Detroit: An American Crisis

Lawrence Porter and Naomi Spencer. "Social crisis in Detroit: A special report"

• Part 1: The spiraling cost of food" (June 20, 2008)


• Part 2: The impact of gas prices" (June 21, 2008)


• Part 3: Collapse of an American city" (June 23, 2008)

Detroit, historically known as the auto capital of the world, has been transformed into the biggest poor city in America, according to the US Census Bureau, with an official poverty rate of 31.4 percent. Detroit has earned this designation several times over the past 30 years as the auto industry destroyed tens of thousands of decent paying jobs.

This once booming city of 2 million has lost more than half of its population, now standing at 900,000, with the exodus accelerating yearly. In some areas only the poorest people remain and the tax and employment bases have collapsed. As a result of the decline, Detroit has the highest high school dropout rate of any big city in the country—over 50 percent. It also has one of the highest unemployment rates in the US and is listed among the top 10 cities in home foreclosures. The city also has recently been determined to have the highest rate of families needing food assistance.

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Jada Browning, an out-of-work waitress and mother of three, told the WSWS, “It’s crazy. You either walk or put money in your car so that you can get a job.” She said that food prices were so high, utility bills just had to wait, and gas was too expensive for her to purchase a full tank for her van. “I haven’t been able to fill it up in so long I couldn’t tell you anymore,” she said. “You know, I’m scrounging for $20-$30, and that is just enough to pick my son up from school and go put in a couple of [job] applications. It is just hard.”

Substantial sections of Detroit’s population do not even have vehicles and must find other means of transportation. In fact, according to the US Census Bureau, 21.9 percent of households—more than one in five—do not possess a car. This places an enormous constraint on quality of life for residents who must travel across the sprawling metro area for work, food, school, and other basic obligations.

Detroit is the most expensive city to own and operate a car, according to Runzheimer International, a management-consulting company based in Wisconsin that specializes in employee reimbursement costs. Detroiters pay an average $5,894 for auto insurance alone each year. In all, operating expenses such as gas, tires, oil, maintenance and ownership costs such as insurance total $11,844 for city residents. Having a car is a major expense that is out of the question for many.

• • •

The decimation of auto industry compensation—the standard-setter for pay scale and benefits in many other sectors of industry, as well as the driver of the economy in the region—combined with cuts to public assistance programs have truly devastated working class living standards.

As the cost of living spirals, thousands of families now face a tremendous financial conundrum.

Poverty is pervasive in Detroit. In 2006, according to the federal Census Bureau, median household income in the city was $29,500. This figure is nearly $20,000 less than the median household income nationwide. Per capita income for the city was only $14,700 in 2006.

Such a low income cannot support a mortgage, a family’s basic food and transportation needs, childcare costs and other expenses. As a result, thousands of families turn to emergency government assistance and charity.

Statewide, more than 1.25 million people now receive federal food assistance through the Food Stamp program—a record number and yet still far from the number of people who qualify for aid.

The Economy of Hunger

Mary Dejevsky, "There's no reason why the world should go hungry"

Overall, the assumption that a richer and more populous world will not be able to feed itself needs more critical examination than it is getting. Take the past: India and famine were once synonymous; that is no longer so. Take the present and the distorting demand for rice in Africa: the development of strains resistant to drought and salinity is well advanced, without resort to controversial genetically modified varieties. But the most effective remedy would be peace. Then take future concerns about farmland: huge acreages in Russia, Ukraine and parts of Central Asia are currently unfarmed, or farmed only inefficiently. As this land is bought up by investors and farmers – as is quietly happening – supply will surely rise to meet demand.

For all these reasons, I wonder whether the world is really running short of food. Or is it rather in thrall to a fevered market in which speculators gamble on stratospheric long-term price rises and so drive up prices today? When I press the button on my next online grocery order, I will think less about whether 1.3 billion Chinese are better nourished and more about whether a futures market in staple food crops belongs in a civilised world.

So Much For the Ticking Time-Bomb Scenario

Scott Shane, "Inside a 9/11 Mastermind's Interrogation"

The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a C.I.A. offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others, the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators called "knuckledraggers."

Mr. Martinez came in after the rough stuff, the ultimate good cop with the classic skills: an unimposing presence, inexhaustible patience and a willingness to listen to the gripes and musings of a pitiless killer in rambling, imperfect English. He achieved a rapport with Mr. Mohammed that astonished his fellow C.I.A. officers.

A canny opponent, Mr. Mohammed mixed disinformation and braggadocio with details of plots, past and planned. Eventually, he grew loquacious. "They'd have long talks about religion," comparing notes on Islam and Mr. Martinez's Catholicism, one C.I.A. officer recalled. And, the officer added, there was one other detail no one could have predicted: "He wrote poems to Deuce's wife."

Mr. Martinez, who by then had interrogated at least three other high-level prisoners, would bring Mr. Mohammed snacks, usually dates. He would listen to Mr. Mohammed's despair over the likelihood that he would never see his children again and to his catalog of complaints about his accommodations.

"He wanted a view," the C.I.A. officer recalled.

The story of Mr. Martinez's role in the C.I.A.'s interrogation program, including his contribution to the first capture of a major figure in Al Qaeda, provides the closest look to date beneath the blanket of secrecy that hides the program from terrorists and from critics who accuse the agency of torture.

Beyond the interrogator's successes, this account includes new details on the campaign against Al Qaeda, including the text message that led to Mr. Mohammed's capture, the reason the C.I.A. believed his claim that he was the murderer of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the separate teams at the C.I.A.'s secret prisons of those who meted out the agony and those who asked the questions.

In the Hollywood cliché of Fox's "24," a torturer shouts questions at a bound terrorist while inflicting excruciating pain. The C.I.A. program worked differently. A paramilitary team put on the pressure, using cold temperatures, sleeplessness, pain and fear to force a prisoner to talk. When the prisoner signaled assent, the tormenters stepped aside. After a break that could be a day or even longer, Mr. Martinez or another interrogator took up the questioning.

Mr. Martinez's success at building a rapport with the most ruthless of terrorists goes to the heart of the interrogation debate. Did it suggest that traditional methods alone might have obtained the same information or more? Or did Mr. Mohammed talk so expansively because he feared more of the brutal treatment he had already endured?

Irony: A Politician Asks a Paid Liar About a Suspected (Known) Liar

WashingtonPost.com, "McClellan Testifies Before Congress" (June 20, 2008)

REP. ARTUR DAVIS, D-ALA.: Mr. Chairman, thank you. And, Ms. Baldwin, thank you for letting me slip ahead, because I have a plane to catch. So I thank you for that. Mr. McClellan, let me circle around a person whose name has come up a great deal today, and that's Karl Rove. You state in your book and you've reiterated to the committee several times that Mr. Rove encouraged you, allowed you and encouraged you to repeat a lie.

You've said a number of things about Mr. Rove. And you've indicated that you've known him for some period of time. So I want you to kind of give the committee some advice on how to deal with the little situation that we have with Mr. Rove right now. The committee has extended an invitation to Mr. Rove to do what you've done to come and appear under oath to allow anyone who wants to ask you questions to do so. Mr. Rove has, not surprisingly to you, I suspect, declined the invitation.

Mr. Rove has come back and he's said to the committee, well, I'm willing to talk, but only if there is no oath, only if there are no cameras present, only if there are no notes made of what I have to say. And let me just ask you, based on what you know of Mr. Rove, Mr. McClellan, does it, first of all, surprise you that Mr. Rove is seeking limitations on the manner and the circumstances in which he would appear before this committee?

MCCLELLAN: No, it doesn't surprise me. And I think it's probably part of an effort to stonewall the whole process.

DAVIS: I'm going to ask you two pointed questions. Would you trust Mr. Rove, if he were not under oath, to tell the truth?

MCCLELLAN: Well, based on my own experience, I could not say that I would.

DAVIS: And, in fact, if Mr. Rove were under oath, would you have complete confidence that he would tell the truth?

MCCLELLAN: I would hope that he would be willing to do that. And as you point out, it doesn't seem that he is willing to do that. But based on my own experiences, I have some concerns about that.

DAVIS: Mr. Rove did testify under oath before the grand jury investigating the leak a number of times, did he not? You have to answer orally.

MCCLELLAN: Yes. I'm sorry. Yes.

DAVIS: You don't believe he told the complete truth to the grand jury under oath when he did testify?

MCCLELLAN: I don't know. Since I haven't seen his testimony, I do not know.

DAVIS: You state at one point -- there was a very pointed sentence -- you say that Karl was only concerned about protecting himself from possible legal action and preventing his many critics from bringing him down. Do you believe, based on what you know of Mr. Rove, that he is capable of lying to protect himself from legal jeopardy, sir?

MCCLELLAN: Well, he certainly passed on false information -- or he lied to me. That's the only conclusion I can draw. So based on my own experience, you can appreciate where I'm coming from.

DAVIS: Do believe, based on what you know of this gentleman, your experiences with him, that he is capable of lying to protect himself from political embarrassment?

MCCLELLAN: I would have to say that he did in my situation, so the answer is yes.

SciAm Responds to Stein's Expelled

Michael Shermer, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed--Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin"

Anyone who thinks that scientists do not question Darwinism has never been to an evolutionary conference. At the World Summit on Evolution held in the Galapagos Islands during June 2005, for example, I witnessed a scientific theory rich in controversy and disputation. Paleontologist William Schopf of the University of California, Los Angeles, for instance, explained that "We know the overall sequence of life's origin, that the origin of life was early, microbial and unicellular, and that an RNA world preceded today's DNA–protein world." He openly admitted, however, "We do not know the precise environments of the early earth in which these events occurred; we do not know the exact chemistry of some of the important chemical reactions that led to life; and we do not have any knowledge of life in a pre-RNA world."

Stanford University biologist Joan Roughgarden declared that Darwin's theory of sexual selection (a specific type of natural selection) is wrong in its claim that females choose mates who are more attractive and well-armed. Calling neo-Darwinians "bullies," the University of Massachusetts Amherst biologist Lynn Margulis pronounced that "neo-Darwinism is dead" and, echoing Darwin, she said, "It was like confessing a murder when I discovered I was not a neo-Darwinist." Why? Because, Margulis explained, "Random changes in DNA alone do not lead to speciation. Symbiogenesis—the appearance of new behaviors, tissues, organs, organ systems, physiologies or species as a result of symbiont interaction—is the major source of evolutionary novelty in eukaryotes: animals, plants and fungi."

Finally, Cornell University evolutionary theorist William Provine (featured in Expelled) presented 11 problems with evolutionary theory, including: "Natural selection does not shape an adaptation or cause a gene to spread over a population or really do anything at all. It is instead the result of specific causes: hereditary changes, developmental causes, ecological causes and demography. Natural selection is the result of these causes, not a cause that is by itself. It is not a mechanism."

Despite this public questioning of Darwinism (and neo-Darwinism), which I reported on in Scientific American, Schopf, Roughgarden, Margulis and Provine have not been persecuted, shunned, fired or even Expelled. Why? Because they are doing science, not religion. It is perfectly okay to question Darwinism (or any other "-ism" in science), as long as there is a way to test your challenge. Intelligent design creationists, by contrast, have no interest in doing science at all. In the words of mathematician and philosopher William Dembski of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a key witness in Stein's prosecution of evolution, from a 2000 speech at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Anaheim, Calif.: "Intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God…. And if there's anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the spirit and people accepting the Scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view."

(Much appreciation to Paul Krugman.)

The End of Accountability

Tim Rutten, "Torture began at the top "

Right-wing -- as opposed to conservative -- commentators already have begun branding the Senate investigation and parallel House inquiries as a witch hunt designed to discredit administration policies that they say have kept the country free from attack for seven years. (It's interesting, however, that even Pentagon spokespeople no longer hint that interrogations involving torture elicited information on planned attacks, let alone imminent ones.)

Part of the hysteria over all this that you see in places like the Wall Street Journal editorial pages stems from an anxiety that congressional inquiries, like that of Levin's committee, will lead to indictments and possibly even war crimes trials for officials who participated in the administration's deliberations over torture and the treatment of prisoners.

It's true that there are a handful of European rights activists and people on the lacy left fringe of American politics who would dearly like to see such trials, but actually pursuing them would be a profound -- even tragic -- mistake. Our political system works as smoothly as it does, in part, because we've never criminalized differences over policy. Since Andrew Jackson's time, our electoral victors celebrate by throwing the losers out of work -- not into jail cells.

(And, humbly presented, a retort.)

The Path to Darkness

Mark Benjamin, "A timeline to Bush government torture"

For years now, the Bush White House has claimed that the United States does not conduct torture. Prisoner abuse at places like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, it has asserted, was an aberration -- the work of a few "bad apples" on the night shift. When the CIA used "enhanced" interrogation techniques such as waterboarding (simulated drowning), the abuse, according to Bush officials, did not add up to torture.

But as more and more documents from inside the Bush government come to light, it is increasingly clear that the administration sought from early on to implement interrogation techniques whose basis was torture. Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon and the CIA began an orchestrated effort to tap expertise from the military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape school, for use in the interrogation of terrorist suspects. The U.S. military's SERE training is designed to inoculate elite soldiers, sailors and airmen to torture, in the event of their capture, by an enemy that would violate the Geneva Conventions. Those service members are subjected to forced nudity, stress positions, hooding, slapping, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and, yes, in some cases, waterboarding.

SERE training has nothing to do with effective interrogation, according to military experts. Trained interrogators don't work in the program. Skilled, experienced interrogators, in fact, say that only a fool would think that the training could somehow be reverse-engineered into effective interrogation techniques ....