rescue package for Greece, and in Europe, where she will still have to show power to make sure the Greeks keep their commitments and play by the rules. The whole euro system depends on that.’…

“Germany always wanted the eurozone to resemble federal Germany, with solidarity dependent on everyone playing fair, by the rules, said Robin Niblett, the director of Chatham House, a research organization based in London… But instead, the Germans ‘find themselves with 70 billion euros of taxpayer money in hock in Greece and asked to write a chunk of it off, which they told German citizens would never happen,’ he said. ‘Merkel has managed to keep the public on side with each ratchet of the eurozone, where Germany is vulnerable. So I’m not surprised it got so heated.’” NY Times. At a time where the world needs stability, this quivering mass of uncertainty in one of the most important political institutions on earth is deeply troubling.

I’m Peter Dekom, and with so many destabilizing events taking place all over the world, it is often difficult to understand the ramifications of so many moving parts.

Eating at the Palm

The Federal Election Commission has tabulated what I will call the Citizens United funding summaries based on required reports filed as of June 30^th. That special interests and a mega-wealthy elite call most of the shots is no surprise. But the sheer numbers reflect the rather total disenfranchisement of the voice of the average voter.

The FEC report was released on July 14^th, and here are a couple of highlights, according to the July 15^th Washington Post: “A small cadre of super-wealthy Americans is dominating the fundraising for the 2016 Republican presidential nominating contest, doling out huge sums to independent groups that overwhelm total contributions to the candidates… Nearly $4 out of every $5 raised so far on behalf of GOP White House contenders has gone to independent groups rather than the official campaigns.

“Outside groups have already amassed more than $235 million — more than three times the $67 million raised collectively by the Republican field through June 30, according to reports filed Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission.

“So far, the dynamic is different on the Democratic side, with 80 percent of the more than $80 million raised so far to support Hillary Rodham Clinton and her competitors flowing to their campaigns… Clinton boasted the biggest campaign haul of any candidate, $47 million, driven by a largely female donor base. Contributions less than $200 made up nearly 17 percent of her total. That was in sharp contrast with Republican Jeb Bush: Just 3 percent of the $11.4 million he raised came from such low-dollar donations.”

With almost double the campaign funding raised by any other candidate (including Clinton), the leader in the campaign money race is far and away Jeb Bush, but his numbers reflect the above special interest (“independent groups”) skew. Out of $119.4 million behind Bush, only $11.4 million were contributions directly to his campaign. Clinton’s numbers show $62.7 million behind her, but the bulk of her contributions - $47.4 million – were directly into her campaign, with $15.6 million coming from those “independent groups.”

The next two highest campaign chests, belonging to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, are well under half of Jeb Bush’s total, but three times the levels raised by the number two Democrat, Bernie Sanders. Oh, while Sanders reflects 100% going into his campaign ($10.5 million of his $15.1 million coming from donations of $200 or less), both Cruz and Rubio have most of their money from these “independent groups.” Note that these “independent groups” are basically SuperPacs, some with identified business billionaires behind them while others – so-called “dark” money – from contributors who wish to remain anonymous. Read: special interests. While the Dems have their liberal well-heeled donors as well (plus organized labor), the contributions from Democratically-oriented donors pales in comparison to the Republic ledger, which is mostly money from business elites. Donald Trump is pretty much self-financed so far.

As billionaires with SuperPac money hold court, candidates flock for their share of the trough slop. Vegas player Sheldon Adelson found Marco Rubio to his liking when the Senator embraced anti-online gaming restrictions favored by Adelson. The Kansas based Koch brothers, heavily invested in natural resource extractions (e.g., paper, oil, gas, etc.), have held their gatherings for GOP tryouts as well. Money from these special interests goes to candidates who are willing to take on the underlying agendas from these contributors as their own.

Simply put, the post Citizens United landscape has created an entirely new political system, a plutocracy if you will, which has added another layer of extreme polarization – clearly favoring the moneyed elites over everyone else – at a time when income inequality is the biggest domestic issue on the table right now. And if you truly believe that “it’s the economy stupid” as the dominant feature of any election, the fact that tax and regulatory legislation and judicial rulings tilt the playing field increasingly towards these elites, as the middle class contracts downwards, would make you think that the electorate will reject this continued bias.

Ah, but that is where massive ad spends to push elite agendas as part of our “American values” plus embracing social issues – from immigration to abortion to available healthcare to same-sex marriage – pushes too many voters to make choices that clearly go against their most basic economic interests. Find a good scapegoat during harsh economic times, publicize ($$) your mythology, and watch your poll numbers rise… at least for a while. In effect, the next election is a contest between those who want to continue this polarization – and are willing to make a few concessions to social conservatives to get this result – against those who rail against this polarization and elitism and want our middle class to grow.

So how is the GOP field faring under this rain of cash? “The latest poll from Fox News puts Donald Trump at the top of the Republican field, with 18 percent. Scott Walker is in second at 15 percent, and Jeb Bush is third at 14 percent. No one else reaches double-digits in the national survey: Rand Paul, 8%; Marco Rubio, 7%; Ben Carson, 6%; Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, 4%; Chris Christie, 3%; John Kasich and Rick Santorum, 2%; Carly Fiorina, Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal and George Pataki each received one percent or less. Remember: the top 10, as decided by Fox, get into the first debate next month. Yesterday, Univision released its own poll showing that 7 in 10 Hispanic registered voters have an unfavorable impression of Trump.” Washington Post, July 17^th. Per patterns from past campaigns, note that newly-declared candidates usually have an initial boost when the publicity of their announcements

That we have a contracting middle class while countries like China and Mexico have extreme growth in this middle economic segment should be a wake-up call to all Americans at every stage of the economic ladder. Rich folks surrounded by a whole lot of people with sinking hopes and dropping standards of living is not only bad for business, at some point, it gets downright dangerous. Polarization is bad for us all.

I’m Peter Dekom, and even as the global turmoil serves as a major distraction from many of our issues here at home, unless we address these anomalies soon, we won’t have much left to defend.

It’s the Economy Stupid

There are three macro-trends that are redefining our planet: 1. Over-population, 2. Climate change/resource exhaustion and 3. Action and reaction to 1. and 2. The underlying vectors are increasingly moving towards extreme religiosity and nationalism, a consolidation of self-interest at the expense of anyone else. My way or the highway. It is the exact opposite of the empathy-driven elements of liberal tolerance and inclusion.

We are seeing the expansion of exclusionary right wing politics from countries like Denmark, Hungary (a rising tide across Europe for that matter), Israel, Russia and even a new movement of re-militarism in Japan. I’ll deal with the rest of Middle East and the Islamic world later. “Immigration” is the issue that rages across the developed world… a code word for racism and exclusion.

In the U.S., we see Tea Party Evangelism apply its rather tortured interpretation of the New Testament as allowing and even encouraging casting the first stone, sitting in judgment of others, intolerance, allowing for the passage of “stand your ground” and “castle” statutes that turn murder into justifiable homicide (no turning the other cheek), believing that gun ownership is sacred and deriding Pope Francis (who does have a claim to interpreting the New Testament!) and  his encyclical on protecting the resources of the planet… claiming a God-given right to exploit the environment without limits (a rather unique feature of American Evangelism).

We seem to ignore how leadership directives, especially in larger nations, influence how life really is for the masses. As the United States fought unsuccessful wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, it encumbered itself with massive and unsustainable debt, diverting its growth resources increasingly towards military spending. That ancient civilizations (from Alexander the Great to Sparta to Rome to the huge Ming Dynasty fleets) and modern nations (the regime changes of the Arab Spring, the fall of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc) collapsed from exactly this overspending on the military is a lesson lost on American leadership. We still have a military budget that represents the equal of the next ten highest military budgets combined… and still we lose wars but, because of our might, find ourselves embroiled in conflicts everywhere.

Think I’m missing the necessity of American might – which I believe we need at an entirely different sense of scale? Why exactly do you think China rose in the post-Mao era? China avoided involvement in any serious external wars, kept its military budget under check, and devoted the equivalent of the U.S. military budget to economic growth. Their middle class has exploded while ours is contracting into lower economic expectations. Meanwhile, we incurred trillions of debt on wars we simply lost, tanking our economy along the way.

Now for the big reveal. Islam. With more than 20% of the world’s population, it is a religion that is redefining the risk profile of the entire earth. Just as throwback religiosity and nationalism have embraced so much of the non-Muslim world, so have these forces reconfigured the many nations of Islam. While the vast majority of Muslims just want to be left alone to live their lives, and while the majority of the new victims are themselves Muslims, there is a new kid in town, and he isn’t going away anytime soon. We have severely underestimated this power, his ability to tie his actions to his holiest book of his faith and overestimated the forces that oppose this malignant power. Make no mistake, this is a deeply conservative religious movement that is thoroughly abhorrent to the majority of the faithful. But this kid wants to rule the earth.

The major throwback in Islam – generally falling under a notion of the jihadist sector of a branch of Sunnism called Salafism (Arabic al salaf al salih, the “pious forefathers”) as well as other parallel Qur’anic interpretations – takes the Muslim mandate back to the time of its ultimate founding father, the Prophet Muhammad (570 – 632). And while there is a conservative movement within the Shiite side of Islam (led by Iran), Sunnis still account for 80% of the adherents of all Muslims. ISIS is pure Sunni.

The Qur’an is filled with expressions of violence and pain, embracing crucifixion (Qur’an 5:33), beheading (Qur’an 47:4) and slavery (Qur’an 33:50), a notion of “us” versus everyone else, allowing only certain non-believers (Jews and Christians) to live within the Muslim community provided they submit to local authority and pay a special tax (jizya).

It is not a clearly tolerant faith in a simple reading of the Qur’an, and its earliest days show conversion by conquest to explain its rapid growth, although there are vast sections of the Book devoted to kindness, charity (a pillar of the faith) and tolerance as well. The ultra-violent movements that are growing within Sunni areas are not lead by older leaders. Ayman Zawahiri – the senior leader of al Qaeda – and his fellow elders are viewed by these nascent militaristic Sunni movements as irrelevant and mere historical figures.

ISIS is not led or supported by ultra-conservative elders; it is led and built on the backs of disenfranchised Sunni youth, from Iraq/Syria to Libya and Tunisia, also embracing the extremist Boko Haram (“reject things Western”) in northern Nigeria. Many are educated, but all seem to have lost their hope for future success and their very identity as human beings in a world of drought and economic impairment. This Sunni extremism is not led by or recruiting older Islamists from Western nations; its entire emphasis is on youth. And it anchors every step it takes, every slaughter it imposes, every outrageous act it embraces, in the literal word of the Qur’an itself. These militants have resurrected the Prophet’s own violent war of conversion almost a millennium and a half ago.

The focus of ISIS power is in lands decimated by climate-change-caused drought where hopelessness is all the young Muslim faithful could see in their “best case guess” as to their futures. As water vaporized, so did hope. And as with the rise of Adolph Hitler in the ashes of post WWI Germany, crushed by reparations imposed by the victorious allies of WWI and suffering from hyper-inflation and massive joblessness, so too did economic hopelessness and rather cavalier disdain from the regional leadership (mostly Shiite) for the ensuing poverty fueled this ultra-violent rebellion.

To the delight of Evangelicals promoting their apocalyptic provocation of a “second coming of Christ” through Armageddon – a war between Israel and its neighbors that literally consumes the earth in which Evangelicals are the only ones God rescued – ISIS has moved into Gaza and has already launched a new mini-barrage of rockets into Israel. ISIS and its sympathizers are popping up all over the world. Lone wolves and coordinated attacks. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, morbidly afraid of Iran's nuclear aspirations, must be particularly upset at the growing parallel needs of Iran and ISIS's opponents to crush ISIS, a reality that will foment some very uncomfortable alliances as we shall see below.

Most Americans do not have the slightest idea what ISIS means, what their strength is and how powerful they really are. I have already blogged that they are actually cable of administering the lands they conquer. Americans believe that ISIS actions are merely brutality without justification, even though every step ISIS has taken has been linked to some quote in the Qur’an. That Shiites require a mystical interpretation of that Holy Book defiles the Sunni vision of the purity of its words, that the Book is a perfect expression of God. So Shiites and less-than-ultra-conservative-Sunni Muslims must die.

Further, ISIS is labeling an increasing number of their fellow Muslims as apostates to be excommunicated, which, under the Islamic law, poses great risk to the accuser as well. “In Islam, the practice of takfir, or excommunication, is theologically perilous. ‘If a man says to his brother, ‘You are an infidel,’ ’ the Prophet said, ‘then one of them is right.’ If the accuser is wrong, he himself has committed apostasy by making a false accusation. The punishment for apostasy is death.” theAtlantic.com (March 2015). 

What is equally historical fact is that once a bad economy generates an extreme over-reaction, the parameters of that over-reaction continue and expand without the necessity of further justification from that bad economy. Think of the snowball becoming an avalanche. But our ignorance, and the abysmal ignorance of our Congress, is giving ISIS a new “evil West” image to help them generate recruits, money and support… to make them increasingly more powerful than we know.

We’ve gotten ourselves in a fine mess. And guess who’s suggesting a new military alliance to combat ISIS at perhaps the only level that has even a slight chance of working? Shiite Iran. “In a message to Washington, Iran's foreign minister on [July 3^rd] called for an end to ‘coercion and pressure’ at the nuclear talks, suggesting a deal acceptable to his country will open the door to cooperation on fighting the upsurge of Middle East extremism threatening both nations' interests…

“The West fears Iran could develop its nuclear program to make weapons while Iran insists it is only meant to generate power and for other peaceful uses. Suggesting that Islamic extremism is a far greater threat to the world than his country's atomic activities, [Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad] Zarif called for an end to ‘unjust economic sanctions’ and for the West to join Iran in common cause against ‘the growing menace of violent extremism and outright barbarism.’

“‘The menace we're facing — and I say we, because no one is spared — is embodied by the hooded men who are ravaging the cradle of civilization, Zarif said. He called for realignment from Iran's nuclear activities, saying it was time to ‘open new horizons to address important, common challenges.’” AOL.com, July 3^rd. We really seem to be fact and history averse, but it’s time to wake up and evaluate who we are and what we face from a sense of reality and not ignorant mythology.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while this is a particularly long blog, it just might be worth reading again.

Waterworld – Obsolete Infrastructure Making It Worse

The “modern era” of water management quivered into existence towards the end of the 19^th century – with earthen dams and under-engineered water channels – and moved into an accelerated high gear in 1902 under President Theodore Roosevelt as he created the federal Bureau of Reclamation. Systems of dams and water management expanded in the 1930s under another Roosevelt, Franklin, as the nation was put to work by building massive water-related infrastructure projects, from flood control to power generation.

Today, building such massive projects probably could not find funding in an austerity-directed Congress, but we now have to live with the fact that these wondrous endeavors were built for a different era with very different challenges. Population centers exploded in the West, and climate change wasn’t remotely on anyone’s radar.

In Los Angeles, for example, those lovely flood channels (like the “Los Angeles River” – a natural river encased in concrete by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1930s) were built with a kind of concrete to accelerate water flow towards the ocean to solve horrific if occasional flooding problems that plagued the city (see above picture). And we wonder why L.A. doesn’t just capture this wasted water flow today? It was built for precisely the opposite result!

Yesterday’s problems with yesterday’s technology do not solve today’s issues. The agency that built and continues to operate huge network of 476 dams, 348 reservoirs and 8,116 miles of aqueducts across the West, fully appreciates the incredible inadequacy of that legacy system.

“‘We have to think differently,’ said Michael Connor, the deputy secretary of the Interior Department, which includes the Bureau of Reclamation. ‘It’s not enough just to conserve water. We need to rethink these projects. We have a lot of infrastructure, but a lot of it doesn’t work very well anymore. We need to undertake what amounts to a giant replumbing project across the West.’

“Mr. Connor said that in the future, the nation’s water agency would have to putclimate change at the center of its mission… President Obama has already started to grapple with that change. Under orders from the White House, the Bureau of Reclamation has begun studies on the impact of global warming on 22 Western water basins and is drawing up multi decade plans to begin rebuilding its Western water management systems.

“But a new water infrastructure across half of the United States could cost taxpayers billions of dollars — at a moment when Republicans are still focused on cutting taxes and lowering government spending. In Congress, the Republican majority has targeted [cutting] climate change research as well as federal policies intended to stop climate change.” New York Times, June 5^th. Some conservatives want to abolish federal involvement in water management entirely, returning that power to the states, but it’s hard to picture how water issues, which often ignore state boundaries, can be resolved with national coordination and management.

We can in fact anticipate and design huge new projects, knowing that Congress probably won’t act until some horrific event kills lots of people, but we do know one thing for sure: water issues are going to get a whole lot worse before we can even begin to grapple with solutions: “Although Western farmers are among the most politically conservative groups in the country, many of them acknowledge the changing climate and say they want the bureau to make the changes necessary to support them. The National Climate Assessment, a 2014 scientific report by 13 federal agencies, says that over the coming century, the impact of human-caused global warming will diminish the once-thick snowpack across the Sierra Nevada and other Western ranges.

“‘We have enough guys noticing that things are changing, and most of these models suggest we’re going to have more intense weather,’ said Dan Keppen, the executive director of the Family Farm Alliance in Klamath Falls, Ore. ‘The snowpack is going to run off quicker and heavier in the spring, and there will be drier growing seasons… So it’s going to be critical to change the water infrastructure,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need to have as much storage and ability to move things around as possible.’”

“Water policy experts point to dozens of changes that could be made, starting by using climate change models to plan new water-collection reservoirs. While climate change models show that there will be less snowfall in the mountains, there may still be rainfall in other regions. The bureau, they said, could build reservoirs designed to capture and store that rain.

“It could also change its methods of irrigation. Today, the bureau sends water to farms in the cheapest way possible, by opening floodgates and soaking agricultural fields. But in the future, the bureau could invest in precision watering technology — computer-operated equipment that measures and moves smaller amounts of water to exactly where it needs to be to help crops grow. Such techniques could be used to continue to irrigate crops while saving lots of water. But they cost substantially more money.

“Experts also point to the need for an update and overhaul of the bureau’s system of aqueducts, earthenware channels that absorb water and easily crack and leak. Mr. Connor said they could be rebuilt with more resilient cement, and covered in waterproof, nonabsorbent coating.” NY Times. We need solutions, big and small, but at least let’s do what we can before the very complexion and livability of so much of the West “vaporizes.” And trust me, the entire United States will suffer massively from this calamity.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sitting idly by and letting the best of what we have disappear should not be our only options.

The Press of Bernie Sanders

The drama seems to be focused almost entirely on the Republican cast of fifteen, now officially adding Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, just as his popularity is fading in his home state. Meanwhile far-left-of-center, Vermont Democrat-leaning-independent Senator Bernie Sanders, is generating rather significant numbers in the polls. While not passing centrist Hillary Clinton in those numbers, he is clearly speaking for that old line farther-left constituency, reminding Ms. Clinton that there is huge group of such traditional Democratic stalwarts whose presence has been dwarfed in the last few years by the far right surge of Tea Party Evangelicals.

Indeed, many has assumed that such left-leaning individuals no longer mattered, that they weren’t heavy voters, but it is that same right wing surge – now reacting to the overt racism of Donald Trump – that may have reawakened leftist cries. And an articulate spokesman: Berne Sanders. With a couple of favorable Supreme Court decisions in hand, it seems as if the assumed-once-dead liberal causes have been resurrected.

Sanders has castigated the Obama Administration for attempting to reach out to a Republican Party with, according to Sanders, no other agenda that to obstruct any program the Democratic President might wish to implement. He admonished the President simply to take the GOP at its obstructionist best and use that negativity to grow a powerful grassroots reaction to shove the “obstructionists” out of office.

His message on July 12^th’s Face the Nation: “We need a mass grassroots movement that looks the Republicans in the eye and says, if you don't vote to demand that your wealthy people start paying their fair of taxes, if you don't vote for jobs and raising the wage and expanding Social Security, we know what's going on. We're involved. We're organized, you are out of here if you don't do the right thing.” Sanders is addressing the huge elephant (pun intended, of course) in the room: income inequality. As Republicans bring out their tired “responsive” mantra of protecting the “job creators,” deregulating them, purging the country of financial and environmental controls, and keeping their taxes lowered, Sanders is at the forefront of telling voters that those programs have never worked and won’t work now, that GOP policies have decimated average Americans.

The hubris of the America’s “Masters of the Universe” is the anti-Sanders constituency that is financing the GOP thrust in the 2016 elections. For example, JP Morgan CEO, Jamie Dimon, has called financial regulation “un-American,” that regulators have simply gone too far. Speaking before a Young Wall Street forum on July 10^th, Dimon seems to have assumed that a Republican Congress and President will inevitably be elected and thus would fix the problem in 2016.“The regulatory, political and legal burden we’re bearing is astronomical. I wouldn’t pay as much for our company as I would for those separate companies because the punishment doesn’t fit the crime sometimes, it fits the size of the bank… But the things I just mentioned – legal, regulatory – will go away.” [Emphasis added] This one percenter’s callousness simply vitalizes Sanders, his voice… and ultimately his constituency. He also doesn’t have to send a “thank you” note to the Donald, whose surge in the GOP polls seems simply to grow Sanders’ stature within the Democratic Party.

Like Senator powerhouse, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Sanders is pulling his entire party towards this once-abandoned left. And as much as Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, has tried to side-step these controversial issues and hive towards the center, Sanders is forcing Clinton to address income inequality – and embrace that lost constituency much more on his terms.

Clinton has responded with a gentler iteration of Sanders’ platform, spoken with less vitriol but clearly accepting her desired role as leader of the Democratic Party. Picking up the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers, Clinton’s refrain has focused on restoring the middle class – which addresses raising wages and taxing the wealthy a la Sanders – but approaching this goal from the middle and not the left. Same overall result.

As Sanders continued to rise in the pre-primary Democratic polls, Clinton looked over her shoulder and shifted left. In a speech at the New School on July 13^th, Ms. Clinton took a steadier aim at the excesses of Wall Street, and separated herself further from the deregulators in the GOP while castigating presumed Republican frontrunner, Jeb Bush, on his call for Americans to work harder.

“She said that many institutions are ‘too complex and too risky’ and promised to go further than President Obama has both in regulating the industry and in prosecuting its bad players. As president, she said, she would appoint and empower regulators who understand that ‘too big to fail is still too big a problem.’ And she promised to ensure that the financial markets ‘work for everyday investors, not just high-risk traders.’

“‘Too often it has seemed that the human beings responsible get off with limited consequences or none at all, even when they’ve already pocketed the gains,’ Clinton said. ‘This is wrong. And on my watch, it will change. . . . We will prosecute individuals as well as firms when they commit fraud.’” The Washington Post, July 13^th. She also questioned the longer-term values of the on-demand “gig-based” economy and centered her platform on a “growth and fairness” plank.

Did she meet Sanders halfway? Were her statements enough for that ignored constituency? When she was asked if she would restore the provisions of the Glass-Steagall Act that her husband had signed into repeal – the legal restriction that kept commercial banks and trading institutions separate – she just didn’t respond. Can she move too far left towards Sanders for the general election? Does she need to move more? Time will tell, but whatever may be said about long-shot-Sanders, he has most certainly left an indelible mark on Democratic politics.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes candidate do not win but forever reshape their party’s platform in ways that have repeatedly changed America.

Abstinence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

School programs that teach abstinence until marriage are a waste of money.

Abstinence-Only Programs Do Not Impact Teen Sexual Behavior  In early November 2007, the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy released Emerging Answers 2007, a report authored by Dr. Douglas Kirby, a leading sexual health researcher, discussing what programs work in preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV. The report found strong evidence that abstinence-only-until-marriage programs do not have any impact on teen sexual behavior… Abstinence-only-until-marriage programs were ineffective in changing any of the behaviors that were examined including the rate of vaginal sex, number of sexual partners, and condom use. The rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among participants in abstinence-only-until-marriage programs were unaffected. Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States Fact Sheet.

But teen pregnancies have come down since 2010, with few startling revelations along the way. “Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle found that teenagers who received some type of comprehensive sex education were 60 percent less likely to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant.” From an article by Amada Peterson Beadle entitled Teen Pregnancies Highest In States With Abstinence-Only Policies, ThinkProgress.org, April 10, 2012.

“For example, take the states with the highest and lowest teen pregnancy rates. Mississippi [which has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation] does not require sex education in schools, but when it is taught, abstinence-only education is the state standard. New Mexico, which has the second highest teen birth rate, does not require sex ed and has no requirements on what should be included when it is taught. New Hampshire [which has the lowest teen birthrates], on the other hand, requires comprehensive sex education in schools that includes abstinence and information about condoms and contraception.” Beadle.

Okay, we got it. Sexual urges among teens are just too damned powerful to try and talk them into abstinence. What if you adopted the opposite approach? Equip them with actual and substantial birth control preventative measures, adding sex education to the mix? Hell, that would simply encourage pre-marital sex, and too many parents would simply freak out at the thought, particularly those with strong religious notions against pre-marital sex, particularly among their teenaged kids. But what if we tried that approach? Seriously? Isn’t it worth finding out if that program could reduce teen pregnancies?

Well, younger-folks-are-gonna-have-sex realists, guess no longer! “Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest ever real-life experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them?

“They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate for teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. There was a similar decline in births for another group particularly vulnerable to unplanned pregnancies: unmarried women under 25 who have not finished high school.

“‘Our demographer came into my office with a chart and said, ‘Greta, look at this, we’ve never seen this before,’ ’ said Greta Klingler, the family planning supervisor for the public health department. ‘The numbers were plummeting.’” New York Times, July 5^th. The Evangelical/ Puritanical methods of persuasion and, where there is any training at all, sex education based primarily on teaching abstinence are complete and utter failures. They do not work. And what’s worse, they lead to pregnancies among women who are the least able to provide solid and mature care to these generally unwanted babies, perpetuating a cycle of under-educated children having babies, generation after generation.

For those with powerful anti-abortion feelings, high among Evangelicals, unwanted pregnancies also foster more pregnancy terminations that infuriate their sensibilities. You’d think that they would be among the forefront of the movement to endorse the Colorado experiment. But myth often trumps facts: anything that makes sex easier is likely to draw some strong religious opposition. However, the facts are stunning: “Teenage births have been declining nationally, but experts say the timing and magnitude of the reductions in Colorado are a strong indication that the state’s program was a major driver. About one-fifth of women ages 18 to 44 in Colorado now use a long-acting method, a substantial increase driven largely by teenagers and poor women.

“The surge in Colorado has far outpaced the growing use of such methods nationwide. About 7 percent of American women ages 15 to 44 used long-acting birth control from 2011 to 2013, the most recent period studied, up from 1.5 percent in 2002. The figures include all women, even those who were pregnant or sterilized. The share of long-acting contraception users among just women using birth control is likely to be higher.

“But the experiment in Colorado is entering an uncertain new phase that will test a central promise of the Affordable Care Act: free contraception.

“The private grant that funds the state program has started to run out, and while many young women are expected to be covered under the health care law, some plans have required payment or offered only certain methods, problems the Obama administration is trying to correct. What is more, only new plans are required to provide free contraception, so women on plans that predate the law may not qualify. (In 2014, about a quarter of people covered through their employers were on grandfathered plans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.) Advocates also worry that teenagers — who can currently get the devices at clinics confidentially — may be less likely to get the devices through their parents’ insurance. Long-acting devices can cost between $800 and $900.

“‘There’s no lifeboat with the Affordable Care Act,’ said Liz Romer, a nurse practitioner who runs the Adolescent Family Planning Clinic at Children’s Hospital Colorado, which went from giving out 30 long-acting devices a year in 2009 to more than 2,000 in 2013.” NY Times. Think about the long-term savings to society. Reduced burden on the social welfare system, less pressure on the criminal justice system where all-too-many “unwanted babies” grow wind up. Other than to support rather completely disproven mythology, I cannot think of a good reason not to expand this Colorado experiment across the land. Can you? Isn’t it time to make this national policy?

I’m Peter Dekom, and there are such clear paths to improving American life, and it is a shame if ignorance or mythology prevents that from happening.