Immigration "reform" suggestions - Bring back indentured servitude?

I recommend watching this VIDEO. But first, some background.

=> From the Denver Post (4/7/2008):

Calling America a country perfectly "capable of multitasking," [Colorado] Republican Senate candidate Bob Schaffer said the U.S. ought to be pursuing a guest- worker program at the same time it fortifies its borders. [....]

"It's a practical impossibility to contemplate rounding up 15 or 20 million illegal visitors and deporting them," said Schaffer, who as a congressman was a member of Tom Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus and co-sponsored a bill severely reducing allowable numbers of family-related legal immigrants.

In his first extended remarks on the issue as a candidate, Schaffer called for tamper-proof IDs for immigrant workers and tougher workplace enforcement, and even suggested giving federal grants to sheriffs and local police for immigration enforcement.

But he said the U.S. should take a "broad, comprehensive approach" to the problem of illegal immigration and suggested that workers brought in on temporary visas should be allowed to eventually apply for citizenship, a position out in front of many in his party. [....]

Schaffer is clear to say he doesn't support amnesty for illegal immigrants now in the U.S. Instead, guest-worker visas should be available only to those who have not broken the country's immigration laws, he said.

The millions now in the country illegally would likely go home through tougher enforcement and as a legal avenue for more immigrant labor became available — a process of attrition that he suggested could take 25 years. [....]

One of the difficulties that Schaffer now faces is that his current views are at odds with more hard-line positions he has staked out in the past. In Congress, he praised Tancredo's Immigration Reform Caucus as the "only organization in Washington looking at finding balanced, sensible solutions." And in 2006, as National Republican Committeeman, he supported a resolution that called for the elimination of automatic citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants.

On the face of it, this does sound like a more reasonable and "moderate" position than the one Schaffer used to take. But the heart of his new position is the advocacy of an expanded "guest-worker" program for importing non-immigrant labor on a temporary basis. A number of western European countries tried this approach in the decades after World War II (the euphemistic term "guest worker," or Gastarbeiter, was coined in what was then West Germany), and it didn't work out brilliantly for them. But Schaffer has another model in mind:

He pointed to the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate that imports tens of thousands of foreign textile workers, as a successful model for a guest-worker program that could be adapted nationally.

"The concept of prequalifying foreign workers in their home country under private- sector management is a system that works very well in one place in America," he said of the islands' program. "I think members of Congress ought to be looking at that model and be considering it as a possible basis for a nationwide program."

Even in the best of circumstances, I think that for the US to embrace large-scale reliance on "guest-worker" programs, the whole point of which is to separate participation in the labor market from the prospect of citizenship and full membership in American society, would be unwise and un-American. (As Paul Krugman correctly pointed out in 2006, this would mean taking "The Road to Dubai".)

But part of the problem is precisely that guest-worker programs don't always operate under the best of circumstances. In practice (remember those Persian Gulf countries) they are often exploitative, oppressive, and otherwise inhumane. And it so happens that Schaffer couldn't have picked a better example to illustrate these dangers. A subsequent article in the Denver Post pointed out that the Marianas guest-worker program has long been notorious for its systematically and pervasively abusive character:

At the heart of the issue is the islands' massive textile industry, which is exempted from the U.S. minimum wage as well as most American immigration laws. The Northern Marianas economy is built on thousands of workers from China, the Philippines and Bangladesh, some of whom pay labor recruiters as much as $7,000 to land a job on U.S. soil.

A class-action lawsuit filed [in 1999] alleged that many of those workers lived in slum conditions, housed seven to a room in barracks surrounded by barbed wire designed to keep the workers in. Workers in some factories labored 12 hours a day, seven days a week, the suit alleged — without pay if they fell behind set quotas.

A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.

The islands' factories were cited by the U.S. Department of Labor more than 1,000 times for safety violations in the late 1990s. [....]

At the time, those alleged abuses and a push by the Clinton administration led to a flurry of congressional action. Several bills passed the Senate that would have brought the islands' factories under stricter American laws, but the legislation failed in the House.

Hired by factory owners and the government of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands, [former Republican super-lobbyist Jack] Abramoff and his firm were paid more than $11 million over nine years to fend off those efforts, according to reports.

In a 2001 memo to the Marianas governor meant to justify millions in fees, Abramoff singles out the relationships built with members of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over U.S. protectorates. He points to the lavish trips for dozens of lawmakers and family members to build goodwill. And he says his connections ultimately scuttled dangerous legislation like the bill proposed by then-Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, which would have toughened the islands' labor and immigration laws.

"We then stopped it cold in the House," the memo boasts.

"In the end, this all-out public relations and lobbying blitz brought the (Mariana Islands) back from the brink of legislative disaster," the lobbyist wrote.

=> To make matters worse, it turns out that Schaffer himself played a direct role in the successful effort to whitewash and protect this abusive system:

Just before boarding a plane to the Mariana Islands in 1999, then-Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was embarking on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of repeated allegations of labor abuse in the American protectorate. [....]

What he didn't say was that the trip was partly arranged by the firm of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented textile factory owners fighting congressional efforts to reform labor and immigration laws on the islands and who was being handsomely paid to keep the islands' cherished exemptions. [....]

He left believing that allegations of widespread abuse were largely unfounded — blaming them on Big Labor's efforts to shut down a booming textile industry allowed to use the "Made in USA" label but dependent on tens of thousands of imported workers.

In a recent interview with The Denver Post, the Republican candidate for Colorado's open Senate seat described the protectorate's guest-worker program as a "model" lawmakers could use as they overhaul the U.S. immigration system. [....]

"There were some examples of problems that we found, and we raised those with the equivalent of the attorney general," Schaffer said of his visit. But in many others, "the workers were smiling; they were happy."

Said Matthew Miller, spokesman for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee: "The fact that (Schaffer) sided against the human rights of those workers, not just then, but still today, shows he was more interested in doing the bidding of the people who set up the trip than in actually investigating abuses." [....]

=> For more details, see this very useful video from Talking Points Memo:

Marianas: Let's Go to the Videotape

=> In short, this is just one more good example of what Republicans mean by "reform"--and by "moderation." (No, not all of them. To be fair, there are some Republicans who favor a genuinely open, fair, and generous pro-immigrant policy. But over the past few years, the most prominent Republican positions on immigration have wavered between anti-immigrant nativism and guest-worker programs that would funnel cheap foreign labor to big business.)

Nor are Republicans the only ones who support the expansion of temporary-worker programs. It's clear that such proposals are going to be a prominent feature of the next attempt at a bipartisan compromise immigration-reform package, just as they were the last time around in 2006, and I'm afraid that the pressures behind them are hard to resist. But it would be a mistake to adopt this kind of "moderate" pseudo-solution, which simply ratifies an existing schism between workers and citizens rather than trying to overcome it. Is the Marianas Model something we should emulate and expand over here? I think not.

--Jeff Weintraub

The Daily Show on airline safety regulation ...

... or, another illustration of why the Republicans have been in power long enough. This would make a good Democratic campaign video for the fall (suitable for Congressional elections as well as the Presidential race): Airplane!

--Jeff Weintraub

More electoral tragicomedy in Zimbabwe

It is now a week and a half since the Zimbabwean elections on Saturday, March 29. The official results for the Presidential contest have still not been released, despite increasingly high-profile appeals from sources that now include UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. Instead, the Mugabe government has begun to arrest election officials on transparently absurd charges of having under-counted votes for the ruling ZANU-PF party (see below).

It seems fair for Tendai Biti of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change to describe this ploy as "the desperate act of a dinosaur regime that has lost an election." But as Norman Geras observes, this is just the next step in a political drama that crossed over into theater of the absurd some time ago:

On the eve of Zimbabwe's election, I gave Robert Mugabe a 10-point lead. I underestimated it. I hadn't thought of the ploy of withholding the election results. Or of this latest move: arresting election officials and accusing them of under-counting Mugabe's share of the vote. What's next upon this stage? They failed to count the votes of some boulders at the Matopos known to lean towards Zanu-PF?

These maneuvers would be laughable if they weren't so worrisome. They suggest that the ZANU-PF power structure intends to cook the voting results from March 29 enough to force a run-off election between Mugabe and the MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai ... and that they are gearing up to 'win' the next round with even more massive vote fraud than they used in the first stage.

But all that remains speculative. My guess is that Mugabe and his circle still haven't fully decided what to do next.

Meanwhile, it may a good sign that South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has long been one of Mugabe's most important enablers, has apparently now agreed to meet with Tsvangirai--or it may not mean anything significant one way or another. Stay tuned ...

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================
BBC News
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Zimbabwe poll officials detained

Zimbabwean police have arrested at least five officials for allegedly under-counting votes cast for President Robert Mugabe in last month's election.

The MDC believes its leader Morgan
Tsvangirai has won outright

Police said the election officials have been charged with fraud and criminal abuse of duty, accused of taking nearly 5,000 votes away from Mr Mugabe.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joined international calls for the urgent release of the results.

The opposition MDC is seeking a court ruling to force publication of results.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says its leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, won the election by a clear majority.

But Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF is seeking a recount.

On Monday, High Court judge Tendai Uchena dismissed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission's (ZEC) argument that his court did not have jurisdiction and set the case for Tuesday.

The judge said he would decide whether to treat it as an urgent case, before hearing the actual arguments.

If he decides it is urgent, he may rule on Wednesday.

"I think ZEC just wants to delay this whole thing," said opposition lawyer Alec Muchadehama.

The ZEC lawyer said the votes were still being verified, while the ruling party's demands for a recount was also delaying matters.

On Monday, Mr Tsvangirai visited regional powerhouse South Africa, where he met ANC President Jacob Zuma.

No word has emerged from those talks. Mr Mugabe's critics have long urged South Africa to take a tougher line on Zimbabwe's leader over allegations of human rights abuses.

'Bloodshed'

Government ministers have said the arrested election officials were paid to falsify the election results.

They say the results posted outside polling stations showed more votes for Mr Mugabe than the forms forwarded to Harare for counting.

"That's absolute rubbish," MDC Secretary General Tendai Biti told the BBC's Network Africa programme.

"That's the desperate act of a dinosaur regime that has lost an election," he said.

Mr Biti said that anyone who worked for the ZEC was carefully vetted by the authorities.

He also urged the international community, and African leaders in particular, to press Mr Mugabe to accept defeat, saying otherwise there could be "bloodshed".

"They want to see dead bodies before they send Kofi Annan," he said, referring to recent violence over disputed elections in Kenya.

On Monday, two foreign nationals accused of working as journalists without accreditation were freed on bail and are due to appear in court again on Thursday.

'Preparing war'

Earlier, Mr Mugabe called on the black population to ensure white farmers did not regain seized land, reports say.

He said black Zimbabweans could not afford to "retreat in the battle for land", the Herald newspaper said.

"Land must remain in our hands. The land is ours, it must not be allowed to slip back into the hands of whites," he is quoted as saying.

At least 18 of Zimbabwe's few remaining white-owned farms have been invaded since Saturday, farmers say, raising fears of renewed violence ahead of a possible run-off in the presidential election.

In 2000, there were 4,000 white farmers working on much of the best land in Zimbabwe.

Just 300 now remain after a campaign of often violent land seizures, with the land redistributed to black farmers.

The government says the land reform programme was needed to right colonial era wrongs, when black villagers were evicted from the most fertile land.

The opposition says the farm invasions were a pretext to intimidate people in rural areas and has led to economic ruin.

This year's election campaign was relatively peaceful but the MDC fears that the new land invasions are a precursor to another campaign of violence.

Some say the occupations have taken place in rural areas, which voted for the opposition.

Zimbabwe one week later - Uncertainty, anxiety, indecision, & behind-the-scenes maneuvering continue

What next for Zimbabwe? Hard to be sure.

It has now been more than a week since the Zimbabwean elections (for President, two houses of Parliament, and local offices) on Saturday, March 29, and the Zimbabwe Election Commission still has not released official results for the presidential contest. As I noted last Monday, in my own contribution to the proliferating speculation about what the delay might mean:

This is odd, since in previous Zimbabwean elections the results have been announced fairly quickly, sometimes within hours after the polls closed. This time, by contrast, official results for the parliamentary elections are just starting to dribble out several days later, and official results for the presidential contest have not been released at all.

The obvious inference is that the government apparatus is cooking the results, but they are still uncertain about much vote-rigging they should try to get away with. Probably they're shell-shocked too, and they're still deciding what to do next. Meanwhile, by all accounts, everything in Zimbabwe is caught in a state of suspended animation [....]

[I]t is by no means certain that Mugabe and the rest of the ZANU-PF ruling elite will agree to give up power, whatever the outcome of the election. In my highly non-expert opinion, all the experience of the past decades suggests that Mugabe himself will cling to power at any cost, even if he takes the country down with him. But, with luck, key segments of the elite will decide to jettison Mugabe and work out some sort of negotiated transition with the opposition--which could take various forms. Or, on the other hand, they may simply decide to abandon the last formalities of constitutional government and escalate to unvarnished military dictatorship. At this point, either outcome seems possible.

Six days later, all that still seems broadly correct, but in the meantime a number of developments have complicated the picture further. Among others ...

=> On Tuesday several serious and usually well informed journalists, including the Guardian's Chris McGreal in Harare, reported that Mugabe and the ZANU-PF power structure were determined to retain power, but were still debating whether to rely on overt military force or electoral fraud for this purpose:

A crisis meeting of Robert Mugabe's security cabinet decided to block the opposition from taking power after what appears to have been a comprehensive victory in Zimbabwe's elections but was divided between using a military takeover to annul the vote and falsifying the results.

Diplomatic and Zimbabwean sources who heard first-hand accounts of the Joint Operations Command meeting of senior military and intelligence officers and top party officials on Sunday night said Mugabe favoured immediately declaring himself president again but was persuaded to use the country's electoral commission to keep the opposition from power. [....]

Sources with knowledge of the JOC meeting said the Zanu-PF leadership was "in shock" after it was informed of the scale of the victory of the MDC's presidential candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai.

A senior diplomatic source who received accounts from two people privy to the JOC meeting said it discussed shutting down the count and Mugabe declaring himself re-elected or the army stepping in to declare martial law on the pretext of defending the country from instability caused by the opposition claiming victory.

"In the JOC meeting there were two options for Mugabe: to declare victory on Sunday or declare martial law," said the diplomat. "They did not consider conceding. We understand Mugabe nearly decided to declare victory. Cooler heads prevailed. It was decided to use the [election commission] process of drip, drip where you release results over a long period, giving the opposition gains at first but as time wears on Zanu-PF pulls ahead." [....]

But on the same day, an article in the London Times reported that

Intensive diplomatic efforts were under way tonight to secure a face-saving exit for Mr Mugabe after 28 years as President of Zimbabwe amid increasing signs he was about to step down from power.

His closest cohorts informed him last night that he had failed to win an outright victory in the country’s weekend presidential poll. [....]

South Africa was leading the behind-the-scenes negotiations centring on a power-sharing deal that would see Mr Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF), which has ruled the country for 28 years, taking a vice-presidential slot.

Such a deal would also ensure that Mr Mugabe retained immunity from prosecution for any crimes committed in his authoritarian rule. "It is over for Mugabe. No one is now talking about him staying on, just somehow finding a graceful exit," the source added.

But a spokesman for Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) denied that there were any negotiations going on. [....]

More optimistic rumors circulating in Zimbabwe suggested that Mugabe was preparing to flee the country--but that was probably wishful thinking.

=> On Wednesday:

There are initial signs that the hawks around Mr. Mugabe may have the balance of power. Last night police raided MDC offices in a large Harare hotel. And 30 police officers in riot gear raided a small Harare hotel, detaining two foreign journalists, including New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak, and two consultants with pro-democracy organizations. [....]

Since this raid, MDC presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai has gone into hiding.

But there were also signs of continued disagreements and indecision with in the ruling elite. According to the best-informed speculation, some tendencies wanted Mugabe to go, some favored a non-nonsense resort to martial law, some favored using fraudulent vote-counts to pretend that Mugabe & ZANU-PF had actually won the elections ... and some favored cooking the election results just enough to force the MDC candidate for President, Morgan Tsvangirai, into a run-off:

Two factions of Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF party are battling over whether President Robert Mugabe should step down or instead participate in a runoff election after he failed to win an outright majority in last Saturday's poll, according to senior ruling party sources.

Hard-liners in his inner circle are pushing Mr. Mugabe to use "presidential powers" to postpone the second poll for 90 days, in order to buy time to regain the control they have lost on the country that ZANU-PF has run since independence 28 years ago. The other faction is encouraging the President to compromise with the opposition.

The power struggle between the camps has the rest of the country in a state of suspended animation, and makes clear that the fate of Zimbabwe rests, now, on the fear, false confidence and desire for retribution driving Mr. Mugabe and those around him. [....]

Hawks in ZANU-PF are insisting that Mr. Mugabe can win the runoff. Their position is stiffened by a determination to hold on to the vast personal wealth they have acquired as members of the governing elite presiding over Zimbabwe's implosion in the past eight years.

A few, including two of the security chiefs, the enforcer "youth league" and former intelligence minister Emmerson Mnangagwa, believe that ZANU-PF, having captured the majority of the popular vote in parliamentary elections [JW: more wishful thinking], can win another contest outright, particularly if it makes use of rigging tactics, such as "ghost voters" and unannounced polling stations, which helped it win the last four elections here, according to international electoral observers. [....]

Others are less confident: A source with excellent knowledge of the country's finances said the government exhausted every dollar of precious foreign currency on last week's vote and has absolutely nothing left to put into a new campaign.

This faction is pushing the President to use presidential powers to postpone the second run for 90 days, effectively imposing a state of emergency. Under Zimbabwean law, the runoff must be held on April 19, three weeks from the first election. If the runoff is postponed, ZANU-PF would use that time to harden its control over a country where its structures govern everything from the price of bread to which village gets a bus or drugs for its clinic.

At the same time, members of Mr. Mugabe's family and many of his oldest friends are advising him not to stand again. They are urging that he cut a deal with the MDC that provides him a graceful way out and immunity from prosecution for human-rights abuses. [....]

=>Then, in a move that I confess surprised me, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission announced the official results for the lower house of Parliament which gave the opposition a slim majority. From the New York Times report:

President Robert G. Mugabe and his party have lost control of the nation’s Parliament, official election returns showed Wednesday, giving new impetus to the bigger question: Does that foretell a loss of the presidency itself, the job he has held tightly for the past 28 years? [....]

With only 11 races to be declared, the Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party, had 106 seats in all, including one for an allied independent, in the 210-seat assembly. Mr. Mugabe’s party — known as ZANU-PF — had only 93 seats, and among its losing candidates were seven of the president’s cabinet ministers. [....]

We can assume that these official results were fraudulent in that they almost certainly understated the margin of the opposition's victory at the polls. Nevertheless, this official announcement did acknowledge that the opposition had won a majority, and it appeared to signal that the ruling elite might be getting ready to accept the verdict of the electorate and relinquish its grip on power.

=> Apparently not. Today, in a post appropriately titled "Theatre of the absurd," Norman Geras pointed to a Sunday Times piece by the formidable South African journalist R.W. Johnson whose headline captures the central thrust of the analysis: "Opposition braced for dirty war as Mugabe clings on to power". But the details are complex and interesting, so read the whole thing.

Anything by R.W. Johnson always needs to be taken very seriously; but as Norm was careful to point out, much of this analysis is necessarily based on informed speculation and well-sourced rumor rather than established facts.

I introduce the report below by R.W. Johnson with that caveat. Even if it's approximately accurate, it is hard not to be struck by the bizarre nature of what is now going on [....]

The key players don't like the outcome of the procedure that Zimbabwe has just gone through. So they think about manipulating it, even though to do so makes it worthless from the point of view of conferring legitimacy. Some of the players understand this and advise that it shouldn't be too severely manipulated, as doing that will convince no one; it should be manipulated just a bit. The world waits and watches. Everyone suspects that something like this must be going on. From 'sources' we learn that something like this probably is going on. Those who wish to benefit from manipulating the result act as if they are quite deluded. They think someone will be taken in by this grotesque farce. Or they don't care. Or perhaps they are cosmic dramatists.

Some highlights from Johnson's piece (but read the whole thing below):

Zimbabwe was bracing itself yesterday for the possibility that President Robert Mugabe, forced into an expected election runoff against his opposition challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, could mobilise an army of thugs to beat, intimidate and terrify voters, while taking emergency powers to vary the electoral regulations so as to make ballot-stuffing easier. [....]

The official tally has yet to be declared and when MDC lawyers went to the High Court yesterday in an attempt to force an announcement, their way into the building was blocked by police from Mugabe’s office over the road. One of the lawyers, Alec Muchadehama, said the police had threatened to shoot them. The case was eventually postponed until today.

The longer the delay in announcing the presidential election result, opposition activists say, the more time Mugabe will have to mobilise his forces. Reports yesterday suggested that attempts to intimidate the opposition could already be under way. [....]

Yesterday’s events followed a week of claim and counterclaim about Mugabe’s intentions. At one point it was reported that he was negotiating a dignified exit and yesterday there were suggestions that his wife Grace was demanding that he resign to protect the interests of their children. There was no corroboration of these reports.

The Sunday Times has learnt the inside story of what happened last Sunday, the day after the poll. By Sunday afternoon the theoretically independent Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, the body under Justice George Chiurshe which is charged with conducting the elections, communicated its initial estimates of the result to the Zanu-PF politburo: Tsvangirai 58%, Robert Mugabe 27% and Makoni 15%. These estimates were based on too narrow an urban sample and were too favourable to Tsvangirai and his MDC, but the message was clear: Mugabe had lost. The politburo, particularly Mugabe himself, hit the roof.

According to an account sourced to a commission official, Mugabe then ordered it to declare him elected with 53%. He was angry at Makoni’s “treachery” and demanded that his vote be reduced to 5%.

This produced resistance from the commission and also from the army, police and intelligence chiefs.

The commission objected that manipulation of the results on such a huge scale would be too obvious, while the security chiefs were concerned that the country might become ungovernable if the popular will was so blatantly flouted.

At this stage Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president, took a hand - he was continuously on the phone from Pretoria and had his emissaries in Harare. Mbeki’s overweening interest is to maintain Zanu-PF in power as a sister liberation movement of his own African National Congress. He fears a possible domino effect throughout southern Africa if a movement that had wrested power from the whites in a liberation war is seen to fail and perhaps then fall to bits.

However, Mbeki wants Mugabe to go. Instead, he would like Makoni to succeed - a younger, modernising technocrat who would, he hopes, restore both his party’s and his country’s fortunes.

Out of Mbeki’s discussions came the notion that the results should be “adjusted” so that Tsvangirai was brought back under the 50% mark, perhaps to 47%-49%, while Mugabe could get 41% and Makoni 10%-12%.

With no candidate over 50% this would produce the necessity of a second-round runoff and Mugabe should then withdraw, leaving Zanu-PF to rally behind Makoni. Provided the security forces could be given a strong role in the way that the runoff was organised and conducted, Makoni could then be given just over 50% and Tsvangirai kept out. [....]

The proposal stitched together by Mbeki might have worked, provided the armed forces were willing to give Makoni some fairly muscular support.

“We were saved from this outcome,” an MDC source said, “by our most reliable ally, Robert Mugabe, who absolutely refused to stand down.”

This brought matters back to square one, leaving the security chiefs and the electoral commission in disarray. Constantine Chiwenga, head of the armed forces, together with Mugabe’s cousin, Perence Shiri, are said to have wanted the army to take power itself. They were faced down by others, including Philip Sibanda, the head of the army, and Augustine Chihuri, the police commissioner.

Chris Mbanga, Tsvangirai’s chief of staff, said he had also heard of the coup plot. “But the fact is they couldn’t have got far,” he said. “We have our own people in there at every level and they would have resisted. The police and the army want change too, you know.”

Meanwhile, the drama had shifted to the [electoral] commission’s command centre [....]

By Monday the police and army were everywhere on the streets and a few independent websites were showing the MDC running well ahead of Zanu-PF in both the parliamentary elections and the presidential poll.

Most people were dependent on state television which leaked out the parliamentary results at a snail’s pace, always leaving Zanu-PF one ahead of MDC. Of the presidential results there was no word.

Ordinary Zimbabweans had no idea of the drama being played out. So terrible has been the toll of the Mugabe years that the struggle just to stay alive preoccupies those who are left - so many have died and at least a third of the population has fled the country. Among those who remain, 80% are unemployed and most go hungry. [....]

When the parliamentary results finally came out, the state media tried to depict the situation as a tie when the opposition had clearly won. The MDC had 99 seats, Zanu-PF 96. The MDC splinter party led by Arthur Mutambara had 11 and there was one (pro-Tsvangirai) independent. Three candidates had died before election day, but all in almost certain MDC seats so the combined opposition has 111 out of 217 seats today and will end up with 114 out of 220. [....]

As the week progressed the tension grew but observers sensed on every hand the resistance of the Zanu-PF state, facing a situation it had never dreamt of. Mugabe called a meeting of the Zanu-PF high command and, as usual, imposed his will. There would be a runoff and he would run, and meanwhile the opposition and foreign journalists would be put in their place. Armed police duly raided MDC offices and hotels housing foreign journalists.

Ahead lies a bruising second round. It is quite possible that Mugabe will break the constitution and insist on a three-month gap before a second round, using that period to try to smash the MDC and terrify the electorate into voting him back in. But the odds are against him now.

Let's hope so.

--Jeff Weintraub
==============================
Sunday Times (London)
April 6, 2008
Opposition braced for dirty war as Mugabe clings on to power
The beleaguered president has been accused of mobilising militias to settle Zimbabwe’s election the hard way
By R W Johnson in Harare

ZIMBABWE was bracing itself yesterday for the possibility that President Robert Mugabe, forced into an expected election runoff against his opposition challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, could mobilise an army of thugs to beat, intimidate and terrify voters, while taking emergency powers to vary the electoral regulations so as to make ballot-stuffing easier.

Both Britain and the United States are exercising strong diplomatic pressure on Mugabe not to follow this route. But some diplomatic observers believe that it may be the ageing despot’s only way of keeping his vow to die in State House.

Mugabe’s deputy information minister, Bright Matonga, who claimed last week that the president’s Zanu-PF party had let him down in the first round of voting, predicted a resounding victory in the second, saying: “We only applied 25% of our energy in the first round. That [the runoff] is when we are going to unleash the other 75%.”

What will be unleashed, according to leaders of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), are war veterans, pro-government militia and the security forces in a display of brute force aimed at enabling Mugabe, 84, to cling to power.

Tsvangirai, the MDC leader, who warned that Mugabe was about to launch a “war against the people” said his party was reluctant to take part in any runoff because of the growing risks of violence. In any case, he argued, there was no need for one because he had won last weekend’s presidential election outright and was already forming a new government.

He called Mugabe a lame duck president who “must concede to allow us to move on with the business of rebuilding and reconstructing the country”.

According to the MDC, Tsvangirai secured 50.3% of the vote, enough to be named president. It is understood that Mugabe’s politburo was briefed on Friday that Tsvangirai had won 47.7%, compared with 43.4% for Mugabe and the remainder for Simba Makoni, a former finance minister expelled by Zanu-PF. If confirmed, this result would require a runoff.

The official tally has yet to be declared and when MDC lawyers went to the High Court yesterday in an attempt to force an announcement, their way into the building was blocked by police from Mugabe’s office over the road. One of the lawyers, Alec Muchadehama, said the police had threatened to shoot them. The case was eventually postponed until today.

The longer the delay in announcing the presidential election result, opposition activists say, the more time Mugabe will have to mobilise his forces.

Reports yesterday suggested that attempts to intimidate the opposition could already be under way. According to one African news agency, Zimbabwean soldiers beat supporters of the MDC in some parts of the country to punish them for “premature” election victory celebrations. At least 17 people were said to have been beaten so badly that they had to be taken to hospital.

The war veterans - 1,000 of whom marched through Harare in silence on Friday - accused the MDC of defying the law by putting out results before the official electoral commission was ready. The tactics were “a provocation against freedom fighters”, said the veterans. They vowed to repel any attempt by white farmers ousted since 2000 to repossess land which is now held by black Zimbabweans.

“The election has been seen as a way to reopen the invasion of our people by whites,” said Jabulani Sibanda, their leader. “We cannot just sit back when there are all these provocations.”

Zanu-PF’s youth brigades, known as “green bombers” because of their military style of clothing, were said to be ready to return to action alongside the veterans, evoking memories of the pounding of opposition supporters – some of whom had their homes burnt down - in past campaigns.

Yesterday’s events followed a week of claim and counterclaim about Mugabe’s intentions. At one point it was reported that he was negotiating a dignified exit and yesterday there were suggestions that his wife Grace was demanding that he resign to protect the interests of their children. There was no corroboration of these reports.

The Sunday Times has learnt the inside story of what happened last Sunday, the day after the poll. By Sunday afternoon the theoretically independent Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, the body under Justice George Chiurshe which is charged with conducting the elections, communicated its initial estimates of the result to the Zanu-PF politburo: Tsvangirai 58%, Robert Mugabe 27% and Makoni 15%. These estimates were based on too narrow an urban sample and were too favourable to Tsvangirai and his MDC, but the message was clear: Mugabe had lost. The politburo, particularly Mugabe himself, hit the roof.

According to an account sourced to a commission official, Mugabe then ordered it to declare him elected with 53%. He was angry at Makoni’s “treachery” and demanded that his vote be reduced to 5%.

This produced resistance from the commission and also from the army, police and intelligence chiefs.

The commission objected that manipulation of the results on such a huge scale would be too obvious, while the security chiefs were concerned that the country might become ungovernable if the popular will was so blatantly flouted.

At this stage Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s president, took a hand - he was continuously on the phone from Pretoria and had his emissaries in Harare. Mbeki’s overweening interest is to maintain Zanu-PF in power as a sister liberation movement of his own African National Congress. He fears a possible domino effect throughout southern Africa if a movement that had wrested power from the whites in a liberation war is seen to fail and perhaps then fall to bits.

However, Mbeki wants Mugabe to go. Instead, he would like Makoni to succeed - a younger, modernising technocrat who would, he hopes, restore both his party’s and his country’s fortunes.

Out of Mbeki’s discussions came the notion that the results should be “adjusted” so that Tsvangirai was brought back under the 50% mark, perhaps to 47%-49%, while Mugabe could get 41% and Makoni 10%-12%.

With no candidate over 50% this would produce the necessity of a second-round runoff and Mugabe should then withdraw, leaving Zanu-PF to rally behind Makoni. Provided the security forces could be given a strong role in the way that the runoff was organised and conducted, Makoni could then be given just over 50% and Tsvangirai kept out.

As word spread into the South African media that Mbeki had been heavily engaged, his office quickly denied that he had been involved at all. By the end of the week Mbeki was publicly appealing for all sides to respect the vote, whatever it had been.

At a conference on progressive governance convened by Gordon Brown in Hertfordshire yesterday, Mbeki told the international community to wait for the full election results, saying it was not time for action. “No, it’s time to wait,” he said.

The proposal stitched together by Mbeki might have worked, provided the armed forces were willing to give Makoni some fairly muscular support.

“We were saved from this outcome,” an MDC source said, “by our most reliable ally, Robert Mugabe, who absolutely refused to stand down.”

This brought matters back to square one, leaving the security chiefs and the electoral commission in disarray. Constantine Chiwenga, head of the armed forces, together with Mugabe’s cousin, Perence Shiri, are said to have wanted the army to take power itself. They were faced down by others, including Philip Sibanda, the head of the army, and Augustine Chihuri, the police commissioner.

Chris Mbanga, Tsvangirai’s chief of staff, said he had also heard of the coup plot. “But the fact is they couldn’t have got far,” he said. “We have our own people in there at every level and they would have resisted. The police and the army want change too, you know.”

Meanwhile, the drama had shifted to the commission’s command centre where Mbanga sat monitoring the parliamentary and presidential results for the MDC as they came through. With the electoral register absurdly out of date and so many having fled or died, the voting totals were often very small.

Mbanga suddenly began to notice some considerable anomalies. In general, in every constituency Tsvangirai was running well ahead of the score achieved by the MDC parliamentary candidate - but he noticed that in Budiriro the MDC candidate had won more than 15,000 votes and Tsvangirai only 12,000. Then he noticed that at Mount Darwin West in Mashonaland North, Vice-President Joyce Mujuru had won 6,071 votes according to the tallies posted up outside the polling stations there, but the commission had given her 13,270. Similarly, at Shamva North in Mashonaland West, the cabinet minister Nicholas Goche had won 4,195 votes, according to the polling station tallies, but the commission credited him with 10,385.

“Once I saw this and some more very fishy figures indeed coming in for Mashonaland Central, I just said, okay, I’m not signing for anything more,” he explained.

Instead, Mbanga insisted on an audit of every single seat, with all the original tally papers from all the polling stations brought in so they could be compared. Thus, while Mugabe has been widely blamed for not declaring the results more quickly, it is the opposition that has made counting such a slow process in its determination to prevent cheating.

By Monday the police and army were everywhere on the streets and a few independent websites were showing the MDC running well ahead of Zanu-PF in both the parliamentary elections and the presidential poll.

Most people were dependent on state television which leaked out the parliamentary results at a snail’s pace, always leaving Zanu-PF one ahead of MDC. Of the presidential results there was no word.

Ordinary Zimbabweans had no idea of the drama being played out. So terrible has been the toll of the Mugabe years that the struggle just to stay alive preoccupies those who are left - so many have died and at least a third of the population has fled the country. Among those who remain, 80% are unemployed and most go hungry.

Every morning begins in the towns with huge queues outside banks and building societies, for nobody may withdraw more than Z$500m a day - about £6.

Harare is the only city where you can see large-denomination banknotes scattered on the pavement. So rapid has inflation become that all notes bear an expiry date after which they are invalid and the central bank adds another nought or two to the next set of notes. People just tear up invalid notes and throw them away.

When you speak to people in the queues you realise how beaten down they are. “I have three children, all hungry. I’ve sold everything in the house except a table and our beds,” said Margaret Zimondi, a secretary.

“We’re just waiting to hear that Mugabe rigged the elections again, as usual,” said Learnmore Maposa, a carpenter.

“Things are much worse in the countryside,” he added. “I went to see my mother in her village last weekend. They can’t cook on oil stoves any more because the price of diesel is too high, so they have to cook with electricity. Often there is none, so they just go to bed hungry night after night. My mother can’t weigh more than 35kg [77lb] now. In our village so many have died already. I am frightened for her.”

When the parliamentary results finally came out, the state media tried to depict the situation as a tie when the opposition had clearly won. The MDC had 99 seats, Zanu-PF 96. The MDC splinter party led by Arthur Mutambara had 11 and there was one (pro-Tsvangirai) independent. Three candidates had died before election day, but all in almost certain MDC seats so the combined opposition has 111 out of 217 seats today and will end up with 114 out of 220.

This result alone would make it difficult for a Zanu-PF president to govern. The party promptly accused the MDC of bribing officials in 16 constituencies and demanded that the results be overturned.

As the week progressed the tension grew but observers sensed on every hand the resistance of the Zanu-PF state, facing a situation it had never dreamt of. Mugabe called a meeting of the Zanu-PF high command and, as usual, imposed his will. There would be a runoff and he would run, and meanwhile the opposition and foreign journalists would be put in their place. Armed police duly raided MDC offices and hotels housing foreign journalists.

Ahead lies a bruising second round. It is quite possible that Mugabe will break the constitution and insist on a three-month gap before a second round, using that period to try to smash the MDC and terrify the electorate into voting him back in. But the odds are against him now.
--------------------
£1bn aid plan

A vigorous aid programme to rebuild Zimbabwe’s economy, society and agriculture would quickly follow an opposition victory, with Britain in a prominent role, writes David Watts.

With £1 billion to be spent, the International Monetary Fund would take the lead in stabilising the currency - inflation is forecast to hit 500,000% by May. The plan would also involve the World Bank, UN and EU. Britain is already putting £45m into the country over the next two years to help HIV/Aids victims and to provide food, shelter and education. More could be made available to help to resettle refugees - there are 800,000 in South Africa alone.

Video: Government begins Zimbabwe crackdown (April 2, 2008)
Video: Sir David Frost interviews Morgan Tsvangirai (November 23, 2007)

Art & self-expression in Pachydermia

This elephant artist in Chiang Mai, Thailand--a female named Hong--seems to be the real thing. She's pretty remarkable. Watch this VIDEO (the whole thing!).

(For more, along with some background and a few shots of Hong doing her day job, see HERE & HERE & HERE.)

--Jeff Weintraub

Saved! - The European University in St. Petersburg can re-open

I have been a little slow in passing on a piece of good news, but it's the kind of good news that remains timely.

First, background. As I said back on February 22 (Academic freedom alert - The Kremlin shuts down the European University in St. Petersburg):

Part of the Putin government's long-term campaign to consolidate an increasingly tight system of authoritarian control, while maintaining some of the outward forms of representative democracy and constitutional government, has been a systematic and wide-ranging effort to shut down, suppress, or marginalize independent institutions, organizations, and associations--especially, though not exclusively, those with any western or other international ties. (Of course, independent journalism has also been systematically undermined and suppressed, in a process that has included some suspicious deaths.)

So far, this campaign has largely spared the academic world. But that is no longer the case. The European University in Saint Petersburg has been the object of strident public attacks, and now it has been shut down on the basis of what looks to everyone like a transparently fraudulent pretext. [....]

After a month of uncertainty, legal & political maneuvering, and a certain amount of international protest, the closure of the EUSP has been rescinded.

This is not unqualified good news, since the interruption has presumably damaged the work of the university, and the whole incident has probably helped to intimidate other independent voices and institutions. Also, we don't know what new blows may come in the future. But for the moment, given the alternative possibilities, this outcome is a cause for celebration.

The announcement below comes from the useful website set up by Mischa Gabowitsch, a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University, to collect relevant information, updates, and suggestions for constructive action (Save the European University at St. Petersburg). Mischa concludes:

This success is obviously due to the widespread Russian and international support the university has received over the past weeks. I think we should all be proud of ourselves! :-)

Congratulations to the EUSP and, more generally, to the international Republic of Letters.

--Jeff Weintraub
==============================
Save the European University at St. Petersburg
Friday, March 21, 2008
Mischa Gabowitsch
Success!

The European University may return to its building!

[Translated from fontanka.ru:] "The European University may resume its regular activities. Federal Judge Anzhelika Morozova, of the Dzerzhinsky Court, granted the university's request for an early lifting of the administrative suspension of its activities.

The university's activities had originally been suspended for 100 hours by court order so that it may correct all fire code violations [...].

At the court hearing, a fire department representative stated that the university had fully complied with most of the fire inspectors' injunctions, and that those instructions whose removal required co-ordination [with other authorities?] are currently being implemented.

The university had drawn up a plan for removal of the violations and had it approved by the chief fire inspector; the fire department therefore considers it possible for the building to be used at this time. According to the rector of the EUSP, Nikolai Vakhtin, a meeting of all students and faculty will take place tonight to celebrate their victory." (fontanka.ru)

The city's science and education committee has already restored the EUSP's license.

This success is obviously due to the widespread Russian and international support the university has received over the past weeks. I think we should all be proud of ourselves! :-)

Mike Gravel's "Helter Skelter" campaign video

Have a look at this VIDEO ... but first, some background.

=> Former US Senator Mike Gravel, who was one of the many candidates once competing for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2007-2008, was not always an obscure political joke. For example, as noted in his Wikipedia mini-bio:

As Senator, Gravel became nationally known for his forceful but unsuccessful attempts to end the draft during the Vietnam War and for having put the Pentagon Papers into the public record in 1971 despite risk to himself. He conducted an unusual campaign for the Democratic nomination for Vice President of the United States in 1972, and then played a crucial role in getting Congressional approval for the Trans-Alaska pipeline in 1973. He was re-elected to the Senate in 1974, but gradually alienated most of his Alaskan constituencies and his bid for a third term was defeated in a Democratic primary election in 1980.

If you didn't notice his candidacy this past year, don't feel bad, since his level of support in public-opinion polls never passed 1%. Then on March 25 he left the Democratic Party, and is now campaigning to be nominated for President by the Libertarian Party.

=> Is that effort connected to this peculiar but very interesting VIDEO--a collage of historico-political images from the past half-century, set to the Beatles' "Helter Skelter"? It looks like it does. If so, this has to rank as one of the odder campaign videos around.

I have to agree with Matt Yglesias on this one:

I'm still not sure I fully understand why Mike Gravel was allowed onto nationally televised political debates [including this one --JW], but I do like this video

And it's not just photos and other images. For anyone who's never heard it before, the clip from President Eisenhower's Farewell Address in January 1961, in which Eisenhower famously warned against the dangers of a growing "military-industrial complex" ...

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

... is worth the price of admission by itself. See the video HERE.

--Jeff Weintraub

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish/Muslim Relations

My admirable friend Sam Fleischacker, whom I have mentioned before in this blog, is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois in Chicago and the author of a pile valuable books, including The Ethics of Culture, A Short History of Distributive Justice, and a a series of important works on Adam Smith as a moral and socio-political thinker, among them A Third Concept of Liberty and On Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations": A Philosophical Companion.

Sam is also, unlike me, an observant Jew. His religious commitment has inclined him to be more, rather than less, open to other religious traditions. Over the years, he has been impressively persistent in pursuing practical efforts at inter-faith dialogues with Christian and Muslim groups, despite repeated tensions and disappointments. In addition, starting in 2005 Sam launched an effort to promote intellectually serious and rigorous comparative study of Judaism and Islam through an interdisciplinary Jewish/Muslim Studies Initiative. (For more details, see HERE.)

In that connection, Sam has asked me to circulate the following announcement. The Jewish-Muslim Initiative has just obtained funding for a one-semester visiting post-doctoral fellowship in Spring 2009. Unfortunately, this timing means that the deadline for applications will be tight. "It's too late to run ads in the proper places, unfortunately, so those of us on the committee are just distributing the following announcement to people who we think might help us locate good candidates."

See below. If you're interested in applying, get in touch with Prof. Fleischacker ... and if you know anyone who might be appropriate for and interested in this fellowship, please pass this announcement along to them, too.

--Jeff Weintraub
=========================

The Jewish-Muslim Initiative at the University of Illinois-Chicago invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Spring semester of 2009. The successful candidate will teach one undergraduate class, give two or three public lectures, and participate in the life of the university. The class may compare Jewish and Muslim views on any topic, or be on any aspect of historical Jewish-Muslim relations. Applicants welcome from History, Philosophy, Religion, Law, Political Science, and other disciplines, or from either a Jewish Studies or an Islamic Studies Department. Successful candidates should display interest in both the Jewish and the Muslim tradition, but need have expertise in only one of them. Applicants should submit a c.v., including the names of at least three referees, and a sample of written work. For full consideration, applications should be in by April 25, 2008. They can be sent to:

Prof. Sam Fleischacker
Jewish/Muslim Search Committee
Philosophy Department (M/C 267)
1407 University Hall
601 South Morgan Street
University of Illinois-Chicago
Chicago, IL 60607-7104

UIC ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students, 12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public medical center. It is an urban, largely commuter campus, with one of the most diverse student populations in the United States. The University of Illinois is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer.

--------------------
Postdoctoral Fellowship in Jewish/Muslim Relations

The rift between Jews and Muslims is among the most serious in the world today. Whatever one’s political views, the need for Jews and Muslims to understand one another better, and to develop friendships and co-operative relationships, could not be more obvious.

With this need in mind, the University of Illinois at Chicago has developed a ground-breaking initiative in Jewish/Muslim relations. As a school with a large Muslim population, in one of America's most ethnically diverse cities, and with a large group of professors with a strong, sympathetic interest in both Judaism and Islam, UIC is well-situated to take the lead in this area.

The heart of the initiative is a course in Jewish/Muslim relations, to be taught each year by a postdoctoral fellow selected from a nationwide competition for that purpose. Any of a large variety of topics can provide the subject matter of this course: it might take up views of Abraham, Joseph or Moses in the Torah and the Quran; the Islamic context of Maimonides’s philosophy; similarities and differences between the Islamic and Jewish legal systems; shared Jewish and Islamic history, in Spain, Iraq, the Balkans, or the United States, or any of a myriad of other topics.

The point of this course, and the fellowship, is three-fold:

1) to provide incentives, in the scholarly world, for young scholars with a strong research interest in either Judaism or Islam to develop knowledge of the other tradition as well — we propose a postdoctoral fellowship precisely to attract scholars at the beginning of their career, just coming out of programs in either Jewish or Islamic Studies, so that they can take the results of this year’s work with them wherever else they go,

2) to provide a venue for Jewish and Muslim students to investigate one another’s traditions together, and

3) to bring the results of this scholarly and pedagogical work to the wider community of Chicago: in the form of presentations by the postdoctoral fellow at mosques and synagogues, Jewish and Islamic schools and cultural centers, and the like, but also in the form of students trained in such a program who go on to work in Jewish or Islamic organizations in the area.

Scholars are well situated to break through stereotypes and provide cool voices to calm down debates clouded by passion. There is a dearth of scholarly work bridging the Jewish and Islamic communities. The UIC Fellowship — which is unique in the world — is one step towards improving that situation.

John McCain's "hundred years" - A small reality check

This may be a small point, but perhaps it's worth making anyway.

To avoid any possible misunderstanding (or deliberate misconstrual), even at the risk of belaboring the obvious, let me begin by making it clear that I do not support John McCain's campaign for President, and I would not consider voting for him against either Obama or Clinton. Rightly or wrongly, it is my firm and considered opinion that the Bush/Cheney administration has been a major disaster for this country, and that a Republican victory in November would extend and intensify that disaster. Furthermore, McCain has said a number of things in this campaign that legitimately deserve to be criticized. Indeed, it has been suggested that McCain gets too much of a free ride from the press (no doubt for complex reasons), and I think there is some truth to those suggestions.

Nevertheless, facts are facts, and the points made in this Columbia Journalism Review piece happen to be factually correct, like it or not. John McCain never said that he would support a 100-year US war in Iraq, and people who oppose McCain (including Obama, but he's not the only one) should stop pretending that he did.

Yours for reality-based discourse,
Jeff Weintraub
==============================
Columbia Journalism Review
Campaign Desk
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 - 05:07 PM
The U.S., Iraq, and 100 Years
Press needs to call Obama on distortion of McCain’s statement
By Zachary Roth

Ever since John McCain said at a town hall meeting in January that he could see U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years, the Democrats have been trying to use the quote to paint the Arizona senator as a dangerous warmonger. And lately, Barack Obama in particular has stepped up his attacks on McCain’s “100 years” notion.

But in doing so, Obama is seriously misleading voters—if not outright lying to them—about exactly what McCain said. And some in the press are failing to call him on it.

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. As he says, we’ve had troops in South Korea for over fifty years, but few people think that means we’re still fighting the Korean War.

Nevertheless, back in February, Obama said: “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another hundred years.”

And, on a separate occasion: “(McCain) says that he is willing to send our troops into another hundred years of war in Iraq.”

Since then, some conservatives have drawn attention to the distortion, and Obama’s been a bit more careful with his language. Today, for instance, he said: “We can’t afford to stay in Iraq, like John McCain said, for another hundred years.” It’s technically true that McCain said that, but Obama’s clear goal in phrasing it that way was to imply, falsely, that McCain wants the war to continue for that long. In other words, he’s gone from lying about what McCain said to being deeply misleading about it. Progress, of a kind.

Still, some outlets continue to portray the issue as a he-said, she-said spat. A long takeout on the controversy by ABC News, opining that McCain’s comment “handed his Democratic opponents and war critics a weapon with which to bludgeon him,” is headlined: “McCain’s 100 Year Remark Hands Ammo to War Critics: McCain Haunted by January Remarks Suggesting 100 More Years in Iraq.” And today’s L.A. Times story, headlined “Obama, McCain Bicker Over Iraq,” is similarly neutral.

To be fair, the ABC News piece does provide the quote in its full context, giving enough information to allow conscientious readers to figure out the truth. That’s better than the L.A. Times piece, which says only that “McCain has stressed since then that he meant that U.S. troops might need to remain to support Iraqi forces, not to wage full-scale warfare”—instead of simply telling readers that it’s clear from the context that McCain did indeed mean that. Still, neither piece stated high up and unequivocally that Obama is distorting McCain’s words.

To be clear, if Obama wants to take issue with McCain’s willingness to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for a hundred years in any capacity, that’s obviously his right. But that’s not the same as misleading voters about what McCain is proposing.

This matters. Obama has given every indication that his general election strategy on Iraq and foreign policy will be to portray McCain as dangerously bellicose. If he’s going to do so by distorting McCain’s words, the press should forcefully call him out on it each time.