John Protevi's Blog

Notes on Elinor Ostrom

Notes on Elinor Ostrom, "Policies that Crowd out Reciprocity and Collective Action." In Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2005: 253-275.

 John Protevi / LSU French Studies / Not for citation in any publication / Permission granted to download and copy for personal use / www.protevi.com/john / [email protected].

Ostrom begins by reviewing evidence for strong reciprocators, which contradicts RCT's assumption that rational egoists (utility maximizers driven only by external rewards / punishments) are the only type of agent that needs to be modeled to account for social behavior. Thus we need to model different ratios of strong reciprocators and rational egoists and how those ratios change over time given different conditions.

 Strong reciprocators are conditional altruistic cooperators and conditional altruistic punishers. They are concerned with fairness of process rather than only outcomes. Thus they have internal motivations.

 If you assume only rational egoists, then you have to design policies with external rewards. "Leviathan is alive and well in our policy textbooks. The state is viewed as a substitute for the shortcomings of individual behavior and the presumed failure of community" (254). And, also, mysteriously, the agents of the state are not supposed to act in their own self-interest when setting up these external reward / punishment systems.

 

Actually, I think the Bush crowd assumes this as well. Since they assume that government agents are already only materially self-interested, why not go ahead and bribe them?

 

The kicker is that such policies actually hurt the prosocial behaviors that would exist in their absence. "External interventions crowd out intrinsic motivation if the individuals affected perceive them to be controlling" (260).

 

But internally motivated prosocial behaviors are not supposed to exist in a world of only rational egoists. So we have a self-fulfilling prophecy, or another example of "methodology become metaphysics": you produce the reality (rational egoists) that you have assumed is needed to model social reality (externally compelled cooperation of a collection of rational egoists).

 

But if you design them properly, you can use external systems to "'crowd in' behaviors based on intrinsic preferences and enhance what could have been achieved without these incentives" (254). To do this, you need "complex, polycentric orders that involve both public governance mechanisms and private market and community institutions [JP: 'civil society'] that complement each other…. Effective institutional designs create complex, multi-tiered systems with some levels of duplication, overlap and contestation" (255). They have to be perceived as "supportive. In this case, self-esteem is fostered, and individuals feel they are given more freedom to act, thus enlarging self-determination" (260).

 

Sarah Palin on evolution

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Republican nominee for Vice-President of the United State of America!

Palin said she thought there was value in discussing alternatives.

"It's OK to let kids know that there are theories out there," she said in the interview. "They gain information just by being in a discussion."

That was how she was brought up, she said. Her father was a public school science teacher.

"My dad did talk a lot about his theories of evolution," she said. "He would show us fossils and say, 'How old do you think these are?' "

Asked for her personal views on evolution, Palin said, "I believe we have a creator."

She would not say whether her belief also allowed her to accept the theory of evolution as fact.

"I'm not going to pretend I know how all this came to be," she said.

You might wish to read the whole thing to disabuse yourself of the admittedly flattering notion that I'm a good enough comic to make this sort of thing up.

Thomas Friedman Twofer!

He's not only a laughably bad writer, he's also a morally depraved monster!

Louisiana Legislature Trifecta!

Down here in Louisiana, we've got something of a trifecta going in the Legislature:

1) A bill to allow concealed handguns on college campuses ("gats" is I think how the bill puts it) (written by the NRA)

2) A pro-ID "teach the controversy" bill (written by the Discovery Institute)

3) A bill to "reform" sick leave policy in public universities (written by LSU administrators)

Together the bills show two things:

1) The LA Legislature is getting serious about outsourcing. Think of all the public money they save by not having to have a staff and just letting others write their bills for them!

2) When ID-infected future LSU students pull out their peacemakers in biology class, the profs will have a cap on accrued sick leave to think about before confronting them.

Amy Goodman Tells the Truth about Ron Paul and Fox News

Or at least she gets to the heart of the matter: the airwaves are public property, leased to corporations on condition that they serve the public good.* So Ron Paul's remark that he declined to sue Fox News over his exclusion from their debate in New Hampshire -- "I realized that they really had some property rights ability there, and I wasn't going to crash the party" -- is both wrong, and symptomatic of libertarian blindness.

Also, local communities should own the physical Internet infrastructure in their areas.

* I know some people dispute this reading of the Communications Act of 1934, which begins "For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, a rapid, efficient, Nationwide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges ...." So sue me -- but only after you read the whole thing.

The Weak Dollar and Economic Sovereignty, or, Whatever Happened to the "Politics" in Political Economy?

I'm just back from two and a half weeks in the UK, seeing friends and giving lectures. Luckily, I got my honoraria in pounds, which really helped due to the terrible exchange rate, with the pound more than $2. My strictly amateur understanding is that the "buyer of last resort" theory plays an important role in keeping the dollar from falling even further. The idea here is that China, Japan (primarily) and South Korea (secondarily) continue to buy US debt in the form of T-bills to support their own export economies. The US consumer market attracts these exports (financed to some large extent on US consumer debt). The usual story then is that when the Chinese are able / willing to unleash their own domestic consumption, they won't need the US market so much and they won't be willing to buy our debt. (We are in debt to some extent due to Bush's maneuver of cutting taxes and spending madly, as in the Iraq fiasco). But in traveling about the blogosphere I came across this very interesting comment:

It seems that many Asian countries decided after the 1997-98 currency crisis that going to the IMF was something they must never do again, as IMF bailouts required forfeiting sovereignty over economic decisions. I’m thinking here of the IMF forcing Korea to break the government-industry link behind the Chaebols as a condition of getting a loan. Thus, the lesson was that if you want to have an economic policy different from that which the US would approve of, then you must stockpile reserves so that you will never again have to beg. So stockpiling reserves–and the undervalued currency that creates the stockpile–then became the key to economic sovereignty. Thus, while I like your argument very much, it seems that the world is actually moving in a different direction–the impetus is not toward rectifying imbalances, but rather the lesson learned from recent history is that imbalance (I’m thinking the Asian surpluses) is essential.

What I like about this comment is that it brings out the "political" in "political economy." And it resonates with the story Naomi Klein tells in her new The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, whose chapter on the 1997 Asian crisis I found very illuminating.

One of the talks I gave was at the University of Nottingham's Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, directed by Simon Tormey of the School of Politics and International Policy. I tried to put my Hurricane Katrina talk in the context of Klein's book. One of the attendees asked me whether I thought David Harvey's understanding of neo-liberalism wasn't superior to that of Klein's. I didn't like the question; I thought it was apples and oranges. David Harvey is one of the most important academics in the world today, perhaps the most important living geographer and a historically important one; Klein is a committed political journalist who has written two readable, interesting, and politically very useful books. In essence, I replied along the lines of Joseph Stiglitz's review of Klein's book, which will set up my point about the "political" in "political economy":

Klein is not an academic and cannot be judged as one. There are many places in her book where she oversimplifies. But Friedman and the other shock therapists were also guilty of oversimplification, basing their belief in the perfection of market economies on models that assumed perfect information, perfect competition, perfect risk markets. Indeed, the case against these policies is even stronger than the one Klein makes. They were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.

The important point here, I'd say, is the word "policies." Friedman liked to gussy up his policy recommendations in a bunch of hand-waving "freedom" talk, giving it some sort of air of representing an essential component of human reality, while at the same time claiming to represent "laws" of economics. But neo-liberal shock therapy doesn't represent the "reality" of possessive individualism; it produces the conditions that necessitate that posture. That's why we should insist on talking about political economy, and emphasize the "political."

Notes on Melinda Cooper

I've been reading some excellent essays by Melinda Cooper of the Centre for Biomedicine and Society at King's College, London.

The essays in question are: "Insecure Times, Tough Decisions: The Nomos of Neoliberalism," Alternatives 29 (2004): 515-533; "On the Brink -- From Mutual Deterrence to Uncontrollable War," Contretemps 4 (September 2004): 2-18; "Pre-Empting Emergence: The Biological Turn in the War on Terror," Theory, Culture & Society 23.4 (2006): 113-135; and "Life, Autopoiesis, Debt: Inventing the Bioeconomy," Distinktion 14 (2007): 25-43.

Here are the notes I've taken:

1. Cooper cites Schmitt on New World conquest as exporting Euro-conflict and allowing for classical liberal economic growth (extensive expansion). New World is to geopolitics as state of exception is to sovereign juridical power.

2. post-WWII Cold War / MAD / Fordist / Bretton Woods / Keynesian world (based on state intervention to provide equilibrium conditions for classical liberal economics: assumption of calculable / insurable risk: accidents happen in normal distribution)

3. 1970s crises: linkage of US domestic financial crisis with Club of Rome type recognition of limits of industrial growth (“eco-crisis”)

4. Washington consensus as response to 1970s US domestic financial crisis, exporting risk into international financial speculation. Use of IMF and WB to promote free trade and to put foreign sovereign states under regime of international financial speculation: hot-money flows, threat of capital flight, currency exchange fluctuations. Speculative auto-affection: actualization of a virtual field of crisis that serves to discipline foreign political sovereignty regarding domestic economic policies.

5. Biotechnology as response to eco-crisis: biological intensification would replace traditional capitalist overcoming of limits via geographical expansion (cf. Schmittian analysis of New World): bioremediation for pollution / biofuels for energy / “extremophiles”

6. Clinton neo-liberalism as euphoria of New Economy growth transformed after dot.com and biotech crash into Bush war on terror: thus an “affective shift” on part of investors from hope to “alertness.”

I would add that neocon foreign policy uses consumer / employee affect in the following way: personal insecurity from 80s downsizing / 90s outsourcing (“one paycheck from street” / employment based health insurance) generates a sort of “civilian PTSD”: constant altertness leads to physiological exhaustion (cortisol overload leading to low panic thresholds, etc.). But this is not "post" as there was no identifiable "trauma": the alertness cannot ideologically have its true causes identified (or if they are identified, there’s no hope of changing the situation). Thus many are relieved when presented with an external personal target (a “bad person”) that is threatening them (gays, blacks, women, liberals, “terrorists”), because it’s better to have a target than to be the subject of constant alert with no target (difference between anxiety and fear: fear is a relief: endorphins are released to help you deal with the emergency: cf. horror movie squeals of relief when villain / monster is revealed; “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”). Thus neocon domestic and foreign policies that target these bad guys win support.

7. Securitization and pre-emption as response to emerging catastrophic risk: shifting catastrophe risk from insurance market to capital market: capitalism in its most delirious phase: speculation on catastrophe breeds demand for securitization. Brings together privatization and government sovereign power. US declares “war on terror” as well as privatizing security [prisons, mercenaries, etc] in literal political physiology: “affective dynamics of fear and (in)security.”

8. Biodefense: bringing together of public health and national defense. US defense policy shift: from equilibrium of MAD to pre-emption of emerging catastrophes / “full-spectrum dominance.” Pumps govt money into biotech that had collapsed at end of Clintonian neo-liberal euphoria. Permanent war rather than permanent hope.

a. Cold War linked to Weismannian scheme: vertical reproduction / fixed spatial – species barriers

b. Terrorism and microbial transversal evolution: “it’s everywhere!”

c. “Emergence” as sudden phase transition: catastrophic / uninsurable / transformative of conditions

d. Incorporation of “whole of life” into national defense

Here I would put the Schiavo case as an experiment in intensification complementing the expansive / extensification processes laid out by Cooper. Here a single life would warrant the mobilization of the federal government: but a bare life w/o regard to quality of life. Not an Agambenian de-politicizing exposure of bare life allowing it to be killed, but precisely a hyper-politicizing capture of bare life forbidding it from being killed, thereby breaking down the “privacy” barrier to exert government control.

9. Pre-emption: founds legitimate use of violence on collective apprehension of emergent threat. Future-based rather than “clear and present danger.” Pre-emption of uncalculable catastrophe rather than prevention of calculable risk. Future-invocative rather than representative: future is generated by our anticipation / speculation. “Affective skills” of speculators: sense and respond to virtual / nascent collective moods / movements; promotion of affect before a threat / opportunity appears.

10. US position as focal point of financial flows: requiring countries to buy US Treasury notes: “debt imperialism”

a. Parallel with autopoiesis: auto-affective life / money

b. Bioeconomy is meeting point: US biotech investment funded by debt imperialism: experimentation with auto-affective life funded by auto-affective political economy

c. Further meeting point as Bush war on terror takes biodefense turn: “life itself” is the stakes / the arena / the method / the enemy (bio-terrorism as weapon / microbial transversalism as the method / mode of being of terrorism)

11. What is resistance in a situation of militarization / privatization / securitization of life? Cannot be a simple call to “right to life” or “health care” or “respect for nature.”

Wallerstein in a Nutshell

Immanuel Wallerstein, writing about the way the huge discrepancy in speed and cost of broadband net access between Japan and the US reflects their different positions vis-à-vis the hegemon position in the world system (yes, I know that's a mouthful!), sums up his theory quite nicely:

This is the way that hegemonic decline builds on itself. The leading country concentrates on the short-term situation, and overinvests in unfruitful military expenditure. Speculation replaces innovation as the source of profits. And before one knows it, the others (in this case the Japanese, but not they alone) speed ahead controlling the technology of the future. This is what the United States did when it was, oh so long ago, an ascending economic power.

Read the rest of the commentary here.

Habeas Corpus Restoration

READ Leahy's statement!

CALL your Senators!

FIND Habeas!

Private Armies

Originally published June 18, 2007. Moving to front on September 18, due to this news.

Original post below:

The Bush Administration relies heavily on private security forces in Iraq. Here is a story in Saturday's Washington Post that puts the 2007 price tag at $1.5 billion; I saw the link at Juan Cole's blog here. (Cole's blog, Informed Comment, is essential reading on Iraq / Iran and the entire Middle East.) An excellent book on the biggest of the private security firms, Blackwater, is Jeremy Scahill's Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. Blackwater was very active in New Orleans in the Katrina aftermath, as I mention in my Katrina paper and has a wonderfully Orwellian self-description as, among other things, a "stability operations company."

Mercenaries and private armies are of course nothing new. Although I'm not a simple economic determinist, the oil factor has to be considered in thinking about Iraq. So while the oil companies haven't yet banded together as a sort of British East India Company (check out this account of a major turning point in Indian history, the Battle of Plassey to see the military force they were capable of employing), there are certainly connections that need to be considered between our government and multinational corporations in the oil, construction, and "stability operations" fields.

Peter Hallward Speaks the Truth about Haiti

Peter Hallward, the excellent philosopher working at Middlesex University in London -- also part of the Radical Philosophy editorial collective -- has written an outstanding article on the interests of the British press. He contrasts the blanket coverage of a missing child to the almost total overlooking of the death of 80 Haitians at sea, deaths for which British authorities are responsible due to their callous disregard of the lives of those they intercept fleeing the poverty of Haiti. Poverty for which, it should always be recalled, American policy  bears great responsibility. The article appears on what looks to be an important resource, www.haitianalysis.com. Check it out.

Gene Lyons Speaks the Truth About Iraq

I found this column to be right on the money, not only about Iraq, but also about our public discourse about Iraq. Here's one of the best grafs:

The politically unspeakable truth is that Iraq no longer exists, except as an abstract noun. Bush administration incompetence, combined with savage sectarian, tribal and criminal infighting have destroyed it. Who holds office inside the Baghdad "Green Zone" makes no difference. Murderous ethnic cleansing has divided Iraq into hundreds of warring enclaves whose only commonality is hatred for Americans.

For political physiology, there are two questions here:

1. Why is this truth "unspeakable"?
2. What social ontology accounts for the conversion (not "reversion," which hides an unexamined teleology) to warrior bands during failures of the central state?

Perverse Justice and the Securitarian Position

Lindsay Beyerstein, who blogs at Majikthise, has an In These Times article on the destructive use of solitary confinement in the Jose Padilla case, and by extension, elsewhere. Read it; here's the punch line: "it seems perverse that the government could deliberately undermine Padilla’s will to defend himself and treat him as competent to stand trial on those very charges."

On the thread about the article on her home blog, the resident securitarian, "Phantom," first tried to derail the thread with a completely bogus implicit claim that Beyerstein was asking for our "sympathy" for the person, Jose Padilla, rather than talking about legal precedent. He finally dropped that line after being hammered for it repeatedly, but then decided to use the classic securitarian trope "the first duty of a state is to protect its citizens." 

In replying to him, I said that he was completely wrong in applying this supposed truism to our republic. The first duty of those serving in the American government is to protect and uphold the US Constitution, whose prime principles are liberty and equality.

I concluded with a little pop quiz, asking him to identify who said the following:

Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis–that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it.

Any guesses from my readers? It shouldn't be too hard to google!

Compound Questions

Over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, "d" posts the Hugh Hewitt quiz, a host of compound questions. People who were awake during the informal fallacies section of their Intro Logic class will recognize compound questions as a type of fallacy. Anyway, here's the quiz, followed by my answers:

A question for lefties in love with [the chickenhawk] meme: Have you denounced The New Republic's and Private Beauchamp's slanders? Have you talked up the virtues of serving in uniform in time of war? Or do you dispute that we are in a war, and find it convenient to focus on alleged war crimes and other misdeeds of the military? Do you accuse the Administration of fighting for oil, or of misleading us into war? Are you tearing down the military and yet condemning people for not serving in it?

1. (a) I have repeatedly denounced TNR, but (b) not in re Beauchamp.

2. (a) I would, but (b) we're not "at war," either constitutionally or in any real sense. GWOT is a fraud and Iraq is an imperial adventure / failed occupation.

3. (a) See 2 (b) above, and (b) allegations of "war crimes and other misdeeds of the military" should be investigated when prima facie credible. Would Hewitt prefer they not be investigated?

4. (a) Yes and (b) Yes. These affirmations do not preclude other reasons for Iraq.

5. (a) To the best of my knowledge, I am not currently engaged in tearing down the military and (b) I do indeed criticize ("condemn" seems a bit harsh) those who claim we are in an existential struggle (a subset of all GWOT and / or Iraq occupation supporters) and yet themselves do not serve.

Complex Adaptive Systems Theory in Military Affairs

Robert Farley of Lawyers, Guns, and Money writes about the need to complement math and science courses in the service academies with courses in social science. There might not be that much of an opposition, if the courses are done right, for the math that many sciences (hard and social alike) use is no longer exclusively the sort of linear equations that engineers might use. For instance, a neat book in which science using non-linear math (aka "complexity theory") is applied to military affairs is Andrew Ilachinski, Artificial War: Multiagent-Based Simulation of Combat (London: World Scientific, 2004). Takeaway quote from the jacket:

combat is more like an interpenetration of two living, coevolving fluids rather than an elastic collision between two hard billiard balls

I'd say this complex adaptive systems approach is a good model for social situations as well. For instance, it's pretty much the model for the excellent new book by Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation (London: Verso, 2007), which I highly, highly recommend for its analysis of various strategies by a number of different Israeli actors (settlers, government, military, business) in creating the famous "facts on the ground" in the Occupied Territories. Weizman is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London. He also runs his own blog, which is very much worth visiting. 

Louisiana Justice: It Does Happen Sometimes

Ridiculous blowhard state Attorney General Charles Foti, to divert attention from his failure to go after poor construction on the New Orleans levees, instead kept the cameras on himself by charging a doctor and several nurses with homicide in connection with deaths during Hurricane Katrina, two days before holding a fundraiser. Last week a New Orleans grand jury rejected the claim, refusing to indict Dr. Anna Pou (charges against the nurses had been previously dropped).

How ridiculous a blowhard is Charles Foti? So ridiculous a blowhard that he employed indicted-on-public-corruption-charges ridiculous blowhard and Schiavo case ghoul Cryil Wecht for an expert opinion. It seems ridiculous blowhards like to give their friends $300 an hour consulting gigs. How many hours did Wecht bill the people of Louisiana? He "can't recall."

Let's hope the doctor's civil suit against Foti succeeds.

Ward Churchill's Firing

Robert Farley of Lawyers, Guns, and Money, with whom I almost always agree, writes regarding the vote of the Colorado University's Regents to fire Ward Churchill:

There's obviously a danger of rush to judgment in such situations, but the fact that he was convicted of academic misconduct by a group of people with a deep, vested interest in maintaining the protections and integrity of tenure helps relieve me of the concern that Churchill was railroaded. While the initial investigation may have been motivated by Churchill's political statements, I think there's good reason to believe that the conclusion wasn't.

That's what I would have said too, a few months ago, but that was before I followed up on criticism of the faculty report, which claims Churchill committed "research misconduct" and "plagiarism."

• On the alleged "research misconduct," see this piece from Inside Higher Ed by John Wilson of the website College Freedom 
• On the alleged "plagiarism," see this piece by Tom Mayer, CU Sociology Dept. Mayer's piece also raises serious doubts about the procedural fairness of the case, especially the role of the CU Provost.
• See also the discussion at Leiter Reports, which includes a link to the CU AAUP report that asks that the recommendation to fire Churchill be reversed due to the poor quality of the faculty report.

With these criticisms in mind, this seems a pretty clear case of CU caving to Horowitz, O'Reilly, et al. and using the flimsy faculty report as cover.

UPDATED July 25, 7:00 pm CDT: Here's a link to a Vail Daily News article, which includes the remarks of the one Regent to vote against firing Churchill:

Regent Cindy Carlisle, who cast the sole vote against termination, said Wednesday she felt the Regents should have accepted the advice of the last faculty committee to review the case, which recommended suspending Churchill for a year without pay and demoting him.

She also said the panel, the Privilege and Tenure Committee, had raised questions about three of the seven specific allegations against Churchill.

Asked whether she felt firing Churchill was unfair, she said: “I’m not going to characterize that. My vote speaks pretty strongly. I thought we should defer to the active faculty (the Privilege and Tenure Committee) for their recommendations for sanctions.”

UPDATED July 25, 8:15 pm CDT: It turns out that Hank Brown, former Republican Senator from Colorado, and the current President of CU, the one who went against the faculty's Privilege and Tenure Committee recommended penalties and instead recommended firing Churchill to the Regents, is a co-founder of the National Alumni Forum, the predecessor organization to ACTA, the noted right-wing agitprop organ which has pushed hard for Churchill's firing. Brown's co-founders of the group that became ACTA include the notable defender of academic freedom Lynne Cheney.

Letter to Senator Vitter re: Habeas Corpus Restoration Act

Dear Sir, thank you very much for your reply to my email urging your support for the so-called "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act." In your reply, you wrote:

The "Habeas Corpus Restoration Act" would allow those detained as enemy combatants for suspected terrorist acts against the United States the rights and privileges of American citizens.

The problem with your formulation is that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows the executive to name anyone, American citizen or not, an "enemy combatant" and thus deny them the right of habeas corpus. Thus it explicitly strips from American citizens that right, which is why the Habeas Corpus Restoration Act is so important in limiting the power of the executive to deny Americans their rights. I therefore respectfully urge you to recall one of the founding principles of our republic, to wit, the limitation of the power of the executive through the naming of our rights, and to reverse this unjust and un-American act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

Yours sincerely,

John Protevi
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

S. 2022: Habeas Restoration

Special post for all Louisianans! Please call Senator Landrieu (Baton Rouge number is 225-389-0395; her Washington voicemail inbox is full) and urge her to support S. 2022, the "Habeas Restoration Amendment" sponsored by Sens. Leahy and Specter. Here's a link that explains why this is so important.

Here are other Senators to call if you're a constituent:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT)
Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)
Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME)
Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN)
Sen. George Voinavich (R-OH)
Sen. John Sununu (R-NH)
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR)
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN)

Please, take some time this morning to call both your Senators — whether they are on this list or not – and then call a few from the above list as well to voice your support for the full restoration of habeas.  You can call your Senators toll free using the following numbers:

1 (800) 828 - 0498
1 (800) 459 - 1887
1 (800) 614 - 2803
1 (866) 340 - 9281
1 (866) 338 - 1015
1 (877) 851 - 6437

Dave Zirin Takes on the Sports-Industrial Complex

If you're like me and love both sports and progressive politics, you really should check out Dave Zirin, who brings the two together with wit and insight. He can be found on the web at Edge of Sports, where you can find the archives of his weekly column.  You can check him out on You Tube as well, talking with Chuck D. about his new book, the excellent take on current events (Zidane / Matterazzi in the 2006 World Cup, the NBA's turning against hip-hop, the Barry Bonds frenzy) entitled Welcome to the Terrordome (Amazon link here). You should also check out his other books, the social history What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States and Muhammad Ali Handbook.

Zirin targets racism, sexism, and homophobia; he skewers the corporate media; he lambastes the selling of war through sports; he scourges the complacency of some athletes and lauds the courage of others; and he truly loves the beauty and promise of sports. He treats his subjects with historical depth, expert knowledge, and a commitment to social justice. Plus he can be really funny. So buy his books, visit his website, and lobby ESPN to give him a show!