Politics

FOCUS: America's Secret African Drone War Against the Islamic State

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=7517"><span class="small">Nick Turse, TomDispatch</span></a>

Friday, 25 December 2015 12:12

Turse writes: "On October 7th, at an 'undisclosed location' somewhere in 'Southwest Asia,' men wearing different types of camouflage and dun-colored boots gathered before a black backdrop adorned with Arabic script. They were attending a ceremony that mixed solemnity with celebration, the commemoration of a year of combat that left scores of their enemies slain. One of their leaders spoke of camaraderie and honor, of forging a family and continuing a legacy."

American troops at the Taji base in Iraq last year. The Pentagon has proposed a plan to build up a string of military bases in Africa, Southwest Asia and the Middle East to aid operations against the Islamic State. (photo: Ayman Oghanna/NYT)

America's Secret African Drone War Against the Islamic State

By Nick Turse, TomDispatch

25 December 15

Predators and the �Neutralization� of 69 People in Iraq and Syria

n October 7th, at an �undisclosed location� somewhere in �Southwest Asia,� men wearing different types of camouflage and dun-colored boots gathered before a black backdrop adorned with Arabic script. They were attending a ceremony that mixed solemnity with celebration, the commemoration of a year of combat that left scores of their enemies slain. One of their leaders spoke of comraderie and honor, of forging a family and continuing a legacy.

While this might sound like the description of a scene from an Islamic State (IS) video or a clip from a militia battling them, it was, in fact, a U.S. Air Force �inactivation ceremony.� There, Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake handed over to Colonel John Orchard the �colors� of his drone unit as it slipped into an ethereal military limbo. But that doesn�t mean the gathering had no connection to the Islamic State.

It did.

Within days, Drake was back in the United States surprising his family at a Disney �musical spectacular.� Meanwhile, his former unit ended its most recent run having been responsible for the �neutralization of 69 enemy fighters,� according to an officer who spoke at that October 7th ceremony. Exactly whom the unit�s drones neutralized remains unclear, but an Air Force spokesman has for the first time revealed that Drake�s force, based in the Horn of Africa, spent more than a year targeting the Islamic State as part of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), the undeclared war on the militant group in Iraq and Syria. The Air Force has since taken steps to cover up the actions of the unit.

Base-Building in the Horn of Africa

From November 20, 2014, until October 7, 2015, Drake commanded the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, a unit operating under the auspices of U.S. Air Forces Central Command (AFCENT), which flew MQ-1 Predator drones from Chabelley Airfield in the tiny sun-baked African nation of Djibouti. For the uninitiated, Chabelley is the other U.S. outpost in that country -- the site of America�s lone avowed �major military facility� in Africa, Camp Lemonnier -- and a key node in an expanding archipelago of hush-hush American outposts that have spread across that continent since 9/11.

Last week, in fact, the New York Times reported on new Pentagon plans to counter the Islamic State by creating a hub-and-spoke network of bases and outposts stretching across southern Europe, the Greater Middle East, and Africa by �expanding existing bases in Djibouti and Afghanistan -- and� more basic installations in countries that could include Niger and Cameroon, where the United States now carries out unarmed surveillance drone missions, or will soon.�

Weeks earlier, TomDispatch had revealed that those efforts were already well underway, drawing attention to key bases in Spain and Italy as well as 60 U.S. military outposts, port facilities, and other sites dotting the African continent, including those in Djibouti, Niger, and Cameroon. The Times cited a senior Pentagon official who noted that some colleagues are �advocating a larger string of new bases in West Africa,� a plan TomDispatch had reported on early last year. The Times didn�t mention Djibouti�s secret drone base by name, but that airfield, Drake�s home for almost a year, is now a crucial site in this expanding network of bases and was intimately involved in the war on the Islamic State a year before the Times took notice.

A few years ago, Chabelley was little more than a tarmac in the midst of a desert wasteland, an old French Foreign Legion outpost that had seemingly gone to seed. About 10 kilometers away, Camp Lemonnier, which shares a runway with the international airport in Djibouti�s capital, was handling America�s fighter aircraft and cargo planes, as well as drones carrying out secret assassination missions in Yemen and Somalia. By 2012, an average of 16 U.S. drones and four fighter jets were taking off or landing there each day. Soon, however, local air traffic controllers in the predominantly Muslim nation became incensed about the drones being used to kill fellow Muslims. At about the same time, those robotic planes taking off from the base began crashing, although the Air Force did not find Djiboutians responsible.

In February 2013, the Pentagon asked Congress to provide funding for �minimal facilities necessary to enable temporary operations� at Chabelley. That June, as the House Armed Services Committee noted, �the Government of Djibouti mandated that operations of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) cease from Camp Lemonnier, while allowing such operations to relocate to Chabelley Airfield.� By the fall, the U.S. drone fleet had indeed been transferred to the more remote airstrip. �Since then, Chabelley Airfield has become more permanent. And it appears to have grown,� says Dan Gettinger, co-founder and co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and the author of a guide to identifying drone bases from satellite imagery.

Despite the supposedly temporary nature of the site, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) �directed an expansion of operations� at Chabelley and, in May 2014, the U.S. signed a �long-term implementing arrangement� with the Djiboutian government to establish the airfield as an �enduring� base, according to documents provided to the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year by the Undersecretary of Defense (Comptroller).

The Djiboutian Solution to the Islamic State

As 2014 was coming to a close, Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake took command of the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron at Chabelley. Under his watch, the unit reportedly carried out combat operations in support of three combatant commanders. AFCENT failed to respond to a request for clarification about which commands were involved, but Gettinger speculates that AFRICOM; U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), responsible for the Greater Middle East; and Special Operations Command were the most likely.

Before U.S. drones moved from Camp Lemonnier to Chabelley, according to secret Pentagon documents exposed by the Intercept in October, a Special Operations task force based there conducted a drone assassination campaign in nearby Yemen and Somalia. Gettinger believes the missions continued after the move. �We know that MQ-1s have been involved in counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and Predators have for many years been flying missions over Yemen,� he told me recently by phone, noting however that the strikes in Yemen have slowed of late.

�There were no U.S. drone strikes reported in Yemen in November, the second calendar month this year without a reported attack,� researchers with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism noted earlier this month. After a lull since July, a November drone strike in Somalia killed at least five people, according to local reports. And just last week, the Pentagon announced that another U.S. strike in Somalia had killed Abdirahman Sandhere, a senior leader of the militant group al-Shabaab.

Drake�s 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron, however, focused its firepower on another target: the Islamic State. The unit was �a large contributor to OIR,� according to Major Tim Smith of AFCENT Public Affairs, and �executed combat flight operations for AFCENT in support of Operation Inherent Resolve.�

Based in Africa, it was, according to Lieutenant Colonel Kristi Beckman, director of public affairs at the Combined Air Operations Center at al-Udeid air base in Qatar, �a geographically separated unit.� By the beginning of October 2015, drones flown out of Chabelley had already logged more than 24,000 hours of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), according to the chief of operations analysis and reconstructions of the 380th Expeditionary Operations Group, its parent unit. (In an Air Force news release, that officer was identified only as �Major Kori,� evidently to obscure his identity.) According to Kori, Chabelley�s drones were also �responsible for the neutralization of 69 enemy fighters, including five high-valued individuals.�

AFCENT failed to provide additional details about the missions, those targeted, or that euphemism, �neutralization,� which was once a favored term of the CIA�s often muddled and sometimes murderous Phoenix Program that targeted the civilian �infrastructure� of America�s enemies during the Vietnam War. Beckman did, however, confirm that �neutralizations� took place in Iraq and/or Syria.

A satellite photo of Predator and Reaper drones at Chabelley Airfield during Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake�s time in command of the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.

Despite the loss of a unit that had flown tens of thousands of hours of ISR missions and attacked scores of targets, Smith says that America�s war on the Islamic State has not suffered. �Coalition efforts in the region are not hampered,� he assured me. �Operation Inherent Resolve has the personnel and assets necessary to continue aerial dominance within the region,� according to Smith. �Though the squadron isn�t needed anymore, there is sufficient capability within the AOR [area of operations] to ensure the needs of the mission are met.�

The Beginning of the End or the End of the Beginning for Drones in Djibouti?

Some commentators have speculated that the transfer of the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron�s Predators indicates a possible end to U.S. drone missions from Djibouti. Others suggest that the move offers a clear indication of demands for the robot aircraft elsewhere in the world.

There�s no question about the demand for drones. The Air Force pushed back plans to retire the Predator by a year -- until 2018 -- and began outsourcing combat air patrols to civilian contractors to deal with a paucity of drone pilots at a moment of expanding operations. Last week, it unveiled a $3 billion plan, which must be approved by Congress, to significantly expand its drone program by doubling the number of pilots, deploying them to more bases, and adding scores of new drones to its arsenal.

All of this comes at a time when, according to a top AFRICOM commander, the Islamic State is making inroads in Africa from Nigeria to Somalia, and especially in Libya. "If Raqqa [the �capital� of its caliphate in Syria] is the nucleus, the nearest thing to the divided nucleus is probably Sirte,� said Vice Admiral Michael Franken, the command's deputy for military operations, speaking of a Libyan city in which IS fighters are deeply entrenched. �From there they look to export their terror into Europe and elsewhere.�

Dan Gettinger sees no end in sight for the use of the Djiboutian airfield or of American drones flying from there. �All the signs point to a more permanent installation at Chabelley,� he says, noting a string of construction contracts awarded for the base in recent years. Indeed, at the end of October, Navy Seabees were constructing another aircraft maintenance pad there. This month, they are working to extend the apron -- where aircraft can be parked and serviced -- at the drone base. It�s the Predator that�s on its way out, he tells me. �I think the MQ-1 is becoming old hat at this point.�

Like Gettinger, Jack Serle of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism sees the larger, more heavily armed cousins of the Predator, MQ-9 Reapers, as the future of drone operations at the satellite Djiboutian base. �I don't think this means the Predators the 60th launched and recovered are being retired -- I think they'll have been redeployed,� he told me by email. �And I don't think this means Chabelley is denuded of drones. I think it means Reapers only will be operating out of there.�

�The personnel that were assigned to the 60th were sent back to the states to retrain on other weapon systems and the assets were redistributed to the states, [European Command], and CENTCOM,� AFCENT�s Major Tim Smith told me. �And this unit has not been replaced with another.� Military press materials suggest, however, that members of the 870th Air Expeditionary Squadron and the 33rd Expeditionary Special Operations Squadron have recently been operating at Chabelley airfield. The latter unit has been known to fly Reapers from there.

Family Planning

U.S. Air Forces Central Command failed to provide additional information in response to multiple requests for clarification about missions carried out by the 60th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron. �Due to force protection concerns and operational security, I cannot discuss further,� Smith explained, although how the security of an inactive unit could be compromised was unclear. Smith also referred me to AFRICOM for answers. That command, however, failed to respond to repeated questions about drone operations flown from Chabelley.

During the course of my reporting, the Air Force news release about the October 7th inactivation ceremony was removed from the AFCENT website, leaving only an error message -- "404 - Page not found!" -- where an article with minimalist details about the �neutralization� of �enemy fighters� by drones once stood. AFCENT failed to reply to a request for further information on the reason the story was withdrawn.

Nor did the command respond to a request for an interview with Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Drake. Before he traveled home to surprise his own family, however, Drake spoke of the �family� he had forged as, in the words of Major Kori, he �engaged enemies of the United States from Chabelley Airfield.�

�My desire at the beginning was simple: make the squadron a family while still continuing the tradition of excellence the previous commanders already established,� said Drake. �[I]f I took care of the people they took care of the mission... I am most proud of the family this squadron became.�

Today, those words, along with photos of the ceremony, have vanished from AFCENT�s website, joining a raft of information about America�s war against the Islamic State, operations in Africa, and drone campaigns that the military has no interest in sharing with the taxpayers who foot the bill for all of it and in whose name it�s carried out. For more than a year, U.S. drones flying out of Djibouti waged a secret war against the Islamic State. For more than a year, it went unreported on the nightly news, in the country�s flagship newspapers, or evidently anywhere else.

The New York Times now reports that "the Pentagon has proposed a new plan to the White House to build up a string of military bases in Africa" and beyond, "bring[ing] an ad hoc series of existing bases into one coherent system that would be able to confront regional threats from the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, or other terrorist groups." But the expansion of Chabelley, the far flung network of bases of which it�s a part, and the war on the Islamic State waged from it suggest that there is little "new" about the proposal. The facts on the ground indicate that the Pentagon�s plan has been underway for a long time. What�s new is its emergence from the shadows.

Nick Turse is the managing editor of TomDispatch and a fellow at the Nation Institute. A 2014 Izzy Award and American Book Award winner for his book Kill Anything That Moves, his pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Intercept, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. His latest book is Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa.

18 comments

FOCUS: Checking Up on Obamacare

Thursday, 24 December 2015 17:23

Krugman writes: "One of the remarkable aspects of the politics of health reform is the way conservatives - even relatively mild, seemingly informed conservatives - have managed to keep believing that Obamacare is unraveling, despite the repeated failure of disaster predictions to come true."

Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)

Checking Up on Obamacare

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times

25 December 15

ne of the remarkable aspects of the politics of health reform is the way conservatives � even relatively mild, seemingly informed conservatives � have managed to keep believing that Obamacare is unraveling, despite the repeated failure of disaster predictions to come true. Part of the way this works is that captive media and the right�s pet �experts� hype every bit of bad news, but go silent when the news is good (and, often, when the bad news turns out to have been a false alarm.) How many will even hear about the news that enrollments are once again running above expectations, and the pool is getting younger?

Anyway, it�s really helpful to have this new report from the Commonwealth Fund comparing actual performance with pre-implementation predictions. Premiums came in far below expectations; part, but only part, of this positive surprise was given back by 2016 premium hikes, with overall costs still looking very good.

15 comments

The Christmas Day That Peace Broke Out

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29097"><span class="small">Michael Winship, Moyers & Company</span></a>

Thursday, 24 December 2015 17:03

Winship writes: "You would scarcely know it here in the United States, but since last year, the British, French, Germans and others of our western allies have been commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, a conflict of extreme foolishness and colossal consequences, like almost every other."

Alex Gwyther as private James Boyce. (photo: Pamela Raith)

The Christmas Day That Peace Broke Out

By Michael Winship, Moyers & Company

25 December 15

As once again politicians seek to unleash the dogs of war, a one-man play recalls the brief holiday truce that marked the first year of World War I.

ast Friday night, I went to a small off-Broadway theater to see an engaging, poignant one-man show about the Christmas Truce of 1914. The title was Our Friends, the Enemy, written and performed by a young British actor named Alex Gwyther.

I felt bad for him; the theater was only about a third full that evening, probably because of the approaching holiday, but perhaps also because we Americans simply are too often indifferent to a century-old fight that scorched the European continent.

You would scarcely know it here in the United States, but since last year, the British, French, Germans and others of our western allies have been commemorating the 100th anniversary of World War I, a conflict of extreme foolishness and colossal consequences, like almost every other.

Maybe our interest in this centennial has seemed lacking so far because we didn�t enter The Great War until 1917. Or maybe it�s because others� losses were so much more devastating than our own � we lost more than 53,000 lives but half of all Frenchmen who were between the ages of 20 and 32 died, and more than 35 percent of German men ages 19 to 22.

Some 723,000 British were killed, more than would die during World War II. No wonder, as Benjamin Schwarz wrote in The Atlantic back in 1999, �The war is Britain�s national trauma, and British and Commonwealth historians compulsively revisit it in the way that American historians revisit the Civil War.�

So I felt bad for the actor and sad that more people weren�t in the theater to hear an important story ingrained in British memory so profoundly that last Christmas a UK supermarket chain even used a highly romanticized version of the events as the basis of a wildly popular and sentimental TV commercial.

In December 1914, World War I had been raging in Europe for some five months; British, French and Belgian troops fighting against Germany and Austria. Along the western front, trench warfare rapidly became the norm, soldiers on both sides deeply dug in, stuck in mud, filth and pestilence with a no-man�s land sometimes just a few dozen yards wide running between the lines. This stalemate was steadily punctuated with rifle and cannon fire, death and anguished cries from the wounded.

On December 7 that year, Pope Benedict XV called for a Christmas Eve truce, �that the guns may fall silent at least upon the night the angels sang.� His plea was rejected.

Few if any of the foot soldiers may have known about that papal imploration, but many of them took it upon themselves to make their own peace, however brief. On Christmas Eve, German troops along the line raised across the trench tops small Christmas trees lit by candles. The two sides sang carols to one another, their voices drifting warily across no man�s land.

With daylight on Christmas morning, on each side, men cautiously peered from their trenches and a few ventured out to shake hands with their foes and exchange holiday greetings, followed by more and more. Artillery fire stopped.

James Boyce, the soldier played by Alex Gwyther in Our Friends, the Enemy, tells the tale:

�Grey and khaki begin to blend into one. Order of military rank and the barriers of language vanish, as they shake hands and introduce themselves in a mix of broken English and silent gestures. They offer small gifts of friendship � drinks, cigarettes, buttons, badges, sketches they�ve drawn and in the warm absurdity of their Christmas morning, some exchange addresses to meet up after the war.�

There are stories of impromptu soccer games or simple kick rounds with an actual ball or something vaguely spherical improvised from tin cans or straw-stuffed sandbags � nothing as organized as the match that supermarket ad suggests. More organized were burial details that the momentary peace allowed to retrieve the dead. �We worked with the enemy,� the character James Boyce recalls, �collecting the men whom we had killed together and attempted to clean up the mess of this war� It slowly dawned on us all � war was still upon us. A strange orange slithered over the dead, and two armies placed their heads in their hands.�

That Christmas of 1914, the peace lasted in some places longer than others; and in still others it never happened at all. Afterwards, word came from on high that such behavior � insubordination! � would never again be permitted. One German infantryman in the trenches also thought it was a disgrace. �Such a thing should not happen in wartime,� he declared. His name was Adolf Hitler.

In Our Friends, the Enemy, James Boyce recalls, �Tucked away from the war in a quiet corner of France, sheltered by trees and covered in frost, thick twigs tied together to form small crucifixes lunge out from the fluffy snow. A worn helmet rests under each cross.

�An old tree, built with a thick body stands over the small cemetery, its long branches watching over the small bumps in the snow. In its trunk, words have been carved using the bayonet of a rifle:

��Death unites us all, and we all rest on the same side.'�

They called it �the war to end all wars.� Pause for sardonic laughter, fast forward to today. Once again, politicians and others run around ferociously beating the war drums, pandering to our fears and baser instincts. In the end, while there are really very few differences among us, there will always be those who seek to turn those small differences into monsters. Do not let that happen.

We all rest on the same side. See you next year.

12 comments

A Holiday Recipe for Economic Equality - In Just 7 Simple Steps!

Thursday, 24 December 2015 17:00

Gerard writes: "In keeping with the figgy-pudding and potato latke traditions of the holidays, here's a recipe for delivering joy to workers so that they can spread holiday merriment."

Low wage workers in Milwaukee go on strike around Christmas, 2014. (photo: Light Brigading/Flickr)

A Holiday Recipe for Economic Equality - In Just 7 Simple Steps!

By Leo Gerard, In These Times

25 December 15

he spirit of the season is generosity. Eight toys for Hanukkah. A partridge in a pear tree and 11 other quirky presents. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Giving Tuesday.

It�s the thought that counts. And the thought is good-hearted. That�s why the season works so well.

To keep it all rolling happily along, however, workers need to earn enough money so that they can afford gifts and charitable donations. With wages stagnant for decades, that�s increasingly difficult.

In keeping with the figgy-pudding and potato latke traditions of the holidays, here�s a recipe for delivering joy to workers so that they can spread holiday merriment:

Ingredients

1 measure outlawing scabs
1 measure banning lockouts
1 measure raising minimum wage to $15 an hour
Knead in trade law enforcement
Filter out currency manipulation
Top it all with campaign finance reform

Directions

1. Start by combining legislation forbidding both scabs and lockouts. These are two weapons corporations use to ratchet down wages, ruining workers� holidays.

Right now, for example, Sherwin Alumina and ATI have locked out their loyal workers and replaced them with scabs. That�s thousands of workers forced to walk picket lines and depend on USW lockout assistance and food pantries for holiday meals rather than donating to them.

2. Prohibiting lockouts and scabs would slightly shift the balance of power toward workers. That�s completely justified considering corporate profits are at record levels while wages are walking backward, lower now than in 2007.

3. Next, add to the mix a raise to the minimum wage. No one who works full-time should live in poverty. The current $7.25 minimum, moribund for six years, is a Dickensian disgrace, a Bob Cratchit-level degradation.

4. Increasing the wages of workers at the bottom to $15 an hour will force up the pay of everyone else as well. All workers benefit. Happier holidays for all.

5. Trade law enforcement must be blended in next. Failure to immediately punish trade law violators has pummeled commodity producers�like aluminum and steel. Mills are closed. Thousands of workers are laid off. No merry holiday for them. Or their communities.

Several foreign countries, but particularly China, illegally prop up their exporting manufacturers. Not only that, they�re also overproducing, flooding the world market and crashing prices.

Workers need laws enabling the government to impose punitive tariffs before American mills close and families suffer. In addition, the government must file and prosecute trade cases to defend American industry, not force labor unions and manufacturers to do it.

6. The next step in this recipe is pulling currency manipulation out of the international market. Ending this underhanded trade cheat is crucial.

Countries including Japan and China deliberately devalue their currency in order to automatically discount the price of their exports, so every day is Black Friday for their international customers. Making matters worse, this scheme simultaneously marks up the cost of products that U.S. manufacturers try to sell in currency-manipulating countries.

This makes for very bad holidays in places like Ashland, Ky., where AK Steel shut down its blast furnace earlier this month and laid off hundreds of workers. They join about 4,000 Steelworkers at plants in Illinois and Alabama threatened with holiday layoffs.

7. The last ingredient, campaign finance reform, makes the whole recipe possible. Nothing will happen without it.

In a democracy, each citizen should have equal influence over lawmakers. The wealthy and fat-cat corporations shouldn�t get special access and treatment because they�ve given millions to candidates. The only way to stop that is to outlaw massive political bribes.

Gifts should be to loved ones and charities, not to politicians. If gargantuan campaign �presents� aren�t stopped, workers won�t be able to afford Christmas gifts because politicians will continue to ignore their needs and, as a result, their wages will continue to atrophy. Then the holiday season will not work well for anyone.

Workers need to make this holiday recipe happen. It would bring joy to their world.

10 comments

Review: Michael Moore's 'Where to Invade Next'

Thursday, 24 December 2015 16:55

Cheshire writes: "Michael Moore's surprising and extraordinarily winning 'Where to Invade Next' will almost surely cast his detractors at Fox News and similar sinkholes into consternation. They get lots of mileage out of painting Moore as a far-left provocateur who's all about 'running America down.' But his new film is all about building America up, in some amazingly novel and thought-provoking ways."

Michael Moore. (photo: Where to Invade Next)

Review: Michael Moore's 'Where to Invade Next'

By Godfrey Cheshire, RogerEbert.com

25 December 15

ichael Moore�s surprising and extraordinarily winning �Where to Invade Next� will almost surely cast his detractors at Fox News and similar sinkholes into consternation. They get lots of mileage out of painting Moore as a far-left provocateur who�s all about �running America down.� But his new film is all about building America up, in some amazingly novel and thought-provoking ways. In my view, it�s one of the most genuinely, and valuably, patriotic films any American has ever made.

It comes billed not as a documentary but a comedy, and the first joke is its hilariously misleading title. You think it anticipates a stern, leftist denunciation of American foreign policy. Instead, Moore tells us the Joint Chiefs of Staff invited him to Washington, DC, to confess that all their wars since �the big one� have been disastrous and ask his advice. He responds by offering himself up as a one-man army who will �invade countries populated by Caucasians whose names I can mostly pronounce, take the things we need from them, and bring them back home to the United States of America.�

So, wearing his trademark baseball cap and literally wrapped in the flag, he sets off across the Atlantic searching out peoples to conquer who have things America needs. Yes, he knows all of these countries have their own share of problems. But he�s come, he says, �to pick the flowers, not the weeds.� And what a bouquet he assembles.

First stop is Italy, where he wonders why �Italians always look like they just had sex.� He finds some reasons for that happy glow in talking to a 30ish couple�he�s a cop, she works for a clothing company�who start enumerating all the paid vacation time they get. The basic portion, decreed by law, is four weeks, but when you add in government holidays and such, it comes closer to eight. They use all this time to vacation in places like Miami and Zanzibar, so there�s more than just sex (though we guess there�s plenty of that too) to explain their radiant tans and satisfied smiles.

After hearing about these citizens� five months paid maternity leave, Moore invades two Italian companies�one makes the famous Ducati motorcycles�where he expresses mock-disbelief that such largesse could be good for business. But the CEOs of both firms genially argue that it is. Workers getting such benefits�and being allowed two-hour lunches where they can have home-cooked meals�makes for a healthier, happier and more productive work force, they say. A union representative notes that these gains have been hard-won and still require struggle. But the picture of an industrial situation where all sides seem to define success as cooperation, health and la dolce vita leads Moore to plant the Stars and Stripes on one factory floor, claiming the idea for the U.S.A.

Before considering the other countries he visits, it�s worth noting that all of this works so well not only because of the ideas presented but also because Moore is such a masterful comic storyteller and skilled polemicist. The film has a very definite point of view, of course; that�s what sets it apart from the bland pseudo-objectivity of our corporate news media. But Moore is clever enough to avoid preaching to the choir by also voicing the doubts and skepticism that Americans of other political persuasions would have.

After Italy, several episodes focus on different aspects of education. In France, he visits a provincial elementary school where the students� hour-long lunches look like they come from a top Parisian restaurant; this is not only cheaper than the crap American kids are fed, the chef tells him, it�s also educational since it teaches about food and healthy eating. In Finland, one of the film�s most startling segments, Moore learns that until a couple of decades ago, student performance was about as lame America�s still is. Then the Finns decided to revolutionize their educational system. The reforms included eliminating homework and standardized testing and giving students more autonomy and free time. The result: Finland is now number one in educational rankings.

In Slovenia, Moore inspects a system where a college education is essentially free, even for Americans who have begun to flock there, unable to afford the exorbitant costs at home. In Germany, the filmmaker�s look at health care and benefits for middle-class citizens elides into the part of the film that�s most likely to draw the ire of American right-wingers, since it concerns how not just education but public policy in general decrees remembering and understanding the Holocaust. Moore says he comes from �a great country that was born in genocide and built on the backs of slaves,� and wonders whether such recognition of historical sins might actually benefit the U.S. too.

Two other countries prompt questions of crime and punishment. In Norway, Moore investigates a prison system where rehabilitation rather than punishment is the goal, even maximum security lock-ups are tailored to that end, and the maximum sentence is 23 years (the country now has one of the world�s lowest murder rates). In Portugal, he hears that eliminating all penalties for drug use and treating it as a health-care issue instead has resulted in decreased use. He also listens as three Portuguese cops talk movingly about how concern for �human dignity� is the most important part of their training.

Two underlying themes of the film, people power and women�s empowerment, converge in the film�s final two segments. In Tunisia (the only non-European and only Muslim country visited), he hears how, after the country�s 2011 revolution, the new Islamist government tried to keep a guarantee of equal rights for women out of the constitution, but bowed to include it after a massive popular uprising. And in Iceland, Moore learns that the only financial company that escaped the country�s massive financial meltdown was one founded and run by women, which leads into a discussion of the transformative benefits that have come with women gaining positions of power in government and business. Meanwhile, Iceland also differed from the U.S. in sending many of their financial bad boys to prison�an idea that the lead prosecutor says was modeled on America�s prosecution of malefactors in the savings and loan scandal.

That�s the kicker here. As he investigates one potentially useful idea after another, Moore keeps discovering that many originated in the U.S. Thus he�s not stealing from foreigners but reclaiming remedies that once belonged to us.

Anyone who travels abroad a lot inevitably reflects that, due to many factors, Americans are very insular, knowing far less about other countries than they know about us. Better national media and education might mitigate this, but in the meantime, Michael Moore has done thinking Americans a great service by opening several fascinating windows on the world. One of his most accomplished and entertaining films, �Where to Invade Next� is rich in ideas that deserve to be discussed by liberals, conservatives and everyone else on the political spectrum in the upcoming election year. Optimistic and affirmative, it rests on one challenging but invaluable idea: we can do better.

4 comments

More Articles...

<< Start < Prev 2201 2202 2203 2204 2205 2206 2207 2208 2209 2210 Next > End >>

Page 2210 of 3432

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

Name:	*
Username:	*
E-mail:	*
Password:	*
Confirm password:	*
Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.