The more things change...

I'm as happy about the elections in Iraq as the next guy. But let's not lose our sense of historical perspective. From the Times, dateline September 3, 1967 (courtesy of Kevin Drum):

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

Of course, we all know that times have changed. (For one thing, torture is now legal.) But even our gaily optimistic president says the fighting will continue. And when he says fighting will continue, you better believe him.

Dick Cheney: Dick

OK, so maybe deep down nobody likes to go to concentration camp liberation memorials. And maybe it is hard to know what to wear. But what, for the love of God, is up with this this?

You can't quite make it out in the photo, but according to the Washington Post, the Veep's oversize parka was embroidered with his name. And his nice ski cap had the words "Staff 2001" written on it, as in, "Check out this cool hat I got for free!"

Quid cogitas, Dick? We all knew about your quadruple bypass, but until now you've kept the Alzheimer's pretty well under wraps...

I mean, what other explanation is there? Cheney's a hard-liner on Israel, and no enemy to the Jews. He wouldn't purposefully offend them. So what gives? I can only think of a few possibilities:

1. Likes Jews well enough, but couldn't resist temptation to offend gays, who were also killed at Auschwitz.
2. Had date with Justice Scalia to go duck hunting afterwards in the Oswieçem woods out back behind Birkenau, didn't feel like going all the way back to hotel.

or, what seems most likely,

3. is total dick.

Come to think of it, an embroidered parka pretty much makes you a dick whatever the reason.

The Divka z Ipanema

That's czech for 'girl from', folks. Turns out the fat Brazilian women pictured in Larry Rohter's recent article about fat Brazilians (notice no more photos) were not, in fact, Brazilians. They were Czech. According to O Globo, the women in the photo will sue the Times. Perhaps that contributed to the Times' decision to run this editor's note today...

In all fairness, this wasn't Rohter's fault: he had no control over the picture, and probably none over the piece's title or even its emphasis on the Girl From Ipanema angle. It was, however, the fault of the photographer, John Meier. I'm not totally unbiased on the subject of John (less than full disclosure here: let's just say we have friends in common), so I won't delve into the ethics of getting paid a bundle for snapping an unauthorized picture of somebody on the beach which you intend to caption "a fat Brazilian". Suffice it to say that I got a good deal of pleasure from the following description of him from Milena Suchopárková, one of the women in the photos:

"um homem que lá pelas tantas se aproximou de nós trazendo vários cachorros, na verdade, estava disfarçando, que o que ele queria mesmo era fazer umas fotos nossas."

("this guy slowly came up on us, bringing some dogs, but he was really dissembling; he was really trying to take a picture of us.")

A ridiculous end to a ridiculous story. Here, of course, it was front page news. Imagine people's relief: NYT proved wrong: Brazilian women hot after all!

Carioca's Revenge

My girlfriend called it: As soon as that Times piece about fat Brazilians came out, she said "somebody is going to sacanear (take the piss out of) that guy during Carnaval." Lo and behold, this year's samba for the bloco (neighborhood samba band) Imprensa que Eu Gamo: "Larry Rohter, será que ele é?":

Não gosta de cachaça
Não entende de mulher
O Larry Rohter, será que ele é?

Rough Translation: He don't like booze, he don't understand women, that Larry Rohter, you think he might be, you know, funny?

(Cultural disclaimer for non-Brazilians/connoisseurs: Actually, "funny" doesn't appear in the original, but is implicit. For better or worse, the P.inC.ness of the lyrics draws on a long tradition of gay jokes associated with Carnaval songs, in particular the old favorite "Olha a cabeleira do Zezé, será que ela é? será que ela é?" -- "look at Zezé's haircut, you think he might be...etc" Is this homophobic / morally wrong? Please. It's Carnaval. I've seen huge crowds of gay men at the infamous Banda de Ipanema sing 'Zezé', some even shouting 'bi-cha!' to complete the question. If bloco lyrics had to be PC, the whole holiday would grind to a screeching halt. And we would never have gems like this, from the great bloco Que Merda é Essa? (What is this Shit?) in 2002, on the brink of the Iraq invasion:

Que merda é essa, seu Bush?
Você só quer saber de brigar.
Arranje um estagiára,
Não vem aqui perturbar.

What is this shit, mistah Bush?
You're just spoiling for a fight.
Go find yourself a nice intern,
and stop making trouble.

Besides, in all fairness to Larry, he was given partial songwriting credits. Along with Harry Potter.)

NY Times vs Social Security

Not to beat up exclusively on the Times -- I'm sure that the scene on cable news is considerably worse -- but today's lead article offers a textbook example of how to skew reporting toward not so much the Bush agenda of private accounts as the Bush agenda of falsehood and generalized obfuscation.

Now, the article is ostensibly about the use of taxpayer money to promote Bush's political agenda. I would argue that this point gets slightly underplayed, not coming up until the 5th paragraph. But let that slide.

What is really unconscionable is giving free air time to Bush's personal campaign ("The system is broken, and promises are being made that Social Security cannot keep," in the 2nd graf, for example), presenting his cronies' slanted statistics ("A policy brief prepared by the agency says those benefit cuts "would double the poverty rate of Social Security beneficiaries aged 64 to 78," increasing the number of indigent people in that age bracket to 1.8 million, from 875,000") and even throwing in some weird innuendo ("Social Security employees denied that their concerns were motivated by a bureaucratic mentality, a fear of change or a desire to protect their jobs") all before getting to this, like, utterly decisive fact buried at the end of the article:

Other analysts, including the Congressional Budget Office, have reached a different conclusion. They say the combination of benefits from the trust fund and individual accounts is likely to be less than actual benefits under the current system.

Oh. So you mean the premier bipartisan overseer of our nation's economy has analyzed the problem and thinks privatization is a bad idea? And all this 'balance' over the Social Security "crisis" is actually concealing the fact that serious analysts don't think there is a crisis and even if there were, privatization isn't the answer? Alright, then. Good to know. But, why didn't you tell me that above the fold? In fact, come to think of it, why wasn't that the headline?

Why indeed.

Rohter Update

Whoa, stop the presses... and here I thought Larry Rohter -- who the local political satire show Casseta e Planeta refers to as "Harry Potter" -- was just a bon-vivant colonial scalawag. Turns out he's a CIA shill.

Just out of curiosity I did a little googling and discovered a whole world of anti-Rohter conspiracy theory out there. One anonysmous e-mail (in Portuguese) that made the rounds in the wake of the Drunken Lula article has Rohter making 5 visits to the US State Department in the last few years, as well as bragging about his exploits among Amazonian pre-teens, among other heinous crimes. And apparently he's been on the rabid anti-drug war set's radar for years now.

Fun for the whole family, this kind of thing. But I did come across one item that seems at least minimally credible: an essay by ex-DEA agent and "expert witness" Mike Levine. I don't know the story on Levine, never heard of him before, and he's got some pretty crazy stories to tell about CIA drug running, but if what he says is true, it's pretty clear that Rohter really does have some connection with the US government.

Levine claims that while he was undercover for the DEA in South America, he read an article by Rohter and Steve Strasser's on Bolivian drug lords in Newsweek. Something snapped in him and he decided to blow the whistle on CIA involvement in drug running in South America. He writes:

I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote the kind of letter that I never in life imagined myself writing. After fully identifying myself I detailed, in three type-written pages written on official US embassy stationary, enough evidence of my charges to feed a wolf pack of investigative journalists along with my willingness to be a quotable source. I addressed it directly to Strasser and Rohter care of Newsweek. And sent it registered mail return receipt requested. Within a couple of weeks I received the receipt (which I still have) and waited anxiously to hear from them. Two sleepless weeks later I was still sitting in my embassy office staring at the phone. Three weeks later, it rang.

It was DEA’s Internal Security. They were calling me to notify me that I was under investigation. I had been falsely accused of everything from black-marketing and having sex with a married. female DEA agent during an undercover assignment to “playing loud rock music on my radio and disturbing other embassy personnel,” an investigation that would wreak havoc with my entire life for the next four years.

Obviously, if Rohter were just a journalist, he would have no reason to notify the DEA. In fact, he'd have every reason to run with the career-making story.

Well, I'm out of my depth here, I have no idea if this kind of thing is at all credible. But some kind of connection with Intelligence, State, or even Justice would explain Rohter's consistent efforts to deflate threatening figures like Chavez and Lula, as well as his consistent derogatory use of terminology like "leftist" and "union leader". Of course it may just be personal.

The bigger question is why the Times would -- year after year, editor after editor -- keep a guy like this on, whatever his political connections. Could Mike Levine be right?

Gotta love that old-time conspiracy theory...

Ah, to be a Foreign Correspondent...

More hardnosed Brazil reporting from Larry Rohter. Today's burning topic: Brazilians are fat.

I guess the occasional feature story, written in that classic Rohter/Times "aren't' the locals so darned funny?" style, would be acceptable as far as it went. (And hey, give the guy a break, he almost lost his visa.) But is this kind of thing destined to be the sum total of the Times' Latin America coverage? Is there really nothing more interesting to talk about?

How about Rio's increasingly absurd drug war? How about the continuing success of Brazil's AIDS policy (which included breaking the patent on American drug firms' absurdly expensive cocktails)? How about American biotech giant Monsanto's massive and ultimately successful lobbying effort to open up Brazil to Genetically Modified Organisms?

But hey, why break a sweat when you can just make up absurd historical revisionist arguments like this one from the now-infamous "Brazil's highest elected official is a drunk" article:

Historically, Brazilians have reason to be concerned at any sign of heavy drinking by their presidents. Jânio Quadros, elected in 1960, was a notorious tippler who once boasted, "I drink because it's liquid"; his unexpected resignation, after less than a year in office during what was reported to be a marathon binge, initiated a period of political instability that led to a coup in 1964 and 20 years of a harsh military dictatorship.

Forget the little I'm-a-carrer-foreign-correspondent-and-can-get-away-with-this-crap lapses like "what was reported to be a marathon binge" and just consider the broader implication: give a president the key to the liquor cabinet, and you're bound to have a 20-year dictatorship.

What went underreported in the hullaballoo over the Lula article and Lula's really stupid reaction (For those who missed it, here is a recap) was the derisive and insulting tone with which Rohter had consistently treated Lula from the getgo, in particular his background, and Rohter's addiction to really inappropriate innuendo (that would be hard to imagine in a Times article on domestic politics). From the drinking article, we have a really abject example:

Mr. da Silva was born into a poor family in one of the country's poorest states and spent years leading labor unions, a famously hard-drinking environment.

What about the Foreign Press Club, eh, Larry?

Natch, the new article on obesity moves quickly from the beaches of Rio to -- surprise -- Lula's past and his personal problems:

Some commentators here have suggested that Mr. da Silva's unwillingness to accept the study [on obesity] may stem in part from his personal history. As he never tires of reminding Brazilians and the foreign leaders he meets, he experienced hunger himself as a poor peasant child and can vividly recall the sensation of going to bed on an empty stomach.

Today, though, Mr. da Silva is one of those Brazilians who struggles to keep his weight under control. With a mixture of sympathy and amusement, the national press has chronicled his efforts to limit his consumption of barbecue, beer and buchada, a fatty tripe dish native to his home region that is the bane of nutritionists.

I mean, is it just me, or is Rohter being a real dick?

Whither the Tickler? To the Battle Stations!

So I was thinking about maybe changing the focus of FT a bit for 2005, maybe mix it up a bit. In fact, I was just about to throw in the political commentary towel for good and turn this site into a one-stop pat-reflections-on-swarthy-natives web portal, when it suddenly occurred to me how great Bush's social security initiative is. Its great because, while it does involve the same dastardly tactics as the Iraq freak-out did -- scare the bejesus out of the population by just making shit up -- it is clearly different in two crucial respects:

1. Unlike national security and intelligence matters, where Bush & Co. could say 'it's confidential, but trust us, we know Saddam has anthrax, nukes, unpiloted drones capable of reaching the Jersey shore, and a tractor beam / death ray combo weapon', Social Security is a matter of public record. We know beyond a shadow of a doubt -- because Bush's own GAO says so -- that Bush is misleading us when he says, "The system will go bust, flat broke if we don't do something now." Sure, the fact that our national media outlets are cowering pissants before the White House (when not actual employees) does mitigate this to some extent. But blurring the facts is much harder when you can't control the public's access to them.

2. The dems are in the polar opposite position than they were on the war. National security was uncertain territory for the dems. They didn't want to appear weak. But Social Security is their bread and butter. Defending it is what being a dem is all about. It brings them together and gives them a sense of purpose. Bush's proposal, if the dems play it right, will be as beneficial to them as the gay marriage decisions in Massachussettes were to the radical right.

In fact, if you want my early and far-away prediction, I bet the whole debate will sow discord among congressional republicans and end up hamstringing Bush for the next four years, at least on domestic policy. Republican legislators know they are getting the shaft -- Bush doesn't care about getting reelected any more, so he's suddenly shooting for the moon, while they will all have to face democratic contenders running ads about how they gutted Social Security.

Anyway, I just talked to a friend of mine, a young guy, who I was surprised to hear saying things like "yeah, but isn't it true that the system is going bankrupt?" and "I heard that the government doesn't really have to pay back the trust fund - its just bookkeeping". OK, the guy is from Texas, but he lives in Austin... The point you or someone you know may be actually buying into the 'crisis is now' claptrap. Bush and Co. are targetting the young, so it is up to us young people to convince our fellow young people to just take a look at the facts:

1. According to the Social Security Administration, if no changes at all are made, the program will have enough money to pay full benefits through 2041. According to the Congressional Budget Office, full benefits can be paid until 2052. After that, the system will not be broke. It will simply have to reduce benefits by a small amount.

2. Yes, the government (general fund) does have to pay the Social Security fund. SS owns government Treasury bills, the same ones many of us private citizens own, the same ones that the Chinese own several trillion of. If the government defaults on SS's T-bills, no T-bills anywhere are safe, the world economy collapses, and it's Thunderdome time.

3. (and this is something that even Krugman the great fails to mention in his excellent essay here) Social Security is insurance -- its function is to stabilize the economy in times of recession, to guarantee a minimum to retirees no matter how long they live. Privatization means you have however much you won on the stock market, to last you for as long as you live. Even if privatization delivers higher rates of return than traditional SS, which it very well may not, if you live longer than average (as the lucky half does, by definition) you will still have less than you would have than under SS. The unlucky half, of course, has more benefits per month, theoretically. But how do they know they are going to die early?

But getting back to my original point: I am not at a comparative advantage here. There is plenty of good running commentary from the regular suspects and Kevin Drum has put together an excellent and concise primer here. The more under 40 year olds out there forcefully asserting the lack of crisis, the sooner we get to hear Bush's hand-flesh sizzle.

And now how about some swarthy natives!

Tickler 2005

Let the word go henceforth out -- the Tickler is back.

If it has been a long cold winter for you, dear readers, (and only about to get colder and darker with the inauguration and the opening of Congress) for me it has been a hot muggy swelter of work, grad school apps, and lingering depression over Nov. 2.

But the apps are in, its a new year, and if all goes well Bush will burn the shit out of his hand on the old Social Security third rail (kind of like Frog grasping the medallion in Raiders of the Lost Ark, howling and wincing at the sickly sweet smell of his own charred flesh, to the mildly guilty satisfaction of millions of viewers), leading to a spectacular 4 years of lame-duck ineffectualness.

As for me, I'm feeling good about 2005. Hope to get this armed violence thing under control in Brazil, maybe legalize drugs, and get the whole income inequality problem wrapped up before starting school in August. Oh, and I want to learn how to surf.

And to you, the Tickler diehards who still check in every once and again, let me say that when you look back along the trail you have walked, and see the long lonely stretches where no Tickler comforted you, and feel kind of sad about that, and then all of a sudden you hear a deep, manly, semitic voice break through the sunlit clouds saying "My son (or daughter), I, the Freedom Tickler, didn't abandon you in your time of need. I carried you," yes dear reader, when you hear that voice, cast your eyes up to the heavens, look deep within your soul, and you will know: the Tickler is full of shit. It didn't carry you. It abandoned you.

The Tickler is nothing if not cunning.