Every once in a long while, I run across somebody who really “gets it”… a person who sees the whole picture of what’s going on in the country and understands how the pieces all fit together. The last time was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a speech which I transcribed for a previous post. And now it’s, Andrew J. Bacevich, a self-described conservative who is a teacher, political expert, and former US Army Colonel. The interview runs nearly an hour, but it’s really worth watching.

And thank goodness for Bill Moyers, the former Washington insider who has found his place as the only television journalist to consistently hosts these kinds of thinkers. If you regularly watch any mainstream news, you owe it to yourself to occasionally balance out the hype-machine with an hour of The Journal.

In Washington D.C. this afternoon, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution died on the floor of the Senate. Cause of death was determined to be intense corporate lobbying brought on by chronic fear-mongering and an insidious infection of misinformation. By a vote of 69-28, the Amendment was pronounced dead at 2:47 pm local time with passage of the FISA bill. In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to AccountabilityNow.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

This week’s so-called “compromise” between the Whitehouse and Congress on the FISA bill is no compromise at all. It’s capitulation. The Democrats bowed to the will of the President and the telecom companies, selling out the citizens, civil liberties and the Fourth Amendment in the process.

Background

The FISA law was passed in the 1970s to regulate the government’s ability to monitor communications. It requires law enforcement agencies to get a warrant from a secret court before tapping the communications of any US citizen. The idea was for the government to be awarded this power only in specific cases without tipping off the subjects of the wiretaps, while also protecting the rest of the citizens from wholesale monitoring of their communications without probable cause.

In 2002, the Bush administration decided that FISA was no longer relevant and moved to bypass the law without informing Congress. The administration directed the National Security Agency (NSA) to install monitoring equipment at major telecommunications hubs across the country, but the NSA needed the permission of the telecom companies. AT&T and Verizon agreed, and in doing so, broke the law. Qwest refused.

Once installed, the equipment allowed the government to monitor the phone calls, emails and internet activity of almost everyone in the United States, without a warrant. This is precisely the scenario that the FISA law was designed to prevent.

The warrantless wiretapping program continued unhindered and unnoticed for years, compromising the privacy of untold numbers of Americans. It took a whistleblower from AT&T for the word to finally get out. After the New York Times broke the story in 2005, AT&T and Verizon’s customers, along with civil liberties groups, filed law suits claiming illegal invasion of privacy. The FISA law itself provides for criminal sanctions and civil damages for each instance where communications were unlawfully monitored.

In response to the law suits, the telecom companies claimed that they were only doing what they were instructed to by the Bush administration. However, a federal judge in the case ruled that the companies cannot reasonably claim to believe that their actions were legal, so the suits are still pending. That’s where the Whitehouse stepped in again and asked Congress to pass a bill revising FISA and giving retroactive immunity (aka amnesty) to the telecom companies for implementing the illegal program.

Congress did just that, but there was opposition from some Democrats. The Bush administration threatened to veto any legislation which did not grant amnesty to the telecom companies, so eventually, a so-called “compromise” was struck. However, it’s unclear how the proposal is really a compromise, because the amnesty is still in the bill, clear and unaltered. The House has already voted to pass it, and the Senate is expected to pass it soon.

If the bill becomes law, which looks likely, Congress, at the behest of the Bush administration, will have wiped out all accountability for the telecom companies, including cases where they clearly broke the law. Furthermore, the public will never know the extent of the spying, because the bill includes provisions to keep that information concealed.

How we got here

The FISA law was born out of a real need. Enemies can and will act from within US borders and it is reasonable that the government be able to monitor the communications of those it suspects of planning to do harm. The rights of the citizens to be secure in their persons and privacy also need to be upheld. FISA seeks to balance those two needs. Although the law may require some modernizing, the basic idea is sound.

The US legal system requires law enforcement agencies to put forth a minimal amount of evidence against a specific person to justify a search. In actual practice, presenting probable cause to obtain a search warrant is not a particularly high standard. Over a 15 year period ending in 2006, the FISA court granted 22,985 warrants, and only five were rejected, so any claim that the FISA system was overly burdensome or a hindrance to law enforcement is disingenuous. What it prevented was the massive data mining dragnet that has likely been installed by the NSA, and that’s what needs to be curtailed.

The telecom companies clearly and knowingly engaged in illegal actions at the request of the government. There needs to be a consequence for that, so that the government doesn’t feel that it can compel wholesale and illegal invasions of privacy from any company that serves the public, such as credit card companies, banks, hospitals, insurance companies, security firms, medical laboratories, satellite imaging companies, and more.

Giving the telecom companies amnesty sends the wrong message. It says that service providers can break the law and violate the rights of their customers without consequence because the federal government will protect them. That would have a wide ranging and devastating effect on the future of liberty in this country. It also clearly runs counter to the Fourth Amendment.

But it is also reasonable to understand that the telecoms were under great pressure to assist the administration in fighting terrorism. Some allowance for the mood of the country at the time, plus an acknowledgement that the FISA law had not been modernized for current communication technology, seems in order.

What should have been done

Here’s what a real “compromise” FISA bill should have done (besides bringing the act up to date for current technology):

1. Stop illegal monitoring. The system of FISA warrants is inherently workable. Though some adjustments may be necessary, there is no need to bypass it.

2. Within one year, require telecom companies to notify all customers whose communications were illegally tapped under the NSA program, except in cases where the government can get a “retroactive” warrant from the FISA court.

3. Issue an official apology from both the government and the telecom companies to those who have been illegally monitored.

4. Give notified customers the option to be included in a combined class of complaintants. All suits will be combined into one.

5. Cap the total damages which can be awarded to the entire class of those affected.

6. Encourage the telecom companies to settle the case and pay their customers compensation, rather than going all the way to trial.

7. Require the government to provide loan guarantees or some financial assistance to the telecom companies in order to spread out the expense for at least part of the payout.

8. Clarify the FISA bill to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.

If the actions to revise FISA had included the points above, they would have balanced the interests of the three relevant parties: the telecom companies, the law enforcement agencies, and the citizens. Alas, what we ended up with gives very little consideration to the citizens and the lion’s share to the telecom companies.

Prologue: the Founding Fathers versus the legacy of Nixon

The United States was founded by a group of people seeking to restrict the power of government over its citizens. They were particularly wary of the Executive branch, because the King of England had ruled over them by decree. The Constitution is structured primarily to limit the power of the President over the people and their property.

Though put to the test at times, this concept of limited executive power endured for nearly 200 years, up until the Nixon administration. The Nixonian view of the Presidency was that anything the President does is inherently legal, because he is the President. It’s a strange kind of circular logic that sounds strikingly similar to that of the monarchies from which the American colonies fought to escape. The current Bush administration has been staffed by many of the same people who cut their political teeth in the Nixon administration, and their concept of executive power has remained intact. It is a treacherous view which goes against the very principles that the country was founded upon.

The only good thing to come out of Nixon’s perspective on executive power was that Congress gained a renewed sense of responsibility to “check and balance” the President. The Special Prosecutor law was designed as a way to investigate the President when he strays into illegal action, as had happened with the Watergate scandal. And the FISA law was a direct response to Nixon’s illegal wiretaps of US citizens.

The tragedy of the current episode of Nixonian resurgence is that this time, the Congress is not stepping up to reassert its Constitutional responsibility to balance out the President. Instead, our Congressional representatives just roll over to his every whim. It seems an appropriate time to ask why that is.

Why would so many representatives in the opposition party vote to support a bill backing an unpopular President and giving amnesty to companies who clearly broke the law, violating the rights of the very citizens who those Congressmen and Congresswomen claim to represent? The only way that makes sense is if those members of Congress feel more compelled by, or beholden to, interests other than their constituents. So much for a government of, by and for the people.

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NOTE: Glenn Greenwald has a great blog following this issue. Among the fantastic commentary is this clip from Keith Olbermann’s show:

UPDATE: Senators Dodd and Feingold issued a joint statement announcing their intention to block or modify the FISA bill, and urging their colleagues to do the same.

Now that we know who the candidates will be in November’s general election, I am looking forward to hearing them state their positions and make their cases to the American public. But the primaries demonstrated that the news media are falling far short of asking the important questions which voters can use to inform themselves. So, like many American voters, I got to thinking about what I would ask the candidates if I had the opportunity.

The first thing I know is what I wouldn’t ask. The candidates can be assured that I don’t care who their preachers are, were or will be. I don’t care if the candidates are elitist or folksy, athletic or clumsy, young or old, man or woman, or black or white. I don’t have the slightest doubt about their patriotism, so I won’t ask any questions suggesting that I do. In short, I don’t care about any of the things that the mainstream media outlets tell Americans is important in this campaign. I want to know where the candidates stand on the issues we face as a country and how they’re going to address them.

So, I’ve written out my own series of questions. If I could sit down with any of the candidates, or even receive a written response to a detailed letter, this is what I would ask. If you have your own questions, I encourage you to post them as comments. Who knows… if we can put together a good, refined list, maybe we can get some answers.

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1. Iraq. How do you define “success” in Iraq and how will we achieve it? Once that criteria is met, what will we do with our forces, our private contractors, and our diplomatic mission there?

2. Health care. A survey by the World Health Organization in the year 2000 ranked health care in 190 countries. Despite being the wealthiest nation in the world, dedicating the largest percentage of our GDP to health care, and spending twice as much per capita as many of the other nations, the US is ranked only 37th. Most of the top-ranked countries have a single-payer universal health care system. Your plan does not call for such a system. If that’s not the solution, then what can the country do to better care for the health of its own citizens?

3. Biofuels. Recent science indicates that biofuels do more harm to the environment than good, and their increased use is driving up the price of food worldwide. Proponents claim that the technology is getting more efficient. Do you believe that biofuels are a good use of America’s resources? Should the US taxpayers continue to subsidize biofuels, such as corn-based ethanol?

4. Signing Statements. As a Senator, you have passed legislation which President Bush has signed, but then qualified with signing statements outlining which parts of the law he was not intending to enforce. As President, do you intend to use signing statements, and if so, for what purpose?

5. Taxes and spending. In 1913, Congress passed the income tax law, with rates of 1 to 7 percent. Initially, over 99 percent of the population paid NO income tax. Today we have far more taxpayers, almost everyone pays, and the LOWEST rate is 10 percent. Federal tax revenue is over 10 times the share of GDP that it was when the income tax came into effect, yet amazingly, we STILL can’t balance the budget. Despite all that money coming from the citizens, Congress continues to spend more than it takes in.

Where is all our money going? How can any candidate talk about taxes or the deficit without addressing the huge amount of money that our government spends?

6. Enhanced interrogation. Imagine this scenario: a high-ranking US soldier, with knowledge of battle plans and tactics, is captured overseas by an enemy force. His captors release a video claiming that they will interrogate the officer using the exact same techniques that have been employed by the US Military in Guantanamo Bay, and by the CIA’s proxies in extraordinary renditions to third-party prisons. Does the US have any legal or moral ground from which to oppose such techniques, or have we effectively lowered the bar for the treatment of captured foes worldwide, including our own fine soldiers?

7. Anti-terrorism laws. It has come to light that many of the measures passed in the wake of 9/11 to make it easier for law enforcement officers to thwart terrorist attacks have been used for other purposes. By broadening the definition of “terrorist”, government agencies have been able to make arrests, obtain citizens’ personal records, seize documents, tap phones and internet connections, and even hold people without charge; all without the need to acquire a warrant or show probable cause.

Is this an appropriate or necessary use of counter-terrorism laws? If so, why? If not, what safeguards can be implemented so that average US citizens do not get swept up in the counter-terrorism dragnet?

8. Guantanamo Bay. What should we do with the facility and prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and when?

9. Undeclared Wars. The Constitution says that only Congress can declare war, but the War Powers Act allows the President to authorize a limited commitment of troops without such a declaration. The last seven presidents have used the Act to undertake extensive military operations around the globe, some of them lasting years and costing thousands of American lives.

Do you believe that the President has the right to authorize military action, other than the direct defense of an attack on US soil, without a formal declaration of war by the Congress? If so, in what cases would you authorize such action?

10. Point of entry searches. The Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling in United States v. Arnold allows Border Patrol agents to search and seize the laptop computers, cell phones and other digital devices of anyone entering the country, including US citizens who are not suspected of any crimes. The agents can review, copy and store the data without limitation.

Privacy groups argue that this is an unconstitutional infringement of people’s rights. Business groups worry that the policy could expose trade secrets. The issue has wide-ranging implications, because if a person anywhere in the world emails private information to someone who later enters the US, the person carrying the information may be held liable for exposing the data.

Do you agree with the ruling? If so, why? If not, what will you do to reverse it?

11. The Federal Reserve. The Fed has been in the news a lot recently. The organization has been battling the economic downturn by lowering interest rates, addressing the credit crisis, and bailing out a major financial institution. Some of these decisions have been controversial, yet the US Government is only peripherally involved. Whether or not you agree with the Fed’s recent moves, does the organization’s semi-autonomous nature give the US taxpayers too little oversight of its actions? Should an organization which holds so much power over the economy be allowed to operate largely outside the bounds of representative government?

12. The tax code. The US tax code is one of the most complicated in the world. Does it need to be, and if not, what can be done to simplify it?

13. The Free Market. Is a free market the same thing as an unregulated market? If not, how do you maintain a balance between appropriate regulation and a business-friendly environment?

14. Public works and infrastructure. The country has suffered some high profile failures of major infrastructure in the last decade. It’s widely agreed that we’re long overdue to address some of these issues, but with the country showing a record budget deficit, how do we afford it?

15. Poverty. We’re the richest nation in the world, yet we have over 32 million people living below the poverty line. What are the root causes of poverty in this country and what can be done to address them?

16. Security vs. Liberty. Can a truly free society also be the safest, or are they mutually exclusive? Is some level of insecurity simply the price of liberty?

17. Intelligence failures. The US intelligence services failed to foresee the end of the Cold War, failed to uncover decades-long foreign spying operations in the US, failed to prevent the transfer of US nuclear technology abroad, and largely got the story wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It is not disputed that US intelligence agencies also had significant knowledge prior to 9/11 that Al Qaeda terrorists were in the country and determined to attack. Do you believe that enough has been done to address the intelligence failures that led to the attacks not being prevented? What would you do to address overall problems in the intelligence apparatus?

18. Politics of Fear. Nobody questions the need to address the threat of foreign terrorism, but statistically, Americans have a much greater chance of being struck by lightning, and about 1000 times greater chance of being killed driving a car, than falling victim to a terrorist attack.

Yet the country has completely changed it’s policies, redirected its resources, curbed civil liberties, and even sent our brave men and women off to die, all to avoid a threat that doesn’t even rank among the top 50 to American lives. If the goal of our enemies is truly to “terrorize”, then haven’t we handed them their victory by our own fearful reaction?

19. Attorney General. Of the last 15 Attorneys General of the United States, more than half have been involved in controversies over their roles relating to the Presidency. Whether it be ethical questions, charges of politically biased prosecutions, or inappropriate ties to the administration, the position of Attorney General seems to be a lightning rod for controversy in our system of governance.

As the person responsible for investigating potential wrong-doing in the Executive branch, should the Attorney General be a presidential appointee? Doesn’t that violate the principle of checks and balances amongst the branches? How can we ensure that the Justice Department remains a non-partisan instrument of justice rather than an instrument of executive policy?

20. Defense spending. The Cold War has been over for 20 years and the US is the world’s only remaining superpower. Yet the country continues to spend more on defense than ALL other countries in the world COMBINED. Is that necessary, and if so, why?

21. DNA Evidence. There have been a number of high-profile cases recently where citizens who were convicted of heinous crimes have later been exonerated by DNA evidence. Because the use of DNA evidence is a recent advancement, it is almost certain that Americans in the past were wrongly convicted and killed by their government. But the effort to exonerate convicts, some of whom are awaiting a death sentence, relies on independent organizations and private contributions. Do you favor government funded DNA testing to confirm the convictions of inmates on death row? How do we assure that American citizens are not wrongly arrested and convicted of heinous crimes?

22. World standing. By almost every measure, America’s standing on the world stage has fallen dramatically in the last five years. Do you think that matters, and if so, how would you reverse the trend?

23. Foreign aid requirements. A little more than one percent of every American’s tax dollars goes to aid foreign countries, yet some of those countries take actions that are not in keeping with our values or interests.

Should aid to foreign countries be conditional? For example, if a receiving nation fails to make progress towards peace or human rights, should we reduce our aid? If we catch an ally or supported nation spying on us, or stealing our state secrets, should US aid to that nation be cut off?

24. Pre-emptive war. Although Iraq did not attack the United States, the President and the Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq based largely on that nation’s past aggressiveness and the possibility that it had acquired weapons of mass destruction.

By that standard, can we not justify pre-emptive strikes against dozens of nations on the planet, or conversely, can’t any other nation use the same justification to attack the United States? In the big picture, how does the shift to a policy of pre-emptive war affect the security of US citizens and the world at large?

25. Foreign oil. As is clear from the effect of gas prices lately, our nation has a severe dependence on foreign oil. We are by far the world’s largest consumer of it. Besides the economic effects, oil has become a security issue, because we are forced to defend our supply. How would you address the nation’s dependence on foreign oil in a lasting, meaningful way?

26. Supporting dictators. The United States bills itself as a paragon of democracy, yet we have repeatedly supported dictators and oppressive regimes around the world. It usually comes back to bite us, and it breeds a great deal of resentment in the people who are forced to live under those regimes. A long list of bad characters, including Manuel Noriega, Sadaam Hussein, and even Osama bin Laden were all at one time supported by American tax dollars, ostensibly to further our own interests. When is it OK to support dictatorships or oppressive regimes abroad?

27. The drug war. Statistics from the drug war are not encouraging. In the decades since the battle began, the pervasiveness of use, potency, availability, number of drug-related crimes, and prison population have all gone up, while the average cost of drugs has generally declined. Critics of the current US drug policy argue that the lessons of alcohol prohibition were not learned and applied to national drug policy. At the same time, a number of states have decriminalized the use of some drugs.

Do you believe that our current federal drug policy is effective and in the best interest of US citizens? If not, what would you do to change it?

28. Afghanistan. By most accounts, the coalition forces are losing ground in Afghanistan. There is a Taliban resurgence, widespread corruption, rising opium production, greater difficulty getting our allies to commit troops, and still no sign of Osama bin Laden. What can we do to make sure that our efforts in Afghanistan are successful?

29. Deterrence. A large portion of the US defense strategy is based on the concept of deterrence. That is, other nations should consider the severe consequences for themselves and their people before attacking the United States. But the most dangerous foreign threat to US interests in the last decade has come from groups which do not depend on nation-states and whose attackers seem to care little for their own lives. Is the policy of deterrence an effective counter to ideologically-based terrorism? If not, how do we defend ourselves?

30. Border security. Our international airports have no-fly lists, bomb screeners, metal detectors, x-rays, cameras, a full complement of security personnel, and many other security measures to assure that not even one potential terrorist can enter the country undetected. Yet, by recent estimates, more than one thousand people each DAY enter the US illegally over our southern border. Setting aside the issue of immigration policy, isn’t the porous nature of our borders simply a security threat? What would you do to address that problem?

31. Campaign finance. The influence of lobbyists and powerful special interests has been a hot topic in Washington and on the campaign trail. Two states, and many municipalities, have tackled this problem by introducing a system of 100% publicly-financed campaigns. The results, though early, are quite promising. Is there any reason that we shouldn’t move to public campaign financing on the Federal level? If the people we elect are truly OUR representatives, then why are they allowed to take even one dime from special interests? Isn’t that just legalized bribery?

32. War reporting. The Iraq War has largely fallen off the radar of American media outlets. Part of this is due to the fact that the Pentagon places restrictions on what the media can cover. Some argue that the reason we don’t allow correspondents to report freely from the war zone, or film the homecoming of flag-draped caskets, is because we don’t want to risk eroding support for the war effort. But in a democracy, isn’t an informed electorate exactly what we want, so that if knowledgeable Americans decide that their sons and daughters should no longer be dying for a particular cause, their government will respond to that decision and withdraw the nation from the conflict? Put another way, when the military or political goals diverge from the interests of the populace, which takes precedence?

33. Climate change. Do you believe that combating climate change is a goal that the US government should undertake, and if so, how?

34. The Bush Administration. What policies, if any, implemented by the current President Bush do you admire and/or agree with?

35. Pardons. If you become President, and members of the former administration are indicted or convicted of crimes committed while they were in office, will you pardon them?

36. Warrantless wiretapping. The Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which monitors the communications of Americans without a court order, has been roundly criticized by civil liberties groups. The Congress is now poised to grant retroactive immunity to the companies who allowed the illegal monitoring to occur. Do you agree with that policy, and if so, why?

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That’s all I’ve got for now. Feel free to post a comment below to add your own.

Here’s the third installment of Steve’s Peeves.

Most refrigerators have a temperature control that’s labeled “Min” and “Max”. The trouble is, “Max” actually means minimum temperature, and vice versa.

Ideally, one side would simply be labeled “colder.” But if the gauge is going to say min/max, it should be called a “coldness” control, not a temperature control.

This is the transcript of an unscripted speech by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., given on May 2nd, 2007 in New York City. Kennedy shares the stage with investigative journalist and author Greg Palast, and radio host Randi Rhodes.

There is video of the speech posted here. Kennedy’s section begins at the 35-minute mark.

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Thank you. Thank you so much.

I had a long travel schedule over the past two weeks, and I really wanted to spend time with my kids tonight, which is usually sacrosanct. But Greg called me and asked me to do this, and he is such an important figure in this country, such an extraordinary American hero, I wanted to come here. And Randi Rhodes, to be here with her…

These are the exemplars, the paradigms, the models of what journalism and punditry should be like in this country — which is challenging authority, and looking into the claims of government officials, and being skeptical. And without that kind of integrity in journalism, that kind of energy and that kind of mission, our democracy cannot survive. And that’s what I kind of want to talk about tonight.

Tonight I was driving down here. I had to go do a talk late this afternoon at the New York Public Library on a new book, the re-issuance of Barry Goldwater’s 1955 classic, “The Conscience of a Conservative,” which I did the introduction to. The reason I did the introduction to it is because, you read this thing, and there’s nothing in it that resembles the kind of conservatives that they have today.

This is not conservativism, what they have. They pretend to be conservatives, but they have torn the “conserve” out of conservativism. All of the things, like free market capitalism, which they hate… they want corporate crony capitalism and they want capitalism for the poor and socialism for the rich; and separation of church and state, which was one of the pillars of conservativism; protection of the Constitution, which Goldwater was absolutely reverential about the Constitution. But these people have destroyed the Constitution.

We are now torturing people in this country. We are wiretapping our citizens. We’ve suspended the eight hundred twenty year-old right of habeas corpus. We’ve suspended our protections against search and seizure. And it’s the biggest bunch of baloney when they say to us, “Oh well, you know, we live in dangerous times.”

If you really look at it — and I have friends who died in the World Trade Center Attack, my offices were destroyed in that attack — but objectively, we live in one of the safest times in the history of this planet, you know, for Americans. Because when I was a little boy, and we had 15 thousand nuclear-tipped warheads in Russia pointing at our country, each one able to destroy an entire city, that was dangerous times. But we didn’t wiretap our citizens. We didn’t torture people then. We didn’t suspend habeas corpus. We didn’t send people to Guantanamo or do extraordinary renditions to torture people in Syria.

During the Civil War, we lost entire cities. Six hundred and forty thousand Americans — not three thousand, but six hundred forty thousand — were killed. That’s the equivalent of six million people being killed today. And Abraham Lincoln said, when they talked about torturing Southerners or mistreating them, he drafted a document for how we treat prisoners, and it later became the Geneva Convention. Because he said, “We are not going to do that, as Americans.” When George Washington was confronted with the British, during the revolutionary war, torturing American prisoners, keeping them on coffin ships right here in New York harbor, where they were dying by the score every day, Washington said, “We’re not going to do that. If that’s what we’re going to do, then I’m not going to be part of this conflict.” And he passed orders, treating prisoners so well, that when he captured Trenton, New Jersey… the barracks at Trenton, the Hessians were so astounded by the good treatment that they had received from the Americans, that they walked all the way from New Jersey to Western Pennsylvania with no guards. And Dwight Eisenhower during World War II, again said, “No matter what the Nazi’s do, we are not going to torture them.” And that’s one of the reasons the Germans gave up so quickly to us, because they knew they were going to be treated well by Americans. All of these things are against the conservative traditions that are a part of our heritage, and that Barry Goldwater, at his best, celebrated.

So I was coming down to do a talk at the New York Public Library about this, and I had put that time aside, driving from White Plains from here to think about what I was going to say, and I turned on Randi Rhodes. She had the most fantastic show today, and I couldn’t turn it off. She was reciting all of these ridiculous, absurd things that these journalists — from Chris Matthews, Joe Scarborough, and all of our great stellar journalists — were saying when President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished,” and how they were all saying, “Well now the Democrats have to apologize because they criticized the war.” You know, Chris Matthews saying, “We’re all neo-cons now.” Right?

Anyway, I love you Randi. Every day, when I go home from work, I look forward now to riding in my car, because I listen to her every day and she is really an amazing hero. And you know, this is what we need to restore democracy in this country. Because we need a press that is doing its job. And it isn’t.

The principle problem with democracy… there’s two big failures. One is all the corporate money that’s going into our election process. And the second failure is that we have a negligent and indolent press in this country, that has simply let down American democracy.

And you know, I travel all over the country, and I hear people talking still… people talking about the liberal media. Well that’s what Joseph Goebbels used to call “The Big Lie.” If you just keep saying it and saying it and saying it, people begin believing it.

There’s no liberal media in this country. You know, what do you have? You have The Nations magazine, you have Mother Jones, you have Rolling Stone, you have Pacifica Radio, Air America, and you have these two guys [motioning to Palast and Rhodes]. And that’s pretty much it.

But we have a right wing media in this country. And if you look around, that’s where Americans are disproportionately getting their news.

The Pew Foundation recently did a survey that showed that thirty percent of Americans now say their primary news source is talk radio, which is ninety percent controlled by the right. Twenty-two percent said cable news… mainly Fox News. Ten percent said Sinclair network, which is the most right wing of all of them. Sinclair is the largest television network in our country. It’s run by a former pornographer who requires all seventy-five of his local affiliate stations to take a pledge that they will not report critically about this president or about the war in Iraq or a number of other issues.

And then the rest of us — only eleven percent of Americans now read papers, where you still can get some relevant news, occasionally — but the rest of us get our news primarily from the traditional corporate-owned media: ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN, which have no ideology except for their own pocketbooks. And that ideology is almost always coterminous with the ideology of the party in power, but particularly, the Republican party. Because they’re supporting these corporate consolidations. These are huge companies. They have all kinds of subsidiaries that are looking for licensing deals and concessions from the government, and they’re not going to say something that offends them.

You look on network television, there’s no liberal equivalent of John Stossel, or Glenn Beck, or Robert Novak, or Sean Hannity, or Bill O’Reilly, or any of these other guys. You’ve got Alan Colmes. That show is the Harlem Globetrotters and he plays the Washington Generals. His whole job is to lose every argument.

Here’s what he said when President Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” a year ago today, “Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, shouldn’t the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?” That’s from our great liberal voice in the American media.

This devolution of the American press began in 1988 when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine. We had a rule in this country that was passed in 1928, at the dawn of commercial radio, called the Fairness Doctrine. And that rule said that the airwaves belong to the public. The broadcasters can be licensed to use them, but only with the proviso that they use them to promote the public interest and to advance American democracy.

There were three requirements under the fairness doctrine:

Number one. They had to air issues of public import. That’s why there’s a six o’clock news hour on the networks; not because they wanted it. They wanted to put entertainment in that slot. The news departments traditionally were money losers. So, they were forced to do that as part of the Fairness Doctrine, and that’s why the radio stations periodically update you on the news. It’s part of the requirement under the original Fairness Doctrine, that they’re still doing as a tradition.

Number two. If they were going to give opinion, they had to tell both sides. You couldn’t have had a Fox News under the Fairness Doctrine. You couldn’t have had a Rush Limbaugh. You could have had Rush four hours a day, but then, they would have had to put somebody else on — a countervailing voice — for the next four hours. You couldn’t have Rush and his ditto heads for twenty-four hours a day on the same station. And Rush Limbaugh got started in 1988, the year that Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.

Number three. They had to avoid corporate consolidation. Congress wanted to make sure that people in Kansas could get crop reports, that people in North Dakota could get tornado warnings, that people in the South could get country music, that you wouldn’t have programming and content dictated by a couple of corporate epicenters in remote areas of the country. And that part of the Fairness Doctrine, incidentally, was strengthened in 1945… fortified, because Congress saw what Hitler had done in Europe — and the other Fascist governments had done — where they had allowed these corporate consolidations, and they had given these contracts and special favors to the media, and they had co-opted the media and got them on their side. So that anybody who criticized them was either muzzled, or was branded as unpatriotic. And they said, “We can’t allow that to happen in this country.” So they strengthened that part of the Fairness Doctrine.

Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine as a favor to the Christian right, which was already plotting the takeover of a.m. radio, and as a favor to the studio heads (who had helped him get elected) who were plotting the takeover of all media. And today, as a result of that, there are five giant, multinational corporations who control virtually all 14,000 radio stations in America, all 5,000 television stations, 80 percent of our newspapers, all of our billboards, and most of the large internet content providers. So there are five guys who are deciding what we hear as news and information.

And the news departments have become corporate profit centers. They no longer have an obligation to promote the public interest. Their only obligation is to their shareholders. And they serve that obligation, not by telling us the difficult issues that we need to understand, like what happens when you privatize Social Security, and how did the pharmaceutical companies end up controlling Medicaid and Medicare, and what is global warming, and all of these issues; but rather by cutting costs.

And guess what… where do they cut costs? They cut costs by firing all of their investigative reporters. 80 percent of investigative reporters have lost their jobs over the past 15 years. The people who can connect the dots between the money that came from the corporate polluters to the Whitehouse, then the rollbacks that were engineered by the Whitehouse, and the children that you see, the asthmatic kids that you see in New York City, and all over this country. Nobody’s making those connections. Nobody’s connecting the dots. So you see the asthmatic kid, and you’re not saying, “The Whitehouse has something to do with that.”

The fact that, in 19 states, you can no longer eat any fresh water fish caught in the state, because of mercury contamination coming from coal-burning power plants that were supposed to have removed 90 percent of that mercury five years ago. But the Whitehouse, having accepted 4 million dollars from that industry, rolled back those rules. So now there are 19 states where all of the fresh water fish are unsafe to eat, and in 49 states, most or some of the freshwater fish — including New York, in which most of them — are unsafe to eat. The only state where all the fresh water fish are safe to eat is Wyoming, where the Republican-controlled legislature has refused to appropriate the money to test the fish. But in all the other states, some or most or all of them are unsafe to eat.

According to CDC, one out of every six American women now has so much mercury in her womb — one out of every six — that her children are at risk for a grim inventory of diseases: autism; blindness; mental retardation; heart, liver and kidney disease. My own levels of mercury are two and a half times what EPA considers safe, just from eating fish. And all of this could have been stopped, except that Bush abolished the mercury rule. But Americans don’t know that.

I go and buy my fishing license for thirty bucks a year every year in New York State. And I get the fish advisories, which are now this thick [holds up fingers about an inch apart] that basically say, there’s only a few places where you can safely fish in New York state. I read through that thing and I’m saying, “That son of a bitch George Bush.” But most fisherman who buy that thing don’t make the connection. The reason they don’t make that connection is because there’s no investigative reporters out there telling them about that connection.

They also got rid of all the foreign news bureaus. When I was a kid, ABC had forty seven foreign news bureaus in Europe. Now it has none. It buys its news in a can from the European producers. And that’s why, Americans, the only way you can get foreign news in this country, is if you go to BBC. And that’s why Americans… we’re supposed to be the leader of the free world, of the entire world, and yet we have no idea what’s happening in other cultures or other countries. And that’s why the American people were able to be gulled into this neo-con fantasy that we were going to be met by flowers and rose petals in the streets when we went into Iraq.

Because they have no obligation to promote the public interest, their only obligation is to their shareholders. They serve that obligation not by explaining the difficult issues that we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy, but rather by entertaining us… by appealing to the lowest common denominator, the prurient interests that all of us have in the reptilian core of our brains, for sex and celebrity gossip.

So they give us three weeks of Anna Nicole Smith, and they give us Laci Peterson, and Kobe Bryant, and Michael Jackson, and Brad and Jen, and Brad and Angelina, and we know more about Kate and Tom than we do about global warming. American people are today the best entertained and the least informed people on the face of the earth. That has profound implications for our democracy, because a democracy cannot function long without an informed public.

I’ve known this for many, many years. I go out around the country, and I do about 30 speeches a year in red states to Republican audiences. And I get the same reaction from Republican audiences that I do from liberal college kids. The only difference is, the Republicans come up to me afterwards and say, “How come I never heard this before?” And I’m like, “It’s ’cause you’re getting your news from Rush Limbaugh and from talk radio.” I came to this conclusion a long time ago… that 80 percent of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on. [audience laughs]

In 2004, there was a survey done that Randi knows about, and Greg I’m sure knows about, called the Pippa Report. It was a survey by the Public Policy Institute at the University of Maryland, and it was a national survey that confirmed my own anecdotal observations that I’d been harboring for so many years about this phenomenon. Because you look on Sunday morning television and the pundits — we call them in my house, “the Sunday morning gas bags” — talking about the morality difference: the red states have this monopoly on morality and the blue states are kind of dissolute and degenerate. It just didn’t jibe with my experience or my own observations. In fact, I did a piece for Vanity Fair a couple years ago, where I went and did a survey. I asked my research assistant to look at the indicia of morality in the various states, and what they found was that just the opposite was true.

The lowest teen pregnancy rate was Massachusetts. The highest was Texas. The lowest divorce rate: Massachusetts. The highest: Texas. The ten lowest divorce rate states: ALL blue states. The ten highest: all red. The ten lowest teen pregnancy: all blue. The ten highest: all red. A red state resident is more likely to murder you, to commit a violent crime against you, to impregnate your teenage daughter, to watch Desperate Housewives on TV, to buy pornography, to play degenerate video games like Grand Theft Auto, etcetera, etcetera. So this difference didn’t exist.

Pippa went out and they quizzed people based upon their knowledge of current events and their party affiliation. And what they found was that there was not a values deficit, but there was a huge information deficit, among people who voted Republican.

They found, for example, seventy percent of the people who said that they had voted for George Bush said that they believed that Saddam Hussein had bombed the World Trade Center. Seventy percent believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. Sixty-five percent said that they believed that the invasion of Iraq was strongly supported on the Muslim street, among Iraq’s Muslim neighbors, and by our traditional allies in Europe. Sixty-four percent said that they believed that President Bush strongly supported the Kyoto protocol and strong labor and environmental standards in our international treaties. Which of course, all of that is wrong.

Then, Pippa went back two more times. The second time it went back to find out where the source of the misinformation was. Invariably, the people who had all this misinformation said that their primary news source was Fox News or talk radio.

They went back a third time to determine what people’s essential values were, and they asked a series of hypotheticals. For example, they said, “What if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center? What if the American invasion of Iraq was mostly opposed on the Muslim street and among our traditional allies in Europe? Should we have still gone in?” Eighty-four percent of Democrats and eighty-four percent of Republicans said the same thing: we should not. So there was no difference in the values. The only difference was in the information. And that is why it is so critical to have a working press in our country.

I did a piece on the Fairness Doctrine, again for Vanity Fair, about a year and-a-half ago. And I went back and looked at the debates that occurred when the Fairness Doctrine was passed, almost unanimously by Republicans and Democrats, in 1928. They recalled the initial debates at the beginning of our country, where there was a division between Jefferson, who wanted a universal franchise — he wanted everybody to vote — and Hamilton, Adams and Madison, who wanted to restrict the vote to landed gentry — not because they were snobs… not because they were undemocratic, but they believed that the great mass of uninformed uneducated public would not be forthright in fighting to retain their civil rights that these guys had laid down their lives and their fortunes for. They said, only an educated public, who has a long view, will do that.

Jefferson agreed, and Jefferson himself said, “An uninformed public will trade a hundred years of hard-fought civil rights for a half hour of welfare” to the first religious fanatic or demagogue or tyrant who comes along and promises them a three hundred dollar tax break. He didn’t say the last part, but he said the first part. But that’s what he was talking about.

He said the remedy for that is not to deprive the public of their rights, but rather, to forcibly inform them, whether they want to be informed or not. And that’s why the thirteen colonies did something that nobody had done in history, which was to impose mandatory public education. So you would go to jail if you did not attend school. You were punished for it.

Jefferson in Virginia started all these educational institutions — University of Virginia and other ones — to force people to understand current events, and to understand philosophy and history, and all these other things that we need to understand if we’re going to retain our democracy.

When the Fairness Doctrine came along, everybody said, “Hey, this [radio] is going to be the way that the public gets its information. We cannot afford to let this medium fall into the hands of a handful of profit-making corporations, who are going use it to enhance their own position and to consolidate their power with government, against the people and against our Constitutional rights. And that’s why they passed the fairness doctrine.

Now, it was eroded. It was destroyed by Reagan, and then Clinton also, through the Telecommunications Act, torpedoed it and sank it completely.

And this corporate consolidation is happening now. As Greg showed in his film here, we are seeing the privatization of the American government. We have a government now that turned FEMA over to somebody who paid them campaign contributions. And the head of the Forest Service is a timber industry lobbyist, Mark Rey; probably the most rapacious in history. The head of public lands, a mining industry lobbyist, Steven Griles, who believes that public lands are unconstitutional. The head of the air division at EPA is a utility lobbyist, Jeffrey Holmstead, who’s represented nothing but the worst air polluters during his entire career. The head of Superfund is a woman whose last job was teaching corporate polluters how to evade Superfund. The second in command of EPA is a Monsanto lobbyist.

I just did another piece, in this month’s Vanity Fair, that shows that the top hundred environmental officials, in the Department of Commerce (which regulates fisheries), Department of Interior, Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, at the FDA, the EPA, and even the relevant divisions of the Justice Department, are virtually, without exception, lobbyists from the worst of the worst of the worst of these polluters. And this is happening throughout our government; not just in the pollution, but everywhere else, where you’re getting corporations who are now running American government.

And what happens when you allow corporations to run our government? What you get is plunder. And I have to say this… the American people have to understand that there is a huge difference between free market capitalism — which is a good thing, because it makes us more efficient, more prosperous and more democratic — and the kind of corporate crony capitalism which has been embraced by this Whitehouse.

And the reason they shouldn’t be running our government is because corporations don’t want the same thing for America as Americans want. Corporations do not want free markets, and they do not want democracy. They want profits. And the best way for them to get profits, too often, is to use our campaign finance system — which is just a system of legalized bribery — to get their hooks into a public official, then use that public official to dismantle the marketplace, to give them monopoly control, and then to privatize the commons. To turn over our treasury, our air, our water, our public lands, our wildlife, our fisheries, the shared resource of our society that give context to our communities, that connect us to our past and that are the source of our values, and our virtues, and our character as a people — and to turn those over for profit to these corporations.

Corporations — we have to remember this — legally cannot do good things. They cannot do true philanthropy. They can’t do things that are good for our country or for our communities. When you see Wal-Mart bringing bottled water down to Katrina victims, they’re not doing that to be good guys. They’re doing it because they think, that over the long run, that the public view of them will be enhanced, and that that will enhance their shareholder value and their dividend distribution.

If they have another reason for doing it, any one of their shareholders can sue them, and they will win that lawsuit. It is called wasting corporate assets. It is against the law in this country for a corporation to turn itself into a philanthropy. And if they’re caught doing it, their board members will be punished, and their shareholders can sue them.

There’s nothing wrong [with this]. We want corporations to be this way, to focus narrowly. We don’t want them to turn into philanthropies, because nobody would invest in them. We want them to focus narrowly on shareholder value. But, we would be nuts to let them anywhere near our government! Because we design them to plunder, and that’s what they’re going to do to us if we let them run our country. And that’s what they’re doing now.

And that’s why, from the beginning of our national history, our greatest political leaders, Republicans and Democrats, have been warning Americans against the domination of corporate power. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican, said that America would never be destroyed by a foreign enemy (by an Osama bin Laden), but he warned that our Bill of Rights, our Constitution, and our treasured democratic institutions would be subverted by “malefactors of great wealth” who would steal them from within.

Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, in his most famous speech ever, warned Americans against the domination by the military industrial complex. Abraham Lincoln, the greatest Republican in history, said, during the height of the civil war, in 1863, “I have the South in front of me, and I have the bankers behind me; and for my country, I fear the bankers more.” And Franklin Roosevelt, during World War II, said that the domination of government by corporate power is, quote, “the essence of Fascism.” Benito Mussolini, who had an insider’s view of that process, said essentially the same thing. He complained that Fascism should not be called Fascism. It should be called Corporatism, because it was the merger of State and corporate power.

And what we have to understand in this country, is that the domination of business by government is called Communism, and the domination of government by business is called Fascism. And what we need to do, what our job is, is to walk that narrow trail in between, which free market capitalism and democracy — and hold big government at bay with our right hand, and big business at bay with our left.

And in order to do that, we need an informed public that is able to recognize all the milestones of tyranny. And we need an aggressive and independent press, that is willing to stand up and speak truth to power. And we no longer have that in the United States of America.

Thank you all very much.

In the last decade, there’s been a noticeable uptick in the number of countries joining the nuclear club. India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested weapons. Libya and Iran have acquired nuclear technology.

How did they get it? Well, not to disparage scientists in those countries, but it’s widely agreed that they mostly stole it, or bought stolen information on the black market.

It now looks increasingly likely that most of the technology was stolen from the US, with the help of moles in the US government and foreign agents at high-security nuclear facilities. That is the barely covered story of Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish and Farsi language translator who worked at the FBI translating telephone intercepts until 2002, when she blew the whistle and was subsequently fired and placed under a gag order.

After years of government secrecy and media indifference, her frightening story is finally getting out, though you still have to hunt for it.

The Sunday Times of London has a three-part (so far) series here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. The Huffington Post provides a nice summary and an argument for why Edmonds needs to be heard. And finally, the Dallas Morning News, the first major print publication in the US to delve into this issue, has a piece running which includes corroboration for some of Edmonds’ claims. A documentary named “Kill the Messenger” was made about her case. It aired on French television in 2006, and is scheduled to be shown in other countries soon. There is information about it and more on Sibel Edmonds’ official site.

If even half of Mrs. Edmonds’ allegations turn out to be true, this could end up being the greatest national security breach in the history of the country, and it has worldwide implications. Americans owe it to themselves to stay informed, and to pressure media outlets and Congress to investigate further.

It used to be that speech was protected in America… not just by the Constitution, but by the speakers themselves. I remember when you could strongly disagree with what someone had to say, but also strongly defend his right to say it.

But over the last 20 years, a wave of political correctness and abdication of personal responsibility has left people on all sides trying to limit, rather than defend, the speech of others. They make assertions like:

In a public place or forum, people don’t have a right not to be offended by someone else’s speech. Just because I say something that upsets another person, it doesn’t mean that I’ve done something wrong. The person I’m talking to may have an irrationally negative reaction to a certain word or phrase. If I happen to use that word in a sentence, does it mean I have aggressed upon him? No. He is responsible for his own sensitivity.

The whole idea that it’s incumbent upon the rest of us to adjust our behavior to accommodate the sensitivities of certain people is an unworkable construct of the sensitive people themselves. Every person has some small set of things that he really doesn’t like to hear. If the views of each one of those people has the power to restrict speech in all of us, then eventually, it won’t be possible to say anything.

[I have changed this post to “Volume 2″ after realizing that an entry from a year ago was really the first installment of Steve’s Peeves.]

I have a lot of pet peeves. Most of them are about bad design or bad social behavior. Here’s the second installment of Steve’s Peeves.

I cook a lot and I like to use the plastic resin type of cutting board. They’re easy to clean, light weight, dishwasher safe, don’t harbor bacteria, and won’t dull your knives.

But has anyone noticed that it’s almost impossible these days to buy this kind of cutting board without a hole in it? Yeah, that’s right… a hole. I can’t figure out why anyone would want a hole in a cutting board, yet I can’t find many without them. Here’s a typical, small plastic cutting board:

Yes, I know it’s a handle. But why? Is lifting and/or carrying a cutting board so cumbersome that one needs a handle to accomplish the task? Are there people who walk long distances with cutting boards for some reason that I’m not aware of? I do fine picking mine up by the edges and carrying it three steps across the kitchen.

The usable area of a cutting board is already limited by the fact that nobody wants to cut or keep food near the edges. There is an effective “margin” of usability. With the board in my example, the hole reduces the usable area by over 15%.

This seems like one of those design “improvements” that happens when one company produces a variation on the standard, hoping it will sell better. Then all the other manufacturers follow suit, without anyone ever wondering if was a good idea in the first place. Well, it wasn’t. The very purpose of the cutting board is to chop stuff into small pieces… small enough to fall through that hole.

So, if you’re reading this and you happen to design cutting boards, please… stop and think, OK?

And if you’re just someone like me who is now thinking, “Yeah… I really would like a cutting board without a hole in it,” then go to a restaurant supply store. You’ll find plenty of them there. The people who use these devices professionally every day understand what the design requirements are.

British newspaper The Independent has an article which follows nicely from my review of Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University.

It is absolutely astounding to me how many people are against freedom of expression in the United States. I was dumbfounded over all the protests against Iranian president Ahmadinejad speaking at Columbia University. Here’s the leader of a sovereign nation which is not at war with anyone, and he’s being protested just for speaking. A few days ago, there was a big uproar about anti-war political group MoveOn.org publishing an ad very critical of US General David Petraus. The incidents combined have left me wondering what people think America is all about.

I don’t support a lot of what Ahmadinejad or MoveOn have said recently. But so what if the ideas someone is expressing are loony, or inflammatory, or menacing, or disrespectful? The best way for people to judge something is to hear/see it for themselves. Once you’ve heard what they have to say (not media interpretations, but a first hand listening), you can disagree with them all you want, because in America, your free speech is guaranteed as well. But to insist that the mere words of a “madman” or group are so inflammatory that they shouldn’t be allowed the right to express them is downright un-American.

It’s easy to name at least a handful of Americans over the years who have repeatedly gotten up in front of huge audiences, or leaked stories to the press, in order to spread messages of lies and hate. Yet here’s a foreigner being invited to speak at an American University, where nobody really knows what he’s going to say, and there’s an uproar. And here’s another group that has an opinion widely shared by many Americans, and they’re officially condemned by the US Congress for expressing that point of view.

It’s just speech. What is everyone so afraid of?

Many years ago, I went on a trip to the Soviet Union. Almost immediately, I realized that our small group was allowed to travel freely and interact with anyone we chose, contrary to what I had been led to believe for most of my life. At that point, something dawned on me. The propaganda machine in the US was at least as well-fueled as the one in the Soviet Union. The difference was that the Americans believed theirs, whereas the Russians didn’t.

People who want to affect policy, selectively and anonymously leak information in order to shape public opinion. They use citizen’s groups and media coverage to rally support for their views. As a result, what you see on the evening news is a carefully orchestrated set of facts, presented and omitted, to create a certain impression.

I sometimes wonder if the reason that major media outlets give such huge coverage to those who protest against free expression is because the views that the person is trying to freely express run contrary to those presented by the very same media outlets. The mass-media in the US presents Petraus as a hero and Ahmadinejad as a madman. Could it be that they don’t want people to hear points of view that might convince them otherwise?

I reviewed President Ahmadinejad’s speech in my previous post below.

My thoughts on the speech of Iranian president Ahmadinejad at Columbia University yesterday.

First of all, I had a hard time finding the full speech online. There were lots of commentaries and excerpts, but I generally try to avoid watching those if I want to form my own opinion. Eventually, I did find and watch the raw video here.

It’s long, and admittedly boring at times, but if you’re interested in a first-hand impression, rather than someone else’s interpretation (including mine) of what was said, I encourage you to watch it.

A word about translation

The difficulties of translation can have widespread and lasting effects. For centuries, countless people believed that Jews had horns, all because part of the Old Testament was mistranslated from Hebrew into Latin.

There are times in the Ahmadinejad broadcast when the interpreter stumbles for words or context. As anyone with a good facility in multiple languages knows, the subtlety of meaning is very difficult to get across when translating, and even more so with the high speed rigors of live interpreting. In some languages, words have common roots, or similar expressions exist because of years of parallel culture. But Persian has almost nothing in common with modern English. As such, I think a lot gets lost in the translation.

An article in the New York Times suggests that President Ahmadinejad’s most infamous statement, that Israel “should be wiped off the map,” may actually have been mistranslated. From the article:

“Ahmadinejad did not say he was going to wipe Israel off the map because no such idiom exists in Persian,” remarked Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan and critic of American policy who has argued that the Iranian president was misquoted. “He did say he hoped its regime, i.e., a Jewish-Zionist state occupying Jerusalem, would collapse.” Since Iran has not “attacked another country aggressively for over a century,” he said in an e-mail exchange, “I smell the whiff of war propaganda.”

Jonathan Steele, a columnist for the left-leaning Guardian newspaper in London, recently laid out the case this way: “The Iranian president was quoting an ancient statement by Iran’s first Islamist leader, the late Ayatollah Khomeini, that ‘this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time,’ just as the Shah’s regime in Iran had vanished. He was not making a military threat. He was calling for an end to the occupation of Jerusalem at some point in the future. The ‘page of time’ phrase suggests he did not expect it to happen soon.”

Clearly, the Iranian president is no fan of Israel and would like to see it gone. But that’s a far cry from threatening an attack.

The introduction and speech

The Dean of the university gave a ten-minute stinging indictment of the Iranian leader as a means of introduction. I was pretty astounded. First, it just seemed downright rude to invite someone to speak at your institution and then pepper him with denigrating language before he even has a chance to open his mouth. But even worse was the dean’s baiting of the president, presupposing aloud that Ahmadinejad wouldn’t have the “courage” to answer his charges. When the president finally got a chance to speak, he took the dean to task for the introduction and the audience responded with a round of applause.

But after that, the Iranian leader had a choice. He could take the bait and completely abandon the speech he had prepared for a very unique opportunity to address an American university, or he could stick to the plan he made before he knew he would be subject to a wholesale attack prior to even approaching the dais. The president chose to give his prepared speech. I don’t think that means he lacked the “courage” to answer the accusations, but rather, that he was caught unaware, and so stuck with his plan.

Ahmadinejad’s speech was focused on the influence that science, philosophy and education have on world politics. He tried to tie in his presence at an institution of higher learning with the current and future state of world affairs. In doing so, he highlighted his personal background as a university professor, as well as his views about the role of education in forming opinions through open and honest dialog.

His speaking style is long-winded and circular, with frequent religious references. I imagine that this is quite common for political speakers from his part of the world, but it doesn’t play well to a US audience. I kept thinking that he really needs a public relations consultant to help him “Americanize” his approach if he hopes to gain sympathy in the US. Even American politicians try to sound direct when they avoid the relevant topics. Ahmadinejad does not. And although religion and politics mix freely in the Muslim world, they don’t in the vast majority of US speaking venues.

Questions

After his speech, Ahmadinejed was asked some questions from the Dean and the audience. They covered various topics, but I’ll focus on four here: Israel, nuclear weapons, treatment of homosexuals, and support for terrorism.

Israel

The position presented by the Iranian president on the Israel-Palestinian conflict seems to be this: prior to World War II, the region of Palestine was a place where Jews, Muslims, Christians and secularists lived together peacefully. Although Palestine was not involved in the war, the atrocities of the war were used as a justification to give one group of people in that region complete dominion over the others, resulting in social and political upheaval. The proclamation of Palestine as a Jewish state, along with the huge influx of population, cash and weapons to support its newly formed government, ostracized many non-Jewish people who had lived there for generations without mind to the differing faiths. Many, especially the Muslims, were forced from their homes and became refugees. Sixty years later, most of them still are. The ones who remained now live in “occupied territory” under the constant threat of attack by millions of dollars in US-supplied weaponry. The situation is unjust, and should be remedied by a fair vote of all the people in the region, from all faiths and ethnic backgrounds.

On the surface, that position seems reasonable. The history is certainly disputable, but the proposed solution appeals to our democratic ideals. Unfortunately, my view is that such a proposal is completely unworkable. You can’t turn back the hands of time. Israel is a nation, internationally recognized and having successfully fought for its existence many times. Furthermore, so much enmity has accrued over the last sixty years that whatever balance remains would be completely obliterated by an electoral free-for-all. Even if all the current political groups could be magically disbanded, individual prejudice is rampant in the region. The supposition that all people currently living in that environment would choose an equal and just system that promises fairness to all parties is something that I cannot even imagine. I foresee all-out civil war with such a scenario.

Nuclear Weapons

Ahmadinejad maintains that his country’s nuclear program is solely for the peaceful purpose of generating electricity. To back that up, he claims that Iran is a long-standing member of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). Part of that organization’s charter is that all member states have the right to pursue peaceful use of nuclear power. The president claims that his nation has been subject to many IAEA inspections — in fact, more than other nations with vast quantities of reactors and weapons — and has been found in compliance each time. Additionally, the president claims that Iran has no use for a nuclear weapon.

The IAEA’s web site contains a report on Iran from just one week ago. The agency’s director general made four points regarding the “implementation of Agency safeguards in the Islamic Republic of Iran”:

* The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran;

* Iran has provided the Agency with additional information and access needed to resolve a number of long outstanding issues, such as the scope and nature of past plutonium experiments;

* Contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, calling on Iran to take certain confidence-building measures, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities, and is continuing with its construction of the heavy water reactor at Arak – “this is regrettable”, he commented; and

* While the Agency so far has been unable to verify certain important aspects relevant to the scope and nature of Iran´s nuclear programme, Iran and the Secretariat agreed last month on a work plan for resolving all outstanding verification issues.

The above at least partially supports Ahmadinejad’s claims. Moreover, it seems to indicate that this issue is not at any kind of a critical juncture where a decision needs to be made. The Iranian president says that his country and the US are not on a path to war over Iran’s nuclear program, and that there would be no reason for war between them. Political dialog is what’s needed.

Obviously, any country which runs a civilian nuclear program would have an easier time eventually producing nuclear weapons than one which has no such program. It also seems plausible that hiding a weapons program would be easier in a country which already has nuclear technology at work, than in one which doesn’t. So, even if the Iranian program is entirely peaceful right now, I can understand the international community’s concern about the eventual goals of the Iranian government. That being said, does a nation’s future potential to possess a highly destructive weapon mean that other nations have the right to attack them preemptively? If that’s the standard, without any kind of demonstration of intent, we’d be literally bombing people back to the stone age all over the world, and making a lot of enemies along the way.

There are eerie similarities here with the run-up to the Iraq war. International weapons inspectors were telling the world that they had found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while at the same time, US politicians were presenting all sorts of evidence based on supposition and third-party sources. They were also claiming that Saddam Hussein was obstructing the work of the inspectors.

Well, we all know how that turned out: the trained inspectors on the ground in the country were right and the politicians with ulterior motives turned out to be wrong. Does anyone in the US government have a shred of credibility left when they claim that another nation is seeking weapons of mass destruction? I sure hope not.

Homosexuals

The president was asked a question about the treatment of women and homosexuals in his country. Part of his response was translated as, “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”

The audience laughed and booed at this statement, and I can understand why. It seems like a preposterous level of denial, given current US thinking, to suggest that an entire society is devoid of homosexuality. An audience of university students is probably even more hostile to this suggestion than the average American.

But I have a different perspective on the president’s remarks. Iran is an Islamic society where homosexuality is widely considered more than just taboo; it’s a mortal sin. Culturally, for one to admit he or she is a homosexual is likely to result in, at the very least, extreme social isolation. As such, I doubt that homosexuality is widely acknowledged by people there. Without widespread acknowledgement of the “phenomenon”, the impression is that it doesn’t exist, or at least, denial of its existence is plausible.

I would imagine that any Arab leader, even one running a nation which is allied with the US, would deny the existence of homosexuals in his country. Furthermore, if you asked any prominent US politician the same question fifty years ago, you probably would have gotten a similar response. Culturally speaking, the Islamic countries are still deeply entrenched in ideas that have been given up by the Western world… some long ago, and some merely a generation or so. There’s no reason to expect that a cultural divide such as this would not be reflected in the speech of the nation’s leader.

Support for terrorism

The Iranian president paints his country as a victim of terrorism, rather than a supporter of it. He makes a case that, throughout the last century, his nation has been subjected to many attacks by a single terrorist organization, and although he doesn’t mention it by name, it’s clear that he’s talking about the CIA. The history does support this claim, though obviously most Americans do not view the CIA this way.

Ahmadinejad failed to address whether his government provides material support for terrorist organizations. The claims on both sides of this issue are very difficult to verify. Much of it hinges on who you believe and how you define “terrorist,” which has been a problem in the US since the Patriot Act failed to do so. Depending on the part of the world you’re in and your political leanings, one person’s terrorist is another’s “freedom fighter.” One leader’s idea of “liberation” is another’s idea of terrorism. It’s all very amorphous, and until someone really sits down and defines all these terms with some clarity, I don’t think there’s any kind of truth to be found.

Overall impression

I felt that Iranian president Ahmadinejad did a decent job of stating his case and not coming across like a “madman” or fanatic. Some of his statements were controversial, but taken as a whole, the speech wasn’t an anti-Western diatribe.

Did he evade some questions? Of course he did. He’s a politician, and he knows that his audience back home is listening too. Have you watched any interviews with US presidential candidates lately? How many times has the interviewer baited a candidate by asking, “Will you promise, right now, in this interview, that you will never…?” Politicians are always weaseling their way out of unequivocal statements. Ahmadinejad does the same. ‘Yes or no’ answers on controversial issues are contrary to a politician’s goal of maintaining the widest possible support among his constituents. We may not like it, but that’s what they do.

I don’t think that those who watch the entire speech will come away with the impression that this man’s goal is to acquire a nuclear weapon and attack Israel or the United States. I’m pretty sure he knows that would be suicide. Nor do I think he comes across as emotionally or psychologically unstable. He may be misguided and evasive, but that’s not a crime. In fact, it seems to be a prerequisite for leadership in many nations today.

Modern Iran has a complicated and tumultuous history with the rest of the world, especially the United States. It’s no surprise that both sides make inflammatory statements about the other. Hopefully, that dialog, contentious as it may be, is the only type of conflict the two nations will engage in.

It’s gradually becoming more acceptable for atheists in America to admit their non-belief. If you’re a person of faith, you may suddenly find yourself with a friend, co-worker or family member who is not the religious person you had always assumed.

But there’s no reason you can’t have just as healthy a relationship with your atheist friend as you did before he showed his true colors. It’ll just take a little time to adjust. Here’s a list of dos and don’ts to help you through the transition:

1. Be respectful. Atheism isn’t a lack of belief (that’s nihilism). On the contrary, atheism is born out of a strong belief in strict reason. Respect that the atheist indeed has a belief system… it’s just different from yours.

2. Don’t warn him. If you’re truly worried that your acquaintance is going to get struck by lightning, just keep your distance, so you don’t end up as collateral damage. There’s no point in warning him, because he’s not going to believe you anyway.

3. Don’t tell him you’re sorry for him. Possibly the most disrespectful thing you can say when finding out someone is an atheist is “I’m so sorry for you.” Expect him to be just as offended as you would if someone pitied you for being a person of faith.

4. People don’t “stumble” into atheism, or get hit on the head and suddenly forget about God. The culture at large is religious, so deciding to buck the system takes a conscious choice. Recognize that the person you’re dealing with has probably given more thought to his beliefs than the average citizen.

5. Socialize on neutral ground. No matter how pure your intentions, any attempt to invite an atheist to your church, temple, mosque, or house of worship for a “social gathering” may be viewed as suspect. If you really want to involve him in something social, do it in a place that cannot be perceived as even remotely related to religion.

6. Don’t try to engage an atheist in a logical argument about faith. Logic is the atheists playground. He has more experience here than you.

7. He’s not lost or unhappy. You may find direction and fulfillment in your spiritual beliefs, but that doesn’t mean everyone who doesn’t hold the same beliefs is without those things. We’re all different. Along these lines, don’t try to tell an atheist that he is truly unhappy, but just doesn’t know it yet because he hasn’t found God. That’s likely to offend him.

8. If you choose to discuss your faith with an atheist, never ask the question “If you don’t believe in God, then where did we all come from?” Although this might make a lot of sense to you, it makes you look ridiculous to an atheist. He’s perfectly comfortable not concluding that “it must be God.” Furthermore, he will view your question as an admission that the only reason you believe in God is because you can’t bear to tangle with the existential questions which have intrigued mankind since we became self-aware, so you’ll take any explanation you can get.

9. Atheists are people too. Even if you believe he’s going to hell, you can still treat him nicely while he’s here on earth.

10. Don’t try to convert him. You may believe that it’s your calling, but you’ll have far better luck with someone who has never really considered his faith than with a person who openly refers to himself as an atheist. That’s why missionaries go to Africa.

11. Recognize that “faith” is frequently in opposition to “reason”. A person of faith may certainly act in an entirely reasonable manner, but in any specific decision, one can decide to take a certain path because he has “reasoned” it’s the right thing to do, or because he has “faith”. As motivations, they’re mutually exclusive. So, if you tell an atheist that you do something because you “just have faith”, or even that HE should have faith, you’re speaking counter to his very belief system. Don’t expect him to understand how you feel or follow your prescription. Just move on.

12. Don’t confuse spirituality with morality. They have very little to do with each other. Some of the most moral people in the world are atheists and some of the most brutal have been deeply religious. Plenty of people learn right and wrong perfectly well from their families and communities without the need for interpretations of ancient texts.

13. Don’t try to get the atheist to “see the light.” Can you think of a time when somebody has done or said something really disrespectful to you, and then tried do justify it by claiming, “I’m only trying to help.”? Most of us find that annoying because we didn’t ask for help. Atheists are not asking for help.

14. If you’re really struggling with the idea of not sharing your faith, consider this… Was there a time when you yourself had little faith, or perhaps even none? Religion has surrounded all of us for most of our lives, but at some point, you “found” it. Perhaps that’s when you personally were ready to receive it. If you are tempted to transform the atheist, it may help to just imagine that he’s not yet ready.

15. For all the talk about the denigrating of religion in our society, the majority of people in the US still consider themselves religious. God is mentioned in the pledge of allegiance, on our money, in the courthouse, and frequently by the President himself. So remember, yours is the position of the majority, and thereby the position of power. The atheist is making the choice to be part of the minority, and is often persecuted for it. Keep that in mind.

A lot of people think that email is a private method of communication. It’s not.

Every email you send goes through half a dozen or so computers on various networks before it reaches the recipient. It’s not encrypted, encoded, password-protected, or otherwise rendered secure in any way. The administrators of those networks, their superiors, law enforcement agencies, and potentially hackers, can all gain access to the messages from any one of those computers.

That’s the reason that banks and credit companies don’t send personal or identifying information via email. They also wisely discourage you from sending information that way.

The analogy I often use is that email is like a postcard. When you drop a postcard in the mail, it goes through many hands on the way to its destination. There’s a lot of other mail in the system, so it’s unlikely that any of the people sorting, processing or carrying the mail will randomly read yours. But if they wanted to, they easily could.

So, if you wouldn’t send it on a postcard, don’t send it in an email.

I just saw Michael Moore’s film Sicko. I’m not a big fan of Moore’s didactic methods, but this film contains less of that than his prior work. Overall, it’s a very compelling piece, no matter where you stand politically.

Moore uses the film to argue for universal health care in the US. At one point, he defends against the tactic commonly used by his opponents: the old standard, red-baiting.

The loopy logic goes something like this: Any program that’s publicly funded can be labeled “socialism”. The Soviets called their nation a Socialist republic, even though it was Communist. Therefore, Socialism equals Communism. We all know that Communism is bad, therefore, anything that’s publicly funded is bad.

The argument is completely flawed, but anyone who advocates against social programs counts on the public falling for labels over logic. They’re a lot easier to understand.

Moore makes the point that there are a lot of things already socialized in our society: the military, mail delivery, road construction, the fire department. Should we rid ourselves of all those pinko-Commie amenities too?

It’s time for America to wake up and realize something: The Cold War is over. We can stop with the demonization and propaganda now.

The Europeans had to deal with thousands of Soviet nukes a lot closer than we did, and they’re not afraid of turning to the socialist “dark side” simply by enacting some programs to help their people. They recognize that a modern nation can make efforts to care for its citizens while still maintaining a free democracy with capitalistic ideologies.

But the point of this article is not to argue for universal health care. The point is to bring to light the level of polarization and group-think that has become the standard of political discourse in the US. Politics and media have become so polarized that there’s no room for any compromise or consensus. You’re either right or left, red state or blue state, etc.

At some point soon, I hope people will realize that it’s perfectly OK to say, “I don’t want that party in power, but I do really like their proposal for ‘x’.” It’s not traitorous to decide that you are in favor of a policy proposed by your rival. Blind loyalty only works out for, well… the blind.

Similarly, it’s fine to say, “The Communist experiment was a failure and I’m glad we don’t have that kind of government here, but they did provide their citizens with universal access to decent health care. I think we should steal that idea from them.” That sentiment doesn’t make you a communist. It makes you a free thinker.

A large portion of the US Bill of Rights was lifted directly out of a 500 year-old document called the Magna Carta, drafted and put into law in England. That’s right, the Founding Fathers took policies directly from the country which had oppressively ruled over them, and against which they’d fought a bloody war for independence, then wrote those policies directly into our Constitution. Nobody said, “We can’t do that! It’d make us look too British.”

There are a multitude of viewpoints on every topic. And although we’re all Americans, we come from different backgrounds, experiences, and cultures, all of which contribute to the formation of our opinions. That being the case, it stands to reason that we won’t agree with another person, or party, on every single topic.

So ask yourself whether you agree 100% with the views of a particular candidate, pundit, news commentator, or party platform. If so, look carefully within and determine if you’re thinking entirely for yourself. It’s always easier to just trust someone else’s opinion, or even a particular ideology, than to take the time to figure out how you personally feel about an issue. But we live in a democratic republic, which makes it our responsibility to educate ourselves and be free thinkers, lest we defer to those who assume they know what’s good for us better than we do.

When North Americans look at a map of Central America, all the countries look fairly small and close together. They all speak the same language too, so it’s hard to imagine that they have such distinct cultures.

However, the geography is deceptive. Panama and Costa Rica share a border, but the cultures developed in relative isolation. Even today, it’s an 18 hour drive between the capital cities.

Because I lived in Costa Rica for a while, and now live in Panama, people often ask me a question that’s obvious, yet still leaves me a bit baffled: “Which one is better?”

Better for what? To live, to work, to vacation, to invest, to explore? And for whom? A retired couple, a family, a young single person? The question itself is so oversimplified that I usually just respond by saying that the decision to move was the right one for me personally. But that’s not really an answer, so over time, I’ve compiled this list of points on which to compare the two.

Note that the contents are based entirely on my own experiences and viewpoints. If yours are different, I’d love to hear them. Post a comment.

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Climate. Both of these countries are tropical, but there are many different sub-climates within. Panama is smaller and the terrain varies quite a bit. Because of that, plus the better roads, one can be in an entirely different climate by driving just an hour. Panama City is right on the coast, so it’s hot and humid most of the time. Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, is in the cooler central valley, but it’s a 3-to-5 hour drive to most beaches.

Cost of living. Food and rent are cheaper in Costa Rica. Real estate, gasoline and all imported goods are much cheaper in Panama.

Pace of life. Costa Rica is a good place for relaxing and for outdoor activities. It’s great for a vacation. Panama has parts that are also great for that, but it’s got a business atmosphere too.

Time has a different meaning in Costa Rica. When North Americans say that something would be “easier” or “better” if it were done a certain way, they often mean “faster”. A Costa Rican will characterize a process as being “easy”, even if it takes a long time. For instance, getting a phone line might take six months, but the process of ordering one is not difficult, so a Costa Rican would say, “Oh, it’s easy to get a phone line.” Easy means easy. It doesn’t imply anything about timeliness.

Panamanians, though not as time-conscious as North Americans, do have an understanding of the word that’s culturally closer. This results in a faster-paced lifestyle than Costa Rica. That works for me, and is one of the primary reasons I moved.

Availability of goods. Panama wins this one by a long shot. Because of the canal, Panama has been a hub of international trade for a century. Products from all over the world are readily available.

In contrast, Costa Rica imposes huge taxes on all foreign goods, resulting in prices so high that it’s simply not cost effective to import many of them. Those that do come through have especially high prices. The most noticeable example is cars, which sell for roughly double what they would in the U.S.

Politeness and warmth. Ticos (as the Costa Ricans call themselves) are extremely polite, in both their language and their demeanor. But it’s part of the culture, so it can sometimes be disingenuous. Panamanians are more direct. But interestingly, in Panama I am frequently invited to the homes of people who I’ve just met. Ticos, despite being outwardly polite and friendly, are less likely to do this.

Standard of living. The two countries are roughly equivalent in their range of living standards.

Infrastructure. This one’s not even close. Panama has near first-world infrastructure and Costa Rica’s is dismal. I have heard that the new President in Costa Rica is doing a decent job fixing the roads, but they have a long way to go. The rest of the infrastructure — phone lines, power, water, garbage collection, cell phones, etc — is all owned or controlled by government monopolies, resulting in terrible service. The Ticos are stiffly resisting the kind of competition that would be brought in by the Central American Free Trade Agreement, but honestly, it would do them a lot of good. In Panama, there are multiple companies competing for your phone, television, internet and cell phone services. That’s driven prices down and service up.

The beaches. Costa Rica wins this one. There are some great tropical islands off Panama with luxurious resorts, but if you’re looking for long stretches of gently-sloping white sand beaches bordered with palm trees, Costa Rica is the place to be. They’re lined up one after the next on the Pacific side.

The cities. Panama City is a big and bustling modern metropolis. Costa Rica’s capital, San Jose, is ugly and decrepit by comparison. However, San Jose does have some very nice suburbs, like Heredia and Escazu. Panama City has problems with traffic and bad odors, especially in certain areas. The city has grown faster than its infrastructure, so until the new sewage treatment plant is completed and a new traffic plan is implemented, the stinky bay and long commute times will remain a problem. San Jose has traffic too, but there’s a more concerted effort to address it, which seems to have helped.

Banking. Panama has far superior banking. There are more banks per capita in Panama than anywhere else in the world. The competition yields great advantages for the consumer. Getting home or commercial loans is relatively simple, and rates are good for both borrowing and savings. Banks in Costa Rica are just getting started with consumer financing, and the process of getting a loan is very cumbersome.

Food. This would seem to be obvious because Panama has had so much more international influence, and Costa Rican food has the reputation of being bland. Indeed there is a lot more variety in Panama. However, the locally grown and raised products in Costa Rica are some of the best in the world.

Costa Rica is one of the few places I’ve been where store-bought produce tastes like it’s home grown. You gardeners in the bunch know what I’m talking about. The variety isn’t there, but the quality is. You can walk to your corner grocery store and buy a pineapple for under a dollar that’s just about the most delectable juicy experience you can imagine. Even though they grow the same kind of pineapple in Panama, for some reason, they’re just not as good. And the locally raised chicken is almost sweet with flavor in Costa Rica.

You can get good lettuce in Panama, which is almost impossible in Costa Rica. In fact, much of Panama’s produce is imported, so you get a lot of choices, even for items that don’t grow well in this climate.

For dessert, Costa Rica has great dairy products; especially Pop’s ice cream. However, it is difficult to find dark chocolate there, which is at the top of my personal food pyramid. Panamanians don’t seem as into sweets, but because it’s easier to get good imported items here, I don’t have to search far and wide to get a chocolate fix.

Water. I drink the water in both countries, but depending on the area, I generally think it tastes and “feels” better in Costa Rica, though it is also much harder (more minerals). The water in Panama City leaves a slight film on my teeth. I notice it after only a day or two here. My dentist once described it as a “thin shell”, while scraping it off. I’m guessing that something added to the water here, probably a softener, is leaving behind a residue. I’ve since installed a filter in my apartment, which has removed all residue, as well as the chemical taste. I’ve never gotten sick from the water in either country. In fact, I’ve hardly gotten sick at all in the tropics, whereas I catch something almost every time I go back to the US these days.

Service. Ticos will bend over backwards with politeness to serve you and expect nothing in return. Panamanians take no crap and expect a tip.

Language. The Costa Rican Spanish is easier to understand. Costa Rica has a culture of language, especially in San Jose. They speak clearly and slowly, with proper pronunciation, making it easier to for foreigners. For that reason, I think Costa Rica is an excellent place to learn the language, especially if you can do an immersion program with a small class size; preferably one-on-one.

Panamanian Spanish is closer to Mexican Spanish, so those learning in the US should find fewer differences in vocabulary than they would when visiting Costa Rica. However, the Panamanians talk fast and cut off the ends of many words, especially those which end in “s”. They also tend to run many of the words together. This makes it quite difficult for a non-native to understand. On the other hand, more people speak English in Panama than Costa Rica, so if you barely speak a lick of the language, you can probably get by.

Travel. Getting to Panama is $200-300 more expensive per round trip, even though it’s just about the same distance from the US or Europe. If you’re traveling back and forth a lot, this can add up. Once inside the country, Panama has better roads to travel on, and less expensive regional airlines that criss-cross the country every day.

Political stability. Both countries have stable democracies with very minimal political unrest. Costa Rica’s democratic system has been in place for 60 years, making it the longest running democracy in Central America. Panama’s democracy was restored when the US ousted Noriega almost 18 years ago, and has had entirely peaceful changes of power since.

Both countries have abolished the military. They rely on strategic alliances for protection from foreign aggression.

Economy. Panama is experiencing an unprecedented economic boom right now. Unemployment is low and wages are rising. Costa Rica’s 15-year boom has slowed, but there is still impressive growth in many sectors.

Visa restrictions. Panama and Costa Rica have the same policy regarding tourist visas. For citizens of most countries, your visa is automatically in force for 90 days just by getting your passport stamped upon entry. Before your 90 days is up, you must leave the country for at least 72 hours, after which you can return for another 90 days. Getting a long-term visa or residency status is easier in Panama.

Dating. I meet more single people in their twenties and thirties in Panama. In Costa Rica, people seem to marry younger, so there are single people under 21, and divorced people over about 45, but not much in between. If you’re looking to date someone in his/her 20s or 30s, Panama is a better choice.

Medical care. Both countries have surprisingly good medical care. Panama City has a couple top notch hospitals and ready access to high quality services. Similarly, Costa Rica has very well-regarded hospitals in San Jose. The difference seems to be in medical education, as people from all over the world come to Costa Rica to train as doctors. That, plus the mandatory residency program in rural clinics, results in better overall care outside of the capital. In fact, the World Health Organization ranks care in Costa Rica as 36th worldwide, right above the United States. Panama is further down the list, primarily because there are rural communities without clinics nearby.

Crime and personal safety. Crime is the dirty little secret of both of these countries. Nobody likes to talk about it, but it does exist. In the United States, you hear about crime every day, but statistically, the per capita crime rate is nowhere near the highest in the world. The murder rate in both Costa Rica and Panama is higher than the US.

That being said, I have never felt unsafe in Panama. There is a huge and visible police presence here, which brings up the biggest contrast in the approach of these two countries: In Costa Rica people are afraid of the criminals. In Panama, people are afraid of the cops.

When I was younger, I believed that the former was much better, but having now lived in a place with a degree of lawlessness, I can tell you that a balance must be struck. Up to a point, I’d rather the people (especially the criminals) be afraid of the cops.

Costa Rica’s law enforcement is under-staffed and under-budgeted, and the laws are heavily skewed towards protecting the rights of the accused. That makes it quite difficult to arrest, hold, charge and convict someone of a crime. Of course, the criminals know this, so there’s very little deterrent effect. Panama takes more of a “tough on crime” approach.

You see houses with bars on the windows in both countries, but to be fair, part of that is an architectural choice. In very safe parts of Spain, every house has barred windows. Locals will tell you that the house just looks “naked” without them.

Pets. The cultural fear of dogs, especially large ones, is very obvious in this part of the world. It’s stronger in Panama than anywhere else I’ve been. When I’m walking down the street with Bandi (my very mellow German Shepherd), many people will cross to the other side in order not to pass us. In the building where I live, over half of the people would prefer to wait for the next elevator than to share a ride with us. There seems to be a belief here that large dogs are prone to unprovoked attacks on random people.

Interestingly, the Colombians I’ve met seem very comfortable, even enthralled, with Bandi. Yet Panama used to be part of Colombia… curious. In Costa Rica, especially outside of the city, the fear of dogs is noticeably less than in Panama. Very few people keep cats as pets in either country, although it is common to see them on the street.

Both countries have good veterinary care.

Schools. Public schools in both countries are somewhat lacking. There’s high literacy, but that’s about it. However, both countries have well-regarded private schools. In Costa Rica, there are a few outside of the capital, but most are in San Jose. In Panama City, the best-regarded schools are in the canal zone. I meet people who grew up there and they are indistinguishable from your average North American… not even a trace of an accent.

Retirement. Panama has excellent incentives for retirees right now. They’re really trying to attract foreigners, and it’s working. Most of their ideas were borrowed from Costa Rica, but while the Panamanians have taken them one step further, the Ticos have slowly eliminated most of their incentives. Also, real estate is still considerably more expensive in Costa Rica, meaning the pension dollar doesn’t go as far there. The town of Boquete, in the mountains of Panama, is consistently ranked as one of the top five places in the world to retire.