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537

Sanctions on Iran are Working, Preventing War

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Feeling bad for the Iranian people who are enduring hardship wrought by the West’s economic sanctions, but the majors demos in Tehran today–inveighing against the Ahmadinejad government and religious establishment–show the whole sanctions policy is working. President Obama has insisted they be given a chance to work, and he’s being proven correct. Mitt, Bibi, and other wingers all look silly, having insisted on imminent war. Even Bibi is now altering his stance to favor sanctions. The mullahs have a growing currency crisis on their hands, while the cost of consumer goods has increased four-fold. Instability is brewing. Sanctions that result in curtailment of their nuclear ambitions are a far better option than bombing. Painful though the sanctions are for Iranians, the people are taking their anger out on the regime, where it belongs for their autocratic rule.

Think my outlook is too rosy? Read what Tod Robberson, editorial writer at the Dallas Morning News published yesterday:

“Mitt Romney and his pal, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, face an increasingly uphill battle arguing that the tough sanctions regime put in place by the Obama administration isn’t working. The pressure on Iran’s government to cease its uranium-enrichment program and abide by its international treaty obligations has never been more severe than it is today.

The value of Iran’s currency, the rial, is in free fall. According to Reuters, the rial reached a record low value of 37,500 to the dollar on the free market. A week ago it traded at about 24,600. Between 2010 and 2011, the rial’s value remained relatively steady at between 10,300 and 10,800 to the dollar. According to one report, Iranians lost 660 trillion in rial-based assets because of the plummeting market. This marks an enormous financial crisis for the country.

Heck, things are so bad that, instead of sightseeing in New York last week, the Iranian delegation headed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went on a shopping trip to Costco to buy stuff like shampoo that they can’t get in their own country. One member of his delegation reportedly has defected.

What has happened since last year to make the currency plummet to less than half its 2011 value? Sanctions, that’s what. . . .

And now, there can be no argument that the sanctions are taking a steep toll on Iran’s government. This helps explain why Israel’s foreign ministry issued a report last week calling for the government to give sanctions more time — in spite of the constant drumbeat of war coming from Netanyahu and Romney.

Yes, Romney can ask for proof that Iran has curtailed its uranium enrichment program as a result, and that’s a fair question. The answer almost certainly is: There is no proof — yet. That’s what the sanctions are all about. At a certain point pretty soon, Iran’s isolation and economic strife are going to reach a breaking point, at which time Tehran will seriously enter negotiations on inspections and agree to international limits on its enrichment activities. Sure beats war.

Romney is going to have to come up with another argument heading into tomorrow’s debates. He can’t even rely on backing from Netanyahu, who appears to be backing away from the hard-line stance he had maintained barely three weeks ago. Read more on that at ForeignPolicy.com,” in a Joel Rubin story headlined Netanyahu Aligns with Obama on Iran.

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10 Years Later, Michael Bell Still on the Trail of New England’s Vampires

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One of the most unusual and fascinating books I edited and published in the seven years I was an editorial executive with Carroll & Graf (2000-07) was Food For the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires by folklorist Michael Bell. Over more than 20 years of research at the point the book was published in 2001, Michael had identified more than a dozen New England gravesites where, beginning in the late 1700s and continuing for at least 100 years, the relatives and neighbors of people who’d died from tuberculosis handled the cadavers and conducted their burial in a way that they imagined might diminish the chances of the disease being passed on to others. These funerary practices, at first inexplicable to moderns living with 20th century medicine, possessed a clear logic in an era when the notion of contagion was sensed but not formally known. They included burning some of the fleshly remains and inhaling the smoke from the resulting fire; feeding some of the burnt byproducts to the ill; and arranging the limbs of the dead in such a way as to thwart transmission of illness. Clearly, the grieving and anxious survivors hoped they could somehow inoculate themselves by taking these steps.

The book is a readable synthesis of fascinating stories combining literary lore from such authors as Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Amy Lowell, and Robert Frost, who retold and reimagined these vampire stories; medical anthropology; and travel tales, with Michael wandering from one corner of New England to another, always in search of more folklore on this surprising topic.

Though Michael’s book came out more than ten years ago, his investigation didn’t end with publication. In fact, according to a comprehensive article by Abigail Tucker in this month’s issue of Smithsonian, Michael has now documented more than eighty examples of these burials and exhumations, ranging beyond New England and stretching as far west as Minnesota. According to Tucker,

“Hundreds more cases await discovery, [the author] believes. ‘You read an article that describes an exhumation, and they’ll describe a similar thing that happened at a nearby town,’ says Bell, whose book, Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England’s Vampires, is seen as the last word on the subject, though he has lately found so many new cases that there’s a second book on the way. ‘The ones that get recorded, and I actually find them, are just the tip of the iceberg.’”

I remain fascinated by this topic, and am excited to have Smithsonian‘s update on Michael’s research, and to be reminded of the book that Michael Kenney in the Boston Globe described as an “Absorbing account [that] is neither Halloween fantasy nor tabloid frenzy, but a major contribution to the study of New England folk beliefs.” I’ll be interested to learn about the more recent cases that Michael has discovered in the decade since I published Food For the Dead with him, and eager to learn about the next book. Below are images of the front and back cover of the 2002 paperback edition.

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Sam Zell, Corporate Raider & Certified Asshole

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In case you’re unfamiliar with businessman Sam Zell, he’s the billionaire who a few years ago managed to acquire the Tribune media empire (which at the time included the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun, and Hartford Courant). While the newspapers were already losing money, the advent of Zell’s ownership and the ways he leveraged his acquisition of the media company saddled it with additional enormous debt, whereupon he began downsizing newsrooms, laying off journalists and gutting the papers. At the same time, he fashioned himself a media critic, supposedly knowledgable about what news organizations must do to survive amid a transformed media landscape.

By now, several years after his Tribune purchase, the company is embroiled in a number of lawsuits over Zell’s attempt to walk away from various pension obligations. Zell has remained what he was at the outset–a foul-tempered, profane, corporate raider who routinely exhibits contempt for news and media professionals. By the standards of Geoffrey Nunberg’s provocative new book, Ascent of the A-Word: Assholism, the First Sixty Years, Sam Zell is a certifiable “asshole.”

This all brings us to today, where I see on ThinkProgress.org in a story by Pat Garofalo that Zell’s done an interview on CNBC TV’s “Squawk Box” program, during which he offered these observations, complaining:

ZELL: The reality is as follows: the whole focus has been on how the, quote, one percenters, the 10 percenters, whatever these top earners have moved ahead of everybody. I wonder if there’s any correlation between while they were moving ahead, the rest of the government was subsidizing, subsidizing more and more people and disincentivizing them. Why is it always assumed that somebody doesn’t succeed because he can’t, as opposed to he doesn’t want to, or isn’t incentivized to. […]
SORKIN: There’s no suggestion, at least that I’ve heard, that the reason why people have had a harder time rising through the ranks today is a function of the fact that they’re disincentivized to rise through the ranks.
ZELL: Wait a minute. I think that they are disincentivized by, in effect, if you don’t have to pay for your health care, that’s another thing you don’t have to worry about…For every step contributing to the progress at the top, there’s an additional step on the bottom to increase the earned income [tax credit], to extend unemployment insurance for 28 years.

This guy doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. My wife and I damn well pay for our expensive healthcare, and hope each year to get the benefit of a tax deduction for having obtained coverage through the small business we operate. And, “unemployment insurance for 28 years”? What rank hyperbole! Ninety weeks is the absolute limit, as I recall, and mine in NY State didn’t even last that long after I was laid off from Sterling Publishing in 2009, an experience I’ve recounted in a personal blog essay, Three Years Ago Today.

So, let’s get this straight–a man who used Bain-like tactics to strip money out of a company he acquired, laid off hundreds of experienced professionals, and ignored his obligations to their pensions, is now lecturing the rest of us on why many Americans lack full-time employment–it’s because we’ve been conditioned to be lazy by government policies that “disincentivize” us. This guy would fit in perfectly in Mitt Romney’s 47% video reel. What an asshole.

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Neil Young, K’Naan in Central Park for the Global Citizen Festival

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Hadn’t realized until today that a big benefit concert’s going on today in Central Park. K’Naan, Band of Horses, Foo Fighters, Black Keys, and Neil Young with Crazy Horse are all playing on the Great Lawn. Might’ve tried to go, but I have other plans for the rest of the day. Some free tickets were drawn by lottery at teh site of the worthy organization coordinating this push to end “extreme poverty” worldwide. Many organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Earth Institute are coordinating to pull it all together, under the rubric of GlobalCitizen.org. So far, K’Naan has played, brilliantly. Also, Band of Horses, who were good too. It’s all being livestreamed at this link, and maybe cached there later, too. I hope so, because I’m going out in a few minutes, and would really love to see Neil and Crazy Horse. Meantime, here’s a photo I took of K’Naan in the livestream. He only played three songs, but he absolutely killed with those three, including with a rousing finale of his global hit, “Wavin’ Flag,’ telling the crowd he was at last reclaiming the song as his own, after seeing it used in so many different situations, like at the World Cup. He sang the personal passages in the lyrics, about leaving Somalia as a youngster, very quietly and intimately. He is a very inspirational figure.
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Got home just in time to hear Neil and Crazy Horse’s two closing songs, “Fucking Up” and “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World,” on which the bands from earlier in the concert joined in. It’s been a Neil Young kind-of-weekend, with his new book, Waging Heavy Peace, one of my #FridayReads for this weekend.

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Wendy Weil, Book Agent Extraordinaire, RIP

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Very sad to read about the passing of longtime book business friend, literary agent Wendy Weil. During my days as a bookseller with Undercover Books in Cleveland, from 1978-85, we had hosted a couple of big launch parties that were very successful for one of her author clients. Then, when I moved to NYC in 1985 to work in publishing she was very kind to me and I got to know her even better. Just saw Wendy recently when she told me of her delight at placing a new novel by this same client, who had left her agency for several years, but then had returned to her fold. She told me how good this had made her feel. She was very happy that day and seemed very well. I was startled to read this death notice in today’s NY Times. Wendy Weil was 72. She died last Saturday, on what happens to have been my birthday. My heartfelt condolences to her family and many friends in the book world. She was a tall, willowy woman, a dear person with a warm sense of humor. I will miss her, as will many others, I’m sure.

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#FridayReads, Sept. 28–Chris Bohjalian’s,”The Night Stranger” & Neil Young’s “Waging Heavy Peace”

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#FridayReads, Sept. 28–The Night Stranger, Chris Bohjalian’s unusual haunted house novel, set in a town much like Franconia, New Hampshire, where I went to college. What does it mean that the number of passengers who died in a crashed airliner–thirty-nine–is the same as the number of bolts in a mysterious basement door? Though about mortality and  hidden things, the novel is told with an oddly calm narration that is all the more unsettling for it.

Also, just picking up Waging Heavy Peace, Neil Young’s long look back on nearly seven decades of living and music-making, a rock memoir written in a calm tone of voice and in a pensive and thoughtful frame of mind. With Neil so much a part of my life and musical DNA, I’d really been looking forward to this book, especially after hearing him in conversation with Patti Smith at BEA last June, and now that’s in my hands, I couldn’t be happier to be reading it, with the voice of Neil coming through on every page.

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Repub Commentator: Todd Akin’s Situation=David Koresh’s Situation

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Unreal–a Repub consultant, Kellyanne Conway, thinks she’s doing a Todd Akin a favor by likening his resolve to stay in the Missouri senate race to the determination shown by David Koresh–the late apoca-death wish zealot–who refused to exit the Branch Davidian compound. Koresh’s megalomanical obstinacy led to the death of his whole flock in 1993. This is what Conway said:

“The first day or two [after Akin’s widely condemned legitimate rape comment] where it was like the Waco with the David Koresh situation where they’re trying to smoke him out with the SWAT teams and the helicopters and the bad Nancy Sinatra records. Then here comes day two and you realize the guy’s not coming out of the bunker. Listen, Todd has shown his principle to the voters.”

Yep, Kellyanne, that should do Todd a world of good! Via TPM’s Igor Bobic, here’s the story, with a link to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch source. This is on top of Akin’s own recent comments, complaining about Claire McCaskill’s demeanor in their debate this week, as “unladylike” and like a “wild cat.” This man is so weird!
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Note: After an Akin spox took issue with Conway’s comment, she contacted the St. Louis reporter, Kevin McDermott, supposedly to clarify herself, but her revision doesn’t change anything:

UPDATE 1:48 p.m.: Akin spokesman Ryan Hite has responded with a one-line written statement: “It was a stupid comment to make.”

UPDATE 2 p.m.: Conway just called to clarify that she was not comparing Akin to Koresh, but rather was comparing the GOP leaders who were trying to dislodge Akin to the federal agents in the standoff with Koresh. “It was about how overbearing the Republicans had been. It was about the tactics being used to force (Akin) out,” Conway said. “I wasn’t comparing the (two) men. . . . I don’t consider David Koresh a man of fortitude. Todd Akin is a man of fortitude.”

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Senator Sherrod Brown ♥s “Rust Belt Chic”

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So glad to be one of the 35 contributors to Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology, with my essay, “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” on a venerable bluesman I followed avidly for years when I lived in Cleveland. Among the writers in the book is Connie Schultz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who for many years worked at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She has recently left the paper while her husband, Sherrod Brown, runs for re-election to the US Senate from the State of Ohio. Today, on the Rust Belt Chic Facebook page, I saw this, a note from Ms. Schultz:

“Sherrod didn’t get home until after midnight last night, but as soon as he saw my newly arrived stack of ‘Rust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology,’ he had to pick up a book and take a look. ‘Wow,’ he said, over and over, as he recognized one writer’s name after another, read aloud some of the titles and marveled at the photos.”

Nice, huh?
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At the time of Rust Belt Chic’s publication earlier this month, I cross-posted my essay on Mr. Stress and wrote these paragraphs to introduce the book to readers. Allow me to quote myself:

As a sign of just how community-oriented the book really is, editors Trubek and Piiparinen asked all the contributors, in the event that the book sells well enough to make back its expenses and reaches into profitability, would we want an honorarium payment, or would we choose to plow our earnings into another indie project to be chosen first from among book ideas presented by us contributors, with one (or if we’re really fortunate, more than one) project being chosen for funding. I have a ready book idea–a new volume to be culled from the Guinness Book of World Records-recognized diary of Edward Robb Ellis, whose A Diary of the Century: Tales from America’s Greatest Diarist, I edited and published in 1995. I was happy to choose the second option offered.

With all that said, I’ll continue this preamble by saying I hope you buy the book as a print or a digital edition, or one of each, not because of charitable intentions (though that’s okay too) but because it offers more than fifty fine examples of narrative journalism, chronicling a distinctive part of the country that is too often overlooked on the literary and cultural map. I also urge you to follow the book’s Twitter feed, @rust-belt-chic. On my own Twitter feed, @philipsturner, I’ve started a hashtag, #MrStress. You may also ‘like’ the Rust Belt Chic Facebook page. Thank you in advance for supporting this exciting experiment in cultural urban renewal.
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Thanks for your support of Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology, and I hope you enjoy reading my essay on Mr. Stress, cross-posted here on The Great Gray Bridge.