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The Gettysburg Address

"Four score, and seven years ago..." began Abraham Lincoln on November 19, 1863 at a town called Gettysburg. It was here in the rolling hills of southern Pennsylvania that the Union Army had stopped cold Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Ironically then that southern Pennsylvania is the next turning point in American history. Here is where George W. Bush covets victory more than any other state. Here is where he has visited 26 times, hoping that he can make a breakthrough and win 2004 in a landslide. But it's not just about the election. It's about war in a place called Iraq, and an ideas about the future. Even if Bush wins without Pennsylvania it's an ominous sign of a new "civil war". Of an ever diverging country where the needs of a slowly growing urban majority outstrip that of its rural minority. But the urban majority tends to be the impoverished, the underrepresented and those unable to lobby for the services they so desperately need.

Enter Arlen Specter. He's a 72 old man from Kansas no less...but yet he sits precariously on his Senate seat because the Club for Growth has decided to play a proxy war with no less than Bush himself. Just as the Spanish Civil War led into World War II, so does Tuesday's primary in Pennsylvania portend the future...of everything. Specter clings to his seat just as the Republicans cling to their one-seat majority in the Senate. His seniority ensures if elected he will become the Judiciary Committee chairman and have incredible power over any vacancies on the Supreme Court. He has Bush's support, and the support of the other Senator, Rick Santorum(R) as well as name recognition.

Should it surprise anyone that the handpicked antagonist is a little-known, little cared for Pennsylvania Congressman named Patrick Toomey? After all with Steven Moore's Club for Growth bankrolling Toomey's insurgency, it's possible that conservatives might get a positive opinion of just about any person...save Saddam Hussein or Hillary Clinton, running for the office. And Specter, who isn't sold on the redux of Reaganomics...stands there as a bulwark to Moore and his shadowy backers dream of a radically smaller federal government. The National Review has thrown its towel to Toomey as well.

In any case the outcome is simple. Run a much more conservative candidate in the general election, and Bush feels that Pennsylvania and his whole bid in 2004 is forfeit. The Democrats will regain the Senate and the White House. The Club for Growth feels that Northeastern Republicans like Lincoln Chafee(R.I.) and Olympia Snowe(Maine) could turn independent like Jim Jeffords of Vermont did, thereby ensuring that the only areas in "play" would be the Midwest and Southwest for years to come. Push through enough tax cuts, Moore reasons, and you will have government get out of plenty of places it need not be, and thereby allow the country's conservative mores to return.

But there's one ugly problem, and her name is Teresa Heinz-Kerry. Gore won Philadelphia by a 4 to 1 margin and only Pittsburgh was close. Assuming that Kerry makes a game of it and pushes hard with himself and the Democratic nominee...Joe Hoeffel, Bush's strong showing the rest of Pennsylvania won't count. Heinz is among the largest and most entrenched of Pittsburgh's companies, along with US Steel and US Airways. About the only card that might work is "gay marriage" but as the California courts are unlikely to determine if San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom has been behaving badly...that's debatable.

Gettysburg voted overwhelmingly for Bush in 2000. That does not tell us though, who they will select on Tuesday and which horse the GOP must ride into battle. Hoeffel's district is an area, (northwest of Philadelphia) that Rove covets and sees as key to winning the state. His home county went to Gore 60-40. With Hoeffel on the ticket as a man not from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh but a down-home Pennsylvanian...one wonders if both parties erred in not choosing Philadelphia for their conventions. Time will tell, but at least after Tuesday, the lines in one of the biggest battleground states will be drawn.
posted by Thomas at 12:41 AM 0 comments

 
The Straw Destined to Break Russia's Back?

Russia's youth may be coming of age. The Russia they have grown up with is not that of Lenin or Stalin and "cold war". Instead, Russia's Generation Y have grown up in the age of rampant corruption, organized crime, and an ever more divisive war in Chechnya. But nothing has captured their attention like the attempted murder of German Galdetsky. Moscow is already on edge after a terrorist bomb attack punctuated the Metro rush hour in February. With police instructed to scrutinize "suspicious persons", it appears that German was attacked by members of the "thin blue line", Russian-style. He lies now in a coma, along with another reporter who had attempted to research the story. As the BBC reports, over 40 chat-rooms have popped up with the sole intent of discussing young German's fate. After three weeks, the Ministry of the Interior, the ministry ultimately responsible for the police, ordered a special commission to investigate the misconduct.

Still it's hard to explain how German became such a hero to Russia's future. Unlike Britain or the United States, the Kremlin criticized the American invasion of Iraq. In addition, high school men have become inured to years of conscription and the prospects that until the conflict in Chechnya is resolved, life in the army could feel no different as under the Soviet Union. The richest man in the country, Mikhail Khorodovsky, will stand trial for irregularities in running the privatized oil firm Yukos.
Yet in the face of all this, one man's campaign to expose police corruption has everyone up in arms.

Yet perhaps this is exactly the point. Studies of black riots during the 1960s suggest that communities often seemed to explode for no apparent reason. After enduring police brutality for sometimes months at a time, neighborhoods would erupt over something as simple as a traffic stop. Instead of riots being the product of escalating relations between the authorities and African-Americans, riots seemingly began when there was a "straw that broke the camel's back". Yet there's no question what impact the black riots had on America...but what about a Russian youth riot?

Remember that Russia sits in a odd position compared to the rest of Europe. It's population is shrinking, while it's infrastructure is growing. It's markets are liberalizing and it's diplomatic stature has been enhanced by the Bush Administration. An at bottom, Russia sits on the world's most lucrative timber and natural gas markets. If the youth decide to flex their muscle older generations may be stuck. Even German himself was a math student who would likely work in a growing higher paying scientific jobs. And ever so belatedly on Friday the Interior Ministry vowed to descend into not just the depths of the Moscow subway, but also the dark heart of police corruption and the increasing animosity of Russia's youth.




posted by Thomas at 6:09 PM 0 comments

 
The Rubble of Leganes

Al Qaeda finally took it's roadshow to Europe on March 11, 2004. Just days before a national election, 200 people were killed in an attack on the regional train system of Madrid. Spain and the United Kingdom had been the only two Western European nations to join the United States in it's military venture in Iraq. Spain is also close to North Africa, and at one time was ruled by Islamic princes. But even in a country with a long struggle with domestic terror did March 11th seem to be a horrific reminder of hate.

Except it was obvious it was coming. Much earlier, the arrest of Khalid Shiekh Muhammad, considered the mastermind of Al Qaeda's antics on September 11, 2001, brought about a confession that Al-Qaeda had been considering an attack on the DC Metro system. The assumption being that by Muhammad announcing the plan, it would be impossible to carry out. However, Al Qaeda is a clever group to adapt old plans into new environments. Thus was born the Madrid bombing. It was the same idea. Multiple suicide bombings on regional commuter trains in a national capital. It just wasn't America's capital. However, the response from the populace was to dump conservative prime minister Jose Maria Aznar in favor of his socialist counterparts, not "rally 'round the flag". In any case, Spanish police have far more experience in hunting down terror crimes, due to a protracted history with the Basque separatist group, ETA. Spanish law enforcement made several arrests before a daring Saturday afternoon raid in the suburb of Leganes. It came just after word that a bomb had been discovered on a railway separating Seville and Madrid. In any case, three members of the Madrid Al Qaeda are dead. Others may still be hiding. The real question remains though if Al Qaeda wants to continue attacking Spain or if it will strike elsewhere in Europe or the United States. Ultimately though, it might be that Al Qaeda is being seen as too homogeneous and monolithic. Indeed, there could be many fronts, ranging from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia to Europe to the United States. The "war on terror" may be a truly global undertaking.

Still, the rubble of Leganes teases us to question why these men blew themselves up: because the cell was about to broken, or because the apartment contained information that could have slowly unraveled the entire network? Expect the wreckage to be highly scrutinized for just that reason. The Spanish hope for the latter, but in the even they are wrong they can only hope that the brains of the Madrid cell is no more.
posted by Thomas at 3:00 AM 0 comments