Dennis Loo

Migrating to Open Salon

2009-01-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

I invite my visitors and readers to join me at Open Salon where I have a blog and at World Can't Wait. Signing up to comment or start your own blog at OS is very easy and fast and even easier at WCW.

I have for now, at least, migrated to OS and WCW rather like someone who has relocated their offices from one location to a new one. I will continue to have dennisloo.blospot.com, but for the indefinite future I will not be posting new things here.

There are close to 500 postings here at dennisloo.blogspot and it's therefore an archive of quite a bit of work. Feel free as always to explore it. Thanks!

"We Will Not Go Down" Song for Gaza

2009-01-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

By Michael Heart here on YouTube.

Israel Rains Fire with Phosphorous Shells

2009-01-05T19:28:00.000-08:00

Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty Images

Israel rains fire on Gaza with phosphorus shells

From Times Online January 5, 2009

Israel is believed to be using controversial white phosphorus shells to screen its assault on the heavily populated Gaza Strip yesterday. The weapon, used by British and US forces in Iraq, can cause horrific burns but is not illegal if used as a smokescreen.

As the Israeli army stormed to the edges of Gaza City and the Palestinian death toll topped 500, the tell-tale shells could be seen spreading tentacles of thick white smoke to cover the troops’ advance. “These explosions are fantastic looking, and produce a great deal of smoke that blinds the enemy so that our forces can move in,” said one Israeli security expert. Burning blobs of phosphorus would cause severe injuries to anyone caught beneath them and force would-be snipers or operators of remote-controlled booby traps to take cover. Israel admitted using white phosphorus during its 2006 war with Lebanon.

The use of the weapon in the Gaza Strip, one of the world’s mostly densely population areas, is likely to ignite yet more controversy over Israel’s offensive, in which more than 2,300 Palestinians have been wounded.

The Geneva Treaty of 1980 stipulates that white phosphorus should not be used as a weapon of war in civilian areas, but there is no blanket ban under international law on its use as a smokescreen or for illumination. However, Charles Heyman, a military expert and former major in the British Army, said: “If white phosphorus was deliberately fired at a crowd of people someone would end up in The Hague. White phosphorus is also a terror weapon. The descending blobs of phosphorus will burn when in contact with skin.”

The Israeli military last night denied using phosphorus, but refused to say what had been deployed. “Israel uses munitions that are allowed for under international law,” said Captain Ishai David, spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces. “We are pressing ahead with the second stage of operations, entering troops in the Gaza Strip to seize areas from which rockets are being launched into Israel.”

The civilian toll in the first 24 hours of the ground offensive — launched after a week of bombardment from air, land and sea— was at least 64 dead. Among those killed were five members of a family who died when an Israeli tank shell hit their car and a paramedic who died when a tank blasted his ambulance. Doctors at Gaza City’s main hospital said many women and children were among the dead and wounded.

The Israeli army also suffered its first fatality of the offensive when one of its soldiers was killed by mortar fire. More than 30 soldiers were wounded by mortars, mines and sniper fire.

Israel has brushed aside calls for a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into the besieged territory, where medical supplies are running short.

With increasingly angry anti-Israeli protests spreading around the world, Gordon Brown described the violence in Gaza as “a dangerous moment”.

White phosphorus: the smoke-screen chemical that can burn to the bone

— White phosphorus bursts into a deep-yellow flame when it is exposed to oxygen, producing a thick white smoke

— It is used as a smokescreen or for incendiary devices, but can also be deployed as an anti-personnel flame compound capable of causing potentially fatal burns

— Phosphorus burns are almost always second or third-degree because the particles do not stop burning on contact with skin until they have entirely disappeared — it is not unknown for them to reach the bone

— Geneva conventions ban the use of phosphorus as an offensive weapon against civilians, but its use as a smokescreen is not prohibited by international law

— Israel previously used white phosphorus during its war with Lebanon in 2006

— It has been used frequently by British and US forces in recent wars, notably during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Its use was criticised widely

— White phosphorus has the slang name “Willy Pete”, which dates from the First World War. It was commonly used in the Vietnam era

Source: Times archives

And see this story too:

"Amid the tidal wave of human misery swamping Gaza City’s central hospital a horrified Norwegian volunteer doctor found a minute to type a text message on his mobile phone to friends back home.

“We are wading in death, blood, and amputees. Many children. A pregnant woman. I have never experienced anything so terrible. Now we hear tanks. Pass it on, send it around, shout it out. Anything. DO SOMETHING! DO MORE! We are living in a history book now, all of us.' It was signed Mads Gilbert, one of two Norwegian doctors toiling relentlessly alongside exhausted Palestinian medics."

Bolton: Gaza raids precursor to Iran War

2009-01-02T17:22:00.000-08:00

From Press TV, 12/31/08:

Former top US diplomat John Bolton says Israeli strikes on Gaza have ignited a multi-front war which could lead to a US attack on Iran.

Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, accused Iran of supplying arms and equipment to Hamas and making efforts to develop a nuclear bomb.

"I don't think there's anything at this point standing between Iran and nuclear weapons other than the possibility of the use of military force possibly by the United States, possibly by Israel," Bolton told FoxNews.

"So while our focus obviously is on Gaza right now, this could turn out to be a much larger conflict," said the hawkish US official, adding, "We're looking at potentially a multi-front war."

Bolton made the allegations about Iran's nuclear program after the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which represented the consensus of the 16 US intelligence agencies, concluded "with high confidence" that Iran halted its "nuclear weapons program" in 2003 and that the program remains frozen.

The controversial intelligence contradicted longstanding claims that Tehran was "working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb" and came as a blow to advocates of a military strike against Iran like Bolton.

When asked if Israel would be capable of taking out Iran's nuclear facilities, Bolton said he believed "Israel could destroy enough of Iran's program to give us three, four years, which puts time back on our side to look for a longer term solution."

Israel continues to mass its forces along the Gaza border in preparation for a ground offensive. More than 370 Palestinians have so far been killed in the assaults among which at least 62 were women and children.
Bolton's remarks came as speculation has been rife that an Israeli go-it-alone strike on Iran is in the offing. However, many analysts believe an Israeli attack on Iran would not be possible without a US green light.

Despite Israeli pressure for a military option against Iran, many US foreign policy experts have advised the President-elect Barack Obama to engage Iran with diplomacy -- a move which would not be well-received among powerful pro-Israeli lobbies in Washington.

Israel after five straight days of air attacks, on Wednesday rejected a proposal for a temporary ceasefire in its military onslaught in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli military is also gathering its gunboats near the Gaza port and its ground forces along the border in preparation for a possible ground offensive.

Earlier on Monday, a senior Iranian commander floated the idea that the time has come for Muslims to militarily stop Israeli crimes in Gaza.

"Only the military aid can save Gaza," said Brigadier General Mir-Faisal Baqerzadeh, Head of the Foundation for the Remembrance of the Holy Defense.

CS/HGH

Krugman and the GOP's "Southern Strategy"

2009-01-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

See my post on this here.

Culpability and the Bush Years

2008-12-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

See my post today at Open Salon here.

Gaza and Israel: Is a Nation State’s First Job to Protect Its Citizens?

2008-12-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

See my posting at Salon.com in Open Salon.

The Nature of Capital and Bob Herbert's "Stop Being Stupid"

2008-12-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

Today's NYT's has Herbert's latest OpEd, "Stop Being Stupid," in which he points out how extraordinarily stupid the idea - originating with the free market fundamentalists and implemented beginning under Reagan - is "that you could radically cut taxes and still maintain critical government services — and fight two wars to boot!"

Herbert scores many good points, but fails to really nail down the source of these stupidities and what it would take to turn the corner on it. He does correctly name some names, such as Alan Greenspan, Rob Rubin and Larry Summers, but not their ideological foundations.

An excerpt, followed by a reader's letter and my commentary:

December 27, 2008
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Stop Being Stupid

By BOB HERBERT

I’ve got a new year’s resolution and a new slogan for the country.

The resolution may be difficult, but it’s essential. Americans must resolve to be smarter going forward than we have been for the past several years.

Look around you. We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and embarrassingly stupid for much too long. We’ve wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future of generations yet unborn. We don’t even know if we’ll have an automobile industry in the coming years. It’s time to stop the self-destruction.

The slogan? “Invest in the U.S.” By that I mean we should stop squandering the nation’s wealth on unnecessary warfare overseas and mindless consumption here at home and start making sensible investments in the well-being of the American people and the long-term health of the economy.

The mind-boggling stupidity that we’ve indulged in was hammered home by a comment almost casually delivered by, of all people, Bernie Madoff, the mild-mannered creator of what appears to have been a nuclear-powered Ponzi scheme. Madoff summed up his activities with devastating simplicity. He is said to have told the F.B.I. that he “paid investors with money that wasn’t there.”

Somehow, over the past few decades, that has become the American way: to pay for things — from wars to Wall Street bonuses to flat-screen TVs to video games — with money that wasn’t there.

For the rest of his OpEd, see here.

In times of major crisis the opportunity presents itself to either recognize what's really wrong and radically change this (and thereby really resolve things), or fail to rise to the occasion and usher in some other more virulent version of what has previously existed. What paradigm one is employing will prove decisive. The following comment on the NYT's website from a reader, one of the NYT's editors' selections, reflects this:

"Nobody can argue with 'be smart.' But how many tens of millions of Americans make their living with a job that, in one form or another, is aimed at getting other Americans to decrease their savings or increase their debt? Too many of us go to work and devise ways to legally pick the pockets of our unknowing fellow citizens in ways big and small. Americans are subjected to a daily blizzard of hidden fees and co-pays and penalties and tolls, each of which wears us down mentally, emotionally and financially. And behind every one of those fees is probably another American who thought it up, and got a big bonus for doing so. We need to revert back (or should I say move forward?) to true capitalism, where the seller and the buyer understand exactly what is being sold and the price that will be paid, and where it is engrained into our capitalist souls that cheating, swindling, hiding, and misrepresenting are immoral, shameful, illegal, and a threat to our country's future. If we know what things truly cost -- whether it be a cell phone, a mortgage, a flight to Denver or a visit to our doctor -- we can can make more intelligent decisions and maintain more control over our financial destinies. This is what actually goes on now, every day, between sophisticated businesses: prices are known, terms are understood, and the commercial code is clearly defined. When there are two sophisticated parties to a transaction, armed with tools of enforcement, things run remarkably smoothly. But consumers are not armed with the information or power necessary to calmly and rationally control our financial destinies. We open our bills wincing at the hidden pain we expect to find, because we are completely vulnerable to small print and long disclosures and agreement amendments and impossibly byzantine rules that we had no choice but to sign on to. Making this change requires more than a "be smart" slogan (which is a good start, mind you). In the short run it requires legal access to information, and penalties and stigma strong enough to dissaude [sic] deception. In the long run it requires us to redefine right and wrong.

— Kevin C, New York, NY"

Kevin C, like Herbert, puts his finger on some important aspects of the situation. I especially like his point that many people's jobs and bonuses are tied to driving other Americans into debt and "legally pick[ing] their pockets."

However, the idea that pure capitalism is the solution is precisely 180 degrees incorrect.

What would it take for the public to know exactly how much something cost, as Kevin recommends happen? How could dissuading deception with penalties and stigma actually come about? You'd have to introduce measures to curb the power of capital in a situation in which capital commands the key levers of power in the society. You'd have to convince those who really run things to do things that are not in their interests.

You might tell them, "Dear Messrs Capital: It is in your best and long-term interest to allow those who you rob and steal from everyday - which is the source of your profts - to regulate you and limit your ability to rob and steal from them. After all, look at the fine mess you are in and have put us into!"

Messrs Capital would say what exactly in response to this? "Dear Mr. and Ms. Citizen: Thank you for your letter. I have your best interests in mind. Yours truly, Capital."

In other words, Capital wouldn't listen. And for a very good reason. Because it's in its nature to do exactly what it has been doing! Asking Capital, or even demanding that Capital do something else, is like trying to get a crab to walk forward. It's like telling a butterfly to go back to being a caterpillar. Even if you could force butterflies back into being caterpillars - pushing monopoly capital back into free enterprise capital - they'd evolve back into butterflies again. Why? Because free enterprise capital becomes monopolistic because the modus operandi for capitalism is profit and it's more profitable to reap the rewards of economies of scale and to eat up your competition. Those who try to do otherwise will be extinguished by the nature of capital itself.

If Wal-Mart's CEO was visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and realized the folly of his ways and announced to the Wal-Mart Shareholders and Directors that he was going to stop paying Wal-Mart workers poverty level wages, begin giving them health and pension benefits, and stop driving down the costs of suppliers to the nth degree, what exactly would the shareholders, the directors, and the rest of the stock market do to this CEO and to the share price of Wal-Mart?

We all know the answer to that question, whether we've never taken Econ 101 or we've gotten an advanced degree in Economics. Wal-Mart's stock price would dive and the enlightened CEO would be canned forthwith.

Even if all of the Captains of Capital were to become Buddhas overnight, in other words, financial capital would discipline them or replace them.

Dealing with the crisis and the insanity that we see all around us requires recognizing what is at fault. It isn't capitalism distorted that is at fault. It is capitalism par excellence that is at work here. The problem isn't back to the future. The problem is capital - that is, a system that feeds on and requires deception, profit and exploitation.

Free Al-Zeidi!

2008-12-24T09:56:00.001-08:00

FREE AL-ZEIDI RALLY SET FOR DEC. 29 IN WASHINGTON, DC

A rally calling on the Iraqi Government to free Montather Al-Ziedi, the man who threw his shoes at George W. Bush, will be held Monday, December 29 at noon in front of the Iraqi consulate to the United States, located at 1801 P Street NW in Washington, DC.

The rally is timed to immediately precede Mr. Al-Ziedi’s appearance in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq on Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve. Mr. Al-Ziedi was arrested December 14 after hurling his shoes at Mr. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad.

"Al-Zeidi did not attempt to physically hurt George Bush but to insult him and express the deep anger that so many Iraqis feel over the U.S. occupation. He should be immediately released and the Iraqi government should be held accountable for abusing him while in custody," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK.

"The treatment Al-Zeidi has received should shame all Americans and is likely to motivate as much anti-American sentiment as have the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib," said David Swanson, cofounder of AfterDowningStreet.org. "While our President and Vice President openly confess to authorizing torture, their puppet government in Iraq tortures a man for throwing shoes, in complete absence of even the pretense of 'interrogation,' much less a ticking time bomb. Freeing Al-Zeidi will not fix this situation. We must also put Bush and Cheney behind bars."

"There are credible reports that Montather Al-Ziedi has been tortured while in the custody of the government of Iraq," said Nick Mottern, Director of Consumers for Peace, one of the rally organizers, "and this alone provides the basis for setting him free."

"Mr. Al-Ziedi's act, in the context of the suffering caused by the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, can be seen as a legitimate form of self-expression," Mottern said, "but in any case his action is something that should be treated as nothing more than a misdemeanor in which his time already spent in jail would be more than sufficient."

The rally is being called by a coalition of peace and justice organizations including: CODEPINK: Women for Peace; Iraq Veterans Against the War; AfterDowningStreet.org; Consumers for Peace; Democrats.com, and others.

At the close of the rally, organizers will deliver a petition to Ambassador of Iraq to the United States Samir Sumaida’ie at the Iraqi embassy at 3421 Massachusetts Avenue NW.

On the NY Times' Editorial About Cheney

2008-12-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

In today's NYT:

December 23, 2008
EDITORIAL

The World According to Cheney

Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. After all, he said, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln did worse than that.

So Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history — Roosevelt’s decision to force Japanese-Americans into camps and Lincoln’s declaration of martial law to silence his critics? That’s not exactly a lofty standard of behavior.

Then again, it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Mr. Cheney has done in a series of exit interviews where he has made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years.

The invasion of Iraq was exactly the right thing to do, not an unnecessary war that required misleading Americans. The postinvasion period was not bungled to the point where Americans got shot up by an insurgency that the Bush team failed to see building.

The horrors at Abu Ghraib were not the result of the Pentagon’s decision to authorize abusive and illegal interrogation techniques, which Mr. Cheney endorsed. And only three men were subjected to waterboarding. (Future truth commissions take note.)

In Mr. Cheney’s reality, the crippling budget deficit was caused mainly by fighting two wars and by essential programs like “enhancing the security of our shipping container business.”

Well, no. The Bush team’s program to scan cargo for nuclear materials at air, land and sea ports has been mired in delays, cost overruns and questions about effectiveness. As for the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office has said the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy were the biggest reason that the budget went into the red.

Some of Mr. Cheney’s comments were self-serving spin (as when The Washington Times helpfully prodded him to reveal that even though the world might have seen Mr. Bush as insensitive to the casualties of war, Mr. Cheney himself made a “secret” mission to comfort the families of the dead.)

Mr. Cheney was simply dishonest about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize spying on Americans’ international calls without a warrant. He claimed the White House kept the Democratic and Republican Congressional leadership fully briefed on the program starting in late 2001. He said he personally ran a meeting at which “they were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike” that the program was essential and did not require further Congressional involvement.

But in a July 17, 2003, letter to Mr. Cheney, Senator John Rockefeller IV, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to “reiterate” the concerns he expressed in “the meeting today.” He said “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues” and created “concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology and surveillance.”

Mr. Cheney mocked Vice President-elect Joseph Biden for saying that he does not intend to have his own “shadow government” in the White House. Mr. Cheney said it was up to Mr. Biden to decide if he wants “to diminish the office of vice president.”

Based on Mr. Cheney’s record and his standards for measuring these things, we’re certain a little diminishing of that office would be good for the country.

* * *

If you go to the comments on the editorial you will find many letters stating that Bush and Cheney ought to be in prison and, as one writer put it, the New York Times has closed the barn door after the animals have already left.

Another person who is a former Legislative Director for a Congressperson points out in letter #342 that the Jay Rockefeller letter that the NYT puts so much stock in is a "cover your ass" letter that Congresspeople write all the time. The NYT, as this person notes, is not so naive as to truly think it is anything else.

What's in play here is the NYT's inability and unwillingness to step outside the safety of caviling at the margins and act in a way appropriate to the gravity of the situation.

It underscores the necessity for the American people to step beyond what our mass media and major parties will do.

This was my comment at their website on their editorial:

Unfortunately, Cheney isn't misrepresenting the essential facts with respect to the White House briefing the Democratic Congressional leadership on their felonious program of massive spying on the American people. While some of the Democratic leadership might have expressed some reservations such as Jay Rockefeller, the fact remains that none of them went public on this in a manner appropriate to the egregious and outrageous violations of the 1978 FISA law that prohibited surveillance without cause. Moreover, none of them did what WOULD have been meaningful if they really objected - moved to impeach. Letters such as Rockefeller's expressing misgivings and concerns mean exactly how much to someone like Bush and Cheney? It's like saying "No, no, no" to a spoiled and rotten kid demanding his way, while GIVING the damn kid what he wants.

Not only did Bush and Cheney involve and get the approval of the Democratic leadership for their ubiquitous spying, but also for the program of TORTURE, not "abuse" as you continue to describe it. Pelosi, among others, was briefed on their use of waterboarding at least as early as 2002.

What is more disturbing than what Bush and Cheney have done is that they have been allowed to get away with it by the Democrats and by the mass media. If they are not held to account and their precedents are allowed to stand, then anything that they have done and more can be and will eventually be done by future presidents. Even if Obama doesn't do it, in other words, some other president can and will. What happens, therefore, to the rule of law?

The New York Times to its credit exposed the warrantless spying, although it delayed revealing it for a full year, having known about it before the 2004 election, by acceding to the White House's entreaties to not reveal "national security secrets" to who? Why to the American people themselves who were being spied upon!

The Times, to its discredit, still refuses to call for impeachment and still refuses to call torture torture.

Obama Selects Rev. Rick Warren for the Inaugural Invocation

2008-12-18T10:30:00.000-08:00

More evidence of what finding common ground with people who want to delegitimize and stigmatize whole categories of people - which is what Obama's stance is - leads to:

From the Human Rights Campaign:

Letter to Pres-Elect Obama on Choice of Rev. Rick Warren to Deliver Invocation at 56th Presidential Inauguration

12/17/2008

WASHINGTON – Today the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, sent the following letter to President-elect Obama on the selection of anti-gay reverend, Rick Warren, to deliver the invocation at the 56th Presidential Inauguration set to take place on the West Front of the United States Capitol on January 20th.

The letter is as follows:
Dear President-elect Obama -

Let me get right to the point. Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans. Our loss in California over the passage of Proposition 8 which stripped loving, committed same-sex couples of their given legal right to marry is the greatest loss our community has faced in 40 years. And by inviting Rick Warren to your inauguration, you have tarnished the view that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have a place at your table.

Rick Warren has not sat on the sidelines in the fight for basic equality and fairness. In fact, Rev. Warren spoke out vocally in support of Prop 8 in California saying, “there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population ... This is not a political issue -- it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about." Furthermore, he continues to misrepresent marriage equality as silencing his religious views. This was a lie during the battle over Proposition 8, and it's a lie today.

Rev. Warren cannot name a single theological issue that he and vehemently, anti-gay theologian James Dobson disagree on. Rev. Warren is not a moderate pastor who is trying to bring all sides together. Instead, Rev. Warren has often played the role of general in the cultural war waged against LGBT Americans, many of whom also share a strong tradition of religion and faith.

We have been moved by your calls to religious leaders to own up to the homophobia and racism that has stood in the way of combating HIV and AIDS in this country. And that you have publicly called on religious leaders to open their hearts to their LGBT family members, neighbors and friends.

But in this case, we feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination. Only when Rev. Warren and others support basic legislative protections for LGBT Americans can we believe their claim that they are not four-square against our rights and dignity. In that light, we urge you to reconsider this announcement.

Sincerely,

Joe Solmonese
President
Human Rights Campaign

The Human Rights Campaign Foundation is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.

What One Person Can Do!

2008-12-18T10:26:00.000-08:00

Update:

About the shoe throwing incident, the New York Times shamefully said:

"Mr. Zaidi had been severely beaten by security officers on Sunday after being tackled at the press conference and dragged out. While he has not been formally charged, Iraqi officials said he faced up to seven years in prison if convicted of committing an act of aggression against a visiting head of state. No doubt he must face the charges - and punished if found guilty."

Would that the New York Times could aspire to acting with even a modicum of the forcefulness of truth that Mr. Zaidi did! Would that they could uphold the rights of the people in such a fashion, even in a pale shadow of his bravery! Would that journalists who have been so culpable in demurring to tell the people the truth about the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions were punished for that guilt! Would that the New York Times would face their responsibility and call for the prosecution and punishment of the monstrous war criminals Bush and Cheney and their gang!

The Shoes We Longed For

The young journalist who took on Bush has become a unifying Iraqi symbol, a national hero

Sami Ramadani
The Guardian, Wednesday 17 December 2008

Within a few unlikely seconds, a pair of size 10 shoes have become the most destructive weapon the people of Iraq have managed to throw at the occupying powers, after nearly six years of occupation and formidable resistance. One Iraqi writer called the shoes, hurled by a journalist at George Bush, "Iraq's weapon of comprehensive destruction".

While the uprisings of Falluja, Najaf, Basra and Baghdad against the occupation will always remain as landmarks of a people resisting occupation, these incredible seconds have united Iraqis in the most dramatic fashion.

Contrary to most media coverage, the 28-year-old TV reporter Muntadhar al-Zaidi made history not by merely throwing a pair of shoes, the highest expression of insult in Iraqi culture, at the US president, but by what he said while doing so and as he was smothered by US and Iraqi security men. He groaned as they dragged him out of the press conference. They succeeded in silencing him - and according to his brother he was beaten in custody - but he had already said enough to shake the occupation and Nouri al-Maliki's Green Zone regime to their foundations.

Strip the words away, and his and the Iraqi people's cry of deep pain, anger and defiance would amount to no more than a shoe-throwing insult. But the words were heard. "This is the farewell kiss, you dog," he shouted as he threw the first shoe. The crucial line followed the second shoe: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." Once those words were heard, the impact of a pair of shoes became electrifying. A young journalist has put aside the demands of his profession, preferring to act as the loudest cry of his long-suffering people. If one considers the torture and killings in Iraqi and US jails that Muntadhar often mentioned in his reports for al-Baghdadia satellite TV station, he was certainly aware he risked being badly hurt.

As the Iraqi and Arab satellite stations switched from the live press conference to reporting reaction to the event, the stunned presenters and reporters were swept away by popular expressions of joy in the streets, from Baghdad to Gaza to Casablanca. TV stations and media websites were inundated with messages of adulation. The instant reply to any criticism of "insulting a guest" was: "Bush is a mass murderer and a war criminal who sneaked into Baghdad. He killed a million Iraqis. He burned the country down."

Expressions of support and demands for Muntadhar's immediate release have spread from Najaf and Falluja to Baghdad, and from Mosul in the north to Basra in the south. An impressive show of anti-occupation unity is developing fast, after being weakened by the sectarian forces that the occupation itself has strengthened and nourished, as Muntadhar himself used to stress.

No one asked after Muntadhar's religion or sect, but they all loved his message. Indeed, I have yet to come across an Iraqi media outlet or website that pronounced on his religion, sect or ethnicity. The first I heard of his "sect" was through US and British media.

The reality is that Muntadhar is a secular socialist whose hero happens to be Che Guevara. He became a prominent leftwing student leader immediately after the occupation, while at Baghdad University's media college. He reported for al-Baghdadia on the poor and downtrodden victims of the US war. He was first on the scene in Sadr City and wherever people suffered violence or severe deprivation. He not only followed US Apache helicopters' trails of death and destruction, but he was also among the first to report every "sectarian" atrocity and the bombing of popular market places. He let the victims talk first.

It was effective journalism, reporting that the victims of violence themselves accused the US-led occupation of being behind all the carnage. He was a voice that could not be silenced, despite being kidnapped by a gang and arrested by US and regime forces.

His passion for the war's victims and his staunchly anti-occupation message endeared him to al-Baghdadia viewers. And after sending Bush out of Iraq in ignominy he has become a formidable national hero. The orphan who was brought up by his aunt, and whose name means the longed or awaited for, has become a powerful unifying symbol of defiance, and is being adopted by countless Iraqis as "our dearest son".

• Sami Ramadani, a political exile from Saddam's regime, is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University sami.ramadani@londonmet.ac.uk

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

Now, if only the courage shown by this Iraqi journalist were to be displayed by US journalists!

2008-12-17T08:59:00.000-08:00

Perhaps then this American Dog of a President would never have been allowed to seize the presidency in the first place, despite losing twice!

Throwing shoes at a tyrant beats licking their butts, which is what dogs are also wont to do.

Iraqi Journalist Hurls Shoes at Bush and Denounces Him on TV as a ‘Dog’ (December 15, 2008)

In Iraqi’s Shoe-Hurling Protest, Arabs Find a Hero. (It’s Not Bush.)

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and ABEER MOHAMMED

BAGHDAD — Calling someone the “son of a shoe” is one of the worst insults in Iraq. But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war.

In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes.

See the rest of the story:

Times Topics: Muntader al-Zaidi

Former CIA Officer Predicts Obama Will Employ Rendition

2008-12-14T15:03:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the New York Times published the following OpEd by Reuel Marc Gerecht, ex-CIA officer and a member of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a neocon think tank that includes Steve Forbes, Bill Kristol, Jack Kemp, Louis J. Freeh, Joseph Lieberman, Newt Gingrich, Max Kampelman, Robert Macfarlane, and James Woolsey. FDD's Board of Advisors are Gary Bauer, Rep. Eric Cantor, Frank Gaffney, Gene Gately, Charles Jacobs, General P.X. Kelley, Charles Krauthammer, Hon. Richard D. Lamm, Kathleen Troia "KT" McFarland, Sen. Zell Miller, Richard Perle, Steven Pomerantz, Oliver "Buck" Revell, Hon. Francis J. "Bing" West (This list courtesy of Wikipedia).

In his OpEd Gerecht postulates a "ticking time bomb" scenario:

"[I]f we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?"

Interestingly, the US government did have information about a pending attack on the US, with the World Trade Center Twin Towers specifically mentioned by more than one source. What did the Bush White House do about this?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Not only did they have information, they had a great deal of information, from diverse and multiple sources, without engaging in rendition and without employing torture.

In my book, Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney, you will find this abbreviated list, in Chapter 14 by Peter Phillips, Bridget Thornton, Lew Brown and Andrew Sloan, of what the White House knew before 9/11:

"A significant portion of the GDG [Global Dominance Group] had every opportunity to know in advance that the 9/11 attacks were imminent. Afghanistan, Argentina, Britain, the Cayman Islands, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, Russia, and from within the U.S. the intelligence community all warned the U.S. of imminent terrorist attacks. Some of the 9/11 prewarnings include:

"1996–2001: Federal authorities knew that suspected terrorists with ties to bin Laden received flight training at schools in the U.S. and abroad. An Oklahoma City FBI agent sent a memo warning that 'large numbers of Middle Eastern males' were getting flight training and could have been planning terrorist attacks. (CBS, May 30, 2002.) One convicted terrorist confessed that his planned role in a terror attack was to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. (Washington Post, September 23, 2001.)

"JUNE of 2001: German intelligence warned the CIA, Britain’s intelligence agency, and Israel’s Mossad that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack 'American and Israeli symbols which stand out.' (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 11, 2001; Washington Post, September 14, 2001; Fox News, May 17, 2002.)

"JUNE 28, 2001: George Tenet wrote an intelligence summary to Condoleezza Rice stating, 'It is highly likely that a significant al-Qaeda attack is in the near future, within several weeks.' (Washington Post, February 17, 2002.)

"JUNE–JULY 2001: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and national security aides were given briefs with headlines such as 'Bin Laden Threats Are Real' and 'Bin Laden Planning High Profile Attacks.' The exact contents of these briefings remain classified, but according to the 9/11 Commission, they consistently predicted upcoming attacks that would occur 'on a catastrophic level, indicating that they would cause the world to be in turmoil, consisting of possible multiple—but not necessarily simultaneous—attacks.' (9/11 Commission Report, April 13, 2004.)

"JULY 26, 2001: Attorney General Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines because of a threat assessment. (CBS, July 26, 2001.) The report of this warning was omitted from the 9/11 Commission Report. (Griffin, May 22, 2005.)

"AUGUST 6, 2001: President Bush received a classified intelligence briefing at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, warning that bin Laden might be planning to hijack commercial airliners; this briefing was entitled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States.' The entire memo focused on the possibility of terrorist attacks inside the U.S. and specifically mentioned the World Trade Center. (Newsweek, May 27, 2002; New York Times, May 15, 2002; Washington Post, April 11, 2004; White House, April 11, 2004; Intelligence Briefing, August 6, 2001.)

"AUGUST, 2001: Russian President Vladimir Putin warned the U.S. that suicide pilots were training for attacks on U.S. targets. (Fox News, May 17, 2002.) The head of Russian intelligence also later stated, 'We had clearly warned them' on several occasions, but they 'did not pay the necessary attention.' (Agence France-Presse, September 16, 2001.)

"SEPTEMBER 10, 2001: a group of top Pentagon officials received an urgent warning that prompted them to cancel their flight plans for the following morning. (Newsweek, September 17, 2001.) The 9/11 Commission Report omitted this report. (Griffin, May 22, 2005.)"

***

The "ticking time bomb" scenario allegedly necessitating the use of torture is a false premise for multiple reasons. I will elaborate on this question as I am able, time permitting. For now, remember that any scoundrel could cite an alleged "ticking time bomb" as a justification at any time. Is this the kind of world that we want to live in where anyone has license, as long as he or she cites the suspicion that there's a bomb about to go off, to torture someone? Torture is, as international law makes crystal clear, at all times and under all circumstances unjust, immoral, illegal and barbaric. Those who want to claim, as does Gerecht, that "we're the good guys" and "they're the bad guys" and "when we torture people we do it morally" are either trying to fool others or are engaging in self-deception as well as duplicity.

See the Op-Ed in question below:

December 13, 2008

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR | TRANSITIONS

Out of Sight

By REUEL MARC GERECHT
Prague

FEW post-9/11 issues have produced more anxiety and revulsion than the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of “aggressive interrogation” and the extrajudicial rendition of terrorist suspects to countries that practice torture. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to ban waterboarding and other pain-inflicting soliciting techniques, as well as rendition. He has also promised to close the Guantánamo Bay prison.

More broadly, liberal Democrats in Congress intend to deploy a more moral counterterrorism, where the ends — stopping the slaughter of civilians by Islamic holy warriors — no longer justifies reprehensible means. Winning the hearts and minds of foreigners by remaining true to our nobler virtues is now seen as the way to defeat our enemies while preserving our essential goodness.

Sounds uplifting. Don’t bet on it happening.

Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.

Of course, he and his senior officials seem to believe now that they don’t have to make this choice. For them there is a better way to combat terrorism, by using physically non-coercive questioning of suspects and civilian courts or military courts-martial to try and punish jihadists.

But this third way, which is essentially where America was before the Clinton administration embraced rendition, is plausible only if Mr. Obama is lucky. He might be. If there is no “ticking time bomb” situation — say, where waterboarding a future Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (the 9/11 mastermind) could save thousands of civilians — then there is neither need for the C.I.A.’s exceptional methods, nor the harsh services of Jordan’s General Intelligence Department.

And there are signs that Mr. Obama won’t have to confront such a situation. Through American and allied efforts, Al Qaeda has sustained enormous damage since 9/11. Osama bin Laden’s decisive battle in Iraq, where Al Qaeda intended to re-energize its holy war against the Americans among the Arabs, has turned into a military and moral disaster. Arab Muslim fundamentalists have finally started the great debate as to whether it is, in fact, unacceptable to kill believers and nonbelievers in jihad.

And the internal-security services of our allies in Europe are, on the whole, vastly better today than they were in 2001. Thanks to intrusive surveillance methods (many of which are outlawed in the United States), they are much more efficient in pre-empting the plots of holy warriors traversing their borders.

However, troubles in Pakistan may well reverse Mr. Obama’s luck. He has said he intends to be hawkish about fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Central Asia. So, let us suppose that he increases the number of Special Forces raids into Pakistan, and those soldiers capture members of Al Qaeda and their computers, and learn that the group has advanced plans for striking American and European targets, but we don’t know specifically where or when.

What would Mr. Obama do? After all, if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?

Mr. Obama will probably not have the option of ordering the C.I.A. to aggressively interrogate another member of Al Qaeda — not after running a campaign that highlighted the moral failings of President Bush. To get the C.I.A. back in the interrogation business would probably require a liberal Democratic Congress to pass laws guaranteeing case officers’ immunity from criminal and civil prosecution. This seems unlikely — unless, of course, the United States is again devastated by a terrorist strike.

And because of Mr. Obama’s plan to close Guantánamo, the Justice Department is already going to have to figure out how to move, try, punish and release its detainees. Thus the last thing in the world the Obama administration will want is to bring in more “enemy combatants” from the Central Asian battlefield.

Which brings us back to rendition, which, properly understood, is what Americans do when they realize that active counterterrorism against jihadists prepared to use mass-casualty weapons is an ethical, juridical and operational tar pit. It isn’t an ideal solution — American intelligence officers have no control of the questioning, and Washington can become beholden to foreign security services — but it’s a satisfactory compromise. Just ask Samuel R. Berger, the national-security adviser for President Bill Clinton, who no doubt worked through all the pitfalls when he first approved extrajudicial rendition.

In addition, the C.I.A. is able to guard the secrecy of foreign-liaison operations more effectively, especially from Congressional prying, than it can its own activities. It has also certainly paid close attention to how the press tracked some of its clandestine international flights carrying terrorism suspects after 9/11, and will in the future undoubtedly make it much harder to sleuth out who is going where.

A dense bipartisan moral fog surrounds rendition. Former senior Clinton officials can still deny that they sent anyone away in order that he be tortured. Few are as honest and frank as Walt Slocombe, a Clinton undersecretary of defense who once remarked that the difference between Democratic and Republican rendition was that Democrats “drilled air holes in the boxes.”

If Mr. Obama’s Democrats get blown back into the ugly world that we live in, and resume rendition (and, of course, fib about it), then President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who have been vilified for besmirching America’s honor, may at least take some consolation in knowing that hypocrisy is always the homage vice pays to virtue.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Senator Charles Schumer, Wall Street, Deregulation and the Current Crisis

2008-12-14T09:11:00.001-08:00

“He [Schumer] is mindful that this is a very big part of his constituency — Wall Street.”

Today's New York Times' "A Champion of Wall Street Reaps Benefits: the Reckoning," a lengthy piece by Eric Lipton, Raymond Hernandez, with contributions by Griff Palmer, recounts the role played by the senior Democratic Senator from New York, Charles Schumer. The piece is well-worth reading.

“We are not going to be a bunch of crazy, anti-business liberals,” one executive said, summarizing Mr. Schumer’s remarks. “We are going to be effective, moderate advocates for sound economic policies, good responsible stewards you can trust.”

Responsible stewards indeed! Trustworthy, without a doubt!

Schumer epitomizes the neoliberal sensibilities dominant among the Democrats: deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. Now that the crisis has struck that others could see and warned vigorously of, warnings that Schumer dismissed while helping his primary constituency, Wall Street, make boatloads of money, Schumer is now backing some limited regulatory mechanisms and blaming the crisis on those that he had helped so much when the storm clouds were gathering. This is Schumer doing what he has always done and what has characterized his career, protecting big capital's interests.

No, those aren't storm clouds, Schumer would say. Those clouds are bright white, they're not dark and gloomy. That wind you feel is merely a trifle. A slight breeze. Not the harbingers of a hurricane.

With leaders such as these, beholden to and in the pockets of the corporate elite, no wonder we're in such straits. But this is what neoliberalism reaps.

Fed Refuses to Reveal Who They've Loaned $2 Trillion to

2008-12-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

“In its considered judgment and in view of current circumstances, it would be a dangerous step to release this otherwise confidential information,” Jennifer J. Johnson, the secretary for the Fed’s Board of Governors, said in a letter e-mailed to Bloomberg News.

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Bloomberg filed suit Nov. 7 under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act requesting details about the terms of 11 Fed lending programs, most created during the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed responded Dec. 8, saying it’s allowed to withhold internal memos as well as information about trade secrets and commercial information. The institution confirmed that a records search found 231 pages of documents pertaining to some of the requests.

“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets.

For the rest of this story, go here.

Ain't democracy great?

Riots Spread From Greece Across Europe

2008-12-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

By PAUL HAVEN, AP

MADRID, Spain (Dec. 11) - The unrest that has gripped Greece is spilling over into the rest of Europe, raising concerns the clashes could be a trigger for opponents of globalization, disaffected youth and others outraged by the continent's economic turmoil and soaring unemployment.

Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks this week, while in France, cars were set ablaze Thursday outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux, where protesters scrawled graffiti warning about a looming "insurrection."

Read the rest and see photos here.

See also indymedia, where the photo above is posted.

September 11 families denounce Guantanamo trials

2008-12-11T10:05:00.001-08:00

Reuters
Wed Dec 10, 2008 4:25pm EST
By Jane Sutton

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) - Two dozen people who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks issued a statement on Wednesday denouncing the Guantanamo war crimes trials as illegitimate, shameful and politically motivated.

Their criticism came in response to passionate praise for the Guantanamo tribunals from other victims' relatives, whom the Pentagon brought to the remote U.S. naval base in Cuba this week to observe pretrial hearings for five prisoners charged with plotting the September 11 attacks.

"These prosecutions have been politically motivated from the start, are designed to ensure quick convictions at the expense of due process and transparency, and are structured to prevent the revelation of abusive interrogations and torture engaged in by the U.S. government," said the 24 relatives who signed Wednesday's statement, which was distributed through the American Civil Liberties Union.

They said any verdict in the Guantanamo proceedings, which are formally known as military commissions, would leave them wondering if justice had been served.

"No comfort or closure can come from military commissions that ignore the rule of law and stain America's reputation at home and abroad," they said. "It is time for our nation to stop betraying its own values and the values of so many who died on 9/11."

For the rest of the story, go to Reuters.

Ray McGovern on Torture, Obama, and Congress

2008-12-11T08:24:00.000-08:00

consortiumnews.com

Will Obama Buy Torture-Lite?

By Ray McGovern
December 11, 2008

You’ve got to hand it to them. Torture aficionados at the White House and CIA have conned key congressional leaders into insisting not only that torture-lite would be a swell idea, but advocating that the overseers of torture be kept on.

From change-you-can-believe-in, we seem to be slipping back to fear-you-can-trade-on.

Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, has publicly warned those in charge of the administration transition that “continuity is going to be pivotal in keeping us safe and secure.”

Thus, he argues, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden should stay in their posts.

If that were not enough, Reyes told Congress Daily’s Chris Strohm that he [Reyes] had advised the Obama team that some parts of what Strohm referred to as “CIA’s controversial alternative interrogation program” should be allowed to continue.

Using some of the same euphemisms and circumlocutions employed by the ersatz-lawyers hired by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, Reyes fired this shot across the bow of Barack Obama’s transition ship:

“It gets back to a world that is very dangerous. … There are some options that need to be available. … We don’t want to be known for torturing people. At the same time, we don’t want to limit our ability to get information that’s vital and critical to our national security. That’s where the new administration is going to have to decide what those parameters are, what those limitations are.”

Background

Someone needs to tell Reyes what those parameters – what those limitations – should be. They are set by the Geneva Accords and the U.S. War Crimes Act of 1996. Those are the laws that President Bush’s overly clever lawyers told him he could safely — well, pretty safely — disregard, because of the “new paradigm” post 9/11.

Pretty safely? Even those Mafia-type lawyers felt it necessary to warn their clients that Section 2441 of the U.S. War Crimes Act, passed by a Republican-led Congress in 1996, could conceivably come back to haunt the president and others who approved of or took part in torture. This is the best they could do by way of offering reassurance:

“It is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors and independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination [that Geneva does not apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”

If that sounds like the kind of advice one would expect to get from lawyers for the Mob, that’s because it is.

The casuistry virtually drips from a Jan. 25, 2002, memorandum for the President drafted by then-counsel to the Vice President, David Addington, and signed by then-counsel to the President, Alberto Gonzales. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell objected for a day or so but then saluted sharply, as is his wont.

As will be seen below, the lawyers’ advice did come back to haunt the President, putting him in a real sweat until he got Congress to grant him retroactive immunity.

To say President Bush was dumb to take their dubious advice is not the half of it. Really dumb was his decision to put it in writing, since the goons uncovered by CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were not about to torture without a signed authorization from the President.

Bush decided to go ahead on the basis of the Addington/Gonzales opinion and signed a presidential memorandum on Feb. 7, 2002, incorporating the advice. The opinion is written verbatim, twice, into that short executive memorandum.

Over the President’s large black felt-tip signature appears convoluted text depicting, despite itself, a circle that refuses to be squared. Bush orders that detainees be treated “humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.”

That was the official start of post-9/11 torture authorized from the top, although an American, John Walker Lindh, was the first to be actually tortured after being captured on Nov. 25, 2001, during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan – when senior Justice Department officials deliberately chose not to prevent it.

In the wake of the smoking-gun presidential memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002, subsequent memos by the administration’s Mob lawyers were mostly ex post facto attempts at CYA.

Shame

What incalculable shame this has brought on the U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency, in both of which I was privileged to serve. I am hardly the first to use a Mafia analogy.

Consider the case of Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who was the first to investigate the Abu Ghraib prison abuse — the most glaring result of the President’s memo and Rumsfeld’s implementing instructions.

“Make sure this happens!” in Rumsfeld’s handwriting appeared on a memo over Rumsfeld’s signature that was prominently posted at Abu Ghraib.

Taguba issued a tough report, which was then leaked to the press — and thus was largely responsible for preventing the scandal from being swept entirely under the rug. Rather than thank Taguba for upholding the honor of the U.S. military, the Bush administration singled him out for ridicule, retribution and forced retirement.

Taguba told Seymour Hersh of a chilling conversation he had with Gen. John Abizaid, then head of Central Command, a few weeks after Taguba’s report became public in 2004. Sitting in the back of Abizaid’s Mercedes sedan in Kuwait, Abizaid quietly told Taguba, “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I’d been in the Army 32 years by then,” Taguba told Hersh, “and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

Getting Squared Away

The Army, to its credit, was able to push brownnoses like Abizaid off to the margins and, more important, to keep Mob lawyers out of the process of updating the Army Field Manual for interrogation.

Such was not the case at CIA, where Mob lawyers continued to prosper — including the one who offered interrogators the following basic guidance: “If the victim dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

I like to think that our nation’s decisions are not totally bereft of moral considerations, and that a majority of Americans would agree that torture — like rape or slavery — is intrinsically evil.

But torture is also intrinsically dumb. And an Army general with guts said precisely that on the very day President Bush was extolling the merits of “alternative sets of procedures” for interrogation.

Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, a career intelligence officer and expert in interrogations, minced no words in describing the new Army Field Manual (FM 2-22.3, Human Intelligence Collection Operations).

He stressed that it is “consistent with the requirements of law, the Detainee Treatment Act, and the Geneva Conventions, and that it was endorsed by the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Director of National Intelligence. The DNI, Kimmons said, “coordinated laterally with the CIA.”

Doesn’t take a crackerjack intelligence analyst to figure out why the CIA would not “endorse” it.

As a former Army intelligence officer, who had to commit the previous interrogation field manual virtually to memory, I was particularly proud that Kimmons had the guts to seize the bull by the horns:

Conceding past “transgressions and mistakes,” Kimmons insisted: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.

“Moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress through the use of abusive techniques would be of questionable credibility. And additionally, it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can’t go there.

“Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been — in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized, humane interrogation practices in clever ways that you would hope Americans would use them, to push the envelope within the bookends of the legal, moral, and ethical — now as further defined by this field manual. So we don’t need abusive practices in there. Nothing good will come from them.”

No Torture Commandments

Kimmons emphasized that the new manual is written in “straightforward language for use by soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines; it is not written for lawyers.” He explained that the field manual explicitly prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment or punishment.

Among the specific prohibitions were:

-Interrogators may not force a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts or pose in a sexual manner;

-They cannot use hoods or place sacks over a detainee’s head or use duct tape over his eyes;

-They cannot beat or electrically shock or burn them or inflict other forms of physical pain — any form of physical pain;

-They may not use water boarding, hypothermia, or treatment which will lead to heat injury;

-They will not perform mock executions;

-They may not deprive detainees of the necessary food, water, and medical care; and

-They may not use dogs in any aspect of interrogation.

Meanwhile, just across the Potomac at the White House an hour later that same day (Sept. 6, 2006), President Bush devoted half of a long speech to cops-and-robbers examples, none of them confirmed or persuasive, showing how “tough” interrogation techniques — he called them “an alternative set of procedures” — had yielded information preventing all manner of catastrophe.

He made clear that his government had “changed its policies,” giving intelligence personnel “the tools they need” to fight terrorists, and that he wanted the “CIA program” to continue.

Bush appealed for and, just before Congress changed hands in November 2006, got legislation granting retroactive immunity to him and other practitioners of “alternative” procedures.

Several months earlier, on June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that Geneva DOES apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, and rejected the artifice of “unitary executive power” used by the Bush administration to “justify” practices like torture.

One senior Bush official is reported to have gone quite pale when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy raised the ante, warning that “violations of Common Article 3 [of Geneva] are considered ‘war crimes.’”

That threw a scare into a whole bunch of what one might call “unitary executives,” prompting the President on Sept. 6, 2006, to ask Congress to give “top priority” to new legislation holding them harmless for violation of Geneva, which they got a couple of months later.

Back to the Future

You may have been told, Chairman Reyes, that when Rep. Charlie Wilson took the reins of a House intelligence oversight panel, he immediately wrote to the operations people at CIA, saying, “Well, gentlemen, the fox is in the hen house. Do whatever you like.”

Your predecessor as House Intelligence Committee chair, Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, also gave the CIA free rein as long as then-Director George Tenet did the White House’s bidding — whatever that bidding happened to be.

Is that how you see your role, Mr. Congressman? Why have you been running interference for the Bush/Cheney administration?

Specifically, why did you stiff-arm those of your colleagues who wanted to put language into the FY09 Intelligence Authorization Bill ordering CIA interrogators to adhere to the Army Field Manual for interrogation?

Have a look at the above list of practices expressly forbidden by the manual. Have the folks in the hen house told you that some are absolutely necessary?

You served in Vietnam. Did you see “alternative techniques” in use there? Could you visualize them being used on you — or your grandsons?

Do you think former Air Force General and now CIA Director Michael Hayden or former Navy Admiral Mike McConnell know more about effective interrogation techniques than the head of Army intelligence?

Getting Snowed

Are you not aware that many of those on the operations side of CIA ply their trade as con men? Such activities are supposed to be directed abroad. But all too often they are applied with consummate, smirking skill to the Hill.

Don’t believe the stories they tell you about alleged “successes” of torture techniques. They are normally told by folks with zero experience or folks simply snowing you.

Take former Deputy Director John McLaughlin, for example. I have known John for 40 years; he would not recognize an interrogation if he tripped over one.

And he and his boss Tenet were so duplicitous that the former head of State Department intelligence permitted himself the undiplomatic comment that the two should have been shot for their role in deliberately falsifying intelligence — like that concerning those non-existent “mobile biological weapons laboratories” in Iraq.

Not long ago, McLaughlin made the mistake of purveying the myth about how effective harsh interrogation techniques have been, with the usual “If you saw the intelligence I have seen…”

Trouble was, the senior intelligence officer he was talking to had seen it all, and more, and answered, “I have seen all of it John. Either you are naïve, incredibly credulous, or you are lying.”

How McLaughlin and John Brennan, both eager accomplices of George Tenet, got picked for the intelligence transition team boggles the minds of those of us who are familiar with their role in the saddest and most unconscionable chapters of U.S. intelligence — both analysis and operations.

But there they are, whispering into the credulous ears of people like Silvestre Reyes.

Chairman Reyes, go talk to Gen. Kimmons.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, during which he chaired National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the President’s Daily Brief. He is now a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Strangling Dissent, Muzzling Whisleblowers

2008-12-09T16:02:00.001-08:00

See my essay posted today at OpEd News.

Berkeley City Council Calls for UCB to prosecute John Yoo for War Crimes

2008-12-09T15:36:00.000-08:00

Berkeley city council urges U.S. to prosecute former Bush official

Carolyn Jones, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

(12-09) 11:19 PST Berkeley -- After an emotional, fiery debate over academic freedom and torture, Berkeley's city council passed a measure late Monday night imploring the U.S. to prosecute Berkeley resident and former White House official John Yoo for war crimes.

Yoo, a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, wrote the legal memos justifying torture while interrogating terrorism suspects while he served as Deputy Assistant Attorney general for the Bush administration in 2001-03.

"John Yoo took a material involvement in the deaths and torture of untold numbers of people," said city councilman Max Anderson, choking back tears during the council's debate. "The broken bodies, the broken spirits, the broken trust he wrought with his actions - that's why they call these crimes against humanity."

Yoo was not available for comment Tuesday.

The council stopped short of passing the full original measure, put forth by the Peace and Justice Commission, which called for the city to urge UC Berkeley to re-arrange its class schedule so no student would be required to take a course from Yoo.

"I don't think we should be dictating course policy to the University," said city councilman Laurie Capitelli.

Yoo teaches constitutional and international law at Boalt, but he won't be in Berkeley much longer. He was appointed in September to be a visiting professor at Chapman University in Orange County, serving from January to May 2009.

E-mail Carolyn Jones at carolynjones@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/09/BA0I14K7P3.DTL

Use Good Search and Raise Money for World Can't Wait

2008-12-07T07:25:00.000-08:00

Support WCW without spending a dime.

Use www.GoodSearch.com <http://www.goodsearch.com/> , powered by Yahoo!, as your search engine to help raise money for World Can't Wait.

Click onto the link above and enter World Can't Wait as the organization you want your donations to go to. It's very simple.

World Can't Wait needs funds urgently to continue its critical work.

My Letter to the Berkeley City Council

2008-12-06T11:43:00.000-08:00

December 6, 2008

Dear Sir/Madam:

I write to support the resolution that John Yoo be prosecuted for war crimes and dismissed from his position as Boalt Hall Professor of Law.

I am a sociologist, a criminologist, and co-editor/author of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney.

The crimes committed by the Bush White House are widespread, extensive, shocking to the conscience, and undermine the rule of law. John Yoo has played and is playing a very significant role as a co-conspirator of the Bush White House’s crimes against humanity, declaring in writing and in speeches that the President’s power is not limited by separation of powers or by the law, whether national or international. That presidential power, according to Mr. Yoo, includes the right to commit horrific acts of torture and murder of detainees and suspects.

Berkeley has a proud tradition of standing up for justice. I can hardly think of a more important duty than to stand up for the victims of torture and to stand up against the acts of those in our government who have consciously facilitated monstrous acts of inhumanity as policy.

I feel deep shame as an American and as a Chinese American for Mr. Yoo’s deeds and for the deeds of the White House that he so willingly and enthusiastically served and serves to this day. The fact that reportedly Mr. Yoo is an engaging professor for law students does not gainsay the fact that he is a war criminal, the latter a fact that is beyond dispute.

War criminals should not face safe harbor anywhere. They should be and must be condemned for their acts and advocacy. People of conscience must speak up and fight against tyranny or the tyrants will prevail. Every generation faces its own tests and found either worthy or wanting. This generation faces an historic challenge, the outcome of which will reverberate for generations and generations to follow. What is at stake here cannot be overestimated.

I urge that you pass this resolution and go on record on the right side of history.

Sincerely,

Dr. Dennis Loo
Professor of Sociology
Cal Poly Pomona

***

Please send a letter or call the City Council and Mayor. See this posting for background and their contact information.

Slip Sliding Away and the Democrats: Is Torture Torture Or Not?

2008-12-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

[Update: Feinstein's office added in a communication with Michael Scherer of Time magazine the following to what she had previously issued: Saying "that she still wants a law that mandates the Field Manual as the sole interrogation standard, but that she may be willing to be talked back from that position by the Obama Administration, if it chooses to do so." This confirms my assessment that Feinstein and Wyden were reacting to signals from the Obama team - DL.

Feinstein further added in her comments to Scherer: "I plan to introduce legislation in January that would close Guantanamo, make the Army Field Manual the single standard for interrogations, prohibit contractors from being used to carry out interrogations and provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with access to detainees."

This "addition" of hers, however, does not add anything to what she said previously. It merely restates her vacillation - DL.]

After consistently and unequivocally demanding that the Bush White House employ nothing other than the Army Field Manual in their interrogations, even introducing legislation to ensure that, Sen. Diane Feinstein – who is going to take over as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January - backtracked in a December 2, 2008 interview in the New York Times:

“[I]n an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. ‘I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,’ she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures.

“Afterward, however, Mrs. Feinstein issued a statement saying: ‘The law must reflect a single clear standard across the government, and right now, the best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual. I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new administration to consider them.’"

The Times article goes on to further relate Sen. Ron Wyden’s remarks:

“Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he would consult with the C.I.A. and approve interrogation techniques that went beyond the Army Field Manual as long as they were ‘legal, humane and noncoercive.’ But Mr. Wyden declined to say whether C.I.A. techniques ought to be made public.”

These remarks bode exceedingly ill for current and future detainees of the U.S. government and for American soldiers who might be captured, and of course, for the fate of this country and the world.

As Glenn Greenwald on December 4 noted at length, Feinstein and Wyden are now backtracking on their very public and consistent stands opposing the use of techniques beyond what the Army Field Manual proscribes.

The fact that no member of Congress filibustered, and thereby stopped torture forthwith, when the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was being debated, or when, even before that, torture was revealed to be going on (Nancy Pelosi knew in 2002), and the fact that no one outside of a handful of Congress, led by Dennis Kucinich, have moved for impeaching this White House of torturers, of course, would have - and still would - render all of these contortions unnecessary.

But so it goes – and continues to go: the Democrats, when left to their own devices, coalesce with the GOP, in the absence of a determined and irresistible mass movement that could force this government, Democrat and Republican alike, to do otherwise: that is, the right thing.

What’s going on?

Greenwald speculates that it was easy for Congressional Democrats to claim that torture must be avoided under all circumstances when anything they passed to that effect could be and was vetoed or signing statemented-away by Bush, but now if they pass such a law, Obama’s on record as saying that torture should be ended, and he would therefore have to sign such a bill. Therefore, the Senators are waffling because they don’t really want to such a bill to become law.

Certainly, Democrats have set the bar very high for world-class waffling and far be it from me to dispute that they might be doing so. But Greenwald’s explanation doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

While he is right about the Senate Democrats backtracking, what’s in play here is more disturbing.

Let’s look closely at Feinstein’s remarks, which were not issued off the cuff but were reissued by her office to expand upon what she said to the Times:

“[T]he best choice appears to be the Army Field Manual. I recognize that there are other views, and I am willing to work with the new administration to consider them.”

Whose views are these “other views?” They could perhaps be originating from the GOP or the current White House, although if that is the source, this is a strange way of putting it since the White House’s views and practice on this are known to everyone and not new for that reason. No, the source of these “other views” is the incoming Obama administration. Yes, the same administration that has repeatedly said that torture is wrong and said that they will end it when they take office.

The Senate Democrats are not acting on their own and would not be issuing these new equivocal statements without first being signaled by the President-Elect’s team and possibly Obama himself that they are considering some “alternative sets of procedures” for interrogations. Party members don’t go off on their own in such a dramatic fashion without first checking with the leaders of their Party.

This shift by Feinstein and Wyden is, unfortunately, consistent with signals coming from the Obama team within the last few weeks on what they are planning to do about the Guantanamo detainees, about creating a new kind of court (“National Security Courts”), and about continuing “preventive detention.” If they do go ahead with these plans, they will have joined unequivocally the no man’s land realm that the Bush cabal has been occupying.

The Times’ piece, authored by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, begins by describing the withdrawal of Brennan from consideration as the next CIA chief:

“John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama’s likeliest choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal critics attacked his alleged role in the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Mr. Brennan protested that he had been a ‘strong opponent’ within the agency of harsh interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left.” [Boldfacing added].

Mazzetti and Shane “forgot” to mention that Brennan has also been an exponent of the massive warrantless surveillance of all of America.

By describing Brennan’s role in supporting rendition and torture as “alleged” Mazzetti and Shane were engaging in the equivalent of declaring that 2+2 = 4 (allegedly).

It’s like Hillary Clinton cagily saying during the campaign that Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim, “as far as I know.”

This is what Brennan said in a March 8, 2006 Frontline interview: ”I think George [Tenet] had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice review.”

Why was there concern of possible prosecution for CIA officers? There would be no concern if these CIA figures were following the Army Field Manual. There was only concern because they were engaging in practices prohibited by the AFM and that are unequivocally categorized by the Geneva Conventions as torture.

Mainstream media can’t bring itself to name practices for what they are when it comes to calling out government officials for what they are doing, but Mazzetti and Shane have no trouble describing in derogatory terms the critics of rendition, torture and massive, felonious surveillance as “ardent supporters on the left.”

I suppose that being opposed to torture makes you a lefty and hence all right-thinking, non-ardent, middle of the roaders or righties are for torture?

Brennan isn’t an “ardent” supporter of rendition. No, ardent isn’t good. He’s merely an “alleged” supporter of such practices.

Is it then better that we be “allegedly critics of torture?”

Speaking of alleged critics of torture: quo vadis Obama and the Congressional Democrats?

Silence in a Time of Torture Signifies Tacit Approval

2008-12-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

A message in support of a Berkeley City Council Resolution on John Yoo:

The Berkeley Peace and Justice Commission's recommendation to the City Council presents an important call for all Americans to stand in opposition to abetting John Yoo, University of California professor and author of the "Torture Memos" which were key to the establishment of a system of state torture. This Resolution calls for John Yoo to be prosecuted for war crimes and dismissed from his position as Professor of Law at Boalt Hall. The ramifications of the Resolution ensure that torture is not tolerated in the city of Berkeley and will serve as a model for other communities' efforts to hold high administration officials of torture to account. The passage of the John Yoo Resolution presents a critical step in investigating the codification, implementation, and acceleration of the authorization of torture—a responsible step that must now be taken to call for the end of torture as a pillar for endless war.

FireJohnYoo.org, a member of the No To Torture - John Yoo Must Go Coalition, supports the Commission's John Yoo Resolution and asks organizations and individual advocates to do the same. Fire John Yoo encourages directly contacting city council members to support the Resolution, and to visibly stand and speak out against torture before the City Council on December 8th. If you are unable to attend the Public Hearing, please write a statement that can be submitted to the Council. By taking these actions, we can have an enormous impact on the direction the U.S. will take in honoring its commitment to rescind the use of torture.

People of conscience demand the removal of John Yoo, legal architect of the Bush Regime's torture policies, from the employ of the University of California. How will the community of Berkeley respond when someone asks: "What did you do during this time?"

Linda Rigas
JD Candidate, New England School of Law, Boston, Massachusetts
Member of FireJohnYoo.org
Legal Intern, Physicans for Human Rights

Public Hearing Monday, December 8

2134 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way
City Council Meetings begin at 7:00 PM

A copy of the Peace and Justice recommendation can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/65oruh (see "Attachment #1").

Write and call Berkeley City Council Members to show your support for
recommended actions against John Yoo, Legal Advisor to the Bush
administration and author of memos giving the green light for torture:

Mayor Tom Bates mayor@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7100

District 1 Linda Maio lmaio@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7110

District 2 Darryl Moore dmoore@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7120

District 3 Max Anderson manderson@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7130

District 4 Jesse Arreguin jarreguin@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7140

District 5 Laurie Capitelli lcapitelli@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7150

District 6 Susan Wengraf swengraf@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7160

District 7 Kriss Worthington kworthington@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7170

District 8 Gordon Wozniak gwozniak@CityofBerkeley.info (510) 981-7180

The Mayor and Council Members may be reached by mail at:
2180 MilviaStreet
Berkeley, CA 94704.

Right-Wingers and Neocons Love Obama's Cabinet Appointments

2008-12-03T13:11:00.000-08:00

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet

Posted on November 30, 2008, Printed on December 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/109160/

As Barack Obama's opus, Team of Rivals, continues its rolling debut, the early reviews are in and the "critics" are full of praise for the cast:

"[T]he new administration is off to a good start."
-- Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell.

"[S]uperb ... the best of the Washington insiders ... this will be a valedictocracy -- rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes."
-- David Brooks, conservative New York Times columnist

"[V]irtually perfect ... "
-- Senator Joe Lieberman, former Democrat and John McCain's top surrogate in the 2008 campaign.

"[R]eassuring."
-- Karl Rove, "Bush's brain."

"I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain ... this all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign ... [Hillary] Clinton and [James] Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for 'neo-liberalism' which is not so different in many respects from 'neo-conservativism.'"
-- Max Boot, neoconservative activist, former McCain staffer.

"I see them as being sort of center-right of the Democratic party."
-- James Baker, former Secretary of State and the man who led the theft of the 2000 election.

"[S]urprising continuity on foreign policy between President Bush's second term and the incoming administration ... certainly nothing that represents a drastic change in how Washington does business. The expectation is that Obama is set to continue the course set by Bush ... "
-- Michael Goldfarb of the neoconservative Weekly Standard.

"I certainly applaud many of the appointments ... "
-- Senator John McCain

"So far, so good."
-- Senator Lamar Alexander, senior Republican Congressional leader.

Hillary Clinton will be "outstanding" as Secretary of State
-- Henry Kissinger, war criminal

Rahm Emanuel is "a wise choice" in the role of Chief of Staff
-- Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, John McCain's best friend.

Obama's team shows "Our foreign policy is non-partisan."
-- Ed Rollins, top Republican strategist and Mike Huckabee's 2008 campaign manager

"The country will be in good hands."
-- Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's Secretary of State

**Team of Rivals will be playing all day, every day for at least the next four years**

Jeremy Scahill pledges to be the same journalist under an Obama administration that he was during Bill Clinton and George Bush's presidencies. He is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army and is a frequent contributor to The Nation and Democracy Now! He is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/109160/

On Obama's Foreign Policy Apppointments

2008-12-02T07:47:00.001-08:00

Max Boot, former McCain campaign staffer and neocon leader: "I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain," Boot wrote. The appointment of General Jones and the retention of Gates at defence "all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign."

This is an excerpt from Jeremy Scahill's "Barack Obama's Kettle of Hawks," posted today at truthout.org.

Iraq War Resister on the Importance of Creating a Culture of Resistance

2008-12-02T06:54:00.000-08:00

The following is a presentation given by Matthis Chiroux, a U.S. Army Veteran, at the "Stopping the Endless Wars and Torture: Resisters Speak Out" event held on the evening of November 22nd, 2008, in conjunction with World Can't Wait's national conference in Chicago. [Go to worldcantwait.net for the video/audio].

My name is Matthis Chiroux.

I was in the Army 5 years. I was honorably discharged last summer. I received forced activation orders this past February, which I publicly refused in the U.S. Congress this past May. The U.S. Army has decided to prosecute me for my refusal to go to Iraq. That will probably be going down in January. I’m going to fight that tooth and nail as I promised to do last May.

I want to talk about this concept of military resistance, of soldiers and sailors saying “no” to this occupation and how we as American citizens can make that decision easier for them, because it is not something that is the slightest bit easy, even for the most progressive of us. I think out of all the people I met in the Army, I was pretty much the furthest left. The fact that I had to struggle for months over whether or not to deploy to Iraq is indicative of the fact that we do not have a society here which is ready to receive GI resisters as heroes rather than traitors.

That’s one of the first and most important things that we have to drive home about this concept of GI resistance. For GI resistance to be a reality, we have to have a society that’s willing to support it. The other vets in the room tell me if I’m wrong, but at least for me, when I was in the military, one of my biggest fears honestly was not physical pain or even getting blown up. My number one fear was being thought of as a coward. I didn’t want my fellow service members, I didn’t want my countrymen, I didn’t want the leaders of my nation to think that I, Matthis Chiroux, was a coward.

And that’s something that we’ve all been told we would be if we refused to go fight. It didn’t matter if that was in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or wherever they decided to send us, the idea of refusing to kill has been painted to service members as an act of cowardice. And it is something that unfortunately in this country is still reflected back at us, even among those who would like to call themselves progressives and Democrats.

The idea of service members saying, “No, I’m not going to do that!” is still unacceptable. And that’s a shame. More often than not, when I tell people that I refused to deploy to Iraq last summer – and this is in New York City, where I live, supposedly a very progressive center of the world – the first thing they say back to me is “well, aren’t you required to follow orders?” This is even very progressive people that I know. And I have to explain to them, “well, before that, there’s this part in the enlistment oath where you’re supposed to swear allegiance to the Constitution, and if you think something is violating that, it’s ultimately the authority.”

That’s crazy. I’m from Alabama originally, so when I got home, it’s just that amplified. That I think is the primary reason that soldiers, who otherwise believe the war is illegal, and know that we were lied to, to get in there, still continue deploying. Myself, it’s crazy to think I wasn’t scared of the jail time. I thought I would rather serve 20 years in jail than take one innocent life. The idea of going to jail didn’t scare me, the idea of having to sacrifice for what I thought was right, didn’t scare me, that’s sort of what gets us into the Army, the idea of sacrifice.

A lot of us, we want to make that sacrifice, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten in there in the first place. There’s something about being a martyr for the country that is moving to us. It wasn’t the jail time, it wasn’t the hardship, it was simply the fact that I didn’t want to be remembered as a coward that was going to drive me into participating in an occupation that Iraq Veterans Against the War ultimately helped save me from, and I’m eternally grateful to the organization, or rather more, the individuals in the organization for opening my eyes to so many realities.

I never went to Iraq, but I was in the Army as a journalist, and I spoke with thousands and thousands of soldiers throughout my years as an Army journalist. After hearing so many idiosyncrasies having to do with prisoner abuse and corpse mutilation, free-fire rules of engagement you kind of start to put together another picture.

But still I had never experienced that first-hand. So I thought if I say no now, people are going to think I’m a coward. But then I saw Winter Solider, and I realized, wow, there are so many people who stood up there and testified who sound a lot like me. Except the only difference is, they’ve got something to regret now. And that’s that they didn’t say no before. I saw so many people who said, had I just known beforehand, I would have said “no” and I’d feel better about myself today.

And I realized, this whole idea of deploying because I’m afraid of being a coward, to participate in something that I think is illegal, is only going to lead me back home to be part of the anti-war movement out of remorse, rather than out of desire to pre-empt all this stuff. So, I think Winter Soldier in a huge way plays into that need of this movement to forge a culture in the United States of acceptance, and even more than that, and I’m not trying to say this because I want anyone to jump up and give me a hug, but of adoration for resisters.

We have been inundated for the longest time with so much of this “America: we support the troops!” There’s this intense love and respect, and I know after I got out of basic training, I went back to my home town, and people were jumping off the sidewalks with tears in their eyes, people I didn’t even know, falling over themselves to thank me for my sacrifice. So all of this “support the troops” rhetoric makes it so much harder for service members to break away from the party line.

Because they see “I’m a hero right now. My country is so overwhelmingly moved by my sacrifice. If I walk away from this, I’m going to be letting all these people down they’re going to think I’m a coward, I’m going to think I’m a coward.”

You [from World Can’t Wait] were showing me the pamphlet [why we don’t support the troops]. I think it’s really important to drive things home right now; the message to be sending to the military is not necessarily “we support you regardless.” To continue to say that, to pile on this admiration and compliments on people who deploy to Iraq is only making them want to do that more. And it’s important that we take that idea of supporting the troops, and apply it to the alternative, which is resistance. Which are those who are maybe not even conscientious objectors – this might disappoint people, but I’m not actually even a conscientious objector, but this war is so blatantly illegal. It is a war of choice, it’s based on lies, money and corruption, and I’m not the only one that can see that. A lot of people can see that.

MATTHIS CHIROUX is part of the We Are Not Your Soldiers National Tour sponsored by The World Can’t Wait–Drive Out the Bush Regime! For more info on this tour contact youth_students@worldcantwait.org or call 347.385.2195.

To Those Who Believe That Torture Is Necessary and Works

2008-12-01T10:43:00.001-08:00

From Matthew Alexander who led an interrogations team assigned to a Special Operations task force in Iraq in 2006, writing in the Washington Post on Sunday:

"I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans."

Torture is wrong under any and all circumstances. But it is also appropriate to point out, as Matthew Alexander does above, that it is viciously counter-productive. Bush and Cheney know this. They use it because their goals aren't really to quell anti-state terror. Their principle goal is to terrorize because they know that they can't accomplish what they want - world domination - by persuasion and if people have freedom of thought.

Bill Kristol Wants the Medal of Freedom for Torturers and Spies

2008-11-30T17:01:00.000-08:00

I hardly know what to say about this commentary from Bill Kristol, in the current issue of the right-wing Weekly Standard. It’s damning on its own without any comment. But then, the premise on which Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and prominent member of the Project for the New American Century, operates here does deserve comment and deconstruction:

“Bush should consider pardoning--and should at least be vociferously praising--everyone who served in good faith in the war on terror, but whose deeds may now be susceptible to demagogic or politically inspired prosecution by some seeking to score political points. The lawyers can work out if such general or specific preemptive pardons are possible; it may be that the best Bush can or should do is to warn publicly against any such harassment or prosecution. But the idea is this: The CIA agents who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the NSA officials who listened in on phone calls from Pakistan, should not have to worry about legal bills or public defamation. In fact, Bush might want to give some of these public servants the Medal of Freedom at the same time he bestows the honor on Generals Petraeus and Odierno. They deserve it.”

So waterboarding, which is torture, and NSA spying (on all of us) that the White House was caught red-handed doing in express violation of the 1978 FISA law, are not crimes against humanity or felonies deserving not just of impeachment but criminal prosecution at the Hague and in U.S. courts. No, according to one of the more influential voices from the extreme right and from the ranks of those who are making policy in the U.S., these acts are worthy of the Medal of Freedom.

And what is this freedom that these torturers and spies have been defending? The freedom from tyranny – or at least that’s what the American Revolution was supposedly all about – and the freedom from being abducted secretly in the night by agents of the state, the freedom from torture and cruel and unusual punishment, the freedom to challenge your detention in court, the freedom to speak and assemble without being spied upon by your government.

How do the advocates and apologists for tyranny and for war crimes get to be pundits in mainstream media, hob nob with the rich and powerful, solicited for their advice and as censors and gatekeepers for CBS News and so on? They get away with murder, literally, because some people still can’t see that actions taken in the name of protecting American lives at the expense of annihilating non-Americans’ lives (actions that don’t in fact provide greater security but in fact do the very opposite) are the actions and justifications of scoundrels and fascists. The Nazis played this game very effectively until they were finally defeated. Kristol and others of his ilk are our own homegrown Nazis. If you think this language is too strong, think again about what he is saying. Read what he said above again.

If these "leaders" and opinion-makers can justify torture and killing innocents under the rubric of their precious and self-serving "war on terror," then they can justify, and will justify, absolutely anything. Nothing is safe from the "logic" of their "war on terror" and anyone who accepts the fundamental premise of that so-called war is going to find themselves, whether they intended to or not, supporting, doing and saying horrid things.

Obama, it should be noted here, accepts the logic of the "war on terror."

In the preface to my book, Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney, I cited the words of Hermann Goering, Luftwaffe Commander and Nazi Leader:

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger."

The Global War on Terror and the constant invocations of 9/11 are, in other words, straight out of the Nazis' playbook.

If Obama does not prosecute those responsible for torture and felonious spying on all of us, beginning with Bush and Cheney and on down, then he is guilty as an accessory to murder and crimes against humanity. This isn’t, as Kristol so deceitfully claims, a matter of partisan politically-inspired vindictiveness. This is the meting out of justice, long overdue, for crimes that all of humanity should be crying out “shame, shame, shame!”

If Obama does not draw a line against this, something that he failed to do as a U.S. Senator when he refused to filibuster the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that legalized torture and stripped habeas corpus rights from anyone declared an “unlawful enemy combatant,” and failed again to do when he not only declined to filibuster, but actually voted FOR, the telecom amnesty bill, then any president from now on forward can do exactly what Bush and Cheney did and more and claim on the basis of precedent, that it is legal and fine because, after all, Bush and Cheney did it and weren’t prosecuted. This is what is at stake. The gravity of the situation we are presently in cannot be overstated.

Mumbai by Glenn Greenwald

2008-11-29T06:58:00.001-08:00

Greenwald, as per his usual, has an excellent post today at Salon.com. I encourage you to read it.

Obama's Picks: Know Him by the Company He Keeps

2008-11-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

Obama, under fire, rightfully so, for his cabinet and advisor picks, defended his picks on Wednesday on the grounds that the vision for change comes from him and that he needs experienced people to staff his cabinet. The vision for change, he said, “comes from me.”

This is an interesting claim by a man who throughout the campaign stated that this was all about the people and not about himself. It is, however, consistent with the cult of personality that he has cultivated about himself. “I am above and more powerful than the people I am surrounding myself with. I, not they, will call the shots. I, not they, am the decider.”

The flaw in this apologia by Obama is this: a central component of the expression and actions of a leader who represents “change” is precisely his choices for the team that he assembles around himself, as these are the people who will filter, frame and edit the information that they bring to him, and shape the parameters of choices that they offer him. They will advocate what they think he should do and beyond that, of course, take principle responsibility for leading the implementation of "change" in policy.

If you wanted to fix a police department that had become famous for brutality and corruption, a new police commissioner wouldn’t start by handpicking as his or her leadership team a bunch of corrupt cops known for their brutality. If you’re serious about implementing your vision of change, you don’t, in your first and extremely important act, begin by selecting for your closest advisers and those who will lead these changes a group of people drenched from head to toe in the bankrupt policies of prior administrations.

An upright, uncorruptable police commissioner cannot realistically expect to accomplish his or her rectification campaign by relying upon a bunch of cops who have already demonstrated their penchant for corruption and brutality. You do not bring about change by relying on people who represent and have distinguished themselves as fighters for the old order.

Yet this is exactly what Obama is doing.

He knows very well - after all, he's an extremely smart guy - that his defense of his picks of his people - who emphatically do not represent change - is disingenuous and designed to deceive people.

Know people by the company they keep.

Pure, Unadulterated Balderdash and Poison

2008-11-26T13:30:00.000-08:00

Jack Goldsmith (who succeeded John Yoo at the Justice Department, serving in the Office of Legal Counsel from October 2003 to July 2004, and who, to his credit, rescinded the torture memos that Yoo wrote) writes today in the Washington Post, arguing that prosecution of the Bush White House for torture would be a huge mistake:

"The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution."

Yes, they merely made "mistakes" or did reasonable things like torturing and indefinitely detaining innocent people by the thousands, murdering many of them and irrevocably traumatizing the rest even though it has been and is against the law to ever under any circumstances torture someone. They have been, my god, severely criticized! Their reputation's been harmed enormously, and some of them have lost some money - oh my Jesus - let my people go!

We certainly shouldn't pursue vindictive prosecutions of people who knowingly lied us into wars that have caused to date the needless and unjust deaths of 1.3 million Iraqis, combat deaths of over 4,000 American soldiers, more than 30,000 suicides by vets, the destruction of a fabled city and the forced extirpation of thousands from their homes in New Orleans, the treasonous outing of a dissident's wife's CIA cover for revenge, the destruction of habeas corpus and that silly little matter of the rule of law! Perish the very thought! We should just shake their hands, tell them how much we admire the difficulties they faced and how marvelously they have handled it all, and give them their pensions and go along our merry way.

That's the ticket!

It's amazing to me what passes muster to be published in a major American newspaper such as the Washington Post, what nonsense comes from the mouths and pens of people who lead this country, and what material the Post and other major publications refuse to publish.

Consider the following unbelievably horrid November 8 article by Michael Kinsley for the Washington Post. Kinsley used to play the "liberal" on CNN"s Crossfire:

Revisiting One Lawrence Summers Controversy

Opponents of Lawrence Summers for a second turn as Treasury secretary have, of course, brought up his 1991 memo as chief economist of the World Bank, in which he wrote that poor countries need more pollution, not less. The memo was obviously meant to stimulate thinking and not to be implemented as policy. But it also was undeniably correct. Summers's main point was that life and health are worth less in poor countries than in rich ones. He measured that worth by the earnings lost when a person is sick or dies prematurely. But another good measure, maybe clearer, would be the amount a society will spend to save a life. Treatments that are routine in the United States, although they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are simply not available to citizens of poor countries. You get cancer and you die. Of course this shouldn't be true, but it undeniably is true, and rejecting the idea of poor countries earning a little cash by "buying" pollution from rich ones will do nothing to make it less true.

If an industrial plant that causes pollution is going to be built somewhere, it ought to be built where life is worth less. This sounds brutal, but it isn't. Or rather, it is less brutal than reality. Turn it around: If a life is worth less, it is also cheaper to save. For what we spend in the United States to save a single life, you could save dozens or hundreds of lives in poor countries. So if the plant is going to be built somewhere, building it in a poor country will enable more lives to be saved than building it in a rich one.

Summers also pointed out that the harm from pollution tends to be "non-linear," meaning that the harm goes up more than proportionately as pollution increases. A little bit of pollution may be virtually harmless, but double it or quadruple it and you more than double or quadruple the negative effects. If a city in a rich country is very polluted and a city the same size in a poor country is not, you will save lives -- in the rich country this time -- if some of that pollution can be moved from the rich country to the poor one. And the money the rich country pays the poor one can save even more lives in the poor country.

The general point is that clean air and other environmental goods are luxuries. The richer a country is, the more of them it can afford. And if rich countries like the United States had had to meet some of the standards being wished upon poor countries today, we would still be poor ourselves.

Every economic transaction has two sides. When you deny a rich country the opportunity to unload some toxic waste on a poor one, you are also denying that poor country the opportunity to get paid for taking the toxic waste. And by forbidding this deal, you are putting off the day when the poor country will no longer need to make deals like this.

In his notorious memo, Summers was doing his job and doing it well: thinking outside the box about how to help the poor countries that are supposed to be the World Bank's constituency. Plenty of outside-the-box thinking will be required from our next Treasury secretary too. Summers is famous for this, and for the abrasiveness that goes along with it. But the Obama administration won't have time, and shouldn't have the patience, for the umbrage game that dominated the recent political campaign. There is no point in making Larry Summers promise to behave himself. That just isn't his style, and if President-elect Obama can't face it, he should choose someone less likely to stir up fusses at regular intervals. That would be a pity.

***

Kinsley's outrageous article prompted many disgusted responses from readers. This one's my favorite:

I've decided that the Yucca mountain nuclear waste material should be buried on Mr. Kingsley's property. I come to this conclusion as a result of my proprietary Moral Calculation Process (tm) in which the relative values of various human beings' lives are assigned in proportion to their demonstrated humanity. Mr. Kingsley's humanity quotient being quite low (as demonstrated by this column), he is worth less as a human being than most of the rest of us.

I am SO glad we have come up with these snappy and elegant algorithms for calculating the relative worths of human beings' lives. Thank you, Messers Kingsley and Summers, for filling us in.

Posted by: B2O2 | November 8, 2008 5:04 PM

***

Does it make you wonder about your country when one of the most important and most prestigious publications in the US syndicates the comments of said Michael Kinsley and publishes the ridiculous apologia for torturers and war criminals of Jack Goldsmith? Does it make you want to radically change and overturn this system?

Brennan's Withdrawn His Name!

2008-11-25T16:23:00.001-08:00

Good news. Brennan has taken his name out of consideration for a top post in Intelligence such as CIA Director or DNI Head.

From the International Herald Tribune:

John Brennan, President-elect Barack Obama's top adviser on intelligence, has taken his name out of the running for any intelligence position in the new administration.

Brennan wrote in a Nov. 25 letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs who associate him with the Bush administration's interrogation, detention and rendition policies.

"The fact that I was not involved in the decision-making process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored," he wrote, in a letter obtained by The Associated Press. . .

Obama's advisers had grown increasingly concerned in recent days over online blogs that accused Brennan of condoning harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects, including waterboarding, which critics call torture.

As Glenn Greenwald writes:

Brennan's self-defense here is quite disingenuous. Whether he "was involved in the decision-making process for any of these controversial policies" is not and never was the issue. Rather, as I documented at length when I first wrote about Brennan, he was an ardent supporter of those policies, including "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition, both of which he said he was intimately familiar with as a result of his CIA position. As virtually everyone who opposed his nomination made clear -- Andrew Sullivan, Digby, Cenk Uygur, Big Tent Democrat and others -- that is why he was so unacceptable.

from The New York Times' Mark Mazzetti:

"The letter came as a surprise to many intelligence experts and even some lawmakers, and some questioned whether Mr. Brennan had been forced to withdraw his name by senior members of Mr. Obama’s transition team who were concerned about Mr. Brennan’s association with Bush administration policies.

"The opposition to Mr. Brennan had been largely confined to liberal blogs, and there was not an expectation he would face a particularly difficult confirmation process. Still, the episode shows that the C.I.A.’s secret detention program remains a particularly incendiary issue for the Democratic base, making it difficult for Mr. Obama to select someone for a top intelligence post who has played any role in the agency’s campaign against Al Qaeda since the Sept. 11 attacks."

[According to Mazzetti then, the ONLY people who have played a role in the CIA's anti-Al Qaeda campaign since 9/11 are those who have advocated rendition. Ergo, if you're AGAINST Al Qaeda you must be FOR rendition. Sure. Of course. So logical.]

* * *

I suspect that this is also why Larry Summers did not end up getting the post that he was widely expected to get as the next Treasury Secretary.

On the Psychologists' Open Letter re: John Brennan

2008-11-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

Below I have reposted an open letter asking Obama not to appoint John Brennan as CIA Director. Brennan, along with Jamie Miscik, is heading up Obama's intelligence transition team. The fact that Obama has entrusted the task of assembling Obama's intelligence policies and personnel to these two enablers and defenders of massive deception in the lead up to the Iraq War and of torture and rendition is very disturbing to anyone who has been holding out hopes that Obama will represent a decisive change from the horrid policies of the Bush White House.

Obama has repeatedly stated that he plans to shut Guantanamo down, which is welcome news.

But his team of advisers has also indicated that they may set up a separate category of so-called "National Security Courts" outside of the existing US federal court system. This would be a continuation of the fundamental logic of the Bush Regime's "War on Terror." See Attorney Candace Gorman's comments here and in these interviews posted at Fire John Yoo! See also Linda Rigas' new piece there on Eric Holder and the Bush Regime's torture policies.

The Open Letter below is a welcome development. I would underscore, however, that a "decisive repudiation" of the torture policies of Bush and Cheney would entail not only ending the practices of "preventive" detention and of "enhanced interrogation techniques," but also the prosecution of the torturers themselves. Without doing that, any future president could do it all and say that "Bush and Cheney did it, why can't I?"

Psychologists to Obama: Don't Name Torture Apologist John Brenner CIA Director

2008-11-25T06:45:00.000-08:00

By Stephen Soldz, Psyche, Science, and Society
November 22, 2008

Dear President-Elect Obama,

We are writing to urge you not to select John Brennan as Director of the CIA. We are psychologists and allies who have long opposed the abuses of detainees under the Bush administration. We are just concluding a successful several-year struggle to remove psychologists from their roles in aiding or abetting these abuses. It has been a distressing fact that, while the Bush administration resorted to abuse and torture of those in our custody, often psychologists have been put in positions to use their psychological expertise to guide these unconscionable practices.

We look forward to your administration as an opportunity for genuine change -- in this case for our country to take a new direction in its treatment of prisoners. We applaud your commitment to closing Guantanamo and are encouraged by your clear statement from your “60 Minutes” interview last Sunday, “America doesn’t torture, and I’m gonna make sure that we don’t torture.” This fuels our hope for a decisive repudiation of the “dark side” -- the willingness to use or abet illegal and unethical coercive interrogation tactics that sometimes amount to torture and often constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

We are concerned, however, by reports that you may appoint John Brennan as Director of the CIA. Mr. Brennan served as a high official in George Tenet’s CIA and supported Tenet’s policies, including “enhanced interrogations” as well as “renditions” to torturing countries. According to his own statements, Mr. Brennan was a supporter of the “dark side” policies, wishing only to have some legal justification supplied in order to protect CIA operatives. In describing Director Tenet’s views he stated during a March 8, 2006 Frontline interview:

I think George [Tenet] had two concerns. One is to make sure that there was that legal justification, as well as protection for CIA officers who are going to be engaged in some of these things, so that they would not be then prosecuted or held liable for actions that were being directed by the administration. So we want to make sure the findings and other things were done probably with the appropriate Department of Justice review.

We know, of course, that “the appropriate Department of Justice review” means that torture was authorized and conducted by our government.

The use of these tactics goes against the moral fiber of our country and is never justified. This is true whether these “enhanced interrogation” techniques are used directly by U.S. forces, as in the CIA’s “black sites,” or by other countries acting as our surrogates, as in the “renditions” program where individuals are taken to countries practicing torture, resulting in suffering inflicted by that country’s forces.

We are well aware that these techniques are ineffective as well as immoral. There is extensive evidence that abused detainees are likely to say anything, true or false, to make the pain stop, leading to faulty intelligence. Furthermore, use of torture and other coercive techniques alienates our allies, strengthens the commitment of our enemies, and puts our own captured soldiers at risk.

Earlier this year Mr. Brennan argued in a National Journal interview that a new administration will have great continuity with the Bush-Cheney administration in its intelligence policies:

"Even though people may criticize what has happened during the two Bush administrations, there has been a fair amount of continuity. A new administration, be it Republican or Democrat -- you’re going to have a fairly significant change of people involved at the senior-most levels. And I would argue for continuity in those early stages. You don’t want to whipsaw the [intelligence] community. You don’t want to presume knowledge about how things fit together and why things are being done the way they are being done. And you have to understand the implication, then, of making any major changes or redirecting things. I’m hoping there will be a number of professionals coming in who have an understanding of the evolution of the capabilities in the community over the past six years, because there is a method to how things have changed and adapted."

In order to restore American credibility and the rule of law, our country needs a clear and decisive repudiation of the “dark side” at this crucial turning point in our history. We need officials to clearly and without ambivalence assert the rule of law. Mr. Brennan is not an appropriate choice to lead us in this direction. The country cannot afford to have him as director of our most important intelligence agencies.

As psychologists and other concerned Americans, we ask you to reject Mr. Brennan as Director of the CIA. His appointment would dishearten and alienate those who opposed torture under the Bush administration. We ask you to appoint a Director who will truly represent “the change we need.”

We eagerly await your administration and the new spirit it represents.

Best wishes for a successful administration,

Sincerely,

Stephen Soldz, Ph.D., Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis & Coalition for an Ethical Psychology

(For a full list of signatories go here.)

Stephen Soldz is a psychoanalyst, psychologist, public health researcher, and faculty member at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis. He maintains the Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice web page and the Psyche, Science, and Society blog. He is a founder of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, one of the organizations leading the struggle to change American Psychological Association policy on participation in abusive interrogations.

You’re Scaring Me, Obama: Let the Bush Years Die

2008-11-21T06:05:00.000-08:00

by Heather Wokusch

To be honest, Obama, you lost me when you voted for the PATRIOT Act reauthorization in 2006. You lost me again when you voted for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) amendment in 2008. And you lost me every single time you voted for yet more war funding.

Don't even get me started on your vote for the $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

I cast a ballot for you in November, but I just can't share in this moment of collective euphoria over your election.

So, if your transition team really wants feedback on "where President-Elect Obama should lead this country," here's a Top Five list:

1. Dump the Bush Doctrine and don’t start more wars

You've made it clear that the US has to "take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights" and you’ve argued for "more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11."

What exactly does that mean?

Take troops out of Iraq and shove them into Afghanistan? Further destabilize Pakistan?

The whole idea of preemptive war (a.k.a. the Bush Doctrine) has no place in a civilized society and must be laid to rest, along with those sacrificed in Bush's military adventurism these past eight years.

Yet your approach to preemptive war, Mr. Obama, is nuanced at best.

During the January 2008 Democratic presidential debate, you said that if the US had "actionable intelligence" and Pakistan didn’t "take on Al Qaida in their territory," then "I would strike." You added, " And that's the flaw of the Bush doctrine. It wasn't that he went after those who attacked America. It was that he went after those who didn't."

No, the flaw of the Bush Doctrine is that it's just plain wrong. We've learned that the hard way.

2. Ditch the warmongers

What's with all of the hawks in your new administration?

You presented yourself as a peace candidate and then chose Joe Biden as your VP. Yes, he brought in the white male vote, but he also backed the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Just last month Biden warned that if you were elected, there would be "an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy." He said that you would make some "incredibly tough decisions" that could alienate the Democratic base, because if decisions are "popular, they're probably not sound."

In other words, a popular decision, one that the majority of the people wants, is probably not a good decision. Democracy to Biden…

And then there's Robert Gates, widely rumored to be staying on as your Defense Secretary. Questions about Gates’ role in Iran-Contra, not to mention his skewing of intelligence about Russia, still linger.

But especially disturbing is his recent push for beefing up the US nuclear arsenal: "As long as other nations have or seek nuclear weapons – and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends – then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the United States in the nuclear arena, or with weapons of mass destruction, could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response."

Let's get this straight: if other nations are even imagined to "seek" nuclear weapons, that "could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response" from the US.

Obama, you've often insisted on taking "no options off the table" in dealing with Iran. How does Gates' proposal for the preemptive use of nuclear weapons factor in there?

While we're on the topic of warmongers in your midst… Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff? Yet another hawk, hell-bent on Iran and enamored with nuclear weapons.

And now we've got Clinton as Secretary of State.

Why is it that none of the 23 senators and 133 House Reps who voted against the war in Iraq are even on a short-list for these critical posts?

3. Close Guantanamo – and the whole system of secret prisons

Shutting down Gitmo is said to be a priority for your new administration. Terrific.

But what about Bagram? What about the other CIA "black site" secret prisons set up in Afghanistan, Thailand, Eastern Europe and elsewhere? What about the CIA torture flights? Will those end too?

Closing Gitmo also raises questions over how "high value" defendants will be handled. Your administration is reportedly considering setting up an alternative court system to deal with sensitive cases. But what safeguards will be in place to be sure that this new system won't degenerate into kangaroo courts, like Bush's military commissions?

It's a disturbing signal that you’ve appointed John Brennan, who has supported extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping, to help review intelligence agencies for your administration. As former CIA and State Department analyst Mel Goodman noted, Brennan "sat there at [former CIA Director George] Tenet's knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making."

And this is who will help lead us out of this mess?

You've criticized the use of torture, yet reportedly will not bring criminal charges against those who authorized or conducted torture during the Bush years. Your administration doesn't see it as politically expedient, and Bush might give "preemptive" pardons anyway.

But can we really end this dark chapter in our nation's history without even an investigation? A Truth Commission, perhaps? Providing blanket immunity to all low-level and senior government officials won’t prevent possible war crimes from happening again. Quite the opposite.

4. Expose Bush & Co., and ditch the national surveillance state

Speaking of war crimes, how about Bush, Cheney and the rest? You'll soon be given access to Bush-era secret orders and opinions authorizing everything from surveillance to detention. You'll no doubt rescind many, to great fanfare, but what about sharing this evidence of Bush-year excesses with the public?

Yes, Bush could file a lawsuit and invoke executive privilege, but it's worth the fight. The only other option is shielding Bush & Co., similar to how you will reportedly shield those government officials involved in torture. But the public deserves to know. And if Bush administration officials violated the law, they should be prosecuted.

Now, back to your vote for both the PATRIOT Act reauthorization in 2006 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act amendment in 2008. These and other rollbacks in domestic civil liberties under Bush are inexcusable and must be addressed. We'll be waiting for you to do that.

5. Choose Main Street (not Wall Street)

Just this month you promised Americans that they can "turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street."

Yet, as Bloomberg notes, "almost half the people" on your Transition Economic Advisory Board "have held fiduciary positions at companies that, to one degree or another, either fried their financial statements, helped send the world into an economic tailspin, or both."

This includes, for example, Anne Mulcahy and Richard Parsons, both of whom were Fannie Mae directors when the company fudged accounting rules. Ditto for another of your team members, William Daley.

Mulcahy and Parsons additionally held executive posts when their companies (Xerox Corp. and Time Warner Inc., respectively) got busted for accounting fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Also on your team is Richard Rubin, who as Bloomberg notes, was "chairman of Citigroup Inc.'s executive committee when the bank pushed bogus analyst research, helped Enron Corp. cook its books, and got caught baking its own. He was a director from 2000 to 2006 at Ford Motor Co., which also committed accounting fouls and now is begging Uncle Sam for Citigroup-style bailout cash."

The list of questionable appointees to your Transitional Economic Advisory Board goes on and on, begging the question: Is this really the best you could come up with? How about Joseph Stiglitz, Sheila Bair, Nouriel Roubini or James K. Galbraith, for starters? Someone who represents labor?

Meanwhile, we're stuck with this nasty bailout bill – which you voted for.

Others, such as Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), realized the bill's problems and voted against it. Feingold said that the Wall Street bailout legislation, "fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn’t do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis. Taxpayers deserve a plan that puts their concerns ahead of those who got us into this mess."

Feingold was right.

In short, Mr. President-elect, you promised "Change we can believe in," but across the board it's looking a lot more like "Business as usual."

***This article is archived at http://www.heatherwokusch.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=142

Heather can be contacted at heather@heatherwokusch.com

Obama: No War Crimes Charges Against the War Criminals

2008-11-18T08:04:00.000-08:00

The news just keeps getting worse for those who have been expecting or hoping that Obama would make right that which has been so monstrously wrong. The following story is the latest evidence that what Dr. Philip Zimbardo observed about his famous Stanford Prison Experiment remains true: while not all guards in the experiment were sadistic in their treatment of the prisoners, not a single one of the "good guards" intervened on behalf of a prisoner against the "bad guards."

Failing to prosecute and hold accountable war criminals means that the Bush Regime's actions can be repeated in the future, whether under the Obama administration or by some future president. In other words, any tyrant can do anything he or she wants because the Bush Regime did it and got away with it.

Even if, for the sake of argument, Obama doesn't torture and doesn't spy upon all of us during his term(s), the failure to prosecute Bush et al for what they have done means that the only way to insure that these war crimes, crimes against humanity and breaches of the public trust and of the rule of law can be prevented in the future is by electing individuals who promise to refrain from doing these monstrous things. We can only count on their promise and their self-regulated behavior because the mechanisms - impeachment and prosecution - to ensure that illegal and outrageous behavior doesn't occur have been left to rust by the Democrats and mainstream media as curious historical relics.

The rule of law no longer applies if Bush et al are allowed to go away without being prosecuted. This is what Obama and his party have given us. Regardless of what they do, good or bad, this one failure to act means a stain and a shame the ramifications from which are impossible to overstate.

How many of us were holding our breath this last election, worried that yet another election might be outright stolen? Do you really want to go through that over and over again? Is that any way to handle crimes against humanity? Yet this is the only thing we can count on within the parameters of official politics.

How do you like the politics we're allowed to believe in now?

If Obama is allowed to do what his people are signaling that they intend to do this also means that horrid injustice and crimes will go unpunished, irrespective of the consequences down the road.

Unfortunately, this news is not surprising. It is entirely consistent with the stance that Obama has been taking since being a US Senator: when he had the chance, the legal and moral responsibility to stop the torture and spying and so on, he demurred.

There's a changing of the guard coming but the new guards are still guards.

Yes, Virginia, this is "change we can believe in."

Obama Advisers Say No Charges Likely Against Those Who Authorized Torture

Monday 17 November 2008

by: Lara Jakes Jordan, The Associated Press

Washington - Barack Obama's incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and human rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by the Bush administration.

Two Obama advisers said there's little - if any - chance that the incoming president's Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are still tentative. A spokesman for Obama's transition team did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Additionally, the question of whether to prosecute may never become an issue if Bush issues pre-emptive pardons to protect those involved.

Obama has committed to reviewing interrogations on al-Qaida and other terror suspects. After he takes office in January, Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture. The panel's findings would be used to ensure that future interrogations are undisputedly legal.

"I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture," Obama said Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." "Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."

Obama's most ardent supporters are split on whether he should prosecute Bush officials.

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, "In the United States, no."

"These things are not going to happen," said Leahy, D-Vt.

Robert Litt, a former top Clinton administration Justice Department prosecutor, said Obama should focus on moving forward with anti-torture policy instead of looking back.

"Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on," Litt said at a Brookings Institution discussion about Obama's legal policy. "To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward - that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically."

But Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy.

"The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it," Ratner said. "I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."

In the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the White House authorized U.S. interrogators to use harsh tactics on captured al-Qaida and Taliban suspects. Bush officials relied on a 2002 Justice Department legal memo to assert that its interrogations did not amount to torture - and therefore did not violate U.S. or international laws. That memo has since been rescinded.

At least three top al-Qaida operatives - including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed - were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003 because of intelligence officials' belief that more attacks were imminent. Waterboarding creates the sensation of drowning, and has been traced back hundreds of years and is condemned by nations worldwide.

Bush could take the issue of criminal charges off the table with one stroke of his pardons pen.

Whether Bush will protect his top aides and interrogators with a pre-emptive pardon - before they are ever charged - has become a hot topic of discussion in legal and political circles in the administration's waning days. White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto declined to comment on the issue.

Under the Constitution, the president's power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled.

Pre-emptive pardons would be highly controversial, but former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. said it would protect those who were following orders or otherwise trying to protect the nation.

"I know of no one who acted in reckless disregard of U.S. law or international law," said Culvahouse, who served under President Ronald Reagan. "It's just not good for the intelligence community and the defense community to have people in the field, under exigent circumstances, being told these are the rules, to be exposed months and years after the fact to criminal prosecution."

The Federalist Papers discourage presidents from pardoning themselves. It took former President Gerald Ford to clear former President Richard Nixon of wrongdoing in the 1972 Watergate break-in.

Re: Obama's Plans to Create Special Courts for GITMO

2008-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

From an attorney representing two Guantanamo prisoners:

Saturday, November 15, 2008

My letter to the editor to a paper today....

I am surprised to learn that President-elect Obama is seriously considering legislation to create special courts for the men at Guantanamo. I hope Obama, a lawyer himself, will take the time to carefully review the “evidence” against many of the men still being held at that base.

At first blush, some of the so called “evidence” might strike the untrained as serious but if Obama reviews the underlying support for that “evidence” he will see that the reason behind many of these detentions is (to quote one of the military tribunal panel members) “garbage.”

I represent two of the men at Guantanamo and I have looked at what is supposed to be the secret evidence against my clients. I can tell you that there is a reason they keep this information secret and it is not about “national security”, this is about national embarrassment. In fact, calling this “garbage” is, in my view, a gross understatement.

Couple this with the resignations of six of the prosecutors in the Military Commission system and it should be clear that there are serious problems underlying the cases. It is appalling that these men have sat at Guantanamo for almost seven years with no charges against them and no judicial review of the evidence.

If Obama follows through with his trial balloon and sets up yet another system to try these men my clients will look at another year or more before they get the fair hearing that they so desperately need. The US Supreme Court said in June that these men have waited long enough for their hearings. I pray that Obama will heed the call of the Supreme Court and let our justice system, which has worked just fine for over two centuries, do its job.

H. Candace Gorman
Attorney at Law

Obama's Intelligence Transition Team

2008-11-17T10:37:00.000-08:00

I will have more to say about this later, but this interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now today and her other interviews today everyone needs to hear:

"Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama’s Intelligence Transition Team

"John Brennan and Jami Miscik, both former intelligence officials under George Tenet, are leading Barack Obama’s review of intelligence agencies and helping make recommendations to the new administration. Brennan has supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition, and Miscik was involved with the politicized intelligence alleging weapons of mass destruction in the lead-up to the war on Iraq. We speak with former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights."

Binging and Purging Commodities

2008-11-14T08:45:00.000-08:00

Retailers report an upsurge of "buyer's regret" in the U.S. with an expected $220 billion in returns this year, an unprecedented amount. One of the people interviewed in the NPR report on this phenomenon yesterday described herself happier upon returning items than she felt when originally buying the items.

I couldn't help thinking of how this parallels the bing/purge cycle for people who adopt extreme measures to keep their weight down. The buy, buy, buy ethic is running up against the realities of the financial crisis and a sharp contraction of credit and assuming the form for some of continuing to buy (it's hard to break a habit, after all), but shortly after binging, purging it in returns.

Down with Proposition 8 and the Bush Program as a whole!

2008-11-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

Over the last eight years the Bush Regime has codified a comprehensive reactionary political program: openly whipping up anti-gay sentiment; creationism being taught in science class; the “Partial Birth Abortion Act,” based on biblical literalism that women are nothing more than incubators and should have no control over their reproductive organs; calls for an end to the constitutional separation of church and state; endless wars; violating previously sacrosanct civil liberties and civil rights; surveillance over us all.

Millions were thrilled to see the Republicans voted out of office.

But who is to stop the Bush Program when Obama promotes finding common ground with Christian Fascists, war criminals and torturers? While Obama said he did not support Prop 8, he’s stated publicly many times that marriage should be between heterosexuals only. He should have called for stopping Prop 8 instead of straddling the fence. Obama in fact has pledged to extend Bush's faith-based initiatives that have granted over $2.2 billion to religious organizations.

We Will Not Accept The Bush Program No Matter Who The President Is!

Your government does not want what you want. That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn, or be forced, to accept. What is needed is not a minor course correction, what is needed is not some meaningless "change" we are allowed to believe in. What is needed is a radical change in direction brought about by people acting outside the strangling confines of official politics. Look at what official politics has given us!

We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do.

We call on all people living in the United States to RESIST the trajectory of wars, reaction and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush Regime and a complicit Congress. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world by extending a hand to those suffering from these policies and by showing our solidarity in word and deed. Join with us. www.worldcantwait.org.

Prop 8 Fallout

2008-11-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

Lesbian mom asked to quit PTA over Prop. 8
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 11/13/2008 06:38:04 PM PST

FRESNO, Calif.—A lesbian mother in Fresno says she was forced to resign from her position as president of the parent-teacher association at her son's Catholic school after she spoke out against banning gay marriage.

Robin McGehee, who enrolled her son Sebastian at St. Helens Catholic School, says she went to a vigil for the "No on Proposition 8" campaign last Thursday. After that, a priest from the Diocese of Fresno told her to step down because she had gone against church teachings.

The PTA's vice president, Tiffany Rodriquez, confirmed that McGehee was removed. Rodriquez herself resigned in protest of her removal.

The school directed inquiries to Rick Sexton of the Office of Catholic Education, who said he couldn't discuss the issue due to privacy concerns.

How the Real New York Times Reacts to the Fake New York Times

2008-11-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Pranksters, the "Yes Men," distributed today 1.2 million copies of a fake New York Times Special Edition that proclaims in its headlines: "Iraq War Ends." A story posted about it is at Raw Story today.

In the accompanying video, an unidentified staffer at the NY Times complains about the fake NYT and says indignantly that the Times has "been all over the Bush administration since day one. We set the standard for coverage of the Iraq War."

To this a woman near him says, "Like Judith Miller?" referring to the Times reporter whose credulous stories about WMD, repeating the lies purveyed by the Bush White House, played a crucial role in helping to justify the war.

The Times staffer on camera scowls and immediately exits in a huff.

Strangely, the Times itself did a 2004 mea culpa about its credulous coverage of the Iraq war buildup during and after the Judy Miller affair, so this Times person's indignation is a little odd.

Truth hurts, doesn't it, or in this case, the contrast between what could be and what is, is painfully stark.

Here is their fake NY Times website.

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE REAL OBAMA NOW?

2008-11-09T18:54:00.001-08:00

[This essay caused me to open my eyes wide several times as some of these actions and stands of Obama's I wasn't even aware of. I urge you to read it all and to pass it on.]

By Sam Smith

Over the past few weeks I've been a good boy. I've placed everything having to do with the real Barack Obama into a futures file and spent my time on the far grimmer matter of the real John McCain and Sarah Palin.

Now the party is over and it's time for people to put away their Barack and Michelle dolls and start dealing with what has truly happened.

This, I admit, is difficult because the real Obama doesn't exist yet. He follows in the footsteps of our first postmodern president, Bill Clinton, who observed the principles outlined by scholar Pauline Marie Rosenau:

Post-modernists recognize an infinite number of interpretations . . . of any text are possible because, for the skeptical post-modernists, one can never say what one intends with language, [thus] ultimately all textual meaning, all interpretation is undecipherable.. . . Many diverse meanings are possible for any symbol, gesture, word . . . Language has no direct relationship to the real world; it is, rather, only symbolic.

As James Krichick wrote in the New Republic, "Obama is, in his own words, something of a Rorschach test. In his latest book, The Audacity of Hope, he writes, 'I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.' "

This is remarkably similar to Ted Koppel's description of Vanna White of TV's Wheel of Fortune: "Vanna leaves an intellectual vacuum, which can be filled by whatever the predisposition of the viewer happens to be."

Obama has left the same kind of vacuum. His magic, or con, was that voters could imagine whatever they wanted and he would do nothing to spoil their reverie. He was a handsome actor playing the part of the first black president-to-be and, as in films, he was careful not to muck up the role with real facts or issues that might harm the fantasy. Hence the enormous emphasis on meaningless phrases like hope and change.

Of course, in Obama's postmodern society -- one that rises above the purported false teachings of partisanship -- we find ourselves with little to steer us save the opinions of whatever non-ideologue happens to be in power. In this case, we may really only have progressed from the ideology of the many to the ideology of the one or, some might say, from democracy to authoritarianism.

The Obama campaign was driven in no small part by a younger generation trained to accept brands as a substitute for policies. If the 1960s had happened like this, the activists would have spent all their time trying to get Martin Luther King or Joan Baez elected president rather than pursing ancillary issues like ending segregation and the war in Vietnam.

Obama himself took his vaunted experience in community organizing and turned its principles on its head. Instead of empowering the many at the bottom, he used the techniques to empower one at the top: himself.

It is historic that a black has been elected president, but we should remember that Obama was not running against Bull Connor, George Wallace or Strom Thurmond. Putting Obama in the same class as earlier black activists discredits the honor of those who died, suffered physical harm or were repeatedly jailed to achieve equality. Obama is not a catalyst of change, but rather its belated beneficiary. The delay, to be sure, is striking; after all, the two white elite sports of tennis and golf were integrated long before presidential politics, but Washington - as Phil Hart said of the Senate - has always been a place that always does things twenty years after it should have.

There is an informative precedent to Obama's rise. Forty-two years ago Edward Brooke became the first black senator to be elected with a majority of white votes. Brooke was chosen from Massachusetts as a Republican in a state that was 97% white.

Jason Sokol, who teaches history at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote in History News Network:

|||| On Election Day, Brooke triumphed with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Newspapers and magazines hummed with approval. The Boston Globe invoked a legacy that included the Pilgrims, Daniel Webster, and Charles Sumner, offering the Bay State as the nation's racial and political pioneer.

Journalist Carl Rowan was among the unconvinced. For whites, voting for Brooke became "a much easier way to wipe out guilt feelings about race than letting a Negro family into the neighborhood or shaking up a Jim Crow school setup." Polling numbers lent credence to Rowan's unease. They showed that only 23 percent of Massachusetts residents approved of a statewide school integration law; just 17 percent supported open housing. ||||

That's the problem with change coming from the top, as Obama might have heard when he was involved in real community organizing. It also helps to explain why there have been no more Catholic presidents since John Kennedy. Symbolism is not the change we need.

Getting at the reality of Obama is difficult. He performs as the great black liberal, but since he is one half white and one half conservative, that doesn't leave him a lot of wiggle room.

To be sure, in the Senate he got good ratings from various liberal groups, but two things need to be remembered:

First, liberals aren't that liberal any more. Thus getting a 90% score merely means that you went along with the best that an extremely conservative Democratic Party was willing to risk. This is not a party that would, in these times, have passed Social Security, Medicare or minimum wage. In fact, many liberals aren't much interested in economic issues at all - especially that portion of the constituency that controls the money, the media and the message.

Second, politicians reflect their constituency. Obama's constituency is no longer Illinois. He has a whole new set of folks to pander to.

There is one story from Chicago, however, that remains relevant. A citizen walks into his alderman's office looking for a job. "Who sent you?" he asks. "Nobody," he replies. Says the staffer: "We don't want nobody nobody sent."

Who sent Barack Obama remains a mystery. He has risen from an unknown state senator to president in exactly four years and that only happens when somebody sends for you.

The black liberal image falters on a number of other scores including Obama's affection for extreme right wingers like Chuck Hagel and an obvious indifference to anybody who votes like, say, a state senator from Hyde Park. Think back over the campaign and try to recall a single instance when Obama reached out to the progressive wing of the Democratic Party or to the better angels of the Congressional Black Caucus. Instead his ads attacked as 'extreme' the single payer health insurance backed by many of his own supporters, he dissed ACORN and Colin Powell was as radical a black as he wanted to be seen palling around with.

The key issue that has driven Obama throughout his career has been Obama. He has achieved virtually nothing for any other cause. His politics reflects whatever elite consensus he gathers around himself. This is why his "post partisanship" needs to be watched so carefully. If Bernie Sanders and John Conyers don't get to White House meetings as often as Chuck Hagel, Obama will glide easily to the right, as every president has done over the past thirty years. If liberals, as they did with Clinton, watch without a murmur as their president redesigns their party to fit his personal ambitions, then the whole country will continue to move to the right as well.

Since the real Obama doesn't exist yet, it is impossible to predict with any precision what he will do. But here is some of the evidence gathered over the past months that should serve both as a warning and as a prod to progressives not to take today's dreams as a reasonable facsimile of reality:

Business interests

Advisor Cass Sunstein told Jeffrey Rosen of the NY Times: "I would be stunned to find an anti-business [Supreme Court] appointee from either [Clinton or Obama]. There's not a strong interest on the part of Obama or Clinton in demonizing business, and you wouldn't expect to see that in their Supreme Court nominees."

Obama supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts. David Sirota in the Nation wrote, "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this big business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop 'frivolous' lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill's real objective was to protect corporate abusers."

He voted for a business-friendly "tort reform" bill

He voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

He had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

He was even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

He was most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists

In 2003, rightwing Democratic Leadership Council named Obama as one of its "100 to Watch." After he was criticized in the black media, Obama disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, is also chief economist of the conservative organization. Writes Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer, "Goolsbee has written gushingly about Milton Friedman and denounced the idea of a moratorium on mortgage foreclosures."

Added Henwood, "Top hedge fund honcho Paul Tudor Jones threw a fundraiser for him at his Greenwich house last spring, 'The whole of Greenwich is backing Obama,' one source said of the posh headquarters of the hedge fund industry. They like him because they're socially liberal, up to a point, and probably eager for a little less war, and think he's the man to do their work. They're also confident he wouldn't undertake any renovations to the distribution of wealth."

Civil liberties

He supports the war on drugs

He supports the crack-cocaine sentence disparity

He supports Real ID

He supports the PATRIOT Act

He supports the death penalty

He opposes lowering the drinking age to 18

He supported amnesty for telecoms engaged in illegal spying on Americans

Conservatives

He went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary against Ned Lamont

Wrote Paul Street in Z Magazine, "Obama has lent his support to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neo-liberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and other Wall Street Democrats to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Obama was recently hailed as a Hamiltonian believer in limited government and free trade by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, who praises Obama for having "a mentality formed by globalization, not the SDS."

Writes the London Times, "Obama is hoping to appoint cross-party figures to his cabinet such as Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator for Nebraska and an opponent of the Iraq war, and Richard Lugar, leader of the Republicans on the Senate foreign relations committee. Senior advisers confirmed that Hagel, a highly decorated Vietnam war veteran and one of McCain's closest friends in the Senate, was considered an ideal candidate for defense secretary.

Richard Lugar was rated 0% by SANE. . . rated 0% by AFL-CIO. . . rated 0% BY NARAL. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 0% by Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 27% by the National Education Association. . . rated 5% by League of Conservation Voters. . . He voted no on implementing the 9/11 Commission report. . . Vote against providing habeas corpus for Gitmo prisoners. . .voted no on comprehensive test ban treaty. . .voted against same sex marriage. . . strongly anti-abortion. . . opposed to more federal funding for healthcare. . .voted for unconstitutional wiretapping. . .voted to increase penalties for drug violations

Chuck Hagel was rated 0% by NARAL. . . rated 11% by NAACP. . . rated 0% by Human Rights Coalition. . . rated 100% by Christian Coalition. . . rated 12% by American Public Health Association. . . rated 22% by Alliance for Retired Americans. . . rated 36% by the National Education Association. . . rated 0% by League of Conservation Voters. . . rated 8% by AFL-CIO. . . He is strongly anti-abortion. . .voted for anti-flag desecration amendment. . .voted to increase penalties for drug violations. . . favors privatizing Social Security

Ecology

Obama voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

He supports federally funded ethanol and is unusually close to the ethanol industry.

He led his party's reversal of a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling

Education

Obama has promised to double funding for private charter schools, part of a national effort undermining public education.

He supports the No Child Left Behind Act albeit expressing reservations about its emphasis on testing. Writes Cory Mattson, "Despite NCLB''s loss of credibility among educators and the deadlock surrounding its attempted reauthorization in 2007, Barack Obama still offers his support. Even the two unions representing teachers, both which for years supported reform of the policy to avoid embarrassing their Democratic Party 'friends,' declared in 2008 that the policy is too fundamentally flawed to be reformed and should be eliminated."

Fiscal policy

Obama rejected moratoriums on foreclosures and a freeze on rates, measures supported by his primary opponents John Edwards and Hillary Clinton

He was a strong supporter of the $700 billion cash-for-trash banker bailout plan.

Two of his top advisors are former Goldman Sachs chair Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Noted Glen Ford of black Agenda Report, "In February 1999, Rubin and Summers flanked Fed Chief Alan Greenspan on the cover of Time magazine, heralded as, 'The Committee to Save the World.' Summers was then Secretary of the Treasury for Bill Clinton, having succeeded his mentor, Rubin, in that office. Together with Greenspan, the trio had in the previous year labored successfully to safeguard derivatives, the exotic 'ticking time bomb' financial instruments, from federal regulation."

Robert Scheer notes that "Rubin, who pocketed tens of millions running Goldman Sachs before becoming treasury secretary, is the man who got President Clinton to back legislation by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, to unleash banking greed on an unprecedented scale."

Obama's fund-raising machine has been headed by Penny Prtizker former chair of the Superior Bank, one of the first to get into subprime mortgages. While she resigned as chair of the family business in 1994, as late as 2001 she was still on the board and wrote a letter saying that her family was recapitalizing the bank and pledging to "once again restore Superior's leadership position in subprime lending." The bank shut down two months later and the Pritzker family would pay $460 million in a settlement with the government.

Foreign policy

Obama endorsed US involvement in the failed drug war in Colombia: "When I am president, we will continue the Andean Counter-Drug Program."

He has expressed a willingness to bomb Iran and won't rule out a first strike nuclear attack.

He has endorsed bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda in violation of international law. He has called Pakistan "the right battlefield ... in the war on terrorism."

He supports Israeli aggression and apartheid. Obama has deserted previous support for two-state solution to Mid East situation and refuses to negotiate with Hamas.

He has supported Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel, saying "it must remain undivided."

He favors expanding the war in Afghanistan.

Although he claims to want to get out of Iraq, his top Iraq advisor wrote that America should keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq. Obama, in his appearances, blurred the difference between combat soldiers and other troops.

He indicated to Amy Goodman that he would leave 140,000 private contractors and mercenaries in Iraq because "we don't have the troops to replace them."

He has called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States and urged sanctions against him.

He claimed "one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn't get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That's all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people."

He has hawkish foreign policy advisors who have been involved in past US misdeeds and failures. These include Zbigniew Brzezinski, Anthony Lake, General Merrill McPeak, and Dennis Ross.

It has been reported that he might well retain as secretary of defense Robert Gates who supports actions in violation of international law against countries merely suspected of being unwilling or unable to halt threats by militant groups.

Gays

Obama opposes gay marriage. He wouldn't have photo taken with San Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he supported gay marriage

Health

Obama opposes single payer healthcare or Medicare for all.

Military

Obama would expand the size of the military.

National Service

Obama favors a national service plan that appears to be in sync with one being promoted by a new coalition that would make national service mandatory by 2020, and with a bill requiring such mandatory national service introduced by Rep. Charles Rangel.

He announced in Colorado Springs last July, "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

On another occasion he said, "It's also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it's important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some." Some have seen this as a call for reviving the draft.

He has attacked the exclusion of ROTC on some college campuses

Presidential crimes

Obama aggressively opposed impeachment actions against Bush. One of his key advisors, Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said prosecuting government officials risks a "cycle" of criminalizing public service.

Progressives

Unlike his deferential treatment of right wing conservatives, Obama's treatment of the left has been dismissive to insulting. He dissed Nader for daring to run for president again. And he called the late Paul Wellstone "something of a gadfly"

Public Campaign Financing

Obama's retreat from public campaign financing has endangered the whole concept.

Social welfare

Obama wrote that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social welfare,

Social Security

Early in the campaign, Obama said, "everything is on the table" with Social Security.

o

As things now stand, the election primarily represents the extremist center seizing power back from the extremist right. We have moved from the prospect of disasters to the relative comfort of mere crises.

Using the word 'extreme' alongside the term 'center' is no exaggeration. Nearly all major damage to the United States in recent years - a rare exception being 9/11 - has been the result of decisions made not by right or left but by the post partisan middle: Vietnam, Iraq, the assault on constitutional liberties, the huge damage to the environment, and the collapse of the economy - to name a few. Go back further in history and you'll find, for example, the KKK riddled with members of the establishment including - in Colorado - a future governor, senator and mayor after whom Denver's airport is named. The center, to which Obama pays such homage, has always been where most of the trouble lies.

The only thing that will make Obama the president pictured in the campaign fantasy is unapologetic, unswerving and unendingly pressure on him in a progressive and moral direction, for he will not go there on his own. But what, say, gave the New Deal its progressive nature was pressure from the left of a sort that simply doesn't exist today.

Above are listed nearly three dozen things that Obama supports or opposes with which no good liberal or progressive would agree. Unfortunately, what's out there now, however, looks more like a rock concert crowd or evangelical tent meeting than a determined and directed political constituency. Which isn't so surprising given how successful our system have been at getting people to accept sights, sounds, symbols and semiotics as substitutes for reality. Once again, it looks like we'll have to learn the hard way.

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama

2008-11-08T18:11:00.000-08:00

[It's remarkable that the Secret Service would be this explicit in its criticism and this precise in their determination of the relationship between a public official's comments and the unleashing of potential assassins. It is not, however, at all remarkable that comments such as Palin's would provoke assassins. Rhetoric such as hers leads directly to legitimizing assassination plots. And these remain, as this article indicates, viable dangers in the form of plots being hatched as we speak.]

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last Updated: 4:04PM GMT 08 Nov 2008

Telegraph.uk.co

The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists," citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.

The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.

But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.

The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.

Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"

The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin's credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.

Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor [sic], warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."

Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.

That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africawas a continent rather than a country.

The advisers have branded her a "diva" and a "whack job" and claimed that she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS's Katie Couric.

In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential language as "jerks" who had taken "questions or comments I made in debate prep out of context."

She said: "I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that's not fair and not right."

She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. But she did deny the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had been returned to the Republican National Committee. "Those are the RNC's clothes, they're not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations."

Speaking as she returned to her native Alaska, Mrs Palin claimed to be baffled by what she claims was sexism on the national stage. "Here in Alaska that double standard isn't applied because these guys know that Alaskan women are pretty tough, on a par with the men in terms of being outdoors, working hard," she said.

"They're commercial fishermen, they're pilots, they're working up on the North slopein the oil fields. You see equality in Alaska. I think that was a bit of as surprise on the national level."

Pelosi: Governing from the Middle

2008-11-08T07:48:00.000-08:00

Relief that at last the evil warlocks will be gone can be felt everywhere.

The day after the election Nancy Pelosi declared, while basking in the glow of the GOP getting drubbed in the elections, exactly the same trend that swept the Democrats back into the majority in the 2006 mid-term elections, that a "new president must govern from the middle."

The GOP's defeat happened despite Congress' approval ratings being even lower than the White House's. It happened because of the deep and wide revulsion towards the Bush Regime's policies. But the American people's political sophistication isn't yet very high. The belief and hope that voting for a candidate who sounds like he's going to bring a change - and that that is all it's going to take - exists broadly among the people. Obama's campaign skillfully appropriated phrases from the movement and Obama speaks repeatedly of this cause being something that requires people's participation. But what he means by this is very different from what most people think.

Pelosi said what she said not because she's an idiot, like Palin, but because she's dishonest. Her comments are the equivalent of an army soundly defeating the other side and then having the victorious general say: "No hard feelings. You and I are still going to rule in tandem and with equal regard for each other's views." Apparently, "change" isn't supposed to mean a change from the "bipartisan" debacle that got us to this point.

The election results were meant to be understood as precisely the opposite of Pelosi's claim.

The electorate wants the policies of the Republicans and the free market fundamentalists to go the way of the DoDo Bird.

But this is not what Pelosi and the Democratic DLC want. Pelosi, who was briefed back in 2002 about the use of waterboarding on detainees and told that the NSA was spying on all of us, said nothing then and has said nothing since. She has actively shielded holding the war criminals in the White House accountable. By her silence and inaction, she has been complicit in war crimes.

Continued co-operation and complicity with the GOP and the Christian fascists is what we're going to get from Pelosi and Obama, unless and until millions in this country realize that merely voting and going to campaign rallies is not going to do what must be done.

Unless and until a movement that is independent of electoral politics arises in sufficient magnitude in the society and demands the righting of the wrongs that this government has brought us - including from the likes of the Pelosi and Reid and Obama - then the very people and policies that we and the world have been suffering under the heel of will be allowed to continue, with a slightly different tinge.

Fox News on Palin's Foibles

2008-11-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

I must tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed this clip from Fox on Palin - how often I'm going to say that I don't know! - that's inside of Rob Kall's article today at OpEd News.

Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent and didn't know what countries were in NAFTA.

Sounds perfect. Let's make her vice-president!

That's ok anyway. God tells you everything you need to know in the Bible. And the Bible didn't talk about NAFTA or Africa being a whole continent (hey, you can't see Africa from Alaska!) or the Bush Doctrine (although, God does go after people that annoy him and destroys them) or what the vice-president of the United States does or what the First Amendment means. That must mean those things aren't worth knowing.

(Has anyone done a parody of her based on that Miss Teen USA contestant of 2007 from South Carolina made so famous on YouTube?)

Read/watch and enjoy!

Against Larry Summers, the Friedmanite

2008-11-07T07:02:00.000-08:00

Former Harvard President, eventually forced out for a number of reasons, including his extraordinary abrasiveness, arrogance, and blatant sexism, Larry Summers is being widely reported as having the inside track for appointment as Obama's Treasury Secretary.

In the following article by John Wilson we hear such gems from Summers as this memo that he signed while vice-president and chief economist at the World Bank in 1991: “I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”

And then there's this:

"Back in April 2008, Summers was predicting that 'There is a reasonable chance that from a financial market, Wall Street perspective, the worst has passed.' That doesn't sound like a smart economic prognosticator.

"Just a few months ago, Summers declared: 'Alan Greenspan had a tremendous record as Fed chairman.'

"And in April 2008, Summers proclaimed, 'Any honest Democrat will admit that we are now all Friedmanites.'”

I don't know about you, but this is change I can believe in! Install as Treasury Secretary a guy who thinks that the free market cures all ills, the same ideology that has created the terrible crisis we are suffering from in the country and world. Capital idea!

So much more, see the Wilson article at OpEd News.

The New Normalcy Established During the Bush Regime

2008-11-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

by Ken Theisen, posted today at World Can't Wait.

The NYT's Editorial on Obama's Win and My Commentary on It

2008-11-05T07:55:00.001-08:00

The Next President by the NYT Editors
11/5/08

This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.

With a message of hope and competence, he drew in legions of voters who had been disengaged and voiceless. The scenes Tuesday night of young men and women, black and white, weeping and cheering in Chicago and New York and in Atlanta’s storied Ebenezer Baptist Church were powerful and deeply moving.

Mr. Obama inherits a terrible legacy. The nation is embroiled in two wars — one of necessity in Afghanistan and one of folly in Iraq. Mr. Obama’s challenge will be to manage an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without igniting new conflicts so the Pentagon can focus its resources on the real front in the war on terror, Afghanistan.

The campaign began with the war as its central focus. By Election Day, Americans were deeply anguished about their futures and the government’s failure to prevent an economic collapse fed by greed and an orgy of deregulation. Mr. Obama will have to move quickly to impose control, coherence, transparency and fairness on the Bush administration’s jumbled bailout plan.

His administration will also have to identify all of the ways that Americans’ basic rights and fundamental values have been violated and rein that dark work back in. Climate change is a global threat, and after years of denial and inaction, this country must take the lead on addressing it. The nation must develop new, cleaner energy technologies, to reduce greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil.

Mr. Obama also will have to rally sensible people to come up with immigration reform consistent with the values of a nation built by immigrants and refugees.

There are many other urgent problems that must be addressed. Tens of millions of Americans lack health insurance, including some of the country’s most vulnerable citizens — children of the working poor. Other Americans can barely pay for their insurance or are in danger of losing it along with their jobs. They must be protected.

Mr. Obama will now need the support of all Americans. Mr. McCain made an elegant concession speech Tuesday night in which he called on his followers not just to honor the vote, but to stand behind Mr. Obama. After a nasty, dispiriting campaign, he seemed on that stage to be the senator we long respected for his service to this country and his willingness to compromise.

That is a start. The nation’s many challenges are beyond the reach of any one man, or any one political party.

* * *

This what I posted at the NYT's website. It is presently being moderated:

You write that Obama won because he sees "the utter failure of government to protect its citizens." If this is so, then why did Obama vote FOR the Telecom Amnesty Bill that legalizes the government's ubiquitous spying on all of us? If I'm not mistaken, the NYT editorialized against this outrageous bill that legalized the White House, the NSA, and the telecom companies' felonious breach of the 1978 FISA bill.

When the Military Commissions Act of 2006 was being considered in September of 2006, you editorialized that if you're going to filibuster anything, filibuster this, this bill that would legalize torture and strip habeas corpus rights from anyone deemed an "unlawful enemy combatant" by Bush or one of his people.

Yet Obama, though he voted against the MCA, failed at that historic moment on two counts: he refused to filibuster the MCA and he expressed his disagreements with it on the grounds that it was "dumb," not on the grounds that it was barbaric and unthinkable. Thus, he along with the Democrats, allowed this monstrous bill to pass when they could have and should have stopped it with a filibuster.

Failing to protect its citizens? Obama voted for the massive bailout of investment banks.

Failing to protect its citizens? Though Obama opposed the Iraq war initially, he has voted funding for it on every single opportunity.

When the invasion of Iraq was being prepared and public opinion was being created to justify it through the repeated and deceitful use of lies, the NYT failed to ever utter the words "international law" or the words "the UN Charter." Had it done so, it would have been clear that invading another country that has not first attacked you is the highest war crime of all. Those who were paying attention at the time knew that there were no WMD in Iraq, but EVEN if there had been, that would not have justified an attack. If possessing WMD were sufficient grounds, then any country on this earth could justify attacking the US as we have the largest inventory of WMD in the world and are the only ones to ever have used nuclear weapons on others. Indeed, Obama has threatened very vigorously to do so against Iran.

While it is a good and historic thing that finally the GOP has been beaten at the polls and this beating has FINALLY been officially recognized, unlike the 2000 and 2004 elections in which the losers took office, we should be under no illusions about what is to come. Change will only come if the people demand it through creating their [own] independent, extra-electoral actions the way that the war in Vietnam was ended and civil rights were won. Civil rights and the end of the war were not won through the largesse of condescending saviors. They were won through the inspired and heroic struggle of millions.

How can the infamous atrocities of the Bush White House be made right merely by voting? Will Obama prosecute these war criminals? When Bush finally admitted that he approved of waterboarding, what did Obama do? Did he immediately call for Bush's resignation as a war criminal? This is what

— Dr. Dennis Loo, Los Angeles

November 05, 2008 10:49 am

(This is what got cut off in my earlier posting:)

When Bush finally admitted approving of waterboarding - i.e., torture - here is what Obama said:

"[O]ne of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances."

What, if not exceptional, have been the actions of the Bush White House?

For the rest of his comments and a commentary on it, see http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=4664&Itemid=220

NY Times Editorial November 4, 2008

2008-11-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

[A very short list of the damage that can and is still being done by the current criminals in the White House until at least January 20, 2009. Regardless of who wins the election, the awful policies continue. They need to be fought today and until they are reversed and those who responsible for these crimes against humanity brought to justice.]

So Little Time, So Much Damage

While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here's a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House — and he's not wasting a minute.

President Bush's aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush's case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.

Here is a look — by no means comprehensive — at some of Mr. Bush's recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come.

CIVIL LIBERTIES We don't know all of the ways that the administration has violated Americans' rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject's neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.

The administration showed further disdain for Americans' privacy rights and for Congress's power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department's privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans' privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.

The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law "does not prohibit" officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn't have done better.

THE ENVIRONMENT The administration has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and protect endangered species.

Mr. Bush, or more to the point, Vice President Dick Cheney, came to office determined to dismantle Bill Clinton's environmental legacy, undo decades of environmental law and keep their friends in industry happy. They have had less success than we feared, but only because of the determined opposition of environmental groups, courageous members of Congress and protests from citizens. But the White House keeps trying.

Mr. Bush's secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne, has recently carved out significant exceptions to regulations requiring expert scientific review of any federal project that might harm endangered or threatened species (one consequence will be to relieve the agency of the need to assess the impact of global warming on at-risk species). The department also is rushing to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list — again. The wolves were re-listed after a federal judge ruled the government had not lived up to its own recovery plan.

In coming weeks, we expect the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a final rule that would weaken a program created by the Clean Air Act, which requires utilities to install modern pollution controls when they upgrade their plants to produce more power. The agency is also expected to issue a final rule that would make it easier for coal-fired power plants to locate near national parks in defiance of longstanding Congressional mandates to protect air quality in areas of special natural or recreational value.

Interior also is awaiting E.P.A.'s concurrence on a proposal that would make it easier for mining companies to dump toxic mine wastes in valleys and streams.

And while no rules changes are at issue, the interior department also has been rushing to open up millions of acres of pristine federal land to oil and gas exploration. We fear that, in coming weeks, Mr. Kempthorne will open up even more acreage to the commercial development of oil shale, a hugely expensive and environmentally risky process that even the oil companies seem in no hurry to begin. He should not.

ABORTION RIGHTS Soon after the election, Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is expected to issue new regulations aimed at further limiting women's access to abortion, contraceptives and information about their reproductive health care options.

Existing law allows doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in an abortion. These changes would extend the so-called right to refuse to a wide range of health care workers and activities including abortion referrals, unbiased counseling and provision of birth control pills or emergency contraception, even for rape victims.

•

The administration has taken other disturbing steps in recent weeks. In late September, the I.R.S. restored tax breaks for banks that take big losses on bad loans inherited through acquisitions. Now we learn that JPMorgan Chase and others are planning to use their bailout funds for mergers and acquisitions, transactions that will be greatly enhanced by the new tax subsidy.

One last-minute change Mr. Bush won't be making: He apparently has decided not to shut down the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the most shameful symbol of his administration's disdain for the rule of law.

Mr. Bush has said it should be closed, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, pushed for it. Proposals were prepared, including a plan for sending the real bad guys to other countries for trial. But Mr. Cheney objected, and the president has refused even to review the memos. He will hand this mess off to his successor.

We suppose there is some good news in all of this. While Mr. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009, he has only until Nov. 20 to issue "economically significant" rule changes and until Dec. 20 to issue other changes. Anything after that is merely a draft and can be easily withdrawn by the next president.

Unfortunately, the White House is well aware of those deadlines.

Ohio police ordered to have riot gear ready for election 'unrest'

2008-11-04T08:50:00.000-08:00

At The Raw Story:

11/04/2008 @ 8:12 am

Filed by David Edwards and John Byrne

It sounds like the kind of thing that precedes "elections" under dictatorships: Riot police being readied for "civil unrest" during a presidential vote.

But the location is in the United States. According to an internal memo acquired by the local NBC News affiliate, Toledo, Ohio police officers have been ordered to "have their riot equipment with them Tuesday and Wednesday."

Police chief Mike Navarre told the network officers will carry equipment similar to the gear they used during 2005 race riots.

"They have been asked to have their helmets and their gas masks available tomorrow and Wednesday," Navarre said, "That's the equipment they would not normally carry with them on a normal day."

Police chief Navarre added that officers wouldn't be station[ed] at individual polling places -- but the memo says otherwise. According to NBC, it reads, "On Tuesday, units shall be directed to patrol the polling locations."

This video is from CNN's American Morning, broadcast Nov. 4, 2008.

This Election and Our Responsibility

2008-11-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

by Debra Sweet now posted at World Can't Wait.

Pre-Election Troubles on Boil

2008-11-03T19:47:00.000-08:00

Sent by David Swanson:

Friends

This will be the last news summary before Election Day and it is one that will make you uncomfortable.

The last few days of voting news, see below, have some real pre-election scares in them. Perhaps most frightening is a letter published by the U.S. Election Asstance Commission from a Michigan election official describing how an ES&S optical scan machine got inconsistent votes in logic and accuracy testing. The October 24th letter, published today, raises serious doubts about the machines. The Michigan official wrote:

"While problems with the performacne [sic] and design of the M-100s have been documented, this is the first time I have ever questioned the integrity of these machines. The issue is this - four of our communities or eight percent - reported inconsistent vote totals during their logic and accuracy testing with the ES&S machines. The same ballots, run through the same machines, yielded different results each time."

Kim Zetter from Wired notes "ES&S tabulators were responsible for counting 50 percent of the votes in the last four major U.S. elections, according to the company. Some 30,000 of them are now deployed in 43 states."

The problem is the machines get dirty during use (like on busy election days!) and cannot be cleaned as maintenance voids the warranty. ES&S is the same company that makes touchscreen machines that have reportedly flipped votes in five states. Combining the ES&S problems with Diebold's (aka Premier) admission that their machines can lose the votes of entire precincts and it is difficult to be confident about the vote count.

Other news shows the beat goes on -- long lines in multiple states, officials and judges refusing to extend the voting day to make up for it, purging of voters continued in Colorado after a judge ordered it stopped and leaves Colorado voters confused., a variety of people put forward various ways in which the election could still be stolen. Even Oprah Winfrey found her voting machine failing to count her presidential choice! But, election integrity activists are also doing what they can. Black Box voting puts out several videos on what you can do to protect the vote and numerous obervers, poll watchers and election hot lines will be in force tomorrow, along with army's of lawyers inside and outside the campaigns. If you want to get a visual of how arrogant election officials can be, watch the video associated with the last story from Philadelphia.

It is hard to imagine how Election Day can go smoothly. Why would it be anything but a concentrated repeat of early voting -- long lines, registration challenges, voter suppression, machine problems and litigation. Is this any way to run an election? Is this really the greatest democracy on Earth!?

If you haven't taken action on our last two alerts (1) urging the networks and AP to keep the exit poll results before they are reconfigured to match the voting results (something that could be the most effective audit of the election we have); and (2) seeking the intervention of international observers for any post-election battles -- there is still time to do so. See http://truevote.us/action.php.

Kevin Zeese

Judge Refuses Last-Minute Election Changes in Va.

November 03, 2008

By Anita Kumar
Washington Post

RICHMOND, Nov. 3 -- Hours before the polls open, a federal judge Monday refused to order any last-minute changes to Virginia's voting procedures in response to allegations by the NAACP that the state is not prepared to handle the predicted historic voter turnout in Tuesday's election.

But U.S. District Judge Richard L. Williams will consider Tuesday a separate request by Republican presidential nominee John McCain to allow overseas absentee ballots an extra 10 days to arrive in Virginia.

» Read More

McCain sues to force Va. to count military ballots

November 03, 2008

By Bob Lewis
The Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. -- Republican John McCain's presidential campaign sued the Virginia election board Monday, claiming absentee ballots weren't mailed on time to military members serving overseas.

The complaint asks the U.S. District Court in Richmond to order the state to count absentee ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received by Nov. 14. It contends that thousands of troops' ballots _ many of which would go to McCain _ will not be counted.

» Read More

Georgia: Fulton, Clayton won't extend voting hours, urge patience

November 03, 2008

Minimum 2-hour waits expected in Fulton

By Mary Lou Pickel, Megan Matteucci
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Officials in Fulton and Clayton counties Monday morning decided against seeking permission to extend polling hours on Election Day.

The Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections voted unanimously not to extend hours, saying that they think the number of voting machines per person is sufficient to handle the load.

» Read More

Colorado's Purged voters in the dark over Election Day status

November 03, 2008

Thousands potentially could be denied right to cast ballots over bureaucratic snafus

By Naomi Zeveloff
Colorado Independent

Thousands of purged Colorado voters have no clue that they've been removed from the state’s rolls. And that could make for some dramatic scenarios on Election Day tomorrow when would-be registered voters are denied a regular ballot at the polls.

Last week, voting rights experts scored a win to protect these voters who were removed from the rolls by allowing them to vote by provisional ballot. The Advancement Project, a national voter protection organization, filed suit against Secretary of State Mike Coffman for illegally removing as many as 30,000 voters after a 90-day no purge federal deadline. In a settlement, Coffman agreed to provide provisional ballots to purged voters who show up at the polls on Election Day. These special provisional forms will be verified before any others in the two weeks after the election.

» Read More

Combat Vote Suppression posted

November 03, 2008

By Peter Rothberg
The Nation

This longest election campaign in American history, soon to be concluded, has seen a record number of new voters registered.

In Connecticut, more than 300,000 new voters have added their names to the rolls since January 1, and a higher percentage of registered voters are expected to participate in tomorrow's election than at any time since John F. Kennedy faced off with Richard Nixon in 1960.

» Read More

Could voting meltdown history repeat itself?

November 03, 2008

By Deborah Hastings
Associated Press

In 2000, the presidential election was marred by hanging chads in Florida. Four years later, it was malfunctioning machines in Ohio. With record numbers of voters expected yet again, the fundamental question remains whether the country's embattled election machinery will stand up to the pressure.

This year's unprecedented primary turnout has already exposed cracks in the infrastructure. In Texas, lines stretched for hours and ballots ran out. Voters in Virginia were told to submit slips of paper — which were later disqualified — when ballot deliveries didn't arrive, and overwhelmed poll workers in Washington, D.C., hid electronic machines because they were afraid of the contraptions.

» Read More

Concerns continue to shadow e-voting

November 03, 2008

Security Focus

As the United States readies for a historic presidential election, voting and security experts continue to push for better checks on the machines that will record and tally up the ballots.

Over the past month, scattered reports of electronic voting machines that have "flipped votes" -- marking a vote for a different candidate than the one selected -- has worried some election experts. The issues have been reported in Colorado, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, although an online video that appeared to show the problem has been assailed as misleading, according to Wired News.

» Read More

Short-Circuiting the Vote

November 03, 2008

Tuesday's election will be the most technologically advanced in American history. But will it be the most reliable?

Newsweek

Eight years have passed since the autumn of the hanging chads. Most punch-card voting machines have been retired, and several billion dollars have been spent on new election hardware as well as the preparation of updated, computerized, statewide registration lists. A major federal elections law was passed in 2002 (the Help America Vote Act); a new agency (the Elections Assistance Commission) was created; and state officials across the country have been working hard to insure that "Florida" will not happen again.

» Read More

Touchscreen Voting Machines Cause Long Lines and Disenfranchise Voters

November 03, 2008

Authors: William A. Edelstein, Arthur D. Edelstein
aRxiv.org

Abstract: Computerized touchscreen "Direct Recording Electronic" DRE voting systems have been used by over 1/3 of American voters in recent elections. In many places, insufficient DRE numbers in combination with lengthy ballots and high voter traffic have caused long lines and disenfranchised voters who left without voting. We have applied computer queuing simulation to the voting process and conclude that far more DREs, at great expense, would be needed to keep waiting times low. Alternatively, paper ballot-optical scan systems can be easily and economically scaled to prevent long lines and meet unexpected contingencies.

Black Box Voting on Protecting the Vote Count on Election Night

November 03, 2008

By Bev Harris
Black Box Voting

Black Box Voting was asked by YouTube to prepare an easy to follow public education program for Protecting the Count on ELECTION NIGHT and the days that follow. We also collaborated with Videothevote.org and Election Defense Alliance. YouTube has created a Channel called Video Your Vote. The Black Box Voting Protect the Count series contains important information and several video clips never before made public.

» Read More

How McCain Could Win

2008-11-03T12:55:00.000-08:00

by Greg Palast

It's November 5 and the nation is in shock. Media blame it on the "Bradley effect": Americans supposedly turned into Klansmen inside the voting booth, and Barack Obama turned up with 6 million votes less than calculated from the exit polls. Florida came in for McCain and so did Indiana. Colorado, despite the Democrats' Rocky Mountain high after the Denver convention, stayed surprisingly Red. New Mexico, a state where Anglos are a minority, went McCain by 300 votes, as did Virginia.

That's the nightmare. Here's the cold reality.

Swing state Colorado. Before this election, two Republican secretaries of state purged 19.4 percent of the entire voter roll. One in five voters. Pfft!

Swing state New Mexico. One in nine voters in this year's Democratic caucus found their names missing from the state-provided voter registries. And not just any voters. County by county, the number of voters disappeared was in direct proportion to the nonwhite population. Gore won the state by 366 votes; Kerry lost it by only 5,900. Despite reassurances that all has been fixed for Tuesday, Democrats lost from the list in February told me they're still "disappeared" from the lists this week.

Swing state Indiana. In this year's primary, ten nuns were turned away from the polls because of the state's new voter ID law. They had drivers' licenses, but being in their 80s and 90s, they'd let their licenses expire. Cute. But what isn't cute is this: 566,000 registered voters in that state don't have the ID required to vote. Most are racial minorities, the very elderly and first-time voters; that is, Obama voters. Twenty-three other states have new, vote-snatching ID requirements.

Swing state Florida. Despite a lawsuit battle waged by the Brennan Center for Justice, the state's Republican apparatchiks are attempting to block the votes of 85,000 new registrants, forcing them to pass through a new "verification" process. Funny thing: verification applies only to those who signed up in voter drives (mostly black), but not to voters registering at motor vehicle offices (mostly white).

And so on through swing states controlled by Republican secretaries of state.

The Ugly Secret

Here's an ugly little secret about American democracy: We don't count all the votes. In 2004, based on the data from the US Elections Assistance Commission, 3,006,080 votes were not counted: "spoiled," unreadable and blank ballots; "provisional" ballots rejected; mail-in ballots disqualified.

This Tuesday, it will be worse. Much worse.

That's what I found while traveling the nation over the last year for BBC Television and Rolling Stone Magazine, working with voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. This we guarantee: there will be far more votes disappeared by Tuesday night than the three million lost in 2004. A six-million vote swipe, quite likely, shifts 4 percent of the ballots, within the margin of error of the tightest polls.

Begin with this harsh statistic: since the last election, more than ten million voters have been purged from the nation's vote registries. And that's just the start of the steal.

If the noncount were random, it wouldn't matter. But it's not random. A US Civil Rights Commission analysis shows that the chance a black voter's ballot will "spoil" or be blank is 900 percent higher than a white voter's.

Does that mean the election's stolen and you should forget voting and just go back to bed for four years? Hell, no. It means you vote and vote smart, learn how to pry their filthy little hands off your ballot (there's a link at the end).

How to Steal an Election in Five Easy Steps

Here's how they can pull off the steal. Take out your calculator and add it up.

Step One: The "Dumpster" Vote - Purge Voters, Provisional Ballots

Ten million voters purged? What the hell is going on here? Why are we removing millions from the voter rolls?

The answer is the GOP's secret weapon, the Help America Vote Act, signed by George Bush in 2002. When Bush tells us he's going to help us vote, look out. But Democrats didn't. They signed on to the GOP bill, believing this "reform" law would prevent "another Florida." Instead, "Help America Vote" Floridated the entire nation.

Here's how: Help America Vote empowered secretaries of state to remove fraudulent and suspicious voters from the voter registries. It was the trick used by Katherine Harris in Florida in 2000 when she purged "felon" voters. Except they weren't felons. And now her GOP confrères are doing it in dozens of states, calling folks felon voters, "inactive" voters, suspect voters, whatever.

Take Colorado. The GOP didn't exactly trumpet it's erasing 19.4 percent of voters' names. It was, as detectives say, "hidden in plain sight," buried deep inside a US Elections Assistance Commission administrative report, among tables of mind-numbing stats through which I was trawling some months ago. (I used to teach statistics at Indiana University, so I enjoy reading matrices like others enjoy novels.)

For BBC TV and Rolling Stone, I asked the current Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman, "Why all the purging?" No answer, not a word, stonewalled even when I flew into Denver and stood outside his door. He was, I guess, too busy preparing to count his own votes as Republican candidate for Congress.

So, where are the Democrats? That's the really scary part. I spoke with Paul Hultin, appointed by Colorado's Democratic governor to the state's Election Reform Commission. Hultin's a terrific attorney. He knows, and says, that Help America Vote was a law "born in corruption," but he's spent his time on Colorado's voting machines, which he knows are busted. He's the Democrats' expert, and he didn't know that a fifth of his state's voters had vanished from the voter rolls.

Well, don't worry. Hultin's official committee will be holding hearings on the voting debacle in Colorado ... on November 19.

Then there's New Mexico, with those one in nine Democrats missing. I spoke with San Miguel County elections supervisor, Democrat Pecos Paul Maez, who was none too happy that 20 percent of his voters, the majority poor and Hispanic, were not on the voter rolls, especially because he was one of the missing. He blamed the state for using a suspect contractor to tag names for the Big Purge, as required by the Help America Vote Act. The contractor that conducted the New Mexico purge, Electronic Systems and Software (ES&S), was founded by Republican Senator Chuck Hagel.

The company and state choose the purging "algorithms," those mathematical formulae that, depending on how you tweak them, can go through a voter roll like a hot knife through cream cheese.

So, what happens to the purged voters? They're told to scram when they arrive to vote or, if they squawk, they get a "provisional" ballot on which they can pretend to vote.

Now, here are the facts about provisionals: they don't get counted. And there are lots of them. The great unreported story of the 2004 election was that there were more than three million voters shunted to provisional ballots. Over a million (1,090,000) were never counted, just chucked in the dumpster. That's what caused Kerry to lose New Mexico, Iowa and Ohio. This time, because of Help America Vote and a Republican campaign to challenge voters, the number of provisionals will rise, as will rejections.

Whatever keeps you from getting a real ballot - purged name, for example - keeps you from having the provisional counted as well. That's because Democrats won the right of every voter to get a provisional ballot, but not the right to have that ballot counted. And how many will go uncounted? Double the 1.1 million loss in 2004 - not just because of the GOP's purge-mania, but because of a vicious little codicil in Help America Vote that went into effect since the last election ...

Step Two: "Verification" (and Elimination) of New Voters

For the first time in US history, new voters will face special new obstacles to voting. When we say "new" voters, let's be clear - we mean Obama voters. A Wall Street Journal poll shows new voters prefer Obama by an eye-popping three to one (69 percent to 20 percent).

So, the Republican game plan is simple: don't let new voters vote. There are three steps to this block-and-steal tactic. First, under the new law, states can deny new voters registration on the grounds their names can't be verified against government data files. Sounds reasonable, but it's not, because we don't have Soviet-style citizenship files in the US. The Social Security Administration is rejecting nearly half of the names submitted because there is no multi-state compatible tracking system. Of course, the Republicans know that.

New voter verification losses are huge. In California, a Republican secretary of state rejected 42 percent of new registrations, a trick discovered by his Democratic successor, Debra Bowen. She told me most of the rejected vote applicants had Hispanic, Vietnamese, Islamic and other "odd" names - odd, that is, for Republicans.

It used to be that you filled out a registration card and, bingo, you were registered. Not any more. That's also what happened in Florida to the 85,000 new registrants. They were victims of strict "matching" algorithms. Other states are also playing the "match" game. The result is voters will find themselves simply missing (or in some states, required to show extra ID - another horror show we'll discuss below). But don't worry, a of couple million new voters will get provisional ballots. That way, they can practice filling out their ballots for the day when democracy returns to America.

Step Three: New ID Laws

Karl Rove said, "I go to the grocery store and I wanna cash a check to pay for my groceries I gotta show a little bit of ID. Why should it not be reasonable ... at the voting place they ought to be able to prove who they are by showing some form of ID." And so, while buying his Pampers, Rove came up with a game-winner for the GOP.

Karl, let me answer your question. The reason, according to several studies by the Bush administration itself, is that lots of folks don't have government ID. Some are nuns, some are poor, lots are brown or old. I was on Fox TV with Lady Rothschild a couple of weeks ago. The lady, a McCain supporter, approved of the ID requirement - and was truly surprised to find out that some poorer Americans don't have passports. "Why don't they?" her Fox-mates asked, incredulous. Well, not every barrio kid has just returned from his estate outside London.

Rove knows that. He certainly knows that, for example, Professor Matthew Barreto of the University of Washington found that 10 percent of white voters in Indiana don't have the needed ID. And, for blacks, it's about double - 19 percent lack the ID required to vote. New ID laws will add to the turn-aways, provisionals and rejecteds on Tuesday by at least two million - and that's way conservative, assuming the new laws in swing states are only one-fourth as restrictive as Indiana's.

Step Four: Spoiling Ballots

Your chad gets hung. The touch screen doesn't like your touch. Or, your paper ballot had that extra mark that made the machine spit out your ballot like day-old beer with a cigarette floating in it.

In the last election, 1,389,231 ballots were zeroed-out, "spoiled," because the machines lost them, couldn't read them, mangled them or simply didn't register them. But it's not random, not by a long shot. In New Mexico in 2004, I found that 89 percent of blank and spoiled ballots were cast in minority precincts - a sum of uncounted ballots way over the Republican "victory" margin in that state.

Another study shows that Hispanics' vote choices are six times as likely to fail to be recorded when they vote on computers versus paper ballots.

In the primaries and in 2006, the "spoilage" and blank ("undervote") totals were horrific. There is every reason to believe the "spoilage" total will be as high as in the 2004 election. That is, no less than one million votes, overwhelmingly in minority districts, will just vanish. ("Spoilage" is not the same as vote tampering. There is the concern that "black-box" computers will switch your vote via an evil software hack job. That's another matter completely - and more votes lost if it happens, a sum I'm not including here.)

Step Five: Rejecting Mail-In Ballots

You've mailed in your ballot. Last time around, over half a million mail-in ballots were junked: everything from postage due to not liking your signature to a circle checked, not filled in. Mailing in a ballot is playing Russian roulette with it. About a tenth get junked.

This time, the GOP has a new game for trashing your absentee vote. In states like Florida, some FTFs (First-Time Federal voters) will have to include a photocopy of their ID in with the absentee ballot. Bet you didn't know that. They're counting on you not knowing that. In Florida, for example, you have to place the ID photocopy outside the inner envelope, but inside the outer envelope - Got that? - or your vote is toast. I've spoken to one student voter, who lost his vote for failing to use the two envelopes - though he only received one. (Have a mail-in ballot in hand? Then, for God's sake, walk it in to the polling place or local board of elections. Sign, seal and deliver it in person.)

You may get it right, but historic data suggest that, when combining the FTF games with the usual mail-in cock-ups, Obama will lose another million votes to mail-in disqualifications.

Exit Polls and Exit Stratagems

These millions of uncounted ballots - spoiled ballots, provisional ballots rejected, absentee ballots disqualified - fully explain the difference between exit polls (which, for example, gave Kerry Ohio in 2004 and Gore a win in Florida in 2000) and the official count. Exit pollsters ask, "Who did you vote for?" They never ask, and can't know, "Did your vote count?"

How would they get away with it? Well, they begin explaining away how the "pollsters" get it wrong, how pollsters didn't figure the "Bradley Effect" of lying, racist voters. They'll tell us the new, young and Black Obamaniacs gave money, went to rallies - but never bothered to vote. But the real reason will never be whispered: They cast votes that just weren't counted.

Will the election be stolen on Tuesday? No, it's already been stolen. That is, several million voters are doomed to lose their ballots; most won't even know it. Overwhelmingly, they are the poor, minorities, new voters - Obama voters. Does that mean McCain's got it in the bag and you're helpless? Not at all.

Don't Steal Your Own Vote

In 2004, I and other investigators wrote, long before Election Day, "Ohio's stolen." We were deadly right.

It's happening again. For six years, the Democratic Party has been snoozing through a quiet, brilliantly executed Republican operation to block, stop and purge voters by the millions. As New Mexico voting rights attorney John Boyd put it, "I don't think the Democrats get it. All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."

Karl Rove once said, "We have elections like those run in countries where the guys in charge are, you know, colonels in mirrored glasses." He wasn't complaining; he was boasting.

I know that the Obama campaign is not happy that I bring up the issue of a possible theft of the election. They fear voters will be "discouraged" by the possibility that the election is fixed.

Well, frankly, if you're too bummed out by this recitation of facts and statistics to vote, then maybe you don't deserve to vote, or to drive or to reproduce. Did Martin Luther King say, "I have a dream ... so I'm going back to sleep"?

Votes can't be saved by "hope" alone. There are simple ways to protect your own vote, from walking in your "mail-in" to refusing a provisional ballot. (You can download the list at StealBackYourVote.org, written with Bobby Kennedy, a professor of law.)

It comes down to this: Can the margin of trickery, vote suppression and ballot destruction - three to six million votes - be overcome? Yes. Because they can't steal all the votes all the time. Two days before the election, John McCain is down by only 4 percent in some polls. But these are polls of "likely" voters. They exclude first-time and many low-income voters.

So, the answer to vote suppression is for something unlikely to happen - for the "unlikely" voters to simply overwhelm the statistical assumption of their laziness. As I'm sure Mr. Obama, a professor of constitutional law, could tell you: the best legal response to systematic vote suppression is to get off yo' ass!

--------

Greg Palast is the co-author of "Block the Vote," in this month's Rolling Stone Magazine, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Palast and Kennedy are also co-authors of the investigative comic book, "Steal Back Your Vote." Palast, who reports on election fraud for BBC Television, is a Nation Institute/Puffin Foundation fellow for investigative reporting. Prior to his becoming a journalist, Palast was a forensic economist, fraud investigator and taught economics and statistics at Indiana University. palast@gregpalast.net

USA Today/Gallup Poll on the 2008 Election

2008-11-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

What the following poll indicates is that barring some sudden and extremely dramatic event tonight or tomorrow, a McCain "victory" on Tuesday will be outside the realm of mathematical possibility and would constitute a stolen election.

I say this also as the author of "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election" which was first published in August 2005 by Project Censored. Following Steven Freeman's signal analysis, "The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy," of December 2004, "No Paper Trail Left Behind" was the next important analysis proving that the 2004 election was stolen.

Obama is but a new face on a government that has been responsible for heinous acts and policies for the last eight years. When you strip away all of Obama's rhetoric about change and look at the substantive elements of his approach and look at what he has done as a US senator, what stands out unmistakably is that he will carry forward the Bush Doctrine in foreign policy (see especially his stand on Pakistan and Afghanistan) and has voted with the Bush White House on critical matters such as the Telecom Amnesty Bill and funding the unjust and immoral Iraq War. So I bring up these points not as an Obama cheerleader.

I bring up the polls here to warn that those who have stolen before are still on the scene and are dead set on ramming their agenda of a police state down our collective throats. Elections don't and never have decided public policy, but elections have been and are used as fabricated "mandates" to carry out policies that the rulers want to implement anyway.

Final USA TODAY/Gallup estimate: Obama, 53%; McCain, 42%

By: Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain by 11 percentage points in the last USA TODAY/Gallup national poll of likely voters before Election Day.

With less than two days to go before polls open, the contenders' support is estimated to be:

• Obama, 53%.
• McCain, 42%.

Those numbers, released this hour, are based on national surveys of 2,472 likely voters. The interviews were conducted by telephone on Friday, Saturday and today. The margin of error on each figure is +/- 2 percentage points.

Gallup says the group it surveyed is mostly made up of voters who fit its "traditional" model of those likely to show up at the polls. Also among the 2,472 are some who have already voted -- including first-timers.

The results are identical to Gallup's "expanded" pool of likely voters, which adds more first-time voters than the survey firm used in the past.

One other set of numbers to consider: Gallup says that when it allocates the 4% of likely voters who either had no opinion or would not choose between Obama and McCain, it estimates the candidates' current support levels would most likely be 55% for Obama, 44% for McCain.

Watch USATODAY.com for more about the poll later this evening, and read more about it in tomorrow's USA TODAY.

And, as always, remember that polls are snapshots of current public opinion and that things can change -- even in the space of less than two days.

Update at 8:50 p.m. ET. USA TODAY's Washington bureau chief, Susan Page, adds that:

McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate doesn't appear to be wearing well with most Americans. In the poll, 45% of registered voters rated the choice as "poor" and another 18% said it was "only fair," while 19% called it "pretty good" and 16% excellent.

Those are much more negative ratings than in a USA TODAY survey taken just after the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. Then, 60% called the pick of Palin excellent or good; 38% said it was "only fair" or poor.

In contrast, assessments of Barack Obama's choice of Delaware Sen. Joe Biden remain positive. Now, 60% call Obama's choice excellent or "pretty good," while 38% say it was "only fair" or poor. In early September, the divide was 63%-33%.

Biden has a favorable-unfavorable rating of 53%-32%. Palin has a favorable-unfavorable rating of 42%-49%.

One more historic tidbit from the survey: Obama's favorable rating is 62% -- the highest that any presidential candidate has registered in Gallup's final pre-election polls going back to 1992.

Posted by Mark Memmott at 07:57 PM/ET, November 02, 2008 in Democrats, Polls, Presidential race, 2008, Republicans | Permalink

It's Happening Already

2008-11-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

An attempt to disenfranchise millions and steal the election - 200,000 in Ohio alone in direct ways, hundreds of thousands more in indirect ways such as providing too few voting machines in heavily Democratic precincts in Ohio - has been in the works and in process, in the most proximate sense, for months, and in the larger sense, since the 2000 election. That theft was successful in 2000 and in 2004. The same people who pulled it off and wanted it in the last two presidential elections are still around and doing their dirty deeds once again.

It's not a question of if. It's not a question of will they try or not. It's a question of whether or not they will succeed.

A mixture of dread and enthusiasm is evident in the country, with the dread being especially felt by blacks and by those who are aware that the last two presidential races were stolen. The enthusiasm is being expressed by those who are feeling and hoping that they may be successful finally in destroying the beast that has been stalking the land, raping and pillaging the people. Except that the beast is going to still be around and in our midst - whether Obama takes office or not - in the form of Palin and her minions, the right-wing media and think tanks, their proponents in military leadership posts and in most other sectors of the society. Palin, as someone has described her, is who Bush thinks he is.

It's clear that the GOP ticket has been and is in a great deal of trouble. As just one example of this, McCain is in danger of losing his home state of Arizona with the polls showing Obama in striking distance. This would be extraordinary. As another example of this, McCain and Palin have become the laughing stock of TV show hosts and various pundits.

On the other hand, a stolen election is a very, very, very real prospect. This is becoming clearer and clearer by the day.

The "Electoral Remedy"

2008-10-31T11:27:00.000-07:00

See my essay at Counterpunch, posted today.

Populism Arising—but Will It Be the Killer Kind?

2008-10-30T14:30:00.000-07:00

By Chris Hedges

The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.

I watched these competing populisms flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.

Baldwin, like Nader, rails against corporatism and our involvement in foreign wars, wants to repeal NAFTA and denounces the curtailment of civil liberties. But Baldwin goes on to support the abolishment of whole departments of the federal government, such as the Department of Education. He calls for U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations and NATO, the elimination of the Food and Drug Administration, the outlawing of abortion and removing all restrictions on the purchasing of firearms. One of his catchier campaign slogans is: “To help keep your family safe and your country free, go buy a gun.” He wants to seal our borders, deny amnesty and social services to illegal immigrants and end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. He calls for dismantling the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service, overturning the 16th Amendment and the personal income tax, and returning the American monetary system to hard assets: gold and silver.

These candidates, while marginal figures in the current election, express the two forms of populism that will soon find a wide political currency. The anger toward our elites will morph into rage. These new populisms may not be articulated by Nader and Baldwin, but they will be articulated by people like Nader and Baldwin.

The ideological foundations of free-market economics and a consumer society have collapsed. This collapse is hard for us to fathom. We are still in shock and denial. We cling to old structures of meaning and outdated words to describe them. We have yet to realize that all our political science and economic textbooks have become junk. We have yet to formulate a vocabulary to describe our altered reality. We grasp, on a subliminal level, that laissez-faire capitalism is gone, but we have not viewed the corpse, scheduled the funeral and read the last rites.

“People get very clearly that Washington found hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out rich people in a way the government does not usually intervene,” said Anthony Pollina, The Progressive Party candidate for governor in Vermont. “They understand that the government came up with all this money to support the wrong group of people. People get that in their gut. There is anger. It is not rage yet. There is still a little bit of disbelief. I may be running for governor, but all people want to talk about is how did we come up with all this money to give to rich people on Wall Street and why didn’t they let them pay their mortgage off.”

Millions of people will lose their homes. Jobs and savings will vanish. The government will continue to lurch from crisis to crisis. The greed of huge corporations, especially as they continue to cannibalize the country, will see them, and our elites, become the enemy. Exxon, to give one example, made $40.61 billion in profits last year while we struggled to fill the tanks of our automobiles and trucks. Oil and gas corporations, despite these profits, ruthlessly refuse to fill furnaces in winter when people cannot pay the bills. AIG, the insurance giant, after being saved with an infusion of $85 billion in taxpayer money, squandered $440,000 on an executive visit to a California spa. It spent $86,000 for its executives to hunt partridges in the English countryside and then blithely asked the U.S. government for an additional $38 billion.

Elites, when they confuse the artificial court life of Versailles with the real world, die. These capitalist entities, grossly out of touch, incompetent, blinded by greed and power and morally and intellectually bankrupt, are committing collective suicide.

“People are beginning to understand that when the economy is weak you have to put people to work,” Pollina, who is now outpolling the Democratic candidate, said. “We have a crumbling infrastructure in the state and a need for affordable housing. I have put forward three or four different ways to raise revenue to put people to work, including closing a loophole in our capital gains tax. I think people are attracted to me because they are realizing that this is now the most important thing we can do. We have to put people to work. We cannot continue to abandon them.”

The flagrant corruption of our political system—hostage to the hundreds of millions of dollars handed out by the corporations and elites to Democratic and Republican candidates—will become clearer as our initial shock wears off. The new American will be about the basics—jobs, food, health care and a place to live. We will discard the old vocabulary, the one still used by the Democratic and Republic parties, and learn to speak in the fiery language of populism. We will turn with a vengeance on the 1 percent that has amassed more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. The populist conflict will see a battle between a frightened and dispossessed majority and the corporations and elites who seek to ruthlessly cling to power and wealth.

“Over the years people became disengaged,” Pollina said. “They stopped paying attention. This crisis has forced them to pay attention. It directly affects their economic future and ability to put food on the table. Outrage will lead to more involvement. This outrage could, however, fuel a right-wing populism around the country, although not in Vermont. Here I think people will move more to the left. In Vermont they have somewhere else to turn—I am here, Bernie Sanders is here, the Progressive Party is here—but on the national level this could see people turn to the right wing.”

A victory by Barack Obama may embolden right-wing populists. They will be able to use Obama and “liberal Democrats” as a lightning rod for the failings, growing poverty and incompetence of the state. The elite, as happens in all such moments of confusion, revolt and social chaos, will probably be forced to make an uncomfortable alliance with right-wing populists if they want to survive. The center of the political spectrum will melt.

“A lot of people feel the two parties have reached a consensus that all they have to do is support rich people to protect their hides,” Pollina said. “The two parties have come together to throw money at people who do not need it. People are beginning to understand they are no better off and probably their grandkids will pay for this. There is a great deal of resentment over the fact that Republicans and Democrats will risk everything to prop up rich people.”

We have begun a socialist experiment. George W. Bush and John McCain, in stunning repudiations of all they claimed to believe, call for massive state intervention in the financial markets and the use of billions in government funds to buy major stakes in banks. The question is not whether we will build state socialism. This process has already begun. The only question left is whether this will be right-wing or left-wing socialism.

The left, with a few exceptions, like the Progressive Party in Vermont, has largely thrown in its lot with the Democratic Party. Right-wing populists, as is evidenced by the acrimonious split in the McCain campaign, remain clustered around the fiefdoms of large megachurches that stoke hatred and frightening totalitarian visions of a Christian state. The left has no correlating centers of activism, organization or mass support, especially with the decline of labor unions. If left-wing populists do not rapidly build local organizations, as was done in Vermont, to compete with the right-wing populism of the Christian right, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, they will be easily swept aside.

There is not much time left. A Democratic victory in November may signal not a reversal of our fading fortunes but the start of a precipitous slide toward the Christian dystopia peddled by people like Baldwin.

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist whose weekly column appears Mondays on Truthdig. He is the author of “American Fascists,” an important book on this topic.

Wikimedia Commons / edited for effect

The Klan marches on Washington, 1928, right around the time of another economic disaster.

What Matters Now? The Bush/Cheney Legacy

2008-10-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

See my article published today in State of Nature.

(Note: in the version published at State of Nature, there is a paragraph on voting that reads this way:

"How could infamous atrocities and a veritable host of malignant deeds such as the mass murder of more than a million, two hundred thousand people in Iraq, egregious abandonment in New Orleans and its people in the face of Katrina, mass surveillance in felonious violation of the 1978 FISA law, brazen and unchallenged declarations by the White House that it is unaccountable to Congress, to international law, to the Constitution or to anyone at all, and on and on, be made right by anything so tame, so small, so risk-free, as what individuals do behind a closed space in a polling station for a few moments on one day in November 2008?"

I would prefer that it read in the following way given the fact that for some people, most especially black people, winning the right to vote and fighting against vicious attempts to disenfranchise them (such as police and official intimidation, disallowing their voter registration on specious grounds, dirty tricks, and far too few voting machines allocated to heavily black districts so that they must stand in line for hours and hours) means that their efforts to have their say have been a major battle. I do not want, in other words, to downplay the difficulties that blacks historically and currently face in being allowed into the voting booth in the first place (this also holds true for women's right to vote in the past). My main point in the paragraph and in the article as a whole that voting per se isn't where things are at and what needs to be done in the face of tyranny remains central:

"How could infamous atrocities and a veritable host of malignant deeds such as the mass murder of more than a million, two hundred thousand people in Iraq, egregious abandonment in New Orleans and its people in the face of Katrina, mass surveillance in felonious violation of the 1978 FISA law, brazen and unchallenged declarations by the White House that it is unaccountable to Congress, to international law, to the Constitution or to anyone at all, and on and on, be made right by what individuals do behind a closed space in a polling station for a few moments on one day in November 2008?")

The Storms to Come: the Elections, a November Surprise and the Aftermath

2008-10-23T20:37:00.000-07:00

See my essay at World Can't Wait.

Pakistan on the Brink

2008-10-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

As I've written previously, Pakistan concentrates the present contradictions in the world more powerfully and dangerously than perhaps anywhere else. See here as well.

As the article below from the Independent UK shows, the failure of the "war on terror" and its viciously, spectacularly counter-productive nature, are being played out in dramatic ways in Pakistan. If Obama becomes president, he will get the chance to continue these horrible policies that his predecessor, W., implemented on Obama's recommendations!

Look at what's happening to Pakistan and then ask yourself if this is the change we need and the change we can believe in.

Pakistan Stares Into the Abyss

Thursday 23 October 2008
by: Andrew Buncombe, Anne Penketh and Omar Waraich, The Independent UK

A spiraling conflict, economic collapse and blackouts threaten anarchy with far-reaching implications.

Pakistan was locked in crisis last night, with the government pressed by Washington to deepen its conflict with Islamic militants in the lawless regions on the Afghan border, and obliged to call in the International Monetary Fund to stave off financial catastrophe.

In the rugged north of the country, a major military offensive to root out Taliban militants has created a flood of up to 200,000 refugees and pitched Pakistani against Pakistani, Muslim against Muslim, in a conflict some are beginning to regard as a civil war.

A new US intelligence estimate meanwhile has warned that the renewed insurgency, coupled with energy shortages and political infighting, means that Pakistan, which is the only Muslim nation with nuclear weapons, is "on the edge."

"Pakistan is going through the worst crisis of its history," according to a leaked letter signed by the former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, the main opposition leader. It is a view shared by Imran Khan, another opposition leader, who says that the political and economic meltdown "is leading to a sort of anarchy in Pakistan."

"How does a country collapse?" the former cricketer asked. "There's increasing uncertainty, economic meltdown, more people on the street, inflation rising between 25 and 30 per cent. Then there's the rupee falling."

Pakistan is experiencing power cuts that have led to hourly blackouts, a doubling of basic food prices and a currency that has lost a third of its value in the past year. "The awful thing is there's no solution in sight - neither in the war on terror nor on the economic side," Mr Khan said during a visit to London. Heightening the sense of national emergency, the government yesterday turned to the International Monetary Fund for $15bn (£9.3bn) to cope with a balance of payments crisis caused by a flight of capital, after previously saying that applying to the IMF would be a last resort.

Almost every day there are retaliatory attacks against police and soldiers and Western targets. Hundreds of soldiers and an unknown number of civilians are losing their lives. The national parliament rejected the US influence on the government by adopting a resolution last night calling for an "independent" foreign policy and urging dialogue with the extremists.

The military operation against the so-called Pakistan Taliban is concentrated in the largely autonomous tribal areas that border Afghanistan. A total of 120,000 troops and paramilitary forces have been deployed against what senior officers say is a skilled and tenacious enemy. "They do not fight in one place, you cannot fight them in one place. It's basically guerrilla warfare," said Lt Col Haider Baseer, a military spokesman. "The area is mountainous, it's vast. And everybody carries a gun. It's the culture."

Long accused of failing to confront the militants, the military angrily points out that up to 1,500 soldiers and many more civilians have been killed in such operations since 2001. America has triggered national anger by dispatching troops from Afghanistan to attack a Pakistani village. At the same time, Pakistani officials point out that US and Nato forces in Afghanistan are looking to negotiate with the Taliban - something they have previously criticised Islamabad for doing.

Mr Khan claimed that the US-led "war on terror" had led to "approximately one million" men taking up arms in the tribal areas. "The total al-Qa'ida who were supposed to be in Pakistan were 800 to 1,200 people. This is the biggest gift of George Bush to al-Qa'ida, what he's done there," said Mr Khan. "It's like a factory of terror, it's producing terrorists, radicalising our society, pushing those people who had nothing to do with al-Qa'ida or Taliban into the arms of militancy and opposing the Americans and the Pakistan army," he said. [boldface added-DL]

Although Mr Khan leads the marginal Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf - which boycotted the last election - his views carry weight because of the strong moral stand he has taken in support of an independent judiciary and against endemic corruption, according to Pakistani analysts.

This week, perhaps partly to try to smooth relations, Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary of State, praised the current military operation, which is said to have killed up to 1,000 militants. "I think it is good Pakistan is taking serious military action against the terrorists," he told reporters during a trip to the country, during which he met the recently elected President, Asif Ali Zardari. But Mr Zardari's coalition government is weak and the civilian president is accused by critics such as Mr Khan of being a "puppet" of the Americans, as was his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.

Suicide bombs have become a near-daily occurrence. There have been more than 100 since July 2007, killing around 1,200 people. In 2006, there were just six such attacks. A report by the Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency suggested that in the first eight months of the year, more people were killed by suicide bombers in Pakistan than in Iraq or Afghanistan.

It remains unclear whether the army will continue to remain on the sidelines, as General Musharraf's successor as army chief-of-staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, has pledged to do. But the army could act as a power broker from behind the scenes.

"I have never known as much uncertainty as this," said Mr Khan, who is based in Lahore and is visiting his children who live with his former wife, Jemima Khan. The security risks are now so grave for Pakistani politicians that for the first time, Mr Khan is considering wearing a bulletproof vest after receiving death threats.

Dear Dave and Howard - On Obama

2008-10-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

Both Dave Lindorff and Howard Zinn have written new pieces about Obama and why they're holding their noses and voting for him.

Howard has been consistently and correctly saying that the key is mobilizing the people in a powerful extra-electoral social movement. But he nonetheless concludes that Obama's the "lesser evil."

Dave's piece, I'm sorry to say, is something that makes me want to put my arm around his shoulders and say: "Dave, what are you thinking?"

I was on a radio interview with Dave and my co-editor Peter Phillips on KPFA shortly before the November 2006 elections. I was saying that a people's movement had to be built and Dave came back arguing that we have to elect Democrats and that "We don't have time for a movement."

Well, we now all know how much good it did to elect those Democrats. They impeached Bush and Cheney and they ended the war on Iraq, right?

I'm afraid I don't have time right now to write a real response to them, but for now let me say this:

There is one and only one way that we can make any difference here and that is by building an independent political movement of the people. Anything else is illusion.

Vote for Nader or McKinney if you're going to vote for a candidate at all.

But don't harbor any illusions that voting means anything. The notion that the left can exert any pressure on Obama more than McCain is sheer fantasy. He is not beholden to us. He's beholden to big capital. Neither Obama nor McCain will have any reason to listen to the left and to the people unless and until a movement of the people is expressed in the streets, literally and metaphorically.

Scott Bateman on Palin

2008-10-18T07:22:00.000-07:00

More on the McCain/Palin Social Base

2008-10-17T18:55:00.001-07:00

This is from Sherrill2 who posted this a few minutes ago at USA Today's website, commenting on McCain's appearance on David Letterman yesterday:

So we're supposed to be tied in knots over Barack Obama meeting William Ayers at a luncheon meeting about school reform. Despite hysteria from the Palin-McCain campaign, Williams Ayers has no felony convictions--none. Since the McCain campaign has raised the issue of relationships to terrorists, why does John Sidney McCain pal around with people like G. Gordon Liddy ?

Who is G. Gordon Liddy? Commenting on the good old days of listening to Hitler on the radio when he was growing up Liddy says, "It made me feel a strength inside I had never known before." In [the] 1970s, Liddy made plans to kill journalist Jack Anderson. He also plotted to firebomb the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. For his role in Watergate. Liddy was convicted of conspiracy, burglary and illegal wiretapping, and received a 20-year sentence. He served a total of five and half years in prison, including over 100 days in solitary confinement.

What does this have to do with McCain? McCain went on Liddy's radio show last year, greeting Liddy as "an old friend." McCain went on to say, "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family." Why does John McCain hang out with a convicted felon who went to prison for subverting democracy by breaking into Democratic election headquarters at the behest of a president who was forced to resign? In light of McCain's recent attempts to subvert democracy by attempting to suppress the vote, connect the dots.

Veterans and Other Protestors Met with Police Violence at Hofstra

2008-10-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

An eyewitness report from IVAW the evening of the presidential debate.

A Report from Outside the Presidential Debate Last Night

2008-10-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

What "democracy" looks like outside the permitted "debate" celebrating "democracy."

From Debra Sweet

[For photos go here. For video footage, see here.]

A group of us from World Can't Wait were out at Hostra University last night before the debate. Several different groups of immigrant rights activists (Hempstead has a large Salvadoran community) student anti-war groups, the Long Island Alliance of peace/environmental groups, and about 50 Planned Parenthood supporters, along with a mix of Obama supporters marched and rallied in a kind of fluid mix across a wide turnpike from where the debate was held.

Iraq Veterans Against the War had announced last week that they had questions for Obama and McCain, and wanted their representatives allowed in. At 7pm, the deadline of when they expected an answer from the debate moderator and the candidates, about 15 members of IVAW led a march across the street. 100 of us followed at that point, into the street, backing them up at the entrance of the campus, shouting "Let them in!" They were met by a solid line of police on horses, with nearly 100 riot police. The activists were non-violent, and announced a peaceful protest.

Matthis Chiroux and Kris Goldsmith read their questions for the candidates, and when they stepped forward to go in, were arrested. A total of 10 IVAW members were arrested, some after standing together, pushed across the turnpike by cops on horses. The horses were used repeatedly to charge into the crowd, and especially at the IVAW members, in uniform, who were able to stay upright for nearly 10 minutes. As we were pushed to the opposite sidewalk, horses pushed several veterans to the ground, including Geoff Millard, and at least one, Nick Morgan was stepped on by a horse, and hospitalized with a broken cheekbone.

The several veterans who were not arrested spoke to the media afterward, full of outrage. Jabar Magruder, who was stationed in Iraq as part of the national guard, said he had not seen people attacked like that since he was in Iraq, and "I don't need to see that here".

I've gathered some of the coverage here:

Listen to Democracy Now for today. Interviews and live audio at the end of the broadcast.

IVAW members arrested while attempting to present questions to Obama and McCain
from ivaw.org:

One hour before the final presidential debate of the 2008 campaign, fourteen members of IVAW marched in formation to Hofstra University to present questions for the candidates. IVAW had requested permission from debate moderator Bob Schieffer to ask their questions during the debate but got no response.

The contingent of veterans in dress uniforms and combat uniforms attempted to enter the building where the debate was to be held in order to ask their questions but were turned back by police. The IVAW members at the front of the formation were immediately arrested, and others were pushed back into the crowd by police on horseback. Several members were injured, including former Army Sergeant Nick Morgan who suffered a broken cheekbone when he was trampled by police horses before being arrested.

"Neither of the candidates have shown real support for soldiers and veterans. We came here to try and get serious questions answered, questions that we as veterans of the Iraq war, have a right to ask, but instead we were arrested. We will continue to ask these questions no matter who is elected. We believe that the time has come to end this war and bring our troops home, and we will be pushing for that no matter what happens in this election." said Jason Lemieux, a former Sergeant in the US Marine Corps and member of IVAW who served three tours in Iraq.

A total of 10 veterans were arrested during the action, including Matthis Chiroux, Kristopher Goldsmith, Adam Kokesh, Mike Spinato, Geoff Millard, Marlisa Grogan, Nathan Peld, Nick Morgan, James Gilligan and Jose Vasquez.

NY Indypendent:

At Least Nine Demonstrators Arrested as Iraq Vets Try to Enter Final Presidential Debate

By Alex Kane
October 16, 2008 | Posted in IndyBlog

As millions of Americans were readying their television sets to tune into the final presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, a much different scene was unfolding outside of Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY where the debate took place.

At least five members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), a group of military veterans who are calling for immediate withdrawal from Iraq, were arrested, as well as at least four civilians, according to National Lawyers Guild observers. Nassau County police on horses trampled one member of IVAW, Nick Morgan, a veteran who served in Iraq for about a year. Morgan was knocked to the ground, and according to witnesses, the horse hooves slammed down on his face. A gash was visible on the side of his head as blood dripped down onto the pavement.

Protesters in the crowd said that Morgan was taken to a local hospital.

“The horses were pushing, like really pushing, against [members of IVAW], and physically touching their bodies,” says Erika Ward, an NYU student and intern at Democracy Now! “To see people laying on the ground…was crazy. For me, it was really emotional, [and] I saw people crying,” she continued.

AT THE HEMPSTEAD STATION

The protest began slowly, with about 70 anti-war activists rallying at a parking lot nearby the Hempstead train station. Speakers included a member of the New York Civil Liberties Union, a local civil rights advocate, a Military Families Speak Out activist and a member of the May 1st Coalition for Immigrant and Worker Rights. As more activists from the NYC area poured in, the march to the campus of Hofstra started, with defiant chants of “Stop the torture, stop the war, this is what we’re fighting for,” and “They’re our brothers, they’re our sisters, we support war resisters!” filling the streets of Hempstead.

With IVAW members at the front, the crowd swelled to around 400 demonstrators. Members of the local Planned Parenthood joined in along the way. At one point, as the antiwar march neared the campus, a group of ten members of the Gathering of Eagles, a conservative pro-war organization, heckled the demonstrators. They shouted epithets like “traitor” and “treasonous” at the Iraq veterans.

The troops have “been promised so much…it’s important for IVAW to have a voice,” says Chelsea Florio, a freshman at Fordham University and a member of the Fordham Anti-War Coalition.

The members of IVAW, backed by a crowd of anti-war protesters, were allowed to pass through one line of police before they were met with lines of Nassau County riot police and cops on horses who would not allow the veterans to enter the Hofstra campus. IVAW members Matthis Chiroux and Kris Goldsmith, who organized the protest, went first and were promptly arrested. At least three other veterans and four civilians followed and were arrested as well.

The arrests seemed to energize the crowd, and as they chanted, “Let them in,” it looked as if things could easily get out of hand.

The police on horses pushed back against the crowd, which was fronted by a group of about 15 Iraq veterans, until the demonstrators had been moved onto a nearby sidewalk.

After a tense standoff for five minutes, it looked like the police in riot gear shoved veterans and demonstrators to push them even further back, and around four people were knocked over by riot police and horses. It was during this fracas that Morgan was injured. After the police assault, a standoff between the cops and demonstrators occurred for over an hour.

A COUPLE OF QUESTIONS

A week ago, Chiroux, who this past May publicly declared his intent to refuse to deploy to Iraq, sent a letter to CBS debate moderator Bob Scheiffer spelling out the demands of IVAW. Chiroux’s letter demanded that two members of IVAW, himself and Goldsmith, be allowed entry into the debate to ask Senators Obama and McCain one question each. CBS or Schieffer did not respond to the letter from Chiroux.

“What yourself and the candidates must decide now, Mr. Schieffer, is what the legacy of this debate will be. Will this be remembered as an event where both sides of the [aisle] and the media came together to hear from our nation’s heroes…or will the words and promises of both candidates be forever shrouded in the image of a host of uniformed veterans and their supporters going to jail because these campaigns cared too little to hear from them?” Chiroux’s letter read.

“Our goal is to make Iraq and veterans the forefront of the debate,” said Goldsmith.

Chiroux planned on asking Obama a pointed question: “My question is, as President of the United States of America, are you prepared to back up your own words [about the illegality of the Iraq War] and the U.S. Constitution by supporting service members refusing to participate in what you describe as an illegal occupation?”

Goldsmith wanted to ask McCain a question about his lack of support for veterans. “What promises are you willing to make, as a veteran, as a senator, as a presidential candidate, to the veterans of the United States, to prove that you will ensure the V.A. is fully funded, staffed and capable of preventing troops from suffering as they are now?” he says.

With the crowd emotionally exhausted and worn down, the protest started to taper off at about 8:30 PM.

“We have a blind media [and] deaf candidates, but [IVAW] has a voice that will be heard,” James Gilligan, a member of IVAW said earlier in the day.

On the Pre-Election Polls

2008-10-15T11:49:00.001-07:00

The latest polls show Obama widening his lead over McCain. Some people are predicting a very large win for Obama. Several days ago I cautioned people that the GOP stealing the election was a likelihood.

If the gap between Obama and McCain gets too large, however, that is, in the high double digits, the gap that must be overcome in an election's heist is going to strain credibility and possibly make it infeasible for those who would otherwise really want to do it. [Reports are coming in about some of these efforts already in places like Ohio.]

Any Democrat running against the GOP this time around ought to have a huge lead over anyone the GOP wants to put forward, given the debacle that the Bush years have been.

(There is still time, by the way, for an October or even very early November surprise. The stock market crash and the worldwide financial crisis, nonetheless, have introduced a major stumbling block in the way of the GOP's plans, narrowing their options sharply.)

Most important of all, whoever wins in November will carry forward the major elements of the Bush White House's foreign policy and its stand on Wall Street, among other things.

The only chance we have to reverse this overall direction is to change the overall political atmosphere and bring to bear the one crucial and missing ingredient: a mobilized and visible independent movement of the people.

Some Quick Observations about the Fascist/Racist Wind Being Whipped Up by McCain/Palin

2008-10-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

From Consortium News:

Why Are McCain Backers So Angry? [an excerpt]

By Robert Parry
October 12, 2008

From Republicans at political rallies to GOP lawmakers on TV talk shows, McCain-Palin supporters are angry, very angry – and they seem to think their anger justifies whatever they do: from calling Barack Obama a “terrorist” to shouting “kill him” and “off with his head” – to getting huffy when their violent rhetoric is challenged.

They’re even angrier now after Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia, a veteran of the civil rights movement, chastised John McCain and Sarah Palin for whipping Republican crowds up into the kind of fury that can set the stage for murder.

Lewis, who marched and bled with Martin Luther King Jr., accused McCain and Palin of “sowing the seeds of hatred and division” in a way reminiscent of Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who rallied white anger against black civil rights advances in the 1960s.

“George Wallace never threw a bomb,” Lewis said Saturday. “He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights.”

While Lewis’s warning could have been an opportunity for McCain to reflect on the tone of his campaign, it became another excuse for him to get angry.

McCain – who has elicited some of the harsh crowd responses by asking ominously “who is the real Barack Obama?” – denounced Lewis’s statement as “a character attack against Governor Palin and me that is shocking and beyond the pale.”

Rather than apologize for his own recklessness – or, perhaps, pull a campaign ad that accuses Obama of lying about his association with a “terrorist,” former Vietnam War-era radical William Ayers – McCain demanded that Obama repudiate Lewis.

(Obama’s campaign responded by saying Lewis was right to condemn “hateful rhetoric” at the rallies but distancing itself from the Wallace comparison.)

* * *

Parry has many useful things to say in this piece, excerpted above, but he frames this overall as a contradiction between the fact that some GOP supporters are spewing venom towards Obama when they really should be angry at their own party.

He's right about this, but the main aspect of this ugly wind being whipped up from rally attendees saying things like "Bomb Obama" and "Kill Him!" is something else. It's not erroneous thinking. It's some of the more blatant signs of a fascist movement's character being displayed.

When Palin, for example, stated at the RNC that "Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights" she was none too subtly fanning the flames of xenophobia and ugly know-nothingism.

The extremism that McCain and Palin represent is no laughing matter, even if SNL has been having a hilarious field day mimicking Palin and even if her stupidity and willful ignorance are painfully obvious. Their ugliness as a team and the depravity of their followers is not something McCain and Palin are so stupid as not to welcome as the desired outcome of their overall stance. In order to carry forward the Bush Program, these GOP leaders are cultivating their "army" of know-nothing fanatics because you can't carry these terrible things forward without such an army as a battering ram.

Naomi Wolf Sounds the Alarm

2008-10-10T12:42:00.000-07:00

Naomi Wolf is one of the brave voices. She warns in this video that a coup has taken place and that we have a small window of time within which to reverse things.

I agree with Ms. Wolf in most particulars but do see things in some respects quite differently. I will get to those differences at the end - I encourage you to read the links within this post as they elaborate much further on what's going on and why - but first, a short list of what I would describe as critical points along this sliding path to a police state.

As Wolf has pointed out in her book, The End of America, the initial stages of a "shift" contain fascist elements side-by-side with liberal democratic elements. This stage of co-existence can go on for some time, but sooner or later the fascist elements eat up the democratic ones. For those who aren't paying proper attention, in other words, day-to-day life can appear quite normal while the horrors build and build in the background.

Paying proper attention in our conditions means going outside of what the Democratic Party and the mass media are directing our attention to. Most people in this country aren't accustomed to doing this as they largely take their cues about what's going on and what they can and should do about it from the political leadership class.

But this is a terrible mistake in our case. Millions of people have got to step outside of the customary and into doing things that are outside their comfort zones. Being comfortable in one's political actions in times such as these will prove fatal.

1) The coup might be properly described as a rolling coup in that there have been distinct nodal points along the way, a description that I think Naomi would agree with (she has spoken of a "fascist shift.") The first nodal point was the surrender by Al Gore and the mass media in 2000 to Bush and Cheney's stealing the election. Gore could have, should have, and didn't, call for his supporters to march on the Supreme Court to demand that all the votes be counted. Once this election was allowed to be stolen in the open through the machinations of the Supremes, the die was cast for everything else that has followed.

2) The second nodal point was the USA PATRIOT Act's passage after 9/11 that gave unprecedented powers to the government to snoop and overrule core elements of civil liberties under the rubric of the unending "war on terror." The acceptance by the rest of the political leadership class of the "GWOT" has been absolutely critical to allowing the rampage of the Bush regime and their followers. It represents the foundation for a police state under any future president.

3) The third nodal point was the 2004 election being stolen - again in plain sight - with the Democratic Party and the mass media again permitting this to happen and refusing to investigate, let alone even mention, the mountains of evidence of fraud.

4) The fourth nodal point was the 2006 Military Commissions Act that abrogated habeas corpus and legalized torture.

5) The fifth nodal point was the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 that gave the president emergency powers.

6) The sixth nodal point was the Democrats' failure to defund the Iraq War and their withdrawal of language from a resolution that would have prevented an attack on Iran by Bush. In addition, in 2007 the Democratic majority in Congress also declared that they would not do anything about the eminently hackable voting machines until at least 2010, thus making a stolen election in 2008 a real possibility, indeed, a likelihood.

7) The seventh nodal point was the issuance of NSPD-51 and HSPD-20 that provided secret policies for the continuity of government (i.e., emergency powers/martial law). When Representative DeFazio was denied access to these procedures in July 2007 and the story wasn't covered by the mainstream press, the story was allowed to pass unremarked upon.

8) The eighth nodal point was on and after April 8, 2008 when Bush admitted approving torture and the rest of the US leadership class said nothing and did nothing when they should have called for and moved immediately for his removal from office.

9) The ninth nodal point was the surrender by the all-progressives Minneapolis City Council to the police state by their green lighting the fascistic measures seen in the streets of St. Paul and Minneapolis during the RNC and the failure of the mass media to give proper coverage to this clear evidence that free assembly and free speech were no longer to be respected. It reflected the coming home of "shock and awe," the use of the bogus claim of terror to crack down in pre-emptive attacks on American protestors, and the use of torture-lite on at least one protestor.

10) The tenth nodal point was the October 2008 knuckling under of Congress to the "sky is falling" claims by the White House demanding the $700 Billion bailout and the warnings to certain unnamed reluctant Representatives of martial law if they didn't vote for the bailout.

11) The eleventh nodal point was October 2008 Bush's ordering the day-to-day control by U.S. Army North, the Army component of Northern Command (NorthCom), of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team who could and will be used to quell U.S. "civil disturbances."

Naomi Wolf speaks clearly and specifically to the last two items on this list in the video below.

* * *

Ms. Wolf calls for the coup conspirators' arrests by District Attorneys. While I would and do support such an action, I think that we need to be clear here on what exactly it's going to take to stem this ugly tide and turn things around. What force will it take to do this? It will take the collective actions of the masses of people in this country. Such a massive action of millions will not materialize as a single act. It is something that must be built for and our efforts need to be aimed at bringing this into being as soon as possible.

The first thing we have to realize, and I know that this is a hard truth for many to face, is that elections don't mean a damn thing in this context. Even if you believe that electing Obama is critical, the chances that the 2008 election will be stolen, as have the last two, is very real and very likely. The grounds for "explaining" such an outcome, "proving" the pre-elections' polls "wrong" again are already with us: the surreptitious white racist vote and the energized Christian fascist vote. How many times do we have to be slammed in the head with the hard reality that votes are easy to steal before we realize that putting all of your hopes into your vote isn't the way to go? Money donated to the Democrats is wasted money. Supporting Obama (or any other third-party candidate) at this point is not only a waste, it takes away from the desperately needed real work to mobilize millions as an independent political force to fundamentally alter the balance of forces in the society. Funneling people, energy and resources into the electoral arena when yet another stolen election is probable and when the Democrats have repeatedly, blatantly, and criminally colluded with the Bush Regime on all fronts is a crime. You don't fight against fascists by supporting the enablers of fascists.

Our energies need to go - on the level of everyday life - into mobilizing the independent actions of the people. This is what the spreading of orange ribbons and other forms of orange in everyday life means: the public declaration that we stand against torture and against imperialist wars and that we call for others to also publicly declare themselves until millions are doing this.

Some might say, what will having a lot of orange do? The gendarmes will just round up the orange people. What this view fails to understand is that politics is determined by a combination of what is in people's heads and the use of coercion. Coercion only works if those who are using the force aren't losing the battle for public opinion. If enough people - who DO represent the large majority - are acting in open and public ways that manifest the PEOPLE's sentiments and that DO reflect truth and justice, then clampdowns with police state actions will not bury the movement but will expose the fundamentally monstrous nature of those using it and spur on others to step forward and further isolate the relatively small numbers who are the enemies of the people. This is a dynamic that has characterized every revolution.

Rolling back the fascist assault must and can happen. We don't have a great deal of time. Forcing war criminal John Yoo out of his UC Berkeley Law Professorship is an important battle. It will be an important victory and open the door to turning the tide against the war criminals who run this country now. Shutting down military recruiters preying on our youth is another important battlefront in this fight to change the future that we see unfolding in real time before us. Support and defend the RNC-8. Donate your money and your time to an organization that has consistently fought for the necessity to rely upon and mobilize the people - the World Can't Wait.

Finally, I agree with Wolf's sense of urgency here. But it is crucial to understand that mobilization can occur under varying conditions and we are not doomed if we do not mobilize sufficient numbers in a certain time frame. If the coup conspirators aren't arrested within three months or so, in other words, they don't necessarily win. The sooner we mobilize the forces necessary, the better, and we don't have any time to waste because Wolf is right about fascism in the making. But even after fascism is officially and openly in power, should this come to pass, this doesn't mean that the rebellion is doomed. We need to be on the one hand alarmed at what's going on, but we also have to guard against getting freaked out and then becoming paralyzed into inaction.

Oppose the Emerging Police State

2008-10-07T10:21:00.000-07:00

SIGN the petition against DNC/RNC arrests, brutal treatment & surveillance of protesters.

The St. Paul City Council is now doing some investigation, and we want to get this national petition to them. Deadline is Thursday October 9.

background at:
worldcantwait.org
rnc08report.org
New Left Notes

To: Local Elected Officials and Law Enforcement in Denver, St. Paul and Minneapolis:
CC: Homeland Security

Thousands of people came to your cities during the recent national political conventions to protest the U.S. occupation of the Middle East, widespread violations of international law by the Bush administration, and abuses of the rights of people living in this country.

They were met in each instance with $50 million spent on military tactics and material, and:

--involvement of US "fusion centers" combining domestic and military agencies for the purposes of surveillance of the protesters;
--riot squads on bicycles, motorcycles, horses, and military troop transports;
--use of agent infiltrators into political groups, and provocateurs on the streets;
--revocation and denial of permits to assemble and mass arrests of protesters & bystanders alike, with pepper & tear gas, concussion grenades, and batons;
--raids featuring drawn weapons at homes and offices and on private cars, on the basis not of crimes committed, but of speech.

Nearly 1000 people were arrested, including 40 members of the press, and including juveniles. Many of them were detained for days. Some were denied medication, medical care, and timely legal representation. Some were illegally interrogated as to their political beliefs and associations. Some were physically abused, with reported use of tasers, hoods, batons, and denial of food and bathroom facilities.

The charges range from vague misdemeanors to "conspiracy to commit riot in the 2nd degree in furtherance of terrorism" in the case of the RNC 8. These are demonstrably political charges devoid of actual crimes committed.

It may be that with the huge budget, the designation of the conventions as "national security events" and the ominous and baseless warnings from federal authorities that the political protests would be violent, such abuses against protesters were predicable. But they are NOT acceptable. We demand:

1) Charges against people involved in political protest at the conventions be dropped immediately. In particular, the indictment of the RNC8 must be withdrawn.

2) A thorough investigation of methods employed by law enforcement, and directed by Homeland Security, including the methods and justification for surveillance of political activists; the insertion of agents into political organizations; the crowd control methods and mass arrests; the conditions of detention of those arrested; and any ongoing surveillance and interference with the rights of those accused, arrested, or involved in the protests are contrary to the expectation of the rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Such investigations must include public hearings, and a real search for the truth in what happened.

3) A public report, dissociating your city from those methods found to suppress speech and assembly, and guarantee to the people that they will not be used again.

4) Rejection of the use of military involvement in surveillance, activation of national guard units or active duty military in future political protests.

SIGN and send it to others!

"Continuity of Government" (COG) Provisions activated in 2001

2008-10-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

by Tom Burghardt

Continuity of Government (aka martial law) in the face of "civil disturbances" or other "disasters" as secretly promulgated by Rumsfeld ten months before 9/11.

Muslim Children Gassed in Ohio after "Obsession" DVD Distributed

2008-10-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Go here to read about this inevitable consequence of the pogromist atmosphere being whipped up by the likes of Sarah Palin and the extremist religious right.

As I have written ("Shock and Awe Comes Home to Roost"), these kinds of shocking events are the emerging reality of what is in store for America so long as the American leadership class remains in charge, unchallenged by a contrary wind coming from the people who will not stand for this.

Raising Our Sights

2008-10-03T12:34:00.000-07:00

See my commentary on the Biden v. Palin debate at world can't wait here.

"Taxi to the Dark Side" on HBO Tonight

2008-09-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

Check your local listings for times. The Academy Award winner for Best Documentary of 2008, by Alex Gibney, who wore an orange ribbon on stage when accepting the award, is being shown tonight on HBO. See it!

A Diane Arbusian Moment

2008-09-28T07:45:00.000-07:00

Diane Arbus is famous for her photographs of freaks. Stan Honda of AFP-Getty Images was channeling Arbus in this photo of Palin with Kissinger.

"Rising up from a source deep in my subconscious. I saw a woman fully aware that she was out of her league, scared out of her wits, hanging on for dear life. I saw this in the sag of her back in her serious black suit, in the position of her hands, crossed modestly atop her knees, and in that 'Mad Men'-era updo, ever unchanging, like a good luck charm."

-- from "Poor Sarah," by Judith Warner in the New York Times, September 25, 2008.

Bailing out regular folks not in Obama's plans

2008-09-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

From "Mortgage help for bankrupt homeowners dropped"
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and DAVID ESPO, Associated Press Writers

"WASHINGTON - House Democrats say the idea of letting judges rewrite mortgages to help bankrupt homeowners avoid foreclosure won't be a part of the $700 billion financial industry bailout.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told Democrats at a closed-door meeting Friday evening the provision would be a deal-breaker for Republicans who she has said must deliver substantial votes for the rescue plan. That's according to several lawmakers who attended the session.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama had said earlier that the measure didn't belong in the bailout."

***

Obama says the measure doesn't belong. Regular folks don't merit a bailout. The plutocracy gets in trouble because regulations controlling their actions were lifted so the "free market" can do its "magic," and the plutocrats act heedless of the consequences, making obscene amounts of money, and when the joy ride is about to crash and burn the government comes to their rescue.

This is what an Obama presidency will look like!

The "Miami Model" in the Twin Cities

2008-09-25T14:36:00.000-07:00

See this article, "Twin Study: Repression at the Republican National Convention."

Poisoned Legacy: the Bush Regime, the Democrats, the Mass Media and the American People

2008-09-24T11:10:00.000-07:00

Go here to read this piece by me. It went up at Counterpunch first, but the CP version doesn't display the links within it that the one posted now at World Can't Wait does.

Subject: Urgent Message from Minister of Treasury

2008-09-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

[Courtesy of David Swanson]

Dear Excellent Friend:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing) will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the PALIN / McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can be assured that this transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully,
Henry Paulson
Minister of Treasury
Department of the Treasury
1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20220

PS: Ignore anything you read at http://afterdowningstreet.org.

Vets Occupy the National Archives - Right Now!

2008-09-23T11:27:00.001-07:00

See this on YouTube here.

This is Your Nation on White Privilege

2008-09-22T20:01:00.000-07:00

By Tim Wise

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege,
or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of
it, perhaps this list will help.

1. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like
Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of
your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge
you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as
black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly
typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

2. White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin'
redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if
anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about
how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a
responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than
a thug.

3. White privilege is when you can attend four different
colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically
failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a
community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment
to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed
as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first
place because of affirmative action.

4. White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a
town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a
state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the
island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and
people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black
U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar,
means you're "untested."

5. White privilege is being able to say that you support the
words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good
enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be
immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the
pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't
added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals
and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which
you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a
dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

6. White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not
make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to
have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that
wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska
first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family,
while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11
memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school,
people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

7. White privilege is being able to make fun of community
organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the
right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or
an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough,
but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and
18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she
took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

8. White privilege is being able to convince white women who
don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and
your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the
ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them
give your party a "second look."

9. White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't
support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your
power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while
being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political
machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

10. White privilege is being able to attend churches over the
years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely
criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an
explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring
Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in
speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on
Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a
good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a
black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department
of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign
policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black
people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

11. White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is
when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for
asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely
refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means
you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and
nuanced.

12. White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a
POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while
being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to
it a "light" burden.

13. And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could
possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George
W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing,
people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is
increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters
aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too
vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which
is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005,
revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month,
also by Soft Skull. For review copies or interview requests, please
reply to publicity@softskull.com

Back At You!

2008-09-16T18:04:00.000-07:00

More of what an Obama presidency would look like can be seen unfolding in Pakistan now.

La plus ca change, la plus c'est la meme chose:

"The United States is suddenly faced with the uncomfortable scenario of confronting the very same weapons and military hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, it has armed Pakistan with for decades. The unsavoury prospect of having to take a crack at the its one-time ally has surfaced most starkly in the skies over the Afghan-Pakistan border this weekend after the Pakistan Air Force deployed its US-supplied F-16s to challenge the violation of its airspace by US drones, and in one case, an airborne assault that landed US Navy Seals inside Pakistani territory."

See the rest of this at The Times of India, 9/14/08.

On the Radio

2008-09-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be a guest of Michael Slate on KPFK today 90.7 FM, Tuesday, 9/16/08 at 5 pm PST. I'll be on for about 20 minutes, talking mostly about my recent article posted here. If you're not in the listening area you can tune in either live or listen to the archived edition online at http://www.kpfk.org/.

Pakistan: the New Cambodia

2008-09-16T08:08:00.000-07:00

See this very informative essay by William Pfaff: "The New 'Invasion of Cambodia.'"

Pfaff notes, among other things, that the Taliban was created by Pakistani Intelligence in order to cooperate with and facilitate the U.S.'s backing of the mujahideen in their proxy war against the USSR in Afghanistan. Pakistan, in other words, was doing its part for U.S. schemes.

Both Pakistan and the U.S. managed to generate their own blowback, just as Israel did in 1982 when it invaded Lebanon in an effort to wipe out the PLO, most dramatically and grievously by facilitating and allowing the Sabra-Shatila massacre of Palestinians left defenseless when PLO forces under Yassir Arafat accepted evacuation instead of staying and fighting.

In so doing, Israel succeeded not in destroying the PLO but in creating a more militant version of the PLO: the Hezbollah.

The suicide bomber tactic that has so plagued Israel since and that Israel cites as a reason why its terrorist opponents are so horrible, was developed by Hezbollah because of Israel's attack.

Can there be any more dramatic an example of blowback than this - other than, of course, 9/11?

Pakistan is both a powder keg and a nation with nuclear weapons. What harvest of bitter fruit are Bush and Obama reaping?

Mondale and Me (More FISA Revelations)

2008-09-16T07:19:00.001-07:00

by Cindy Sheehan

I was flying back to the states from Kristiansand, Norway, after receiving an award and was flying on the leg from Oslo to London. The flight's purser pointed out one of my "countrymen" sitting in 2D. I had already been recognized on the flight by the crew because I had won the award and been on Norwegian TV. The purser pointed to seat 2D and told me that it was Walter Mondale.

I looked and did a double take, because he did not look so much like Mondale from about 10 feet away. I was eventually convinced that it was Walter Mondale (Former Senator from Minnesota; Jimmy Carter's VP, Democratic presidential Candidate in 1984 and Ambassador to Japan during the Clinton administration). So being the shrinking violet that I am, I immediately went to introduce myself.

After we established who I was and that he supported "Nancy" even though I was a "wonderful person," he looked at me and said: "Boy wasn't the FISA thing awful?" I said, "Yes, it's awful and my opponent supported it." He returned with: "Oh, I don't think she was really for it." My last question went unanswered: "Well if she was against it, why would she allow it to go to a vote, as Speaker, and then vote for it, as a member?" Note: On many controversial votes, Pelosi often does not vote, on the FISA Act she voted the wrong way.

Our chat was then over because he said: "Nice to meet you, good luck with everything," and looked back down at the paperwork he was reading. I had been dismissed for asking a question that has no reasonable answer. Nancy allowed the Act to come to a vote and voted for it, against the wishes of our liberal district, because SHE WAS FOR RETROACTIVE IMMUNITY. Not only are telecoms some of Pelosi's biggest donors, she has been in on the illegal wiretapping crimes from the beginning. As a member of the Democratic minority leaderhip's "Gang of Four" with Jane Harman (D-CA), Steny Hoyer, (D-MD), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), not only was the gang briefed on Bush's FISA felonies, they were also briefed on torture. There was and is a rightful outcry on the FISA abuses (if the crimes weren't retroactively legalized, the penalites for breaking FISA laws are steep), but to me, torture is a crime against humanity and, in my opinion, that issue, and lying to a nation about going to war and funding war, are the ones on which the Gang of Four and the Bush Crime Mob should be held accountable.

Ever wonder why "impeachment" has always been inexplicably "off" of Pelosi's table?" Ever wonder why the most criminal and corrupt administration, in this country's long and checkered history that is liberally peppered with corruption and violence, is going to walk away and be allowed to live the rest of their lives in relative comfort and ease? Ever wonder why Pelosi's Congress has an approval rating under double digits? It's because the twin parties of corruption are the "Lawmakers" and the "Lawbreakers." How can Mondale credibly say that Pelosi did not "support" the legislation when she voted "Yea?" Did he mean that it is common for one to sell out his/her constituents and his/her principles when money and crime and punishment are involved?

Walter Mondale (a man whom I voted for three times) has been a political insider for generations and would not even broach the subject of accountability with me. Ever wonder why the system was allowed to decay so far that it appears that only a miracle can save it now from total socio-economic destruction?

This nation is in dire straits partially because of blind allegiance to a two-party monopoly (I used to say "duopoly," but what's the use?) that only exists to perpetuate itself and the unscrupulous system that supports it. That system built of popsicle sticks and set on a shaky foundation will soon go the way of all Empires unless our "leadership" becomes more responsive to the people's needs and less concerned with their bank accounts and personal power trips.

"Change" will not come from inside the monopoly. How much more proof do we need?

"If America bombs moderate sensibilities often enough, you may find that its actions are the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had."

2008-09-15T19:46:00.001-07:00

The above quote comes from the leading English language newspaper in Pakistan The News, as reported by The Australian on September 13, 2008:

"What amounts to a dramatic order to 'kill the invaders,' as one senior officer put it last night, was disclosed after the commanders - who control the army's deployments at divisional level - met at their headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi under the chairmanship of army chief and former ISI spy agency boss Ashfaq Kayani.

"Leading English-language newspaper The News warned in an editorial that the US determination to attack targets inside Pakistan was likely to be 'the best recruiting sergeant that the extremists ever had,' with even 'moderates' outraged by it."

The Australian goes on to report:

"The 'kill' order against invading forces, and the sharp deterioration in relations with the US, has far-reaching implications for the war on terror.

"Anger at all levels in Pakistani society was summed up last night in The News, not normally sympathetic to the militants.

"'There is an escalating sense of furious impotence among the ordinary people of Pakistan,' the newspaper said.

"'Many - perhaps most - of them are strongly opposed to the spread of Talibanisation and extremist influence across the country: people who might be described as "moderates."

"'Many of them have no sympathy for the mullahs and their burning of girls' schools and their medieval mindset.'

"'But if you bomb a moderate sensibility often enough, it has a tendency to lose its sense of objectivity and to feel driven in the direction of extremism.'"

Apparently, this is not, for even moderate Pakistanis who despise the Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists, the "change they can believe in."

From the Daily News, another Pakistani English language paper, on September 14, 2008:

Tribesmen say they are with army, warn US

Staff Report

MIRANSHAH: Tribal elders in North Waziristan on Saturday vowed to defend the country’s frontiers by fighting alongside security forces against any ‘possible American attack’.

Malak Nasrullah, Malak Qadar Khan, Malak Mamoor, Malak Muhammad Afzal Khan, Malak Mumtaz and Malak Habibullah welcomed Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani’s statement, adding that it was the voice of eight million tribesmen.

They said that if the American forces did not stop attacking the Tribal Areas, they would feel the repercussions of such attacks in Kabul, Bagram and Kandahar.

The elders said that their tribal brethren living on the Afghan side would also join the fight, as the foreign troops were subjecting them to gross injustices.

And finally, from the Guardian on September 15, 2008:

Pakistani tribal chiefs threaten to join Taliban
· US warned of uprising if armed incursions continue
· New counter-terror policy backfires on Washington

The article begins:

"A controversial new US tactic to mount counter-terrorist operations inside Pakistan has met with fresh hostility, it emerged yesterday, as Pakistani tribesmen representing half a million people vowed to switch sides and join the Taliban if Washington does not stop cross-border attacks by its forces from Afghanistan.

"Reacting to American missile attacks in north Waziristan last week, which followed an unprecedented cross-border ground assault earlier this month, tribal chiefs from the area called an emergency meeting on Saturday.

"'If America doesn't stop attacks in tribal areas, we will prepare a lashkar [army] to attack US forces in Afghanistan,' tribal chief Malik Nasrullah announced in Miran Shah, north Waziristan's largest city. 'We will also seek support from the tribal elders in Afghanistan to fight jointly against America.'"

"The development threatens to widen the conflict, with previously moderate people from Pakistan's tribal border region with Afghanistan in danger of joining Taliban militants based in the area. They have reacted furiously to intensified American missile attacks on targets in the tribal territory in recent weeks."

...

"'If the Americans are coming to sort it out with force, they would create more enemies. The Americans might have supersonic jets and we might have to fight with stones in our hands, but we will stand up.'"

Read the rest of this article here.

---

In the name of fighting extremists and terrorists, the US is engaging in war crimes and state terror, creating enemies among those who hate al-Qaeda and the Taliban, but who now, in what should come as no surprise to anyone, are deeply offended, angered, provoked and victimized by the US's willful attacks on their country and people.

These attacks upon and in Pakistan were advocated by Obama beginning in August 0f 2007. The Bush regime adopted it in July 2008.

Is this the change we can believe in?

"I Need You To Hold Still, Sir, Please."

2008-09-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

Watched "No Country for Old Men" again last night. A magnificent film.

The quote above comes from the hired killer Anton Chigurh's request of a motorist that Chigurh stops so that Chigurh can steal the guy's car. The poor motorist doesn't know what's about to hit him as Chigurh asks him to stand still as he places the cattle slaughtering device (a captive bolt pistol) on the man's forehead and then pulls the trigger.

The poor guy stopped in the first place because Chigurh was driving a sheriff's car.

Beware of killers driving in official vehicles.

The Chigurh quote really ought to be the slogan for the GOP and the Democratic Parties this season.

Andrew Sullivan on Obama's Foreign Policy

2008-09-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

"Obama Leads In Foreign Policy, Bush Follows" writes The Atlantic Magazine's Andrew Sullivan on 9/12/08 about Bush's adoption of Obama's recommendations that the US shouldn't observe the territorial integrity of Pakistan and should launch military actions against al-Qaeda as it sees fit, regardless of what Pakistan may want.

And Andrew means this as a compliment to Obama!

Without going into a great deal of detail here, it is, after all, a Sunday and atheists also need a day of rest, and one can read more about this here, let me ask the following: exactly what kind of world do we live in where one of our presidential candidates is lauded for advocating the violating of international law, a mirror of what the Bush regime did in invading and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq?

Is it better because al-Qaeda is really in Pakistan?

Do you think that this strategy of antagonizing the invaded country's people by killing innocents (such as we have done and continue to do in Afghanistan and Iraq) is going to create hostility to al-Qaeda? How does this work?

Even if you do succeed in killing off some of the al-Qaeda leaders, it's really elementary logic that the key sources of support and ongoing recruitment for anti-state terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda (what keeps them in business and makes them more than a fringe group) is precisely the state terrorist actions that led to and maintain the Iraq invasion and that undergirds the expansion of this into Pakistan and escalating it in Afghanistan - as Obama wants to do.

You don't kill off a movement by creating and expanding upon the grounds that provide the ongoing recruitment into that movement. You don't douse a fire by drowning it in gallons and gallons of gasoline.

But then, even if this is elementary logic, that doesn't mean that everyone's going to see it, does it? It's easier to go through life with blinders on, except when a Mack Truck barrels down on you from the side and you don't see it. By then it's too late, isn't it?

Shock and Awe Comes Home to Roost

2008-09-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Published 9/13/08 at Counterpunch.

"Al-Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America and he’s worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” – Sarah Palin at the RNC

“[T]he looser ‘preemptive strike’ rationale being applied to situations abroad could migrate back home, fostering a more permissive attitude on the part of law enforcement officers in this country.” – FBI Special Agent Colleen Rowley

“We followed our [RNC] Welcoming Committee members to many cities around the country. We consulted with the terrorism task force in those cities. We received information, etc. [Did you have infiltrators?] Yes, we did. [Were they paid?] Yes.” - Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher

“[S]ix or seven officers came into my cell… one officer punched me in the face…And then they slammed—and I fell to the ground, unconscious. And the officer grabbed me by the head, slammed my head on the ground and re-awoke me …to consciousness. I was bleeding everywhere. … They put a bag over my head that had a gag on it. And they used pain compliance tactics on me for about an hour and a half. They pressed—they separated my jaw as hard as they could with their fingers…. They …bent my foot backwards. I was screaming for God and like screaming for mercy, crying, asking them why they were doing this.” - Elliot Hughes, member of the RNC Welcoming Committee, arrested at gunpoint days before the RNC, charged along with the other RNC8 Defendants with “conspiring to riot in furtherance of terrorism.”

The police state actions before and during the RNC are not a dystopic America but the real America of 2008 and a harbinger of even worse to come. Beneath the carefully staged and tightly cordoned off circus of “democracy” at the convention rots the corpse of the Bill of Rights:

Of what significance can a person’s right to see the charges leveled against them be when there’s a war on terrorists to be waged? What need do people accused of crimes have to see who has accused them – are they not guilty by virtue of being accused? What end is fulfilled to allow the accused to cross-examine their accusers? Why waste the court’s time with such absurdities? What purpose does it serve to have perfectly good evidence ruled inadmissible, so what if it was extracted employing electric shock and waterboarding? These people are guilty, guilty, guilty! Why just look at them: do they not look guilty? What more evidence do we need? 9/11! 9/11! 9/11! We must wring the truth out of them, whatever it takes, the preservation of freedom demands it! Planting police undercover officers in the ranks of these protestors and provoking them into doing illegal or violent acts, even if those undercover officers have to do it all themselves, is necessary to protect the precious rights we enjoy as Americans. Country First! Anyone who dares tell us that we must not violate Constitutional rights in order to protect Constitutional rights deserves waterboarding! Strap him down! Give me that bucket of water! I’ll show him who’s free!

* * *

It was only a matter of time before the obscenity of war crimes and torture being carried out on other countries and peoples would return home to be inflicted directly upon Americans who dare to speak out against these atrocities.

It isn’t only Arabs and Muslims anymore. It isn’t only American citizens who’ve converted to Islam. It’s now American citizens – whatever their religious views - who can be summarily rounded up in pre-emptive actions, charged with terrorism, and tortured - on the grounds that they might do something.

Bush declared “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists.” Except our malapropist president has uttered a tautology once again: being part of “us” means being one of the terrorists. It means defending the use of monstrous measures in the name of fighting monsters. As Pogo put it: “We have met the enemy and he is US.”

Unhinged from the Law and from Facts

Accusing someone of being a terrorist, like the magical incantation of witches and warlocks, turns any feeble twig into an invincible sword. Invoking “national security” allows the White House and its representatives to do and say anything at all.

You can almost hear Bush saying this under his breath: “It’s good to be king.” Only, come to think of it, he’s said out loud a number of times: “If this were a dictatorship things would be a heck of a lot easier – just as long as I’m the dictator.”

It’s good to listen in on anybody’s conversations, peer over their shoulders at their email, track their financial transactions and inspect their associates.

What has Congress – the People’s Representatives - done to monitor the country against the predations of dictators and the whims of police agents?

Congress has peered down the precipice of an unchecked executive branch and they have jumped in feet first, but not without – God be Praised! - waving their American flag pins and bibles as they descend down the bottomless pit, into the infamy reserved for those who looked tyrants in the face and cringed like cowards.

But there’s a new president coming! Surely he will save the Republic!

“Change” “change” “change” they cry.

In the face of an openly lawless, felonious, war crimes, spying and lying White House they will rescue us, no doubt!

“[Y]ou reserve impeachment for grave, grave breaches, and intentional breaches of the President’s authority.” -- Barack Obama

Whaa..at?! Are you saying that Bush and Cheney have not intentionally breached their authority? What country have you been living in? Are these not grave, grave breaches – even if the standard for impeachment was as high as you say it is, which it isn’t? What could be graver than this? Perhaps arresting your political rivals in the Democratic Party and torturing them – would that rise to the standard? How long before something like that happens?

“Change” “change” “change” they cry.

Are not their change invocations so appealing to so many because of the failure of Obama, McCain, Biden and others to stop the White House and the government from doing the things that need to be changed?

When those who are the guardians of the ship of state fail to do their duties, what happens to the ship? Who will police the police?

The police will police the police. Surely you trust the police? You’re not one of those commie-pinko-terrorists, are you? Hold still while I turn you in to Homeland Security.

The Unbearable Darkness of Duplicity

If agents provocateurs are infiltrating protesters’ ranks and engaging in violent and provocative acts to justify police crackdowns, then what’s to become of civil liberties, freedom of speech and assembly, the right to dissent and the health of civil society? Are the police and the government not now in possession of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards with which they can do absolutely everything and get away with it? Is this not recognizable as the tried and true plaints of scoundrels, authoritarians, fascists and tyrants?

When you give unlimited powers to the government with the only restraint the equivalent of the foxes guarding the hen house what do you expect to get? Do you think that you will be safe? Because if you do, you’re the world’s biggest fool and you deserve the fate you get.

If you’re not one of these then it’s time to show it and stand up. If you’re against this but don’t show it then it doesn’t count. If you act but act too late then it doesn’t matter.

There are no “maybe it will get better” rationales left if you’re paying any attention.

Speak out against the railroading of the RNC 8 because they stand in the breach against the flood that is coming that will drown us all.

The shooting of wolves from helicopters is not a metaphor here for the people, is it?

A Window On How Public Policy Is Actually Made

2008-09-12T11:26:00.001-07:00

Headlined at OpEd News on 9/14/08 under the title: "Repression in Minneapolis and Pakistan."

Two items in the news offer us rare glimpses into how public policy is actually arrived at and what differences there really are between Democrats, even progressive Democrats - let alone centrists such as Obama - and Republicans.

The first item concerns the Minneapolis City Council’s role in the police state tactics used at the St. Paul RNC and the other item concerns foreign policy and Pakistan in particular.

Both are related directly to the so-called war on terror: what both major parties call the central issue of our time.

It is clear that the fulcrum for today’s politics involves the “war on terror” and whether the dominant paradigm about it that both major parties subscribe to will carry the day, or a different paradigm wins out that originates from among the people.

First item:

At OpEd News on September 11, 2008 Michael Calvan reported the inside dirty dealing in the all progressives Minneapolis City Council in which the council gave the green light to the police to use the storm trooper tactics before and during the RNC. I quote from the piece at some length as follows:

"In the months before the Republicans came to town, there had been a flurry of activity. Local activists were keeping a close eye on their local elected officials. Initially, there had been a so called Free Speech Committee set up, supposedly to look at how authorities could allow free speech during the RNC and keep order.

"We found out that the Free Speech Committee did not allow any members of the public to add our input. Only City Council members on the committee and lawyers were allowed to speak. There was no free speech allowed at the misnamed Free Speech Committee.

"Nonetheless, activists followed the Committee's actions closely and were present during each meeting. The City Council of Minneapolis is almost 100% Democratic. In fact the only real opposition in Minneapolis is the Green Party which currently has one Green on the City Council, Cam Gordon, who was a small light in a very dark room. But, we were to discover, even that light was to be extinguished.

"The so called Free Speech Committee would change the time and locations of its meetings…There was also discussion on protest groups being required to register themselves and even their members, to be 'allowed' to protest. At these times, Cam Gordon spoke eloquently on behalf of the community and in opposition to these repressive measures…

"Then suddenly [after months] we found out that the Free Speech Committee had their last meeting, July 16th. The meeting itself was unannounced, unlike the other meetings which at least had a pretense of openness and public inclusion. At the next Minneapolis City Council meeting July 25th, the recommendation of the misnamed Free Speech Committee was announced. The Free Speech Committee Resolution passed unanimously, even by our one small light, Councilman Cam Gordon.

"The Minneapolis Police were given 'legal' authority to shut down any protest or group of 25 people or greater. They were also authorized to use rubber bullets, mace and the other array of non-lethal weapons on innocent, peaceful demonstrators, practicing our First Amendment Rights. Also violated repeatedly was the Fourth Amendment Right protecting us citizens against illegal search and seizure. Police violated the laws of assault and battery and destruction of evidence of their crimes, as evidenced by their targeting journalists."

Calvan notes, probably correctly so, that even if the city council had not approved these fascistic tactics that they would have been by-passed and the police and various state and federal officials would have done it anyway.

In other words, despite months of efforts by grassroots activists and even with a Green on the City Council - making grand speeches about protecting free speech - despite the people doing the very best that they could to monitor, participate and speak out, the fix was in and democratic participation was merely a charade for the real power being exercised, even on the nearest thing to local control as you can find in the government - at the City Council level – and even in one of the most left-influenced places in the country.

Second item:

As reported by the New York Times on September 11, 2008, in July 2008 Bush secretly approved Spec Ops forces to launch ground military attacks inside Pakistan without prior approval from the Pakistani government. The NYT essay notes: “It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country.” It’s unclear because such actions are blatantly against international law. (During the Vietnam War when President Nixon announced on April 30, 1970 that he had begun bombing Cambodia and thereby expanding the war, a fury broke out in America. During the widespread protests that followed, four students were famously shot and killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4.)

The Times’ article continues: “Pakistan’s government has asserted that last week’s raid achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas.

“‘Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion,’ said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, during a speech on Friday. ‘In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops.’”

What gives this story even more resonance is the fact that the Bush regime is now finally embracing the tactics that Obama had called for back in August 2007. At the time, Bush, John McCain and the other Democratic presidential hopefuls including Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton derided Obama for offering such a bellicose proposal. Bush said: “he’s going to attack Pakistan” in disbelief.

As Reuters reported on August 1, 2007: “Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government, a move that would likely cause anxiety in the already troubled region. ‘If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will,’ Obama said.”

So there you have it: the reactionary Bush White House has now adopted a plan that it previously publicly described as overly aggressive – can you imagine this White House thinking anything is too aggressive? – a plan offered up by the Democratic Party’s standard bearer, Obama, the man that many progressives pin their hopes on.

This reminds me of the line from a comic who wondered what the world is coming to when the world’s best golfer is black and the best rapper is white.

What is the world coming to? The labels certainly don’t tell you the story. You have to look carefully and critically at what people are actually saying and what they are doing. And you have to examine carefully how political policy is actually made, not how you might have learned about it in civics class and not how it is presented everyday in the news.

Obama himself has said – correctly so - that people should pay attention to what he’s saying. He does not oppose all wars, just “dumb wars.” He approves of the war on terror. His differences are over tactics and whether the goals of the “war on terror” are being best pursued. In other words, is the US imperialist empire doing what is in its best interests? This is like campaigning for Godfather and saying that the existing Godfather isn’t being efficient enough in his extortion, racketeering, drug running, torture, brutality and death dealing.

If the city that may be second only to Berkeley in the degree to which progressives hold political office colludes, conspires and cooperates with the police state, even while some of the progressives make fine sounding speeches but vote with the gendarmes when push comes to shove, and if the one “realistic” choice on the national level that the people are being given to oppose the Bush regime’s reign of terror is a man whose foreign policy is now being adopted by the very same hated Bush regime that Obama says he is a “change” from, then what’s realistic now? What good does your vote do? Just what kind of democracy is this?

The only ones we can trust are the people themselves acting independently of the political parties and the normal, acceptable political channels. You must speak out, protest, show how you feel and call on others to do the same. A movement of the people that becomes a mass movement that must be reckoned with by public officials and the media and that does not subordinate itself to either public officials or corporate media must come into being. What is more democratic than that?

It is the ONLY realistic path. It is also the only moral stance possible. Participating in the existing structures and channels is a fool’s errand and worse: it amounts to collusion in crimes against humanity.

Stand up for those who have stood up such as the RNC 8. Wear orange daily and spread the resistance. Don’t kick yourself after the November 2008 election and say, why the hell didn’t I recognize the signs? Why did I allow myself to be sucked in once again? Why didn’t I fight the burgeoning police state when we still had a chance?