Monday, February 27, 2012

How Nasser shaped the Arab Spring


How Nasser shaped the Arab Spring 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012221135257602109.html



Sarah Mousa
Sarah Mousa
Sarah Mousa graduated from Princeton University in 2010, and is currently a Fulbright scholar in Egypt.
How Nasser shaped the Arab Spring
Similar tactics of oppression have been used by the leadership of Egypt and Syria to weaken the will of their people.
Last Modified: 22 Feb 2012 10:27
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The revolutions in Egypt and Syria were shaped in part by Nasser-era policies and institutions [GALLO/GETTY]
Cairo, Egypt - Today marks the 54th anniversary of the foundation of the United Arab Republic (UAR), a unity between Egypt and Syria that was the height of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser's power and the pinnacle of the pan-Arab philosophy that he epitomised.
At that moment in 1958, the Arab world took a decisive step towards declaring its ultimate independence from foreign influence and reclaiming a unity that both Eastern and Western powers had worked to destroy since the Middle East's golden age. Nasser emotionally described the jubilant scenes he witnessed on the day of the UAR's founding, and later called it a victory for the Arabs as a free people, despite the eventual dissolution of the Republic.
A closer look at this time, one hailed as a revolutionary moment in modern Arab history, offers great insight into the region's current struggles. Nasser's philosophies resonated closely with people not only in Egypt, but throughout the Arab world and beyond, making him overwhelmingly popular. However, both the Syrian and Egyptian systems today are rooted in institutions that the Nasser regime either directly or indirectly created. It is these institutions that have pushed the people of both countries to rise, and that have allowed the Assad regime of Syria and Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) in Egypt to continue to exert control over their countries.
Nasser's insistence on complete Arab sovereignty and unity, as well as a focus on the plight of the poor, made him a central figure in a region rising out of British and French imperialism. Nasser's frustration at the failure of Arab armies in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, due to foreign control and Arab disunity, would later be cited as the key impetus for his role in the 1952 military coup that rid Egypt of British rule. Nasser's humble background and disdain for the aristocratic hierarchy of the time further inspired him to champion the cause of the poor, the farmers and the workers through semi-socialist policies implemented during his presidency.
His steadfast beliefs and daring policies, including Egyptian-Syrian unity, the nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956, land redistribution, and free education for all, made Nasser the most celebrated leader of modern Arab history. To this day, photos of Nasser hang throughout the region's cities and towns and his sayings are readily echoed. Among the most famous ones: "Raise your head brother, the age of imperialism is over".
It was also Nasser's regime, however, that created the institutions that have left Egypt and Syria dealing with the same problems of over-centralised power and underdeveloped institutions of social justice that pushed the youth of these countries to rise in revolution.
While Nasser often espoused democratic ideals, especially in his earlier writings, for him the populist ends he desired ultimately justified the undemocratic means by which he sought to obtain them. Political participation, fair electoral processes, impartial jurisprudence, independent media and civil liberties were stifled by the Nasser regime, which merged all powerful institutions into one conglomerate. Any voice that was suspected to contradict Nasserist causes and any threat to the singularity of national authority was intolerable.
Just rule of law?
When Nasser became president of Egypt in 1954, it was only after a struggle with then President Mohamed Naguib, who had been advocating for a transfer of power to civilian rule and a return of the military to its proper position of protecting - not leading - the country. Naguib and Nasser shared many of the same ideals, but clashed when it came to the means of implementation. Pressure from Nasser and the Free Officers, the group responsible for the 1952 coup, mounted and Naguib's role became largely ceremonial until he himself stepped down and was subsequently forced into isolation.
Since the beginning of the 1952 coup, the judicial system had been used to achieve the regime's goals. The Revolutionary Command Council, the ruling body, set up courts to supersede the system and try dissidents. One vocal advocate for constitutional governance was Abdel Raziq al-Sanhouri, a legal scholar and the author of Egypt's Civil Code. In 1954, Nasser's first year of presidency, a mob violently beat Sanhouri and he was forced to resign. The incident came to symbolise an end to the just rule of law in modern Egyptian history; in addition to the transcendence of the judiciary, the regime carried out purges to ensure complete loyalty within the system.
To the Nasser regime, influential institutions were a tool to achieve the revolution's goals. Nasser recognised the importance of media very early in his career. In 1952, the Free Officers announced their military coup by taking over the national radio. Nasser silenced opposing media voices in his early presidency through imprisonment and torture, and in 1960 media was nationalised. Some top editors resigned in protest as they saw media become a mouthpiece for the government and journalists, unskilled government employees.
The Nasser regime vehemently attacked political parties on the belief that they would weaken the goals of his Revolution by giving platforms to opposing groups. The Wafd Party, the strongest political group under the British-controlled Egyptian monarchy, was effectively destroyed by Nasser. The Muslim Brotherhood was declared illegal, and anyone suspected of belonging was detained.
Plurality in political opinion was considered a threat, and civil liberties were repressed. Through the recruiting and planting of informers, particularly on college campuses, and the torture or detention of any opposition, the regime successfully created a tangible fear throughout society. Whether it needed to or not, the Nasser regime used its power to exercise electoral fraud to further guarantee absolute control. In referenda, Nasser frequently secured "99.9 per cent" affirmations, and forgery was further used in parliamentary and local elections to ensure regime loyalty on all levels.
When Egypt and Syria united in 1958, it was at the invitation of Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatly and the leading Baath Party. The Baath Party was based originally on the pan-Arab, socialist ideals formulated by Syrian thinker Michel Aflaq and espoused by Nasser. In 1958, Syria had been in its early years of democracy and the elected Baath Party was facing a growingly strong Communist Party with leaders in key positions, as well as internal conflicts. In a move to strengthen its position, the Baath proposed unification to Nasser, a largely popular move.
Baath loyalists
As president of the UAR, Nasser placed loyal members of his regime in top posts in Syria and implemented the same policies he had in Egypt. The poor political structure set up by Nasser often left unfamiliar Egyptians running Syria, much to the chagrin of Syrian leaders, especially those of the Baath. Most significantly, Nasser outlawed all political parties, including the Baath Party, leaving it with unexpectedly little power. Growing unrest within the military finally led to a coup and Syrian secession from the UAR; for the following two years, the country was led by democratically elected representatives.
When a second military coup placed the Baath in power in 1963, Syria's democratic experiments were forgotten, as well as the original ideologies of the party. Michel Aflaq and other Baath founders were exiled, and the party used divisive tactics to keep the population under control. Gamal Abdel Nasser himself criticised Hafez al-Assad, who was minister of defense before becoming president, for his use of sectarianism to divide the population and grant favours to Baath loyalists (with all of his administrative flaws, few would argue that Nasser was corrupt). The Baath was able to exert complete control on the population through the use of institutions either directly put in place by Nasser or indirectly inspired by his example.
"The strength of [Egypt and Syria's] militaries ... have allowed both the Assad regime of Syria and SCAF of Egypt to continue to exert control over their countries."
Developments over the past several decades have rendered Nasser's pan-Arab philosophies absent on a political level, yet the institutions and mechanisms of rule that he established in Egypt and Syria remain. In some case, institutions have become less severely repressive, while in others abuse of government tools is more rampant. While many tolerated this sort of repression under Nasser for the sake of greater goals, a loss of clear ideological principles on part of the governments, aside from the retention of power, has elucidated the dangers of allowing for the excessive granting of power to a single institution.
While Arab peoples have a doubtless impact on one another (the Arab Spring has proven the undeniable strength of pan-Arabism on a social level), the intertwined history of Egypt and Syria gives the relationship an added layer. Both the people and governments of these two countries have been and continue to be influenced by one another throughout the revolutions. The influence that the Egyptian and Syrian governments have had on one another, due in part to similarly rooted institutions, is less often noticed. The strength of their militaries - due to centralised power, state control over media and the systematic weakening of political parties - have allowed both the Assad regime of Syria and SCAF of Egypt to continue to exert control over their countries.
Ironically, al-Assad praised the Egyptian Revolution when it started, claiming that the case of Syria was not like Egypt; First Lady Asmaa al-Assad asserted that Syria had recognised the need for reform long ago and had already begun, that Syrians were not as "desperate" as Egyptians. As horrific scenes of military brutality emerge from cities across of Syria, the Egyptian state media looks on with horror, ignoring the undeniable resemblance between the two countries, just as the Assads had done months before.
Unrestrained military
The complete power that the Syrian and Egyptian militaries hold has allowed them to act in an unrestrained manner. The Egyptian military, unlike that of Syria, had no modern history of direct use of force against civilians until recent months. When Mubarak stepped down in February of 2011, there was no precedent for Egypt to look towards but the Tunisian Revolution and the quick exit of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. But since SCAF has been in power, another alternative has presented itself: the Syrian case and the Assad regime's perception that a war of attrition can be successfully waged against protesters.
The Egyptian military first directly used violence against civilians in October of 2011, when tanks literally crushed protesters in front of Maspero, the state media building. Since then, the military has continued to use force against protests using a brutality that is similar (though on a much smaller scale) to that with which the Syrian military has addressed civilians since the first signs of an uprising in March. The Syrian government seems to hold a conviction that any sign of opposition can be completely wiped out, a conviction that is perhaps rooted in its successful silencing of the rebellious Muslim Brotherhood through the massacre of tens of thousands of Hama residents in 1982. SCAF has since followed in similar naivete, mimicking the Syrian regime in acts that range from painting over graffiti to using live ammunition on protesters. The recent Port Said massacre, in which an estimated 74 soccer fans were killed in just a few hours, showed a government brutality that Egyptians had not seen under Mubarak or his predecessors.
Just like the Nasser regime had, the Egyptian and Syrian governments have both recognised the value of media control. When the revolution began in Egypt, the Maspero building was one of the first to be guarded by the military. In Syria, exiles say that protesting in front of the state media building would be suicidal.
Media of both countries have often echoed one another: isolating protesters by labelling them as thugs and foreign agents, blaming economic instability and deficits in security on protesters, and warning of an Islamist takeover as the only possible alternative are mechanisms that both regimes continue to use in uncanny similarity. Both governments have used thugs to wreak havoc and focussed disproportionate media attention on such cases as to give the people an ultimatum between chaos and dictatorship.
While the youth of both countries' use of available tools to rally support has been remarkable, the failure of the opposition to complete their revolutions may be associated with the weakness of opposing political parties that have been banned or strictly limited since the Nasser era. The current unimpressive composition of Egypt's parliament, in terms of both diversity and quality, is a reflection of the past 60 years under military rule. It is in consideration of such circumstances that Bashar al-Assad's recent announcement expediting a referendum on a constitution that would allow for a multi-party system could have been significant was it not far too late for such a concession.
The UAR and its dominant political ideologies and structures have left several lessons for today's ongoing revolutions. The dangers of allowing any power to go unchecked, however lofty its goals may seem, have been made all too clear by these countries' recent history. In both Egypt and Syria, nascent democratic institutions were once destroyed in favour of popular ideologies, resulting in a long-term detriment to the people. 
The progress of the revolutions in both Egypt and Syria leaves much at stake. There is a burden on Egyptians to create formidable democratic institutions, not only for their own sake, but to set an example for their Arab neighbours. The burden falls on Syrians to end the bloodshed and hold those responsible accountable, again not only for the sake of all those who suffer from the Syrian military's brutality, but also to make it clear to the Egyptian government that their aggression will not go unanswered.
Sarah Mousa graduated from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs in 2010, and was a 2010-2011 Fulbright Scholar in Egypt.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source:
Al Jazeera

Scientists pioneer cloaking technology



Scientists pioneer cloaking technology 

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/01/20121271254465876.html


Europe
Scientists pioneer cloaking technology
Scientists in the US manage to use invisibility cloak to make a three-dimensional object.
Last Modified: 27 Jan 2012 01:22


The idea of turning invisible could be closer to 'science fact' than 'science fiction'.

Researchers at the University of Texas have for the first time used an invisibility cloak to make a three-dimensional object.

One cloaking technique uses so-called meta-materials to redirect light, creating 2-dimensional invisibility; another uses a heat panel to create a mirage effect, bending the light to trick the eye.

The latest advance uses plasmonic meta-materials to cancel all reflected light. No reflection means the object disappears into 3-dimensional invisibility.

Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull reports from London.
 
  
Source:
Al Jazeera

The best information is quantum information



The best information is quantum information 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122237159922635.html



Joseph Emerson
Joseph Emerson
Joseph Emerson is a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics, at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Emerson is co-writer of the award-winning documentary "The Quantum Tamers". He is currently a visiting professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo.
The best information is quantum information
Quantum computing could revolutionise the field of cryptography, with major implications for privacy and security.
Last Modified: 23 Feb 2012 11:01
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A multinational research group is trying to transmit quantum bits to an orbiting satellite [GALLO/GETTY]
Waterloo, Ontario - For some time now we have been immersed in the information age - if you're reading this online, you're proving the point. Our immersion in the information age is reflected in almost every social setting; it has become hard not to find at least one face, if not several faces, aglow with the cool blue light of a smartphone screen. Google, Facebook, and Twitter have changed the way we learn about the world and each other.
The digitisation of information has brought about Marshall McLuhan's "global village", in which nearly everyone is - or soon will be - fully connected. The explosive growth of information technology has transformed our world into one that is now draped in a network of fiber-optic cables, dotted with cell-phone towers and encircled by a drone army of communication satellites, all of which enable the flow of digital information around the globe.
Privacy, security, knowledge and power
A major unresolved question is the role, or even the possibility, of private communication and information security in this brave new digital world - a topic in which governments, corporations and private citizens all have a vested interest. This issue has come sharply into focus as various governments attempt to monitor the communications of their citizens, and even threaten to ban some services, such as Blackberry's BBM, because of the incredibly secure encryption such services provide to end users. But it's important to emphasise that private and secure communication is broadly relevant to users of the internet. For example, if I want to do some online banking, I want to be sure my financial data is protected from online prying eyes.
A fundamental, scientific question is this: how much privacy is even possible over networks controlled and monitored by others? Under what physical conditions can Person A communicate privately with Person B over a public network?  Fortunately, we currently have efficient encryption systems to reliably protect online activities such as personal banking. But practical systems can be cracked, depending on the resources the would-be eavesdroppers have at their disposal.
One of the most widely used encryption schemes on the internet today is the RSA scheme. The basic idea is that one can encode information with a key - which is some very large number - that is made publicly available. With RSA, the encoded information can only be decoded by someone who knows the two prime factors that, when multiplied together, produce this very large number. While it is easy to multiply two numbers together, it turns out to be extremely difficult to find the two prime factors that are multiplied to create a large product. This difficulty is what enables privacy. I make my locking-key publicly available and anyone who wants to send me information privately encodes that information with this locking-key. If I do not disclose the prime factors to anyone - that is, if I keep my unlocking key private - then only I can decipher the encoded message. To anyone else, the message looks like random binary gibberish.
How secure is this? The answer depends on a number of practical considerations, but fundamentally, RSA remains only as secure as the difficulty of finding the two prime factors for the locking-key. For large enough locking-key numbers this problem is believed to be unfeasibly hard to solve - even with vast amounts of conventional computing power - because finding the prime factors gets exponentially more difficult as you increase the number of digits in the key.
What can quantum physics do for you ... or to you?
Information is an abstract concept - it can comprise names, numbers, dates, places, almost anything. The important point is that any information is ultimately represented as some physical quantity - it is always encoded in some physical medium, whether the physical medium involves sound waves from one person's mouth to another's ear, blotches of ink on paper, pulses of light in a fiber-optic cable or the magnetised regions of a hard drive. When the physical medium is manipulated according to the laws of classical physics - for example, the laws of classical electromagnetism which completely describe conventional computers - then these laws imply certain physical limits on how the encoded information can be manipulated and accessed. And when the information is encoded in physical media that obey the laws of quantum physics, then a different set of rules describes how the information can be manipulated and accessed.
The laws of quantum physics are now well established as the appropriate rules that govern the way that world works. However, the special features of the quantum laws that make them different from the classical laws are typically only manifest when we manipulate objects at the level of individual atoms and photons. So the idea of quantum information technology is based on the possibility of encoding information at this tiny scale. But before we discuss the practical issues associated with this technological challenge, let's first address the following question: how do the unique features of the quantum laws - and any quantum technology based upon them - affect information privacy?
The quantum information age
The quantum information age was born about 20 years ago from a somewhat unexpected union between quantum physicists and computing scientists. One of the major insights that brought quantum information to the forefront of science was the discovery by Peter Shor that a "quantum computer" (a computer built out of components that can be manipulated according to the full extent allowed by the laws of quantum physics) could easily solve the factoring problem. Hence a quantum computer, if one could be built, would spell an end to the security of the most practical encryption method used for private communication today.
Shor's algorithm and a host of other quantum algorithms that have been discovered subsequently have stimulated a major global research effort investigating practical ways to build a large-scale quantum computer. However, there are major technological obstacles to realising large-scale quantum computers. It turns out that the same special features of quantum mechanics that give power to quantum computing also make them tricky to build. Quantum systems are fragile, fickle and tough to control. While small-scale quantum computers consisting of up to a dozen quantum bits, or "qubits", have been realised in the most advanced research labs, currently there is no known technological pathway to building a large-scale quantum computer with thousands or even tens of thousands of qubits, which would be required to crack present-day encryption.
The quantum world taketh ... but also giveth
Quantum technology creates a threat to the possibility of private communication using current encryption methods - but, interestingly, it also provides a new and more secure solution to achieving private communication. While a quantum computer would break current practical encryption schemes, quantum technology also enables a new means of establishing unconditionally secure private communication through a protocol known as quantum key distribution, which was actually discovered a decade before Shor's algorithm.
Quantum key distribution exploits one of the fundamental features of quantum mechanics known as the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This principle holds that, when dealing with quantum systems, it is impossible to observe one property of that system without disturbing some other property. The significance of this for private communication is this: if a Sender A transmits some (random) data to a Receiver B using quantum bits encoded in the right way, then the receiver can always detect whether an eavesdropper has snooped on the transmission.
If no eavesdropper is detected, then B is certain that the random data is private, and this private random data can then be used to establish a secure communication channel over a regular (classical) network. Unlike the RSA scheme currently in use, private communication with quantum key distribution remains secure even if an adversary has access to a quantum computer.
The technological threshold for creating and using quantum communication in practice is much lower than that for creating a practical quantum computer. In fact, we already have the technology - researchers have shown that it is possible to transmit quantum bits over hundreds of kilometers using commercial-grade fiber-optic cables. Moreover, there are already private companies offering quantum cryptographic systems. For example, quantum key distribution was used to establish secure communication during the federal election in Switzerland in 2007. Moreover, a multi-national research group led by one of my colleagues, Thomas Jennewein at the Institute for Quantum Computing, is now undertaking a research program to transmit quantum bits to an orbiting communications satellite, which would enable quantum key distribution on a truly global scale.
Of course, the extra security afforded by quantum key distribution is currently unnecessary for most applications. Current encryption methods, and the information it protects, can be decrypted only in the future, from an adversary who gains eventual access to a quantum computer. Although for most applications this level of security is not relevant, for others the threat of this future technology can be a serious security concern.
We live at a time when rapid developments in conventional information technology have led to an equally rapidly adapting social and political landscape surrounding private communication over public networks. The advent of quantum information technology will further shape the future of communication privacy in our expanding global village.
Joseph Emerson is a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics, at the University of Waterloo, Canada, and a member of the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing. He is a scholar of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and recipient of the province of Ontario's Early Researcher Award. Prof. Emerson is co-writer of the award-winning documentary The Quantum Tamers. He is currently a visiting professor at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. 
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source:
Al Jazeera

The 0.000063% election


The 0.000063% election

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122217200429526.html

 

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/20122217200429526.html



Ari Berman
Ari Berman
Ari Berman is a contributing writer for The Nation magazine and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. He has written extensively about American politics, foreign policy and the intersection of money and politics. He graduated from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and political science.
The 0.000063% election
How US politics became the politics of the "super rich".
Last Modified: 25 Feb 2012 11:47
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Campaign finance has made this the 2012 presidential election for the one per cent of the one per cent [GALLO/GETTY]
New York, NY - At a time when it's become a cliché to say that Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation's political conversation - drawing long overdue attention to the struggles of the 99 per cent - electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the one per cent. Or, to be more precise, the .000063 per cent. Those are the 196 individual donors who have provided nearly 80 per cent of the money raised by Super PACs in 2011 by giving $100,000 or more each.
These political action committees, spawned by the Supreme Court's 5-4 Citizens United decision in January 2010, can raise unlimited amounts of money from individuals, corporations, or unions for the purpose of supporting or opposing a political candidate. In theory, Super PACs are legally prohibited from coordinating directly with a candidate, though in practice they're just a murkier extension of political campaigns, performing all the functions of a traditional campaign without any of the corresponding accountability.
If 2008 was the year of the small donor, when many political pundits (myself included) predicted that the fusion of grassroots organising and cyber-activism would transform how campaigns were run, then 2012 is "the year of the big donor", when a candidate is only as good as the amount of money in his Super PAC. "In this campaign, every candidate needs his own billionaires," wrote Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.

Listening Post - Super PACs:
A new media weapon
"This really is the selling of America," claims former presidential candidate and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean. "We've been sold out by five justices thanks to the Citizens United decision." In truth, our democracy was sold to the highest bidder long ago, but in the 2012 election the explosion of Super PACs has shifted the public's focus to the staggering inequality in our political system, just as the Occupy movement shined a light on the gross inequity of the economy. The two, of course, go hand in hand.
"We're going to beat money power with people power," Newt Gingrich said after losing to Mitt Romney in Florida as January ended. The walking embodiment of the lobbying-industrial complex, Gingrich made that statement even though his candidacy is being propped up by a Super PAC funded by two $5 million donations from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It might have been more amusing if the GOP presidential primary weren't a case study of a contest long on money and short on participation.
The Wesleyan Media Project recently reported a 1,600 per cent increase in interest-group-sponsored TV ads in this cycle as compared with the 2008 primaries. Florida has proven the battle royale of the Super PACs thus far. There, the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, outspent the pro-Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, five to one. In the final week of the campaign alone, Romney and his allies ran 13,000 TV ads in Florida, compared with only 200 for Gingrich. Ninety-two per cent of the ads were negative in nature, with two-thirds attacking Gingrich, who, ironically enough, had been a fervent advocate of the Citizens United decision.
With the exception of Ron Paul's underdog candidacy and Rick Santorum's upset victory in Iowa - where he spent almost no money but visited each of the state's 99 counties - the Republican candidates and their allied Super PACs have all but abandoned retail campaigning and grassroots politicking. They have chosen instead to spend their war chests on TV.
The results can already be seen in the first primaries and caucuses: an onslaught of money and a demobilised electorate. It's undoubtedly no coincidence that, when compared with 2008, turnout was down 25 per cent in Florida, and that, this time around, fewer Republicans have shown up in every state that's voted so far - except for South Carolina. According to political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar, negative TV ads contribute to "a political implosion of apathy and withdrawal". New York Times columnist Tim Egan has labelled the post-Citizens United era "your democracy on meth".

 US comedians hold 'sanity rally'
The 0.01 per cent primary
More than 300 Super PACs are now registered with the Federal Election Commission. The one financed by the greatest number of small donors belongs to Stephen Colbert, who's turned his TV show into a brilliant commentary on the deformed Super PAC landscape. Colbert's satirical Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, has raised $1 million from 31,595 people, including 1,600 people who gave $1 each. Consider this a rare show of people power in 2012.
Otherwise the Super PACs on both sides of the aisle are financed by the one per cent of the one per cent. Romney's Restore Our Future Super PAC, founded by the general counsel of his 2008 campaign, has led the herd, raising $30 million, 98 per cent from donors who gave $25,000 or more. Ten million dollars came from just ten donors who gave $1 million each. These included three hedge-fund managers and Houston Republican Bob Perry, the main funder behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004, whose scurrilous ads did such an effective job of destroying John Kerry's electoral prospects. Sixty-five per cent of the funds that poured into Romney's Super PAC in the second half of 2011 came from the finance, insurance and real estate sector, otherwise known as the people who brought you the economic meltdown of 2007 to 2008.
Romney's campaign has raised twice as much as his Super PAC, which is more than you can say for Rick Santorum, whose Super PAC - Red, White & Blue - has raised and spent more than the candidate himself. Forty per cent of the $2 million that has so far gone into Red, White & Blue came from just one man, Foster Friess, a conservative hedge-fund billionaire and Christian evangelical from Wyoming.
In the wake of Santorum's upset victories in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri on February 7, Friess told the New York Times that he'd recruited $1 million for Santorum's Super PAC from another (unnamed) donor and upped his own giving, though he wouldn't say by how much. We won't find out until the next campaign disclosure filing in three months, by which time the GOP primary will almost certainly be decided.
For now, Gingrich's sugar daddy Adelson has pledged to stay with his flagging campaign, but he's also signalled that if the former Speaker of the House goes down, he'll be ready to donate even more Super PAC money to a Romney presidential bid. And keep in mind that there's nothing in the post-Citizens United law to stop a donor such as Adelson, hell-bent on preventing the Obama administration from standing in the way of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, from giving $100 million, or for that matter, however much he likes.
Before Citizens United, the maximum amount one person could give to a candidate was $2,500; for a political action committee, $5,000; for a political party committee, $30,800. Now, the sky's the limit for a Super PAC, and even more disturbingly, any donor can give an unlimited contribution to a 501c4 - outfits defined by the IRS as "civic leagues or organisations not organised for profit but operated exclusively for the promotion of social welfare" - and to make matters worse, that contribution will remain eternally secret. In this way, US politics is descending further into the darkness, with 501c4s quickly gaining influence as "Shadow Super PACs".
"Forty per cent of the TV ads in the presidential race so far came from these tax-exempt 'social welfare' groups."

A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that, at a cost of $24 million, 40 per cent of the TV ads in the presidential race so far came from these tax-exempt "social welfare" groups. The Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads, a leading conservative Super PAC attacking Democratic candidates and the Obama administration, also runs a 501c4 called Crossroads GPS. It's raised twice as much money as its sister group, all from donations whose sources will remain hidden from US voters. Serving as a secret slush fund for billionaires evidently now qualifies as social welfare.
The 'income defence industry'
In his book Oligarchy, political scientist Jeffrey Winters refers to the disproportionately wealthy and influential actors in the political system as the "income defence industry". If you want to know how the moneyed class, who prospered during the Bush and Clinton years, found a way to kill or water down nearly everything it objected to in the Obama years, look no further than the grip of the one per cent of the one per cent on our political system.
This simple fact explains why hedge-fund managers pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries, or why the US is the only industrialised nation without a single-payer universal healthcare system, or why the planet continues to warm at an unprecedented pace while we do nothing to combat global warming. Money usually buys elections and, whoever is elected, it almost always buys influence.
In the 2010 election, the one per cent of the one per cent accounted for 25 per cent of all campaign-related donations, totalling $774 million dollars, and 80 per cent of all donations to the Democratic and Republican parties, the highest percentage since 1990. In congressional races in 2010, according to the Centre for Responsive Politics, the candidate who spent the most money won 85 per cent of House races and 83 per cent of Senate races.
The media loves an underdog story, but nowadays the underdog is less likely than ever to win. Given the cost of running campaigns and the overwhelming premium on outspending your opponent, it's no surprise that nearly half the members of Congress are millionaires, and the median net worth of a US Senator is $2.56 million.

 Fault Lines - The Top 1%
The influence of Super PACs was already evident by November 2010, just nine months after the Supreme Court's ruling. John Nichols and Robert McChesney of The Nation note that, of the 53 competitive House districts where Rove's Crossroads organisation outspent Democratic candidates in 2010, Republicans won fifty-one. As it turned out, however, that election was a mere test run for the monetary extravaganza that is 2012.
Republicans are banking on that Super PAC advantage again this year, when the costs of the presidential contest and all other races for federal posts will soar from $5 billion in 2008 to as high as $7 billion by November. (The 2000 election cost a "mere" $3 billion.) In other words, the amount spent this election season will be roughly the equivalent of the gross domestic product of Haiti.
The myth of small donors
In June 2003, presidential candidate Howard Dean shocked the political establishment by raising $828,000 in one day over the internet, with an average donation of $112. Dean, in fact, got 38 per cent of his campaign's total funds from donations of $200 or less, planting the seeds for what many forecast would be a small-donor revolution in US politics.
Four years later, Barack Obama raised a third of his record-breaking $745 million campaign haul from small donors, while Ron Paul raised 39 per cent from small dollars on the Republican side. Much of Paul's campaign was financed by online "money bombs", when enthusiastic supporters generated millions of dollars in brief, coordinated bursts. The amount of money raised in small donations by Obama, in particular, raised hopes that his campaign had found a way to break the death grip of big donors on US politics.
In retrospect, the small-donor utopianism surrounding Obama seems naïve. Despite all the adulatory media attention about his small donors, the candidate still raised the bulk of his money from big givers. (Typically, these days, incumbent members of Congress raise less than ten per cent of their campaign funds from small donors, with those numbers actually dropping when you reach the gubernatorial and state legislative levels.) Obama's top contributors included employees of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Citigroup, hardly standard bearers for the little guy. For obvious reasons, the campaign chose to emphasise the small donors over the big ones in its narrative, as it continues to do in 2012.
Interestingly enough, both Obama and Paul actually raised more money from small donors in 2011 than they did in 2008, 48 per cent and 52 per cent of their totals, respectively. But, in the Super PAC era, that money no longer has the same impact. Even Dean doubts that his anti-establishment, internet-fuelled campaign from 2004 would be as successful today. "Super PACs have made a grassroots campaign less effective," he says. "You can still run a grassroots campaign but the problem is you can be overwhelmed now on television and by dirty mailers being sent out ... It's a very big change from 2008."
Obama is a candidate with a split personality, which makes his campaign equally schizophrenic. The Obama campaign claims it's raising 98 per cent of its money from small donors and is "building the biggest grassroots campaign in American history", according to campaign manager Jim Messina. But the starry-eyed statistics and the rhetoric that accompanies it are deeply misleading. Of the $89 million raised in 2011 by the Obama Joint Victory Fund, a collaboration of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Obama campaign, 74 per cent came from donations of $20,000 or more and 99 per cent from donations of $1,000 or more.
The campaign has 445 "bundlers" (dubbed "volunteer fundraisers" by the campaign), who gather money from their wealthy friends and package it for Obama. They have raised at least $74.4 million for Obama and the DNC in 2011. Sixty-one of those bundlers raised $500,000 or more. Obama held 73 fundraisers in 2011 and 13 last month alone, where the price of admission was almost always $35,800 a head.

Inside Story US 2012 - Romney's Florida win:
More money than policy?
An increase in small donor contributions and a surge of big money fundraisers still wasn't enough, however, to give Obama an advantage over Republicans in the money chase. That's why the Obama campaign, until recently adamantly against Super PACs, suddenly relented and signalled its support for a pro-Obama Super PAC named Priorities USA.
A day after the announcement that the campaign, like its Republican rivals, would Super PAC it up, Messina spoke at the members-only Core Club in Manhattan and "assured a group of Democratic donors from the financial services industry that Obama won't demonise Wall Street as he stresses populist appeals in his re-election campaign", reported Bloomberg Businessweek. "Messina told the group of Wall Street donors that the president plans to run against Romney, not the industry that made the former governor of Massachusetts millions."
In other words, don't expect a convincing return to the theme of the people versus the powerful in campaign 2012, even though Romney, if the nominee, would be particularly vulnerable to that line of attack. After all, so far his campaign has raised only nine per cent of its campaign contributions from small donors, well behind both Senator John McCain (21 per cent) in 2008, and George W. Bush (26 per cent) in 2004.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, Romney outraised Obama among the top firms on Wall Street by a margin of 11 to one. His top three campaign contributions are from employees of Goldman Sachs ($496,430), JPMorgan ($317,400) and Morgan Stanley ($277,850). The banks have fallen out of favour with the public, but their campaign cash is indispensable among the political class - and so they remain as powerful as ever in US politics.
In a recent segment of his show, Stephen Colbert noted that half of the money ($67 million) raised by Super PACs in 2011 had come from just 22 people. "That's seven one-millionths of one per cent," or roughly 0.000000071 per cent, Colbert said while spraying a fire extinguisher on his fuming calculator. "So, Occupy Wall Street, you're going to want to change those signs."
Ari Berman is a contributing writer for the Nation magazine and an Investigative Journalism Fellow at The Nation Institute. His book, Herding Donkeys: The Fight to Rebuild the Democratic Party and Reshape American Politics (Picador) is now out in paperback with a new afterword.
A version of this article first appeared on TomDispatch.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.
Source:
TomDispatch


 

Drums of war: The US media's 'Iranian threat'





Drums of war: The US media's 'Iranian threat'

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2012/02/20122258252674477.html

Listening Post
Drums of war: The US media's 'Iranian threat'
We examine US coverage of Iran and ask if a culture of journalism has emerged that ignores the dangers of conjecture.
Last Modified: 25 Feb 2012 12:39
On Listening Post this week: Beating the drum for war - the US media and 'The Iranian Threat'. Plus, the burgeoning media scene in post-revolutionary Libya.
Something sounds familiar. 'Long-range nuclear missiles', 'terrorist sleeper cells', 'WMDs': terms which quickly became part of the media's vocabulary in the run up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Fast-forward to 2012 and they are featuring heavily once again, only now it is not about Iraq, but Iran. Last time, the media's saber-rattling followed the Bush administration's lead in selling the attack on Iraq. This time, the so-called 'Iranian Threat' is a narrative being constructed by the US media all by itself - with scant public support from the Obama administration. Our News Divide this week takes a close look at the coverage of Iran and a culture of journalism that seems to have forgotten the very real dangers of hypothesis and conjecture.
In our News Bytes this week: Two international journalists become the latest victims in the Syrian uprising; Rupert Murdoch announces the launch of his new Sunday tabloid in the UK; New CCTV footage reveals the extent of an attack on a Mexican newspaper last year; and an edition of a Spanish newspaper is banned in Morocco for containing a caricature of King Mohammed VI.
For more than 40 years, the media in Libya served as a propaganda tool for Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. But the revolution has brought change not just to the country's leadership, but also to its media environment. Over the past year, Libyans have seen an explosion in brand new media outlets. At least 120 print outlets have sprung up, as well as fresh alternatives on TV and radio. Meanwhile, a new generation of Libyan journalists are enjoying their newfound freedom of expression despite the lack of training and infrastructure. In this week's feature, Listening Post's Flo Phillips examines the flourishing media scene in Libya and the challenges that lie ahead.
The latest homemade video to be speeding around the internet is a film by Argentinean filmmaker, Fernando Livschitz which makes his homeland's capital, Buenos Aires, look like an amusement park. The budding director managed to cut scenes from a funfair into shots of the city to make it look like the revellers were coasting their way around town. Our dreamlike Internet Video of the Week is called Inception Park and - in our opinion - is just as impressive as the Hollywood blockbuster. We hope you enjoy the show.

 
Listening Post can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Saturday: 0830, 1930; Sunday: 1430; Monday: 0430.

Click here for more on Listening Post.
Source:
Al Jazeera

Does AIPAC want war?


Does AIPAC want war?

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012218134736845243.html




Robert Naiman
Robert Naiman
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy.
Does AIPAC want war?
If a bill pushed by Lieberman passes, it could give the US "political authorisation for military force" against Iran.
Last Modified: 19 Feb 2012 15:17
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Joseph Lieberman is pushing a bill that will delineate red lines' for Iran - lines Iran has already crossed [GALLO/GETTY]
Washington, DC - For all it has done to promote confrontation between the United States and Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has worked to avoid the public perception that AIPAC is openly promoting war. In AIPAC's public documents, the emphasis has always been on tougher sanctions. (If you make sanctions "tough" enough - an effective embargo - that is an act of war, but it is still at one remove from saying that the US should start bombing.)
But a new Senate effort to move the goalposts of US policy to declare it "unacceptable" for Iran to develop a nuclear weapons capability - not a nuclear weapon, but the technical capacity to create one - gives AIPAC the opportunity to make a choice which all can observe. If the Lieberman resolution becomes an ask for AIPAC lobbyists at the March AIPAC policy conference, then the world will know: AIPAC is lobbying Congress for war with Iran.

 US intelligence suggests no Iranian nukes
Sponsors of the Lieberman resolution deny that it is an "authorisation for military force", and in a legal, technical sense, they are absolutely correct: it is not a legal authorisation for military force. But it is an attempt to enact a political authorisation for military force. It is an attempt to pressure the administration politically to move forward the tripwire for war, to a place indistinguishable from the status quo that exists today. If successful, this political move would make it impossible for the administration to pursue meaningful diplomatic engagement with Iran, shutting down the most plausible alternative to war.
The first "resolved" paragraph of the Lieberman resolution affirms that it is a "vital national interest" of the United States to prevent Iran from acquiring a "nuclear weapons capability".
The phrase "vital national interest" is a "term of art". It means something that the US should be willing to go to war for. Recall the debate over whether the US military intervention in Libya was a "vital national interest" of the United States (which Defence Secretary Robert Gates said it wasn't.) It was a debate over whether the bar was met to justify the United States going to war.
The resolution seeks to establish it as US policy that a nuclear weapons capability - not acquisition of a nuclear weapon, but the technical capacity to create one - is a "red line" for the United States. If the US were to announce to Iran that achieving "nuclear weapons capability" is a red line for the US, the US would be saying that it is ready to attack Iran with military force in order to try to prevent Iran from crossing this "line" to achieve "nuclear weapons capability".
And this is reportedly being openly discussed by the bill's sponsors.
Senators from both parties said Thursday that a diplomatic solution was still the goal and they believed the sanctions on Iran were working, but that a containment strategy was less preferable than a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if all else fails.
So, what the Senators are reportedly saying is that if "all else fails" - that is, if diplomacy and sanctions appear to be "failing" to prevent Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability - according to these Senators, that's what "failure" would be - then they want war. That's not a legal "authorisation of force", but it is a political one.
And it is not a political authorisation of force in some far-off future. It is a political authorisation of force today.
"Nuclear weapons capability" is a fuzzy term with no legal definition. But Joe Lieberman, a principal author of the bill, has said what he thinks this term means:
"To me, nuclear weapons capability means that they are capable of breaking out and producing a nuclear weapon - in other words, that they have all the components necessary to do that," Lieberman said. "It's a standard that is higher than saying 'The red line is when they actually have nuclear weapons'."
But many experts think that Iran already has the "components" necessary for "breaking out".
"To me, nuclear weapons capability means that they are capable of breaking out and producing a nuclear weapon - in other words, that they have all the components necessary to do that."
- Senator Joseph Lieberman
On Thursday, Anthony Cordesman of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies was quoted saying that the November report from the International Atomic Energy Agency "basically laid out the fact that Iran now has every element of technology needed to make a fission weapon".
On January 24, Helene Cooper reported in the New York Times:
Several American and European officials say privately that the most attainable outcome for the West could be for Iran to maintain the knowledge and technology necessary to build a nuclear weapon while stopping short of doing so.
This suggests two things. One, these US and European officials believe that Iran already has "the knowledge and technology necessary to build a nuclear weapon"; two, these US and European officials believe that inducing Iran not to use this knowledge and technology to build a nuclear weapon is the best outcome that the West can achieve.
If the experts and Western officials who believe that Iran already has "the knowledge and technology necessary to build a nuclear weapon" are right, then what that says is that Iran has already crossed the "red line" of the Lieberman bill. And therefore, the supporters of the Lieberman bill are saying that they are ready for war today. Or they are ready for war any time that they decide to join the experts and officials who say that Iran has already crossed the Lieberman "red line", which of course is something that the Lieberman supporters can do anytime they want.
It's as if someone wearing a bag over their head says, "I'm ready for war whenever I see light". All they have to do to see light is take the bag off their head, so they are saying that they are ready for war whenever it is convenient for them to say that they are.
Anyone who supports the Lieberman bill is declaring themselves for war. If AIPAC makes the Lieberman bill an ask for its March policy conference, then at least we'll be done with the pretence that AIPAC is doing anything besides trying to get the US into another Middle East war.
Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source:
Al Jazeera