The last known photo of Kirsten Brydum was taken during her two-month-long journey, before she boarded a train to New Orleans. The road trip was partly a rite of passage — an adventure to mark her college graduation. But she also hoped to report on the small, scattered outposts where fellow radicals had established alternatives to mainstream culture.
She traveled across the country with little but her conviction that a better world was around the bend. Then she came to New Orleans.
By Richard Fausset
January 31, 2009
Reporting from New Orleans -- Kirsten Brydum pedaled away from the Howlin' Wolf club into the darkness of another American city that she didn't know very well. It was 1:30 a.m.
She rode a black cruiser bicycle with a basket on the back, borrowed from friends of friends. In nearly every city she had visited on her 2-month-road trip, it seemed someone was willing to lend her an old bike.
The Rebirth Brass Band was on the bill that night. Brydum, 25, had danced for a while outside the club in her flip-flops. She thought that the bouncer would eventually let her in for free, and that suited her in more ways than one. She believed, passionately, that people would one day reject a basic mechanism of free-market societies: the exchange of goods and services for money.
She arrived in New Orleans in late September with a rail pass, a little red notebook and a head full of ideas about the oppressive forces of capitalism and government, and how they might be replaced with something better. The road trip was partly a rite of passage in the grand tradition of Jack Kerouac -- an adventure to mark her recent graduation from college in San Francisco. But she also hoped to report on the small, scattered outposts where fellow radicals had established alternatives to mainstream culture.
It would all end in New Orleans, four miles from the Howlin' Wolf, in a forlorn and out-of-the-way block in the 9th Ward.
More than three years after Hurricane Katrina, its homes remained battered and abandoned, its lots choked with debris and roof-high weeds. To many Americans, this kind of New Orleans neighborhood has come to symbolize a near-criminal lack of government presence.
Brydum might have seen the block as the kind of place where an autonomous, post-capitalist movement might flourish.
But it is unclear if she saw it at all.
She had some cash saved from waiting tables; her mom helped with some of the travel expenses. Brydum and an old boyfriend drew up the list of places she would visit: alternative health centers, collectivist punk communes, anarchist bookstores and "guerrilla gardens" planted by activists on land they do not own. Her plan was to document on a website what she found, allowing radicals to share ideas and strengthen tiny institutions that she believed would "prefigure a world without capitalism."
On July 30, she flew to New York City, where she met her boyfriend, John Viola. In an e-mail to friends and family, she rhapsodized about their four days of "romance and resistance."
Viola, a Bay Area attorney, met Brydum when he agreed to take on her 2004 criminal case. She and a few dozen others had been arrested at a San Francisco biotechnology and anti-globalization protest. By the time he got involved, the activists had been jailed for a couple of days, and the stress was beginning to show.
"And there was Kirsten, just super rock solid," recalled Viola, 38. "Like a lot of people, I just immediately fell for her."
She was small and fine-boned, with long hair and brown eyes. After he won her release, they would see each other at the same parties, the same protests. In March, they met at an impromptu procession through the streets of the Mission District that had started at the Anarchist Cafe, on Potrero Avenue.
"I was in the back with Kirsten, and people in cars kept coming up to us and saying, 'What's the procession for?' " Viola recalled.
"It's for fun," Brydum would tell them, smiling.
She grew up middle class in Van Nuys -- sweet-tempered, well-liked, a good student. But from an early age, she questioned accepted wisdom.
At her Catholic elementary school, she challenged the religious dogma; her ideas, she later joked, got her branded "a third-grade heretic." At Birmingham High School, she gravitated toward the punk-rock kids, the black-clad, the ravers and the seekers.
At the now-defunct New College of California, where she earned her bachelor's degree, she immersed herself in contrarian thinkers, particularly the anarchists: Emma Goldman, imprisoned by U.S. authorities for opposing the draft in 1917; David Graeber, the anthropologist who studied the egalitarian communities of northwest Madagascar; and Hakim Bey, a scholar who extolled history's "pirate utopias," which operated beyond the grasp of governments.
Central to her thinking: "She didn't believe that we lived in a world of scarcity," Viola said. "That scarcity was a myth that was used to keep people divided. And so if resources and goods are taken care of and shared equitably, then there's enough for everybody."
In San Francisco, she put the idea into practice. She helped found a series of fine-dining events. Patrons were not required to pay. In Dolores Park, she cofounded a "Really Really Free Market," where people gathered to give things away.
"Because there is enough for everyone," the slogan read. "Because sharing is more fulfilling than owning."
She was a utopian, Viola said, but not naive. He had seen her street smarts. Still, as she prepared to leave New York and set out on her own, he was concerned.
"She was very aware of the risks," he recalled. "She said, 'If anything should happen to me on the trip, if I should ever be killed on the trip, I accept that.' "
The e-mail messages home traced her path. From New York, she rode the train to Philadelphia. There, she wrote, she met up with "a small activist scene living in the cracks of a neglected and impoverished neighborhood. . . . We borrowed bikes and rode all over town, visited the urban farm, danced at a benefit for Critical Resistance" -- a group that advocates the eradication of prisons -- "cruised a free store/vegan potluck barbeque/folk show in the basement."
In Providence, R.I., she stayed in a friend's apartment without electricity, noting, on her trips around town, the "gorgeous empty mills that seem to be opening up for more creative endeavors as the condo wave recedes."
In Boston, she networked at a regional anarchists' meeting. In Buffalo, she met up with a friend who calls herself Hannah Potassium. The pair rode bikes everywhere.
"She showed me the greener side of the Rustbelt city: rivers, lakes and gardens," Brydum wrote. "We found a well-organized housing co-op with beautiful interiors and were invited to come back for dinner. At midnight, I hopped on a Greyhound to Detroit not knowing where to go or what to do when I arrive. . . . "
She was shocked by Detroit's vast landscape of blight. The broken city seemed to support her ideas about the folly of capitalism. But she was also troubled that people had to live there.
"Sure, there's some romanticizing of a place like this: a post-industrial workless wonderland free for the taking, ripe with opportunities to create a pirate utopia," she wrote. "But in reality, the scene was sad. Some people do still live in Detroit, and the few that I met from the activist scene were bitter and burned out. It's hard to create the world you wish to see when there are no resources, few comrades to inspire, and no spare energy."
By early September, she was in St. Paul, Minn., for the Republican National Convention, among the thousands of activists who protested President Bush, the Iraq war, and the neglect of the needy, chanting: "Stop the war on the poor!"
More cities followed: St. Louis; Kansas City, Mo.; Madison, Wis., and Chicago. She found a ride from the Midwest to North Carolina on Craigs- list. But the driver changed plans abruptly and left her in downtown Indianapolis. She eventually hooked up with another stranger who drove her.
Then it was on to New Orleans, on Amtrak's Crescent line.
"I don't really know what to expect," she wrote. " . . . The sun is setting on the bayou-licked lands and I am truly fortunate. I have rounded this beautiful Southeast corner on the Crescent line today and from now on I am westward bound."
She rolled into town with a reservation of sorts at a punk-rock group house in the 9th Ward. They were friends of friends, white kids in a black neighborhood. Some dumpster-dived for food. Some were artists and musicians, and some hopped trains. Some had volunteered to help rebuild the city.
Julia Milan, a 22-year-old resident of the house, remembers the impression Brydum made when she came in from the Amtrak station. She wore a pink sundress with a pink ribbon around her waist.
"She was so cute," Milan said, but not meek. "She looked very driven."
Brydum had talked to her friends about making sense of New Orleans, and looking for radicals working for solutions amid the post-Katrina ruins. Since the storm, the city -- long a magnet for escapists and hipsters -- had also been attracting a new kind of itinerant idealist.
Some came to work for nonprofits or public schools. Others aligned themselves with activist groups like Common Ground Relief, a nonprofit that set up shop in the Lower 9th Ward, gutting houses, starting community gardens and helping organize residents left homeless.
Many of the newcomers arrived with scant knowledge of the charming but insular city, which, by some measures, is plagued with the nation's highest crime rate.
"We give them overly cautious warnings," said Caitlin Reilly, Common Ground's volunteer coordinator. "We say, 'You're probably going to be fine, but you should be aware there's very high crime, and a high murder rate.' "
But Common Ground was apparently not on Brydum's list.
After the brass band show at the Howlin' Wolf her second night in town, Viola said, Brydum disappeared.
Her laptop, duffel bag and phone remained at the punk-rock house, and the phone kept ringing.
"We were kind of worried, because she didn't seem like a party kid," Milan said. "The second day, we started to get scared."
Her body had been found by a church group gutting houses in the 9th Ward; it was lying unidentified in the morgue. Brydum had been shot four times in the face. New Orleans police detectives began their search for a killer, but have thus far had no luck.
When the news reached the Bay Area, some of her fellow activists wondered if there had been a conspiracy. Some suspected the CIA.
"Kirsten's death looks more like a hit job rather than a random act of murder," someone called SF Activist commented on one blog, one of a number of similar comments. "New Orleans is still a militarized zone and it's quite possible she was targeted by hired guns."
New Orleanians tended to respond to such comments with a weary disbelief.
"Hired guns?!" a respondent named Sterno wrote after an essay on xavierthoughts.blogspot.com. "Every murder here in New Orleans looks like a 'hit job', mainly because our criminals are professionals."
Viola, the boyfriend, flew to New Orleans to meet with homicide detectives. He held meetings with anti-violence activists and a few young radicals. With his encouragement, they established a system that provides escorts to anyone who feels uncomfortable biking alone at night.
Brydum's mother, Mamie Page, always respected Kirsten's ideas and ideals, even when she didn't share them.
In an e-mail message, she said her younger daughter told her that Kirsten "would have been more about forgiveness than punishment for this crime, and focusing more on the issue of violence against women and rehabilitating the criminal."
"I can't get my brain around that one," said Page, a paralegal living in Portland, Ore. "For obvious reasons."
Other family members noted, with a disgusted irony, that the killer may have been covering up a robbery. Brydum's bag and bicycle were not found at the scene.
"It's kind of pathetic," said Brydum's aunt, Catherine Page-Evans, of Woodland Hills. "Of course, she would have given it to them."
richard.fausset@latimes.com
General Federation of Trade Unions of Palestine denouncing the Israeli occupation forces arrested 334 Palestinian workers in Israel.Shaher Saad expressed the Secretary-General of the General Federation of Trade Unions of Palestine for the censure and condemnation of the Israeli occupation forces arrested more than 334 Palestinian workers working inside the Green Line, saying it is a flagrant violation of the rights of Palestinian workers who are trying to secure a living for themselves and their families under the strict closures and siege Israeli authorities imposed on the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And the Voice of Israel Radio reported this morning that the Israeli occupation forces arrested during the last week of at least 334 Palestinians working inside Israel the pretext of their stay there without permits, a phrase used by the Israeli police to justify prosecutions and aggression on Palestinian workers, arresting and sentencing them to high fines. Saad said that the arrest of Palestinian workers inside the Green Line is a violation of human rights and a violation of the laws and international conventions, which the occupation authorities bear the responsibility to ensure the right of workers to work in safe conditions to secure the requirements of his family, he said, adding that the occupation authorities closed the Palestinian territories and surrounded by the separation wall and the adoption of Racial bear full responsibility for the outcome of the conditions of our workers in the occupied Palestinian territories. Thus, these punitive measures depriving Palestinian workers of employment opportunities and lead to a lifting of poverty and unemployment rates already high in the Palestinian society, which have resulted in a lot of human tragedy and suffering as a result of these arbitrary measures. Saad noted that the General Federation of Trade Unions of Palestine will go to international organizations as the International Labor Organization and the International Federation of Free Trade Unions and friendly to expose these practices, the right of our workers, and to reaffirm their right to work and decent living and to stop these inhumane practices against them through the organization of an international campaign of solidarity with the Palestinian Workers who have suffered for long years of vicious Israeli prosecution and the denial of the right to work.www.pgftu.org
From: Kristin Bricker at http://narcosphere.narconews.comPosted by Kristin Bricker - January 31, 2009 at 7:49 pm John Gibler's first book, Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt, recently hit book stores. Gibler's book is drawn from two years of on-the-ground reporting in Mexico. Narco News' Kristin Bricker interviewed Gibler about his new book as he prepared to embark on a West Coast book tour in the US.Narco News: What was the inspiration for this book?John Gibler: The idea was born of the experience of covering the [Zapatistas'] Other Campaign[1] during the first four months of 2006. When the Zapatistas issued the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle and announced the sixth-month listening tour that would be the first phase of the Other Campaign, they made a special call out to the alternative media to accompany this tour and use that as a way into all the untold stories of Mexico's struggling peoples, of Mexico's underdogs--los de abajo in Spanish. During the first four months of the Campaign, Delegate Zero--as Subcomandante Marcos was called--would often point to the motley crew of alternative journalists who hadn't shaved or showered or changed clothes for long stretches of time and he would say, "Don't get worried about those mugrosos [filthy people] out there on the fringes. They're actually the alternative press, and they're here to take your words out to other places." Day after day he would mention that as part of his call for people to participate in the Other Campaign. That was something I seriously felt as a commitment, as a responsibility, and during that time I tried to fulfill it by writing articles, getting stuff out online, launching with friends a small zine that we published on the caravan, and doing radio work with community radio stations in the United States. But I felt as if that was only a part of trying to fulfill that commitment. And then 2006 exploded: the police repression in San Salvador Atenco, the electoral fraud, and then the sixth-month-long unarmed uprising in Oaxaca. These are all things I covered for the alternative press. It kept fanning the flames of this desire to go deeper into the stories of los de abajo. That was where the idea for writing this book came from. Narco News: The original title for this book was Ungovernable. Why did you decide to change the name to Mexico Unconquered?John Gibler: "Ungovernable" was a quotation from the 2006 Oaxaca conflict. That quotation is very specific to a certain time and place: Oaxaca in late summer and early fall of 2006. One of the strategies of the Oaxaca's peoples movement was to force the Mexican Senate to declare Oaxaca "ungovernable." And by declaring the state "ungovernable" the Senate would have the ability to dissolve the powers of the state. That is the only legal constitutional way in Mexico for a federal authority to remove a state governor from office. This is part of the Oaxaca Peoples' Popular Assembly's strategy, to force the federal government into a checkmate, forcing this legal constitutional move to depose Ulises Ruiz and oust him from the Oaxaca governorship.I wanted to take that word "ungovernable" and quote it as a way of tapping into that spirit of resistance in Oaxaca. But I thought upon reflection that as a title that word would be taken so far from the context of Oaxaca in 2006 and make it seem as though Mexico as a land is ungovernable or the Mexican people are ungovernable. That gets away from the political point that I try to make in the book, and that people in Oaxaca were making in their demand, forcing the federal government to declare the state ungovernable. That political point is the spirit of rebellion, the spirit of protest in Mexico, which is an intensely anti-imperialist spirit and a spirit that compels people to risk everything, to put their lives on the line, to engage in action that defends their land, their autonomy, and their dignity. In thinking about how to best and try and touch at that spirit in one or two words, I decided upon "Mexico Unconquered," this idea that after centuries of invasion, foreign and later internal colonialism, and the constant threat of the boot of military and economic imperialism from the United States, that in spite of all of this repression and violence, so many sectors of Mexican society have never fully given in and have never allowed themselves to be fully conquered. Narco News: Explain what you mean when you say that "hunger is biological class warfare" in the book.John Gibler: Hunger is people simply not having enough food to eat, and it's the ache in their bodies from not having the nutrition they need. That hunger is unleashed upon the bodies of the people who have been consistently pushed out and pushed away from the development of wealth. It's biological because it's in your body and in your blood, and it's class warfare because it's a direct descendent of colonial invasions.Poverty is not an act of nature or an accident of history. Poverty is destitution and a form of violence. It is the result of history and concrete human actions in the Americas, as well as many other parts of the earth. In the Americas that history is explicitly a colonial history. The argument regarding hunger and poverty that I make in the book is drawn from a wealth of writers and thinkers from across previously colonial territories, such as Eduardo Galeano and Arturo Escobar. They are part of a school of thought that views the very concept of poverty critically. It says that poverty is not something that just happens to people or something that people are born into. That which we know as poverty--different levels of material and political destitution--is the result of concrete historical actions. In Mexico, it's not an accident that the country's 12 million indigenous people are some of the poorest people in the land or that government statistics show that the poorest municipalities in the country are all heavily indigenous municipalities. The legacy of colonial invasion and conquest in the creation of poverty is apparent. Indigenous people were literally pushed out of the valleys they were farming and cultivating. They were enslaved and brought to Spanish haciendas [estates] and mines to work.That legacy of colonial violence was transformed slowly through the independence and post-revolution eras but never ended. That legacy is actually the engine of the creation of poverty. Now folks come along and point to different isolated villages and say "Well, of course they're poor. Look at how far away the are from the towns and cities and the coast and all of those fertile areas." Well, why do you think they're there? They got pushed there. And why do you think they don't have access to the towns and cities? Because the government never built roads to those communities. If you analyze the transportation infrastructure in the country, you realize that the north is heavily industrialized because that's where all of the powerful landowners went and bought land using the wealth from the silver mines. They created industrial agriculture and heavily industrialized urban centers in the north.The heavily indigenous south never received any of those infrastructure projects. And when they do receive infrastructure projects it's usually part of a colonial plan, like building highways in order to get access to resources that the state or private landowners want to exploit. The idea here is that poverty is something that has been and continues to be crafted over the ages through class warfare. That class warfare has fractured over time. Now it's not simply Europeans versus indigenous, though the indigenous in Mexico continue to bear the heaviest blows of state violence and institutional forms of violence. Now it's drawn very much along class lines as well. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) wreaked havoc in rural areas of Mexico that are not necessarily indigenous. That campesino [rural peasant] population has also been pushed out or in some cases chose to stay out of industrial development. With NAFTA you get the final machete blow, cutting people off from their land and forcing them into the economically dispossessed current of migration to the United States. Narco News: You spend a significant portion of your first chapter explaining how the Mexican center-left's beloved President Lazaro Cardenas cemented the PRI dictatorship. Cardenas is often regarded as Mexico's FDR because of his seemingly socialist policies such as the nationalization of Pemex and land redistribution. What was Cardenas' role in conquest?In my historical chapter I rely on Mexican historians and their analysis of the importance of Cardenas [president of Mexico from December 1, 1934 – November 30, 1940]. Here I draw on the work of Arnaldo Cordova in particular, and Adolfo Gilly who is an Argentinean but who has lived in Mexico since the 1960's. Gilly is one of the foremost historians on the Mexican Revolution as well as the Cardenas presidency.Cardenas was one of the geniuses in the creation of the Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI). That was the transition point for colonial power in Mexico when it was finally solidified in the new metropolis of Mexico City. Part of the argument I make is that the independence movement didn't sever Mexico from its colonial powers; it shifted the center of colonial power from Madrid to Mexico City. In the hundred years between the War of Independence and the Mexican revolution, the fight was between warring factions within this new internal colonial elite. The idea of internal colonialism comes from Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and his 1965 work Democracy in Mexico where he discusses the way in which the PRI, the one-party state in Mexico, engages with its indigenous populations as an internal colonialism. It's still a war of colonial conquest, but taking place within one nation's borders. Cardenas' role was to make that transition from foreign colonialism to an internal colonialism possible. He enacted several land and labor reforms that granted a certain level of autonomy and peace to people across the country, though it was an intensely controlled and structured environment. Cardenas separated the campesinos (the rural population) from the obreros or the industrial workers by forming two separate unions, both of which are controlled by the PRI. This was part of the birth of the one-party state where the PRI becames the single arbiter for any conflict within the nation's borders. And that completed the transition from a foreign European colonialism to an internal colonialism. In the background during this period of transition is United States imperialism. At one point in the book I say that it's like battleships looming on the horizon, which of course, at several points in Mexico's history those battleships did loom on the horizon off the coast of Veracruz . United States imperialism has constantly threatened the integrity of Mexico from its earliest days of independence. So when I say "internal colonialism," that's not to ignore or deny the impact of US imperialism, but to say that the way in which the modern Mexican state evolved after the revolution was into a new power structure centered in Mexico City that was still carrying on policies of conquest. Again, these are ideas that I have drawn from Mexican theorists and historians, as well as people in the streets and in the fields, who use the language of colonialism and imperialism to talk about their own relationship to the state and their fight against repression and dispossession at the hands of the state. Narco News: Mexico Unconquered's thesis is that Mexico's history is one of perpetual attempts to conquest and resistance to this conquest. How does the drug war fit into your conquest narrative? Some of the same actors you mention in your book are currently engaged in the drug war: government institutions, mafia-like power brokers, military and police forces, media, and private enterprises.John Gibler: I take a look at the drug war as a way into contemplating the nature of the modern state in Mexico. I don't consider the drug war as something outside of the state, or even as something the state engages in in a 1:1 adversarial relationship with the drug gangs, that is, the idea that there are these criminal drug gangs and the state is fighting them. The drug cartels have penetrated every layer of the institution of the state in Mexico from the municipal through the state and into the federal levels. Thus, the drug war itself--the war between the various fighting cartels--is something that's replicated internally within the state. The warring cartels that are fighting out on the street are also fighting within the structure of the state. Hence you have the constant back-and-forth assassinations of police and military officers, civilians, and people involved in the various anti-drug agencies. One gang will find the "Deep Throat" of another gang inside a given institution and then have them killed. I use the drug war as a way of analyzing and taking apart the ideological concept of the rule of law in Mexico, the very concept that is used to justify state violence and repression against social movements, peoples' movements, and just everyday people across the country. The drug war is a window into the nature of the very being of the modern state and a way of taking apart its cosmetic presentation of itself as an institution wedded to the concept of the rule of law. Narco News: You interview Gloria Arenas Agis about her experience as a guerrilla in the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) and later the Insurgent People's Revolutionary Army (ERPI). When she discusses the split between the EPR and the ERPI, she talks about experiences the Guerrero-based ERPI has in common with the Zapatista Army for National Liberation (EZLN). What is the relationship, if any, between the ERPI and the EZLN? And why has no one outside of Mexico heard of the ERPI?John Gibler: I know of absolutely no relationship between the EZLN and the ERPI. And I don't think that any relationship exists between those two organizations. Gloria Arenas, who is now a political prisoner, is one of the ERPI's founders. She's been in jail for almost ten years, and she is very openly an adherent to the Zapatistas' Other Campaign initiative. The ERPI is not well-known outside of Mexico or even within Mexico. One of the reasons is because two of their founding members [Arenas and her husband Jacobo Silva Nogales] were abducted by the state, tortured, and then thrown in jail very soon after the organization's founding in 1998. Thus, some of the most potentially eloquent spokespeople for the organization have been locked down. Jacobo is in maximum security prison; Gloria was in maximum security prison for several years. About four years ago she moved to a medium security prison in Mexico state where I was able to interview her. The organization is a grassroots campesino and indigenous organization mainly located in Guerrero state. The ERPI has not really sought media attention. They've only given a handful of interviews to local Mexican media, mainly Canal 6 de Julio, and there was one interview given to a US journalist published in Bill Weinberg's Homage to Chiapas. Otherwise, they haven't given many interviews. In this case, the interview I did is with a member of the organization who can now speak publicly because she's no longer living in clandestinity. She's a political prisoner. We speak about her experience, her involvement in the organization, the history of the creation of the organization, and how and why they split from the EPR. We don't in any way address the current state of the organization. The ERPI does continue to exist, and they put out communiques now and again. But it isn't an organization that has sought out much media attention. The media has also been, at least in the early years, very focused on Chiapas and in the later years pretty blase about armed or unarmed people's movements in Mexico. Narco News: In your book, you briefly mention the Oaxaca Peoples' Popular Assembly (APPO) and the Other Campaign together in the same paragraph. Subcomandante Marcos passed through Oaxaca just months before Oaxaca's 2006 uprising. What role, if any--did the Other Campaign play in the APPO uprising?John Gibler: The Other Campaign deeply inspired several sectors of the urban youth autonomy movement within the APPO. I think the thirteen years (at that time) of Zapatista struggle had a deep and lasting influence on political and social organizations across the country and the world. And thus the Zapatistas definitely had a profound impact on a lot of both the indigenous and non-indigenous organizations involved in the APPO. But the Other Campaign as a movement and an initiative was really so young at that point that it's difficult to measure its influence. I know there were several other collectives who explicitly used the language and ideas of the Other Campaign in their involvement with the APPO. However, the autochthonous experience of Section 22 of the state teachers union had a profound effect on the Oaxaca uprising, as did the distinct and unique indigenous struggles across the state. Oaxaca has 16 distinct indigenous ethnicities within its population, and all of those contributed to the way in which the APPO was formed in an assembly structure. It even contributed to the way the occupied media were used. People were talking to and amongst themselves on the air rather than reporting on something. It was like a continuously broadcasted conversation amongst the people themselves.Narco News: During the 2006 uprising in Oaxaca, over 20 people were killed. One of them was Brad Will. His murder made international headlines, his case is the only case the government has decided to "investigate," and the only one where the government has brought charges against "suspects"--APPO organizers, witnesses who were ready to testify against the government agents who killed him, and the people who tried to save his life. Both Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and the falsely accused say that there will never be justice for Brad as long as his case his considered out of the context of the state and paramilitary violence that wracked Oaxaca during that period. Several witnesses and defendants in the case have told me that international activists seeking justice for Brad must start talking about the other murders--which you do in your book. You name many of them by name. So let's talk about who else was murdered during the uprising, how they were killed, and what's going on with those cases.John Gibler: During the Oaxaca uprising 23 people were assassinated. Several more have been assassinated since the November 25 federal police crackdown, which was the final act of state repression that broke the protesters' hold on areas of Oaxaca City. Those assassinations came in the context of the slowly unfolding counterinsurgency strategy conducted primarily by the state police, though there was federal involvement in the very beginning and then very heavily toward the end of the conflict, and several people were killed by federal police in late October and early November. Those murders were the state's desperate attempt to inflict terror upon the population and to scare people away from taking the streets. The amazing thing that happened in Oaxaca is that with every assassination more people took to the streets. Instead of being terrified and running away, the response was a surge in popular support for the teachers and the peoples' movement. The people who were assassinated were everyday folks who were participating in the movement. Some of the first people to be killed during the conflict were Triqui indigenous people who were killed on their way to Oaxaca City from a village assembly reporting back to an APPO assembly. They were ambushed and killed on the road on the way back to Oaxaca. [2]The first person to be shot down in the street in Oaxaca was Jose Jimenez Colmenares, the husband of a teacher who was actively participating in the teachers' strike and then in the uprising. He had come out to support his wife and was in a march in Oaxaca City in early August 2006 when gunmen opened fire from two rooftops along the narrow street where the teachers were marching. That day they were marching to denounce the disappearance of several Oaxacan activists two days earlier. Those activists--German Mendoza Nube being one of them--were seen being abducted off the street, thrown into the back of a pickup truck, and driven away. They appeared about five days alter in federal prison in Mexico City, meaning there is the solid assumption that federal police were involved in those first abductions in early August. Alejandro Garcia is another person who was assassinated. Alejandro and his wife and kids had made tamales, sandwiches coffee, and hot chocolate and were taking them around to people who were guarding the barricades in one of the central avenues in Oaxaca City. Alejandro was shot in the head while handing out coffee and hot chocolate. The shootings seem to have targeted the support base--people who were just coming out to help, rather than the people who were grabbing headlines by giving interviews to the press or people who had already had a rather well-known trajectory in local or state politics or activism. These were people from the very, very grassroots coming out to participate and help. The barricades themselves were a phenomenon of popular organizing to overcome the death squads. On August 20 and 21, the state sent out convoys of 40-something vehicles, some of which were unmarked with no license plates, while others were clearly marked state and local police vehicles. They opened fire on people across the city and killed one man, Lorenzo San Pablo Cervantes, who was an architect who lived in the Reforma neighborhood near one of the radio stations the protesters had occupied. He wandered out of his house, showed up at the barricade closest to his front door, introduced himself, and offered to volunteer and to help stand watch. Minutes later the death squad caravan of police vehicles drove by and opened fire. Not a single one of these cases is being investigated. Not a single one. Out of the entire 23 murder cases during the 2006 conflict, the only case that is currently open is Brad Will's case. The only one that is being investigated is the one that involves a foreign citizen. That said, so many people in Oaxaca have told me that they view Brad's case as a fulcrum. They feel that if people are able to fight for some kind of institutional justice in Brad's case--which would mean identifying, apprehending, charging, and sentencing the local parapolice forces who shot and killed him from down the street in Santa Lucia--if justice is achievable in Brad's case, they feel as though there's some sparkle of hope for justice in the Oaxacans' cases. And on the contrary, if the state insists on blaming the protesters themselves and blaming the people who tried to lift Brad up off the street and carry him to safety, if the state insists on accusing the people who tried to save his life of having killed him, then there is no hope whatsoever for any kind of justice in the case of the other Oaxacans. Brad's case is intimately linked to the broader fight for justice in Oaxaca. But Brad's case cannot be thought of or addressed in any way if one tries to extract it from the overarching context of paramilitary and parapolice violence which had preceded Brad's murder for months. At the time Brad was killed on October 27, fifteen people had already been assassinated. Narco News: In Brad's case, the perpetrators are clearly identifiable. There's photos of them shooting at him and witnesses. Have perpetrators been identified in any of the other cases?John Gibler: In the case of Jose Jimenez Colmenares who was shot and killed on August 10, 2006, he was shot in the middle of a huge march. There were hundreds of people right there and thousands of people in the march. Immediately after the gunshots rang out and Jimenez fell to the ground, people in the march stormed both of the houses on either side of the road where the shots had come from, and they apprehended several people. Those people were turned over to federal authorities later that night. What's happened to those people? I think all of them have been released for "lack of evidence."Narco News: But it would've been incredibly easy to run a gunpowder residue test on the suspects' hands to verify if they'd recently fired a gun.John Gibler: In the Colmenares case, I don't know, because once they were turned over to federal officials at that point in the conflict there was really no dialogue. My several attempts to get information from members of the Federal Investigative Agency (AFI) were all met with absolute silence. I do know, however, that they were administering those types of tests. In late July, one of the first people to open fire during a protest was apprehended by members of the APPO and turned over to the AFI. In that case, the AFI came down into central Oaxaca. I was present at the university building where they were holding the suspect, the person whom they said had fired a weapon. The suspect told me in an interview that he had not fired a weapon that he didn't know how to fire a handgun. It turned out he was an ex-army soldier and at the time of his detention was a state police officer. He said he'd never been trained to fired a handgun. Sure enough ,when the federal agents arrived they came with two lab technicians who conducted a gunpowder residue test, which showed that he did indeed have traces of gunpowder residue on his hand and had fired a handgun within the previous two hours. [Narco News note: The Federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) released the suspect, Isaias Perez Hernandez, shortly thereafter without charge.]Narco News: You discuss human rights organizations and how, despite their "truly exhaustive" research and evidence and their own statements of widespread abuse, they don't acknowledge the abuse as endemic and part-and-parcel of governing. You say, "They blindly consider the systematic human rights violations as aberrations rather than defining characteristics of the Mexican state." How does this affect their advocacy and policy recommendations regarding Mexico? John Gibler: I know this will be a controversial thesis, but I do think that the human rights organizations--especially a lot of the large international human rights organizations that have been following human rights issues in Mexico over the past several decades--have consistently either failed to acknowledge or have failed to act upon the truly political nature of human rights violations. Failing to acknowledge the incredible consistency and pervasiveness of the same types of violations, such as, for example, the practice of torture, is failing to acknowledge the true nature of the state and what's really happening.Take the case of torture. When a human rights organization publishes year after year after year in their annual human rights report that the majority of police in Mexico still use torture as their principal form of interrogation, and yet they conclude their human rights report with some nod to a recommendation that "police should be trained not to torture" or there should be some sort of reform in the structure of the police forces so that they're held accountable for their actions. It seems to me that that loses any kind of real integrity because of the persistence of the use of torture over so many years. If you find that year after year after year someone keeps doing the same thing, it's probably because they want to be doing that, because doing that is extremely beneficial to them. And in the case of these human rights violations, the human rights organizations just keep saying year after year, "Don't do that," with no real analysis as to the "why." Why do police in Mexico use torture as their principal interrogation technique year after year? A couple of these reports even mention in their list of concerns, "Well, it seems as though there might be a lack of political will." That two-word phrase "political will" seems to me to contain the first indication of the true nature of the problem. Not having the political will means you don't want to do something. In the case of torture, the entire international community, with the exception of the United States and Israel, has come together to declaim this practice as something that is horrid and should be erased from use and implementation across the planet. Yet you have these human rights organizations documenting year after year that everybody still does it, and they never ask why. Narco News: So what should human rights organizations do in order to be effective in Mexico, since what they're currently doing apparently isn't working?John Gibler: I don't know if human rights organizations can be effective anymore. There was a heyday of human rights activism in Mexico in the last years of the PRI in the late 1990s. Back then, throwing incredible amount of energy and resources just at the documentation of the scale and nature of human rights abuses was itself a very powerful thing. Here, the majority of that heavy lifting was conducted by Mexican human rights organizations, national and local. When President Vicente Fox was elected president in 2000, and soon thereafter one of Mexico's most gutsy and hard-working human rights attorneys, Digna Ochoa[3], was assassinated, those two moments in Mexican history served to blast apart the human rights community in a way that I don't think it's ever recovered from. In the case of Fox, all the international organizations starting patting each other on the back and saying "Great, now Mexico is a democracy," just by the simple fact that in one year during one election, the ruling party was voted out of office. That is definitely something historic and it inspired many people with the hope of real lasting change in Mexico--hope that was rather quickly squashed[4]. In Digna Ochoa's case, the state actually engaged in the same kind of tried-and-true blame-the-victim smear campaign to make the assassination look like a suicide. Surprisingly--and appallingly--they seemed to sway a significant portion of the human rights community with all of their mud-slinging. The internal divisions that occurred around the Digna Ochoa case tore apart the human rights community in a way that it hasn't recovered from and in a way that would become more devastating years later with the candidacy of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and several the divisions that occurred around that candidacy and around the PRD electoral efforts during the 2006 presidential elections. The work of documenting human rights abuses can be extremely powerful, especially in the cases of Atenco and Oaxaca in 2006. Local Mexican human rights organizations on the ground risked their own safety to quickly document the nature and the scale of the abuses against people there. Most of the big name international human rights NGOs were nowhere to be seen. Several of them tried to jump into advocacy around these cases once most of the damage had been done and once the conflicts had been beaten down through police repression. Local human rights organizations went jail to jail in Oaxaca to find out if someone who had just been disappeared was in fact disappeared of if they'd appeared in jail, and if they had appeared, in what condition. They evaluated to see if they had been tortured, applying the Istanbul Protocol[5]. It's really important for social movements to have that sort of documentation. The human rights political project, on the other hand, utilizes a framework of shaming states into complying with the UN human rights declarations. I think that project has been completely exhausted. The fact that the United States of America could, in the name of human rights, invade and destroy a country, that Mexico, in the name of human rights, could send thousands of riot cops to beat and rape people, shows the true final co-optation or failing of that human rights political project. What that project might've hoped to accomplish now falls back fully into the hands of the grassroots movements themselves. Narco News: A year ago you and I and other Narco News journalists were in Salon Corona in Mexico City. I remember you mentioned that you watched a documentary with some Mexicans about the 1999 protests that shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle, and when you reached the part where police are brutally beating kneeling protesters who were doing nothing to resist the blows, you and the Mexicans you were watching with exclaimed, "Why don't they fight back?!?" What is it about unconquered Mexicans and their collective history that makes them more likely to defend themselves from attacks perpetrated by authorities? Last year, for example, UNAM high school students occupied their principal's office and the major highway in front of their school for days because a school security guard had broken up an unpermitted chess tournament. That sort of resistance is not likely to happen in the US, but it's commonplace in Mexico.John Gibler: I think it's because there's this deeply anti-imperialist root to protest in Mexico. Here you're not fighting to slightly reform or recast something; you're fighting to protect your home and your dignity from invasion. From the smallest of fights like university occupations or fights to protect a small community radio station, to very large fights like the Zapatista uprising and fifteen years of the construction of autonomy in Chiapas, and the teachers' rebellion that became a popular rebellion in Oaxaca in 2006, all of these fights share in common this spirit of defense of dignity, land, and autonomy. There's something fundamentally illegitimate about the power weighing down upon you, power that threatens to crush you and dispossess you. The questioning of the legitimacy of the state and authority and actions of repression lends to the intensity and the risky nature of Mexican protest. And when I say risky nature I mean really risking one's life.Narco News: It seems as though indigenous autonomy movements--the "most radical sites of revolt" as you call them--are in some ways the ideological or spiritual leaders of anti-imperialist struggles in many parts of Mexico. What possibilities do you see for an anti-imperialist movement within the United States that would at the very least include, if not put at the forefront, indigenous autonomy?John Gibler: There are many very deep pockets of resistance--especially indigenous resistance and autonomy--within the borders of the territory now called the United States that are simply not acknowledged, not noticed, and not considered, much less understood. Those movements have an incredible wealth of dignity and strength to offer an anti-imperialist struggle. I also think and hope that many of those movements as well as non-indigenous movements stand a lot to learn, benefit, and take inspiration from the stories of indigenous autonomy struggles and resistance in Mexico. Some element of that cross-fertilization is one of the hopes of the book and its political project, which is following through with that commitment to take the stories and the words of the underdgos of Mexican resistance (los de abajo) and help spread them to other communities of resistance and rebellion. Narco News: You say Mexico Unconquered is part call-to-action for readers. What are you calling upon us to do?John Gibler: My biggest hope is that it inspires very genuine and deep reflection upon strategies of resistance here in the territory known as the United States and Canada. I personally think many protest tactics we've been using in the north, including marches, non-governmental and non-profit organizational structures, and human rights frameworks, have been proven ineffective and that others need to be explored. I don't think it's my place or really anyone's, to say from an abstract level to a concrete and practical level what should be done. That needs to spring forth from the community of people directly involved in a particular struggle. My hope is to inspire expanding the realm of political imagination, thinking about what could be done, thinking beyond the regions of possibility that we've been presented with and confronted with by the media and the state. I hope the book inspires taking those down and truly stepping out into much broader territories of political imagination. Notes:
MSNBC Looking To Add New 10pm ET ShowNow that Countdown with Keith Olbermann is in place at 8pmET and The Rachel Maddow Show is set at 9pmET, the New York Times' Brian Stelterreports MSNBC is looking to add a new show at 10.
"It's almost like we're one personality away," MSNBC president Phil Griffin told Stelter. Olbermann supports the move as well. "Losing the 10 p.m. replay [of Countdown] is a very small price to pay for a last piece to the puzzle." Olbermann says. MSNBC insiders tell us there is nothing currently in development, but the network's goal is to add a 10pm show when it finds the right host.
Not mentioned in the article — potential hosts. So we put the question to you (After all, you predicted the "Hannity" choice correctly).:
CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged U.S. President Barack Obama to extradite an anti-Castro Cuban exile wanted in Venezuela who the administration of George W. Bush had refused to hand over.
Extradition of former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles, accused of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jet that killed 73 people, could improve bilateral ties that have for years been frayed by a war of words between the Bush administration and Venezuela.
"Send us the terrorist Posada Carriles," Chavez said in a televised speech late on Friday. "We've been waiting four years for the extradition of the biggest terrorist in human history."
The Bush administration had refused to hand over Posada after he was arrested in the United States for entering the country illegally, sparking harsh criticism of a double standard in Washington's war on terror.
Posada, who was involved in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to topple Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was jailed for two years in Texas on immigration charges but released in 2007. He now lives in Miami.
Posada also is accused in Cuba of plotting 1997 hotel bombings in Havana that killed an Italian tourist.
Chavez, whose country provides some 12 percent of U.S. oil imports, was a harsh critic of former President George W. Bush. He has accused Obama of repeating the same policies, although he recently applauded Obama's decision to shut the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He also has urged Obama to lift the U.S. embargo of Cuba and return Guantanamo Bay, which the United States has rented since the early 20th century.
(Reporting by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Bill Trott)
“What happens on the ground is for every one of those impacts you get five or ten times as many recruits for the Taliban as you've eliminated. The people that we’re trying to convince to become adherents to our cause have become rigidly hostile to our cause in part because of bombing and in part because of other killing of civilians from ground forces. We’re dealing with a society that’s based on honor... They have to resist being invaded, occupied, bombed and killed. It’s a matter of honor, and they’re willing to die in unbelievable numbers to do that.”
Young said:
“The problem is [that] the focus remains a military solution to what all the other information I have says is a political problem. I don’t care how you slice the military tactic. So long as your notion is that you can actually deal with this in a military way, you’re just going to march deeper and deeper into what Pete Seeger called ‘The Big Muddy”... The point is, if you can’t figure out a political way to deal in Afghanistan then you can only compound the compound mess.”
David Korten's new book Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth outlines an agenda to bring into being a new economy--locally based, community oriented, and devoted to creating a better life for all, not simply increasing profits.
In this special pre-publication excerpt, Korten summarizes his version of the economic address to the nation he wishes Barack Obama were able to deliver.
Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. presidency on a promise of change. Before his inauguration, indeed before his election, I drafted the following as my dream for the economic address he might deliver to the nation during his administration in fulfillment of the economic aspect of that promise. It is the New Economy agenda presented in the style of candidate Obama's political rhetoric.
I suffer no illusion that he will deliver it. He has surrounded himself with advisers aligned with Wall Street interests in an effort to establish public confidence in his ability to restore order in the economy. Because there has been no discussion of any other option, to most people "restoring order" means restoring the status quo with the addition of a job-stimulus package, and that is most likely what he will try to do.
This speech presents the missing option--the program that a U.S. president must one day be able to announce and implement if there is to be any hope for our economic, social, and environmental future.
Here is the address:
Fellow Citizens:
My administration came to office with a mandate for bold action at a time when our most powerful economic institutions had clearly failed us. They crippled our economy; burdened governments with debilitating debts; corrupted our political institutions; and threatened the destruction of the natural environment on which our very lives depend.
The failure can be traced directly to an elitist economic ideology that says if government favors the financial interests of the rich to the disregard of all else, everyone will benefit and the nation will prosper. A thirty-year experiment with trickle-down economics that favored the interests of Wall Street speculators over the hardworking people and businesses of Main Street has proved it doesn't work.
We have no more time or resources to devote to fixing a system based on false values and a discredited ideology. We must now come together to create the institutions of a new economy based on a values-based pragmatism that recognizes a simple truth: If the world is to work for any of us, it must work for all of us.
Corrective action begins with recognition that our economic crisis is, at its core, a moral crisis. Our economic institutions and rules, even the indicators by which we measure economic performance, consistently place financial values ahead of life values.
We have been measuring economic performance against GDP, or gross domestic product, which essentially measures the rate at which money and resources are flowing through the economy. Let us henceforth measure economic performance by the indicators of what we really want: the health and well-being of our children, families, communities, and the natural environment.
Like a healthy ecosystem, a healthy twenty-first-century economy must have strong local roots and maximize the beneficial capture, storage, sharing, and use of local energy, water, and mineral resources. That is what we must seek to achieve, community by community, all across this nation, by unleashing the creative energies of our people and our local governments, businesses, and civic organizations.
Previous administrations favored Wall Street, but the policies of this administration henceforth will favor the people and businesses of Main Street--people who are working to rebuild our local communities, restore the middle class, and bring our natural environment back to health.
We will strive for local and national food independence by rebuilding our local food systems based on family farms and environmentally friendly farming methods that rebuild the soil, maximize yields per acre, minimize the use of toxic chemicals, and create opportunities for the many young people who are returning to the land.
We will strive for energy independence by supporting local entrepreneurs who are creating local businesses to retrofit our buildings and develop and apply renewable-energy technologies.
It is a basic principle of market theory that trade relations between nations should be balanced. So-called free trade agreements have hollowed out our national industrial capacity, mortgaged our future to foreign creditors, and created global financial instability. We will take steps to assure that our future trade relations are balanced and fair as we engage in the difficult but essential work of learning to live within our own means.
We will rebuild our national infrastructure around a model of walkable, bicycle-friendly communities with efficient public transportation to conserve energy, nurture the relationships of community, and recover our farm and forest lands.
A strong middle-class society is an American ideal. Our past embodiment of that ideal made us the envy of the world. We will act to restore that ideal by rebalancing the distribution of wealth. Necessary and appropriate steps will be taken to assure access by every person to quality health care, education, and other essential services, and to restore progressive taxation, as well as progressive wage and benefit rules, to protect working people.
We will seek to create a true ownership society in which all people have the opportunity to own their homes and to have an ownership stake in the enterprise on which their livelihood depends. Our economic policies will favor responsible local ownership of local enterprises by people who have a stake in the health of their local communities and economies. The possibilities include locally owned family businesses, cooperatives, and the many other forms of community- or worker-owned enterprises.
We will act to render Wall Street's casino-like operations unprofitable. We will impose a transactions tax, require responsible capital ratios, and impose a surcharge on short-term capital gains. We will make it illegal for people and corporations to sell or insure assets that they do not own or in which they do not have a direct material interest.
To meet the financial needs of the new twenty-first-century Main Street economy, we will reverse the process of mergers and acquisitions that created the current concentration of banking power. We will restore the previous system of federally regulated community banks that are locally owned and managed and that fulfill the classic textbook banking function of serving as financial intermediaries between local people looking to secure a modest interest return on their savings and local people who need a loan to buy a home or finance a business.
And last, but not least, we will implement an orderly process of monetary reform. Most people believe that our government creates money. That is a fiction. Private banks create virtually all the money in circulation when they issue a loan at interest. The money is created by making a simple accounting entry with a few computer keystrokes. That is all money really is, an accounting entry.
My administration will act immediately to begin an orderly transition from our present system of bank-issued debt money to a system by which money is issued by the federal government. We will use the government-issued money to fund economic-stimulus projects that build the physical and social infrastructure of a twenty-first-century economy, being careful to remain consistent with our commitment to contain inflation.
To this end I have instructed the treasury secretary to take immediate action to assume control of the Federal Reserve and begin a process of monetizing the federal debt. He will have a mandate to stabilize the money supply, contain housing and stock market bubbles, discourage speculation, and assure the availability of credit on fair and affordable terms to eligible Main Street borrowers.
By recommitting ourselves to the founding ideals of this great nation, focusing on our possibilities, and liberating ourselves from failed ideas and institutions, together we can create a stronger, better nation. We can secure a fulfilling life for every person and honor the premise of the Declaration of Independence that every individual is endowed with an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
No government on its own can resolve the problems facing our nation, but together we can and will resolve them. I call on every American to join with me in rebuilding our nation by acting to strengthen our families, our communities, and our natural environment; to secure the future of our children; and to restore our leadership position and reputation in the community of nations.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee was the only member of the House or Senate to vote against the authorization of force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That led to threats against her life.
*
Season for Peace and NonviolenceOriginally published January 31, 2009ByRon Cassie News-Post Staff "Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not a sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation."
-- from Martin Luther King's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 1964
The Rev. Toni Fish, the spiritual leader at Frederick's Unity Church, has joked that she developed the concept of an interfaith Gandhi-King Season for Peace and Nonviolence here because she was tired of driving to similar events in Arlington, Fairfax and Washington.
Now, four years later, local clergy, peace activists and artists seek out Fish, hoping to include events in what has evolved into a popular two- month series.
The Ghandi-King Season for Peace and Nonviolence project, founded a dozen years ago by the Association for Global New Thought, continues to grow nationally and internationally. This year more than 200 U.S. cities and 14 countries are taking part in the celebration.
Jan. 30 and April 4, the dates marking the beginning and end of the season, originally marked the 50th and 30th anniversaries of the assassinations of Mahatma Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Megan Staneck, of the Association for Global New Thought, said some 300 groups requested new materials this year and a CD put out by AGNT had to go into reprinting twice.
A highlight of the series in Frederick includes Oakland, Calif. U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee discussing her recently published book, "Renegade for Peace and Justice: Congresswoman Barbara Lee Speaks for Me," at the Frederick Cultural Arts Center on Feb. 9. Lee was the only member of the House or Senate to vote against the authorization of force after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That led to threats against her life.
Other notables include former ambassador Philip Wilcox Jr. who will address the Israeli and Palestinian conflict on Feb. 22 at Unity Church, and journalist/teacher Colman McCarthy, founder of the Center for Teaching Peace, who will speak at Evangelical Lutheran Church on March 15.
Former pastor Michael Dowd, author of the "Thank God for Evolution," a book acclaimed by five Nobel laureates, will speak at Unity Church on March 20. Fish said she is still working to bring another special guest to the closing ceremonies at Hood College on March 29.
A dozen religious and civic groups will participate in and sponsor the 15 events.
"We started planning in late November, and a number of groups already said they had programs in mind," Fish said. "By our second meeting, we had a list of commitments. It's caught on."
The Israeli government has blocked the entry of a much-needed water filtration system into the ravaged Gaza Strip.
This water tank in Gaza is empty, and the wells have run dry
The French Foreign Ministry said Friday that Israel has refused to allow the French government from bringing the filtration system to Gaza, where people have been without clean water for weeks.
In some parts of Gaza, sewage is flooding streets and homes after the three-week long Israeli assault that ended last week when Israeli officials declared a ceasefire.
The Israeli military has violated the ceasefire seven times since then, including an attack yesterday that wounded a number of primary school students in Khan Younis. Palestinian fighters killed one soldier who was invading southern Gaza in violation of the ceasefire.
Meanwhile, the Israeli imposed closure of the Gaza Strip remains in place, and Palestinians have been unable to even clean the racist graffiti and feces smeared on their walls by the Israeli military, due to the lack of water.
The French government has summoned the Israeli ambassador to come to Paris and explain why the Israelis have refused the entry of their water filtration system, despite the French government going through the correct channels to get the water system approved.
[Link from a stranger] You might think your fifty inch 1080p screen has a pretty high resolution, but reality is a quadrillion times better - a hundred trillion dots per inch. A collaboration between Fermilab scientists and a hundreds of meters of laser may have found the very pixels of reality, grains of spacetime one tenth of a femtometer across.
The GEO600 system is armed with six hundred meters of laser tube, which sounds like enough to equip an entire Star War, but these lasers are for detection, not destruction. GEO600's length means it can measure changes of one part in six hundred million, accurate enough to detect even the tiniest ripples in space time - assuming it isn't thrown off by somebody sneezing within a hundred meters or the wrong types of cloud overhead (seriously). The problem with such an incredibly sensitive device is just that - it's incredibly sensitive.
The interferometer staff constantly battle against unwanted aberration, and were struggling against a particularly persistent signal when Fermilab Professor Craig Hogan suggested the problem wasn't with their equipment but with reality itself. The quantum limit of reality, the Planck length, occurs at a far smaller length scale than their signal - but according to Hogan, this literal ultimate limit of tininess might be scaled up because we're all holograms.
Obviously.
The idea is that all of our spatial dimensions can be represented by a 'surface' with one less dimension, just like a 3D hologram can be built out of information in 2D foils. The foils in our case are the edges of the observable universe, where quantum fluctuations at the Planck scale are 'scaled up' into the ripples observed by the GEO600 team. We'd like to remind you that although we're talking about "The GEO600 Laser Team probing the edge of reality", this is not a movie.
What does this mean for you? In everyday action, nothing much - we're afraid that a fundamentally holographic nature doesn't allow you to travel around playing guitar and fighting crime (no matter what 80s cartoons may have taught you.) Whether reality is as you see it, or you're the representation of interactions on a surface at the edge of the universe, getting run over by a truck (or a representation thereof) will still kill you.
In intellectual terms, though, this should raise so many fascinating questions you'll never need TV again. While in the extreme earliest stages, with far more work to go before anyone can draw any conclusions, this is some of the most mind-bending metaphysical science you'll ever see. Are we real, or are we quantum interactions on the edges of the universe - and is that just as real anyway?
Once more we see that sufficiently advanced physics is indistinguishable from getting really stoned.
Soon after the passage in 1999 of the Clinton-Rubin-Summers-P. Graham deregulation of the financial industry, I boarded a US Air flight to Boston and discovered none other than then-Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers a few seats away. He was speaking loudly and constantly on his cell phone. When the plane took off he invited me to sit by him and talk. After reviewing the contents of this Citibank-friendly new law called the Financial Modernization Act—I asked him: “Do you think the big banks have too much power?” He paused for a few seconds and replied: “Not Yet.” Intrigued by his two word answer, I noted the rejection of modest pro-consumer provisions, adding that now that the banks had had their round, wasn’t it time for the consumers to have their own round soon? He allowed that such an expectation was not unreasonable and that he was willing to meet with some seasoned consumer advocates and go over such an agenda. We sent him an agenda, and met with Mr. Summers and his staff. Unfortunately, neither his boss, Bill Clinton, nor the Congress were in any mood to revisit this heavily lobbied federal deregulation law and reconsider the blocked consumer rights. The rest is unfolding, tragic history. The law abolished the Glass-Steagall Act which separated commercial banking from investment banking. This opened the floodgates for unwise mergers, acquisitions and other unregulated risky financial instruments. Laced with limitless greed, casino capitalism ran wild, tanking economies here and abroad. One champion of this market fundamentalism was Alan Greenspan, then chairman of the Federal Reserve. Last October before a House Committee, Greenspan admitted he was mistaken and expressed astonishment at how corporations could not even safeguard their own self-interest from going over steep speculative cliffs. Greenspan and Summers were deemed “brilliant” by the press and most of Congress. Summers’ predecessor at Treasury—Robert Rubin—was also a charter member of the Oracles—those larger-than-life men who just knew that the unfettered market and giant financial conglomerates would be the one-stop shopping mart consumers were assumed to be craving. Now the world knows that these men belong to the “oops oligarchy” that bails itself out while it lets the companies collapse into the handcuffed arms of Uncle Sam and bridled taxpayers who have to pay for unconditional megabailouts. Instead of the Wall Street crooks being convicted and imprisoned, they have fled the jurisdiction with their self-determined compensation. Corporate crime pays, while pensions and mutual fund savings evaporate. Now comes the next stage of the Washington rescue effort in a variety of stimulus packages which every vendor group imaginable wants a piece of these days. When trillions are offered, many come running. As the public focus is on how much, when and where all this money should be spent, there are very serious consequences to be foreseen and forestalled. First, consider how much more concentrated corporate power is occurring. Forced or willing mergers, acquisitions and panic takeovers of big banks by bigger banks along with bankruptcies of companies further reduce what is left of quality competition for consumer benefit. Remember the anti-trust laws. Obama needs to be their champion. The fallout from the Wall Street binge is likely to lead to a country run by an even smaller handful of monopolistic global goliaths. In the stampede for stimulus legislation, there is a foreboding feeling on Capitol Hill that there is no proposal on the table to pay for it other than by the children and grandchildren. Just the opposite is raining down on them. Everybody including the private equity gamblers, Las Vegas casinos and Hollywood studios along with the banks and auto companies are looking for tax breaks. So with the economy deteriorating and taxes being cut, where is the enormous money coming from? From borrowing and from printing money. So look out for big time inflation and decline in the dollar’s value vis-à-vis other currencies. In all the hundreds of pages of stimulus bills, there is nothing that would facilitate the banding together of consumers and investors into strong advocacy groups. We have long proposed Financial Consumer Associations, privately and voluntarily funded through inserts in the monthly statements of financial firms. If this bailout—stimulus—Wall Street funny money waste, fraud and abuse sounds confusing, that is because it is. A brand new paperback “Why Wall Street Can’t Be Fixed and How to Replace It: Agenda For a New Economy” by long-time corporate critic, David C. Korten will explain some of the wheeling and dealing. You don’t have to agree with all or many of Korten’s nostrums. Just read Part II—The Case For Eliminating Wall Street. He considers three central questions: First, do Wall Street Institutions do anything so vital for the national interest that they justify trillions of dollars to save them from the consequences of their own excess? Second, is it possible that the whole Wall Street edifice is built on an illusion of phantom wealth that carries deadly economic, social, and environmental consequences for the larger society? Third, are there other ways to provide needed financial services with greater results and at lesser cost?
From: http://www.ballot-access.orgJanuary 30th, 2009On January 30, the Republican National Committee chose Michael Steele of Maryland to be its new national chair. One of the other candidates for chair, Ken Blackwell, dropped out and endorsed Steele after placing last in the fourth ballot.Blackwell, a former Ohio Secretary of State, behaved with hostility toward minor parties and independent candidates while he was Secretary of State in 2003 and 2004. In late 2003, he rejected the Ohio Libertarian Party’s petition because the wording on the petition changed while the party was conducting its petition. When the party started its petition, the petition was supposed to say, “The penalty for election falsification is imprisonment for not more than 6 months or a fine of not more than $1,000 or both.” During the drive, the state changed the petition so that it said instead, “Whoever commits election falsification is guilty of a felony of the 5th degree.” The party didn’t know about the wording change, and was shocked when it submitted the petition and Blackwell rejected it because of the wording.In 2004, Blackwell rejected Ralph Nader’s independent petition because most of the signatures had been collected by people that perhaps were domiciled outside Ohio (although this was never resolved). At approximately the same time Blackwell rejected Nader’s petition, he waived the rules to allow an initiative petition to appear on the ballot even though its circulators had not been domiciled in Ohio.Blackwell’s behavior kept Nader off the 2004 ballot, and kept the Libertarian Party off the 2004 ballot (although it qualified its presidential candidate as an independent). However, after the 2004 election was over, courts struck down the Ohio procedure for new parties to qualify, and struck down the Ohio law barring out-of-state circulators from working on an independent candidate petition, so Blackwell’s behavior was ultimately good for ballot access.
An opportunity to engage your community in an important national event
The historic TrinityChurch, founded in 1697 in the heart of what is now Wall Street, will host a national conference of faith leaders January 21-23, 2009, the day after the presidential inauguration and potentially a new beginning for the United States. The topic of the conference “Radical Abundance: A Theology of Sustainability” will address the need and opportunity to advance an economic transformation for justice and sustainability. More than 80 congregations across the United States are expected to participate via webcast and to organize discussion groups based on professionally designed study guides. A subsequent book and DVD will spread the conversation beyond the original participants. Contact: Angelica Roman-Jimenez, aroman@trinitywallstreet.org or Wall Street Trinity Institute for more information.
The featured speakers are:
Majora Carter, famed South Bronx community organizer and co-chair of Green for All,
Sister Miriam MacGillis, founder of Genesis Farm and recipient of the 2005 Thomas Berry Award for her ministry on the new cosmology.
Timothy J. Gorringe, a leader in environmental theology from the UK.
Rev. Nestor Miguez, from Buenos Aires, Argentina, a leader in articulating a Latin American perspective on the life and teachings of Jesus.
David Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and board chair of YES! magazine.
David offers this observation:
“Given the timing, reach, and location of this conference, I can scarcely imagine a more favorable opportunity to make a historic contribution to framing a new national conversation on the redesign of an economy that has failed environmentally, socially, and now financially. The conference organizers intend to highlight the relationship between spiritual awakening and economic transformation in the service of justice and sustainability. My presentation will frame the moral choice between money and life and the ways in which Wall Street has reproduced the historic practice of debt bondage on a national and global scale to maintain the structures of domination and expropriation that the world’s great religions have condemned for thousands of years.
“Working with the staff of the Trinity Church Institute has been a thrilling experience. They bring an exceptional commitment, spiritual sensibility, and professionalism to the work of making this a significant national event.”
Peaceful SocietiesAlternatives to Violence and War
Peaceful societies are contemporary groups of people who effectively foster interpersonal harmony and who rarely permit violence or warfare to interfere with their lives. This website serves to introduce these societies to students, peace activists, scholars and citizens who are interested in the conditions that promote peacefulness. It includes information on the beliefs of these peoples, the ways they maintain their nonviolence, and the factors that challenge their lifestyles.
LISTS: A list of peaceful societies is never completely finished or accurate. However, social scientists have convincingly described at least 25 societies around the world in which there is very little internal violence or external warfare. Generalizations are difficult to make accurately, except that most of the time these peaceful societies successfully promote harmony, gentleness, and kindness toward others as much as they devalue conflict, aggressiveness, and violence.
DISCLAIMER: While scholars have clearly identified a small number of societies in which people rarely act aggressively, it must be emphasized that no stamp of approval is intended for the societies included in this website. None of them are utopias. They share many problems with the rest of humanity. That said, however, most of the time they interact in a highly pro-social manner and they successfully avoid both violence within their own societies and warfare with other peoples.
OTHER "PEACEFUL" SOCIETIES: Popular writers and casual observers have also described many other societies as “peaceful,” but often in a more general or romantic sense. This website focuses, instead, on societies where there is significant scholarly literature to support the claims of peacefulness, and where the evidence provided by those scholars appears to be quite convincing.
COMPARISONS: Part of the fascination of this scholarly literature is the way readers can compare the extent of peacefulness and violence in these societies. Their differing ways of developing social, psychological, ethical and religious structures that foster peacefulness should inspire—and challenge—anyone interested in the processes of peace building. This literature suggests several questions:
Why are some societies highly opposed to both aggressive behavior within the community and warfare with external enemies, while most other peoples tolerate or even encourage such violence?
How are these peaceful societies able to maintain their pro-social values and their nonviolence even when challenged by aggressive outside forces?
How do peaceful societies raise their children to support harmonious social interactions, to devalue violence, and to transmit firm commitments to nonviolence to following generations?
What sorts of psychological strategies do they employ to reinforce their values and beliefs in peacefulness?
How do the religions, systems of belief, and worldviews of the peaceful societies foster their nonviolence?
APPROACHES TO PEACEFULNESS: Most of the nonviolent peoples have a wide range of strategies for promoting interpersonal harmony, building mutual respect, and fostering toleration for individual differences. Many of them are masters at devaluing conflicts, minimizing and resolving them when they do occur, and preventing them from developing into violence. Many of these peaceful societies also devalue competition, self-focus, and other ego-centered social behaviors that they feel might lead to violence.
LITERATURE: While the literature about these societies is small in contrast to the vast number of works about violence and war, there are some notable, highly readable books about peaceful societies and some useful websites that describe a few of them. Most of the best literature, however, is available in books, journal articles, and essays contained in published volumes. A small number of the best journal articles and essays from books are included in the Archive of Articles on Peaceful Societies of this website. Three different encyclopedia articles describe peaceful societies and the literature about them (Dentan 2002; Fry 1999; Sponsel 1996).
ADDITIONS: Additions to the website, as well as news about the peaceful societies, are noted on the News and Reviews page.
Photo: Seven year old Zapotec boy eating a tortilla in the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, near the village of La Paz. D. P. Fry photo collection.
Despite President Obama’s pledge to restrict former lobbyists in the White House, several are set to play key roles in his administration. The National Journal is reporting fourteen of the 112 White House staffers that Obama has named had been registered as lobbyists at some point since 2005.
AMY GOODMAN: In one of his first acts as president last week, Barack Obama signed an executive order setting new rules on the role former lobbyists can play in his administration.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As of today, lobbyists will be subject to stricter limits than under any other administration in history. If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years. When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I am president.
AMY GOODMAN: Despite President Obama’s pledge, several former lobbyists are set to play key roles in the new administration. Obama has nominated Raytheon’s former top lobbyist, William Lynn, to serve as Deputy Secretary of Defense. Lynn was a registered lobbyist for the defense contractor until July. Several watchdog groups, including Public Citizen and Project on Government and Oversight, have urged the Senate Committee on Armed Services to reject Lynn’s nomination because of his ties to Raytheon.
President Obama has granted a waiver to Lynn, as well as to William Corr, who has been nominated to be Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Until recently, Corr was a registered lobbyist for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
At the Treasury Department, Secretary Timothy Geithner has hired former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to be his chief of staff. Patterson was a registered lobbyist until April.
The National Journal is reporting fourteen of the 112 White House staffers that Obama has named had been registered as lobbyists at some point since 2005. The list includes Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod and Homeland Security adviser John Brennan.
We’re joined now in Washington by Bara Vaida. She is a reporter covering the lobbying industry for National Journal. Her article, “Former Lobbyists Join Obama,” appears in this week’s issue.
Lay it out for us, Bara Vaida.
BARA VAIDA: Hi, Amy. Thanks for having me.
As Obama said, these are the most sweeping restrictions on lobbying behavior that’s ever been implemented by a president, so it’s important to remember that. I think what this shows is that there are—the lobbying industry is just a very big part of the culture of Washington and that there are a lot of people who have worked on policy that end up lobbying from time to time. And there’s such a mix between lobbying and policy that it shows how difficult it is to draw a very bright line between lobbying and policy. Lobbyists, you have to remember, do have a lot of expertise. They have a lot of information. They do play an important role in how policy is developed. So that’s, you know, an important sort of thing to remember when we talk about lobbying.
Obama did campaign on a pledge that he would limit the role of lobbyists in his White House. And as I noted, there are fourteen—or thirteen people, actually, who have had lobbying in their background who are now White House staff, and there’s probably more at this point. But there’s hundreds of positions already that he has named. So he is—he can say that he’s limited so far the role of lobbyists. But it’s important to pay attention to how many of these folks have had lobbying in their background and keep track of it to make sure he keeps with his pledge, you know, not to have lobbyists dominating his White House, as opposed to what we saw with the previous administration.
AMY GOODMAN: What about Raytheon’s former top lobbyist, William Lynn, serving as Deputy Secretary of Defense?
BARA VAIDA: Yes, I mean, that has certainly caused a lot of heartburn in the watchdog community. They’re very concerned about that. They don’t see how it’s any way possible that Mr. Lynn can do his job without doing something that’s going to have some kind of impact on the bottom line at Raytheon. And that’s what they’re greatly concerned about.
And that was what happened in the Bush administration. You have to remember, a lot of these rules that Obama has implemented are a reaction to what happened during the Bush years. What we saw happen in the Interior Department, Steven Griles got embroiled in something with a former lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, who’s now in jail, and that he had gotten people in the Interior Department to, you know, trade on favors for him, for his clients. And that’s what this is aimed at.
Mr. Lynn has sent a letter, apparently, to the Hill this week, trying to lay out that whatever he does that may have some effect on Raytheon, he will run it by the general counsel’s office before he does anything. And McCain and some—I think Senator Grassley, as well, have both said, “You know, that’s just too vague. We want somebody more specific.”
AMY GOODMAN: White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was questioned Wednesday about the role lobbyists will have in the new administration.
REPORTER: Is the President bothered at all that Secretary Geithner has picked as his chief of staff a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs, who has obviously—that company has benefited from government bailouts. Doesn’t that punch a hole in what the President signed just last week in terms of preventing lobbyists like that from serving in his administration?
ROBERT GIBBS: No, the President—well, again, let’s step back and talk about the broader issue of ethics and transparency in this administration. As I said from this podium, and as you all read in papers throughout the country, that the ethics and transparency executive orders that the President signed the first day institute a policy that covers this administration, unlike any policy we’ve seen in any previous administration in the history of our country.
REPORTER: But if it’s a strong—even if it’s a strong policy, does it mean anything if people are getting waivers to go around it?
ROBERT GIBBS: Those very same people that labeled that policy the strongest of any administration in history also said they thought it made sense for a limited number of waivers to ensure that people can continue to serve the public.
AMY GOODMAN: And that was Robert Gibbs, the new press secretary. Bara Vaida, what about Treasury Department Secretary Tim Geithner hiring former Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson to be his chief of staff? Patterson, a registered lobbyist until April.
BARA VAIDA: Again, I mean, it’s a good question. I mean, Patterson was lobbying up until about March of 2008, and there is definitely a question: how can he do his job without doing something that may have an impact on Goldman Sachs? It’s almost impossible. So I think it’s totally fair to raise these questions.
And I think the administration is going to keep getting hit with these questions until they explain how they’re deciding how they’re implementing these waivers. They haven’t explained that, what their standard is. I have asked them that. They don’t want to answer it. You heard the response. That’s the response we tend to get, which is, “We’ve said we’ll do a few waivers in the cases where we think there’s unique experience of this person and that a waiver should be granted.” I guess, you know, people will be watching this very carefully, and people will have to decide: are the exceptions OK or not? I think the administration really needs to explain what standard they’re using, and that is not clear.
AMY GOODMAN: Bara Vaida, I want to thank you very much for being with us, reporter covering the lobbying industry for National Journal.
AMY GOODMAN: The level of support for President Obama before he became president and now?
SAHAR SHAFQAT: In Pakistan? He was definitely more popular before the attacks on Friday, a week ago. And, in fact, the prime minister of Pakistan had more or less guaranteed to the Pakistani public that when President Obama comes into office, these drone attacks are going to stop. So he has, of course, been extremely embarrassed by this action, and there have already been mass protests against US bombing. And I think a lot of disillusionment has set in, because there were hopes that there would be some kind of policy correction, policy change, and that appears to not be the case at all.
...
Dear Mr. Limbaugh,The Associated Press reports your new contract with Premiere Radio Networks will enrich you with at least $38 million a year over the next eight years. You are making this money on the public property of the American people for which you pay no rent.You, Rush Limbaugh, are on welfare.As you know, the public airwaves belong to the American people. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is supposed to be our trustee in managing this property. The people are the landlords and the radio and TV stations and affiliated companies are the tenants.The problem is that since the Radio Act of 1927 these corporate tenants have been massively more powerful in Washington, DC than the tens of millions of listeners and viewers. The result has been no payment of rent by the stations for the value of their license to broadcast. You and your company are using the public's valuable property for free. This freeloading on the backs of the American people is called corporate welfare.It is way past due for the super-rich capitalist -- Rush Limbaugh from Cape Girardeau, Missouri -- to get himself off big time welfare. It is way past due for Rush Limbaugh as the Kingboy of corporatist radio to set a capitalist example for his peers and pay rent to the American people for the very lucrative use of their property.You need not wait for the broadcast industry-indentured FCC and Congress to do the right thing. You can lead by paying a voluntary rent -- determined by a reputable appraisal organization -- for the time you use on the hundreds of stations that carry your words each weekday.Payment of rent for the use of public airwaves owned by the American people is the conservative position. Real conservatives oppose corporate welfare. Real corporatists feed voraciously from hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare gushing out of Washington, DC yearly.Whose side are you on? Freeloading? Or paying rent for the public property you have been using free for many years?I look forward to your response.Sincerely yours,Ralph NaderPO Box 19312Washington, DC 20036
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Contact: Kevin Akin 951/675-2813 kevinakin1950 AT hotmail.com
www.peaceandfreedom.org
Richael Young, Student Senate for CA Community Colleges 650/678-2064
Community college students announce major march to Capitol; Peace and Freedom Party endorses it, challenges ‘big-money parties' to do the same
SACRAMENTO – Community college students from throughout the state will hold a nearly two-hour march and rally on March 16 – from Raley Field in West Sacramento to the State Capitol – to demand relief from the budget ax.
A rally at the Capitol begins at 12:30 p.m. on the North Steps. The call for the march and rally was issued by the Student Senate for California Community Colleges.
The Peace and Freedom Party has endorsed the march, and challenged leaders in the "big-money parties" to do the same, said Peace and Freedom Party State Chair Kevin Akin.
"Both big parties are responsible for chopping and corporatizing higher education in California. The people of California need to reject their policies and fight for free public education from pre-school through the university," said Akin.
Akin points out that the Peace and Freedom Party has long expressed support for a return to free higher education in California.
"They took it away from us, but we can take it back. Build for a big march in March, and show them how the people feel. The corporate forces who control the executive and legislative branches are determined to put the whole burden of the crisis in higher education on the backs of students, freezing out the working class from advancement.
"We need to raise taxes on the income and assets of the richest Californians to properly support a free public education system at every level,"he said.
-end-
I found this article at the Society For Worldwide Herb Smokers blog, via my Ralph Nader News Alert feed and just felt as if I needed to add it here. In my opinion, it is high time (pun intended) that we get to the skinny of marijuana truth in this country. It is time to realize that Power Brokers who control Big Money (Big Prison, etc) will do anything to scare you into NOT buying something that is competitive to their product.
It is so pitifully clear to even a casual observer (one doesn’t have to be a user to understand this) that marijuana is not the horror drug we were brainwashed into believing. It is FAR safer than its competitive product in society (alcohol and tobacco) and should be made legal for a variety of reasons. As a matter of fact, the subject that caused me to look at the blog was Ralph and he plainly lets the world know the truth.
Please give this blog a visit and quick read. Good stuff related to this subject matter:
A simple conversation could become heated when the subject of legalizing ganja came up. A realization occurred: because of common misconceptions of ganja and its users, many people strongly oppose the idea of legalization. Without knowing the facts, people do not understand why this is not such a bad idea.
Through legalization, the government can regulate ganja use and production to make it safer for the consumers as well as make a profit off of its sales.
Ganja is derived from the cannabis sativa plantand its main component is THC. THC causes a reaction in the brain that stimulates a mood of euphoria. This stimulation can also by caused by eating chocolate, a completely legal activity.
Ganja use continues to be a growing trend in the U.S. and the rest of the world including Malaysia. To dispel the common “gateway drug” myth, statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services show that the majority of people who smoke ganja do not use any other illicit substance.
With this growing trend, the money that could be made off of a government taxon the sale of ganja is incredible. Right now, drug enforcement programs are a drain on the national budget while making no profit to pull funds from. By legalizing ganja, the money made from it could go to support these expensive programs.
To be deadly, a person would have to consume more than 70 grams of pure THC. The chances of having deadly outcomes from alcohol consumption or legal drug use are much more attainable. Why then are these substances are regulated by the government and ganja is seen as so wrong?
By outlawing ganja, the government is also hurting the economy. Ganja is not the only thing derived from the cannabis plant but the hemp fiber is also. Hemp is extremely durable and can withstand rotting due to seawater.
This durable hemp fabric can be used as a cotton alternative. The reason why this is such a great alternative is because hemp is naturally resistant to pests, therefore no pesticides would need to be used to make cotton products. Cotton production is responsible for half of the world’s toxic pesticide use.
Another use for hemp is as a paper and plastic alternative. Normally, trees are used to produce paper and plastic products. Where it takes trees years and years to grow back, hemp can be cultivated every 100 days. Also, it takes less hemp to produce the same amount of products that trees can. One acre of hemp produces the same amount of resources that would take four acres of trees to do.
With these economically beneficial uses of the cannabis plant, the profit from the drug venue, and the safety of the consumers through ganja regulation by the government, why is legalization such a bad idea? Simply because the alcohol companies fear a loss in their sales if ganja was legalized. The reason this movement is so opposed is due to an uninformed public and misconceptions.
Ralph Nader put it best when he stated the following:
Annual drug deaths:
Tobacco: 395,000
Alcohol: 125,000
Legal drugs: 38,000
Illegal drug overdoses: 5,200
Ganja: 0
Considering government subsidies of tobacco, just what is the U.S. government protecting their citizens from in the DRUG WAR?
When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman's new book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.
Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America's ability to fall for absolutely anything -- just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts -- along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-'stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400-square-foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.
Where does a man, who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated, get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy-inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a "Green Revolution"? Well, he'll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.
I've been unhealthily obsessed with Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about -- in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn't make them up even if you were trying -- and when you tried to actually picture the "illustrative" figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.
Remember Friedman's take on Bush's Iraq policy? "It's OK to throw out your steering wheel," he wrote, "as long as you remember you're driving without one." Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman's analysis of America's foreign policy outlook last May: "The first rule of holes is when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels."
First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you're supposed to stop digging when you're in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.
Even better was this gem from one of Friedman's latest columns: "The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it's all too familiar. It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: 'Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn't we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?' "
There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the "title" of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple-personality disorder? Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second, he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third, he's a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel?
Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: "It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: 'Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple-personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews? Why? Because his editor's been drinking rubbing alcohol!' "
OK, so maybe all of this is unfair. There are a lot of people out there who think Friedman has not been treated fairly by critics like me, that focusing on his literary struggles is a snobbish, below-the-belt tactic -- a cheap shot that belies the strength of his overall "arguments." Who cares, these people say, if Friedman's book The World is Flat should probably have been titled Thief. He had wanted the book's title to match its "point" about living in an age of increased global interconnectedness?
And who cares if it doesn't quite make sense when Friedman says that Iraq is like a "vase we broke in order to get rid of the rancid water inside?" Who cares that you can just pour water out of a vase, that only a fucking lunatic breaks a perfectly good vase just to empty it of water? You're missing the point, folks say, and the point is all in Friedman's highly nuanced ideas about world politics and the economy -- if you could just get past his well-meaning attempts to explain himself, you'd see that, and maybe you'd even learn something.
My initial answer to that is that Friedman's language choices over the years have been highly revealing: When a man who thinks you need to break a vase to get the water out of it starts arguing that you need to invade a country in order to change the minds of its people, you might want to start paying attention to how his approach to the vase problem worked out. Thomas Friedman is not a president, a pope, a general on the field of battle or any other kind of man of action. He doesn't actually do anything apart from talk about shit in a newspaper. So in my mind it's highly relevant if his manner of speaking is fucked.
But whatever, let's concede the point, forget about the crazy metaphors for a moment and look at the actual content of Hot, Flat and Crowded. Many people have rightly seen this new greenish, pseudo-progressive tract as an ideological departure from Friedman's previous works, which were all virtually identical exercises in bald greed worship and capitalist tent-pitching. Approach- and rhetoric-wise, however, it's the same old Friedman -- a tireless social scientist whose research methods mainly include lunching, reading road signs and watching people board airplanes.
Like The World is Flat, a book borne of Friedman's stirring experience of seeing an IBM sign in the distance while golfing in Bangalore, Hot, Flat and Crowded is a book whose great insights come when Friedman golfs (on global warming allowing him more winter golf days: "I will still take advantage of it -- but I no longer think of it as something I got for free."), looks at Burger King signs (upon seeing a "nightmarish neon blur" of KFC, BK and McDonald's signs in Texas, he realizes: "We're on a fool's errand."), and reads bumper stickers (the "Osama Loves your SUV" sticker he read turns into the thesis of his "Fill 'er up with Dictators" chapter). This is Friedman's life: He flies around the world, eats pricey lunches with other rich people and draws conclusions about the future of humanity by looking out his hotel window and counting the Applebee's signs.
Friedman frequently uses a rhetorical technique that goes something like this: "I was in Dubai with the general counsel of BP last year, watching 500 Balinese textile workers get on a train, when suddenly I said to myself, ‘We need better headlights for our tri-plane.' " And off he goes. You the reader end up spending so much time wondering what Dubai, BP and all those Balinese workers have to do with the rest of the story that you don't notice that tri-planes don't have headlights. And by the time you get all that sorted out, your well-lit tri-plane is flying from chapter to chapter delivering a million geo-green pizzas to a million Noahs on a million Arks. And you give up. There's so much shit flying around the book's atmosphere that you don't notice the only action is Friedman talking to himself.
In The World is Flat, the key action scene of the book comes when Friedman experiences his pseudo-epiphany about the Flat world while talking with himself in front of InfoSys CEO Nandan Nilekani. In Hot, Flat and Crowded, the money shot comes when Friedman starts doodling on a napkin over lunch with Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. The pre-lunching Friedman starts drawing, and the wisdom just comes pouring out:
I laid out my napkin and drew a graph showing how there seemed to be a rough correlation between the price of oil, between 1975 and 2005, and the pace of freedom in oil-producing states during those same years.
Friedman then draws his napkin-graph, and much to the pundit's surprise, it turns out that there is almost an exact correlation between high oil prices and "unfreedom"! The graph contains two lines, one showing a rising-and-then-descending slope of "freedom," and one showing a descending-and-then-rising course of oil prices.
Friedman plots exactly four points on the graph over the course of those 30 years. In 1989, as oil prices are falling, Friedman writes, "Berlin Wall Torn Down." In 1993, again as oil prices are low, he writes, "Nigeria Privatizes First Oil Field." 1997, oil prices still low, "Iran Calls for Dialogue of Civilizations." Then, finally, 2005, a year of high oil prices: "Iran Calls for Israel's destruction."
Take a look for yourself: I looked at this and thought: "Gosh, what a neat trick!" Then I sat down and drew up my own graph, called "Size of Valerie Bertinelli's Ass, 1985-2008 Versus Happiness." It turns out that there is an almost exact correlation! Note the four points on the graph:
1990: Release of Miller's Crossing
1996-97: Crabs
2001: Ate bad tuna fish sandwich at Times Square Blimpie; felt sick.
2008: Barack Obama elected
That was so much fun, I drew another one! This one is called "American Pork Belly Prices Versus What Midgets Think About Australia 1972-2002."
Or how about this one, called "Number of One-Eyed Retarded Flies in the State of North Carolina Versus Likelihood of Nuclear Combat on Indian Subcontinent."
Obviously this sounds like a flippant analysis, but that's more or less exactly what Friedman is up to here. If you're going to draw a line that measures the level of "freedom" across the entire world and on that line plot just four randomly selected points in time over the course of 30 years -- and one of your top four "freedom points" in a 30-year period of human history is the privatization of a Nigerian oil field -- well, what the fuck? What can't you argue, if that's how you're going to make your point?
He could have graphed a line in the opposite direction by replacing Berlin with Tiananmen Square, substituting Iraqi elections for Iran's call for Israel's destruction (incidentally, when in the last half-century or so have Islamic extremists not called for Israel's destruction?), junking Iran's 1997 call for dialogue for the U.S. sanctions against Iran in '95, and so on. It's crazy, a game of Scrabble where the words don't have to connect on the board, or a mathematician coming up with the equation AB-3X = Swedish girls like chocolate.
Getting to the "ideas" in the book: Its basic premise is that America's decades-long habit of gluttonous energy consumption has adversely affected humanity because: a) while the earth could support America's indulgence, it can't sustain 2 billion endlessly copulating Chinese should they all choose to live in American-style excess, and b) the exploding global demand for oil artificially subsidizes repressive Middle Eastern dictatorships that would otherwise have to rely on tax revenue (read: listen to their people) in order to survive, and this subsidy leads to terrorism and a spread of "unfreedom."
Regarding the first point, Friedman writes:
Because if the spread of freedom and free markets is not accompanied by a new approach to how we produce energy and treat the environment … then Mother Nature and planet Earth will impose their own constraints and limits on our way of life -- constraints that will be worse than communism.
Three observations about this touching and seemingly remarkable development, i.e. onetime, unrepentant free-market icon Thomas Friedman suddenly coming out huge for the environment and against the evils of gross consumerism:
1. The need for massive investment in green energy is an idea so obvious and inoffensive that even presidential candidates from both parties could be seen fighting over who's for it more in nationally televised debates last fall;
2. I wish I had the balls to first spend six long years madly cheering on an Iraq war that not only reintroduced Shariah law to the streets of Baghdad, but radicalized the entire Islamic world against American influence -- and then write a book blaming the spread of fundamentalist Islam on the ignorant consumers of the Middle American heartland, who bought too many Hummers and spent too much time shopping for iPods in my wife's giganto-malls.
3. To review quickly, the "Long Bomb" Iraq war plan Friedman supported as a means of transforming the Middle East blew up in his and everyone else's face; the "Electronic Herd" of highly volatile international capital markets he once touted as an economic cure-all not only didn't pan out, but led the world into a terrifying chasm of seemingly irreversible economic catastrophe; his beloved "Golden Straitjacket" of American-style global development (forced on the world by the "hidden fist" of American military power) turned out to be the vehicle for the very energy/ecological crisis Friedman himself warns about in his new book; and, most humorously, the "Flat World" consumer economics Friedman marveled at so voluminously turned out to be grounded in such total unreality that even his wife's once-mighty shopping mall empire, General Growth Properties, has lost 99 percent of its value in this year alone.
So, yes, Friedman is suddenly an environmentalist of sorts.
What the fuck else is he going to be? All the other ideas he spent the last 10 years humping have been blown to hell. Color me unimpressed that he scrounged one more thing to sell out of the smoldering, discredited wreck that should be his career; that he had the good sense to quickly reinvent himself before angry gods remembered to dash his brains out with a lightning bolt. But better late than never, I suppose.
Or as Friedman might say, "Better two cell phones than a fish in your zipper."
“Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind… War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
I've decided to start manufacturing weapons. Nothing too ambitious, just
some small arms, a few automatic weapons, and maybe a couple of bombs.
You know the sort of thing.
It's not that I'm keen on killing people. I haven't actually killed
anyone myself yet. It's all to do with economics.
You see, I can't help but notice that the arms industry is doing
extremely well. In fact in these times of economic disaster, it's the
one industry that seems to be expanding.
According to the Government's Defence and Security Organization, the UK
has become the top global defense exporter, notching up a golden £10
billion of new business and snagging a walloping 33 percent of the market.
In fact the UK is now the second-biggest player in the global arms
market, with a whizzo $53 billion of sales over the past five years,
compared with America's $63 billion and Russia's measly $33 billion,
France's pathetic $17 billion, and Germany and Israel trailing at $9
billion each.
And even in these difficult economic times, things look good for the
future too. In 2007, global arms buying rose by 6 percent to £1. 3
trillion. And according to the Center For Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation, the US spent $696 billion last year and is set to
increase that to $706 billion this year.
US operations in Iraq are currently costing $14 million per hour. That's
$343 million per day, or $3, 973 per second. By the time you finish
reading this, the United States will have spent another $1 million in
Iraq and Afghanistan combined!
That's an awful lot of gravy to share around, and I wouldn't mind
putting my knees under the arms industry's table.
What I admire about the arms industry is that it's willing to put its
money where its mouth is, when it comes to promoting its members'
interests. And it has a lot of money.
Last summer, for example, the National Rifle Association of America
announced that it intended to spend $40 million during the 2008
elections. That's quite a lot, isn't it? And $15 million was earmarked
merely to persuade the Americans that Barack Obama would be a threat to
gun ownership in the US.
They wouldn't throw that sort of money around if they didn't think it
was going to do some good. And of course it does.
In the 2000 presidential race, the arms industry gave Bush five times
the donations it gave to Al Gore. And Bush duly showed his thanks by
doubling the expenditure on defense from just over $333 billion in 2001
to $696 billion in 2008.
And since November, the outgoing president has rushed through a whole
slew of arms export deals, just to make sure his friends in the arms
industry survive any economic downturn.
With friends like that, I know I'm going to feel right at home as an
arms manufacturer.
Another thing that persuades me that the arms industry is the industry
for me is its professionalism when it comes to creating markets.
One of the main responsibilities of any industry, of course, is to make
sure it creates its own markets. You can't just rely on the demand being
there, you have to go out and actually stimulate the demand.
And this is where, for me, the arms industry proves itself to be one of
the most responsible in the world--on a par with the heroin and crack
cocaine industry.
Take what happened after the collapse of Communism, which had provided
the arms industry's bread and butter since the Second World War.
The arms industry was faced with empty order books. As the then-chair of
the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell put it, they were "running out
of enemies"! But it only lasted for about six months.
At the time, I remember reading an editorial in a magazine called
Weapons Today that described how the industry had fallen on lean times.
But "Cheer up!" the editor wrote, because now that Saddam Hussein has
invaded Kuwait, things will start looking up, and in the future we in
the arms industry can look forward to Islam replacing Communism to keep
our order books full.
To be quite honest, when I read that in 1990 I thought they were off
their heads, but now I realize that one should never underestimate the
professionalism and skill of the weapons industry in creating markets
for their product.
I don't know how they've done it, but I am certain my future colleagues
have had a big hand in making their own dreams come true.
And now, as the DSO notes with satisfaction in a recent Market Review,
there has been a "return to higher spending in the Middle East." And as
long as America keeps encouraging Israel to bomb the hell out of Gaza,
thereby fueling the Islamic backlash that we are all praying for, we in
the arms industry can look forward to a secure future, safe in the
knowledge that the "Middle East regional market" will continue to expand
well into the foreseeable golden future.
I can't wait to get manufacturing those shells and landmines.
Terry Jones is a film director and actor and member of the Monty Python comedy group. - Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror: Observations and Denunciations by a Founding Member of Monty Python (Nation Books)
While a Democratic polling firm has just found, as pollsters always do, dramatic public support for public health coverage, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill appear divided, as they have always been, over whether to take a comprehensive approach to health care.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said on C-Span on Sunday that incrementalism would suit him better "than to go out and just bite something you can't chew." Clyburn said he opposes any comprehensive approach in 2009. Meanwhile House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) made a long speech about healthcare at a conference in D.C. on Thursday in which he said "I am committed to helping bring comprehensive reform to the floor of the 111th Congress."
Now, on Capitol Hill, phrases like "comprehensive reform" and "universal healthcare" can mean almost anything, including proposals that would likely require comprehensive reform themselves by the time the ink was dry. But there is an opening right now for serious healthcare reform of the sort that has succeeded in almost every other wealthy country on earth: single payer. Here are three reasons why this is a moment in which single payer health coverage (private medicine paid for by the government, and the elimination of all health insurance companies) has become possible.
First, the partisan dynamics have changed in Congress. While some Republicans might vote for single payer, they wouldn't need to. The Democratic leadership could persuade enough Democrats to vote Yes to pass it without a single Republican, if they chose to. In the House, where the Democrats seriously worsened an economic stimulus bill this week in order to win irrelevant Republican votes and then didn't get a single one, they might be in the mood to wake up and begin behaving as the majority they are. In the Senate, there is the ever-present scourge of the filibuster, which allows senators representing 11 percent of the public to block legislation, but the Democrats could change the rule to rid our republic of that antidemocratic blight if they choose to. This will require placing a great deal of pressure on Democratic senators to persuade them that losing important battles in which they vote well but don't play to win will hurt them as much as it hurts the Republicans who vote against the public will.
That's where the second reason comes in. A massive, well-organized public movement has been built that is pressing right now for single-payer. In the House of Representatives, the leading advocate is Congressman John Conyers whose bill H.R. 676 had 93 cosponsors in the last Congress. Conyers provides a useful FAQ on single payer here, and Physicians for a National Health Program has provided a longer one. Other advocates include Labor for Single Payer, Healthcare Now, the California Nurses Association, and the Leadership Conference for Guaranteed Health Care which boasts dozens of major organizational members. Progressive Democrats of America has mobilized tremendous grassroots pressure through its Healthcare Not Warfare campaign. This is essentially a campaign for single payer health coverage, but it both organizes the peace movement to participate and communicates an important selling point. The financial cost of creating a single payer system would be a fraction of what we spend each year merely on the occupation of Iraq, which Congress and the president have committed to ending. Compared to the cost of wasteful programs at the Pentagon or bailouts for bankers or even the new economic stimulus bill, single payer is a bargain, doesn't kill anyone, saves and improves lives, and even stimulates the economy better than most of the measures being used toward that end. The movement for single payer has organized a lot more than numbers; it's also marshaled persuasive arguments.
The third reason that this is the moment for single payer is that it is so obviously the best solution. When put into consideration with other proposals, single payer wins the debates hands down. The alternative to single payer is multiple payer. That means massive waste and inefficiency, not what a new government ostentatiously looking for solutions that really work should settle on. It also means maintaining the only things in America less popular than Dick Cheney: health insurance companies, and funding them with public money as well as money directly from citizens. In a multiple payer system, one of the payers is YOU. If you can't pay, you may be out of luck. If you can and do pay, you are often out of luck as well. And the bureaucratic waste extends to your own life. You fill out forms for the privilege of paying through the nose for the privilege of being told you can't be helped unless you get a second mortgage. Talking about "universal" systems that are "affordable" is all well and good, but they cannot actually exist as long as the for-profit health insurance companies are running the show. How does this alternative sound for affordable: go to whatever doctor you choose and then go home with no bill and no paperwork. What if such a system could be paid for with taxes on businesses that amounted to less than what most of them currently pay for health care? What if the removal of the profit motive allowed a shift to preventive and truly comprehensive medicine? This is not a dream. It's far more possible right now than giving trillions of dollars to bankers would have seemed a year ago or polite debates over which torture techniques are acceptable would have seemed eight years ago.
Here's what you can do. Listen to the Thom Hartmann Show on Friday. During the first hour, Thom will talk with Senator Bernie Sanders, who was a cosponsor of H.R. 676 when he was in the House. During the second and third hours, Thom will talk about how we can get single payer through Congress. And he'll ask everyone to do two things on Friday:
Call Congressman James Clyburn and ask him to whip his colleagues for H.R. 676: (202) 225-3315.
Call your own Congress Member and ask them to cosponsor and promote H.R. 676: (202) 224-3121.
J. Myztico Campo ("Tico" as his friends call him) defines his art as "visionary psychedelic surrealism." His illuminating paintings treat the viewer to bright kaleidoscopic landscapes of mystical proportions. His work melds the worlds of ancient cultures, ceremonial rites of passage, esoteric icons, and alien entities into an alchemical mosaic of color and light.
Campo states, “Each of us are part of a complex web of consciousness that spans across the inter-dimensional cosmos. Some of the images in this gallery were inspired by entheogenic sacred teacher plants that I have explored throughout the years. Others appear through Dreamtime cycles behind the veil of perceptions… Here, I share with you some of the imagery I have experienced within a variety of inter-dimensional realms. I have attempted to capture these visions to the best of my natural abilities."
You can explore these themes further on Campo's website using the mediums of music, film, photography & poetry.
The following comes from the book, The Magical Approach, by Jane Roberts. This is part of the Seth Speaks collection.
***
Session Eleven: Multidimensional Spiritual Dramas
September 15, 1980, 8:52 PM Monday
Now: Good evening.
(“Good evening, Seth.”)
A few comments.
Now: Christ was not crucified – therefore he did not resurrect, coming out of the tomb, nor did he then ascend into heaven. In the terms of the biblical drama (underlined), however Christ was crucified.
He arose from the tomb and ascended into heaven. The resurrection and the ascension are indeed, however, the two parts of one dramatic event. (pause) Dogmatically, arising from the dead alone was clearly not sufficient, for men were to follow where Christ led. You could not have a world in which the newly-risen dead mixed with the living. An existence in a spiritual realm had to follow such a resurrection. (pause)
Now in the facts of history, there was no crucifixion, resurrection, or ascension. In the terms of history there was no biblical Christ (pause), whose life followed the details given. The organization of the church is a historical fact. The power, devotion, and energy, the organizational expertise of Christianity, cannot be disputed. Nor can it be disputed that Christianity was based upon great religious and psychic vision. To some extent it involved the intuitional reorganization of subjective, and then objective, realities. (long pause)
I have told you, however, that the world of events springs from the world of ideas. It seems certain that “something” happened “back then” – and that if you could go back there, invisibly studying the century, you would discover the birth of Christianity. But Christianity was not born at that time. (long pause) You might say that the labor pains (intently) were happening then, but the birth itself did not emerge for some time later.
Jewish shepherds represented the placenta that was meant to be discarded, for it was Jewish tradition that nourished the new religion in its early stages before its birth. Christ, as you know, was a common name, so when I say that there was a man named Christ involved in those events (see Seth Speaks), I do not mean to say that he was the biblical Christ. His life was one of those lives that were finally used to compose the composite image of the biblical Christ.
The mass psyche was seeking for a change, an impetus, a flowering, a new organization. The idea of a redeemer was hardly new, but ancient in many traditions. As I stated before, that part of the world was filled with would-be messiahs, self-proclaimed prophets, and so forth, and in those terms it was only a matter of time before man's great spiritual and psychic desires illuminated and filled up that psychological landscape, filling the prepared psychological patters with a new urgency and intent. There were many throw-away messiahs (with gentle amusement) – men whose circumstances, characteristics, and abilities were almost (musically) the ones needed – who almost (musically) filled the psychic bill, but who were unfitted for other reasons: They were of the wrong race, or their timing was off. Their intersection with space and time did not mesh with the requirements. (pause)
You must understand the long trail of psychological reality that exists before you have a physical event. Yo must understand man's need and capacity for fulfillment, dramatization, and psychic creativity.
There is nothing that happened in those times that is not happening now in your own: You have numberless gurus, people who seemingly perform miracles (and some do). So there were in those days some rather disconnected events that served as the focus point for great psychic activity: People wanted to believe, and their belief changed the course of history. It doesn't matter that the events never happened – the belief happened. And the belief was man's response to (long pause) intuitional knowledge, to inner knowing, and to spiritual comprehension.
(9:25) These all had to flow into reality, into psychological patterns through man's own understanding. They had to flow into the events of history as he (underlined) experienced history. They had to touch the times, and they did so by transforming those times for later generations.
I want it understood (pause) that the accomplishment (pause) is breathtaking in its grandeur – more so because man formed from his psyche such a multidimensional spiritual drama that its light struck upon this or that person, this or that place, and formed a story (pause) more powerful than any physical event could be – hence its power (emphatically).
In those terms, however, again, the gods of Olympus were as real, for all of men's riches are representations, psychic dramatizations, standing for na inner reality that cannot be literally expressed or described – but can be creatively expressed or represented. (long pause)
Too-literal translations of such material often lead to grief, and the creative thrust becomes lost. The great mystery, of course, and great questions, rest in the nature of that inner reality from which man weans his religions, and in the power of the creative abilities themselves that bring them into birth (all quite intently). Such activities on a large scale are the end result of each natural person's individual relationship with nature, and with nature's source. (pause)
Now: Ruburt is progressing very well, and with your help, and both of you should become more and more aware of the natural persons that you are.
The armed men seized the boy as the two walked to school in Port Harcourt, capital of Rivers State.
The children's father works for Royal Dutch Shell, a company spokesman said.
Earlier in the day, a Catholic priest kidnapped on Sunday was released after a militant leader told the group holding him to let him go.
Militant groups have been kidnapping oil company employees and their families since 2006 as part of a campaign that has cut oil production by some 20%.
Police named the girl as Oduayo Awonusi.
Her brother Emmanuel is nine.
Struggle
"The gunmen came out of the vehicle and grabbed the boy," Rita Inoma-Abbey, police spokeswoman for Rivers State said.
"While the sister was struggling with them, she was shot. The gunmen went away with the boy. Passers-by rushed the girl to hospital but she died on the road."
Some militant groups say they are fighting for a fairer share of Nigeria's oil wealth.
But other gangs of armed, jobless youths have made money through kidnapping, extortion and oil theft.
In 2007 militants kidnapped three-year-old Margaret Hill, the child of a British bar-owner in Port Harcourt.
She was released without harm, but her father Mike died shortly afterward of a heart attack.
Unidentified militants kidnapped Father Pius Kii from the steps of his church on Sunday.
It is understood that no ransom was paid for his release.
AMY GOODMAN: Federal officials revealed a Georgia peanut plant knowingly shipped products contaminated with salmonella on a dozen occasions over the past two years. On Wednesday, the FDA expanded its recall of peanut butter products in what’s become one of the largest food recalls in US history. The FDA is now asking retailers, manufacturers, consumers, to throw out every item containing peanut products manufactured at the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, Georgia.
Salmonella poisoning has already killed at least eight people, sickened more than 500, half of them children. More than 400 consumer products containing peanut butter have been pulled from the shelves, including Clif bars, ShopRite peanut butter crackers, Famous Amos cookies and King Nut peanut butter. Peanut Corporation of America sells peanut products to institutions like schools, nursing homes, and to other companies, including Kellogg’s, which turns the butter or paste into other products.
The peanut scare raises new questions about the FDA’s regulatory practices. The Washington Post reports, prior to the salmonella outbreak, the FDA hadn’t inspected the Georgia plant since 2001. In 2006, the agency contracted inspections to the Georgia Department of Agriculture, but last year state officials failed to check for salmonella.
Meanwhile, another story involving food safety has just come to light. A pair of new studies has revealed traces of toxic mercury can be found in many popular foods containing high-fructose corn syrup. The sweetener has become a widely used substitute for sugar in processed foods, including many items marketed to children. Items found to contain mercury include Hershey’s chocolate syrup, Smucker’s strawberry jelly, Hunt’s tomato ketchup, Coca-Cola Classic, Quaker Oatmeal to Go, Nutri-Grain strawberry cereal bars. Mercury is considered toxic in all forms, particularly dangerous for children.
We’re joined now by two guests. Patty Lovera joins us from Washington. Assistant director of Food & Water Watch, she’s been closely monitoring the peanut butter recall. Dr. David Wallinga has joined us from Minneapolis. He’s the director of food and health of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. Dr. Wallinga is co-author of the new studies on mercury levels in high-fructose corn syrup food products.
I want to start with Patty Lovera in Washington. Talk about the magnitude of the peanut problem.
PATTY LOVERA: Well, this—we’ve been struggling to get information from FDA and from this company about the magnitude, but what it shows is that there was really no presence of regulators in this plant for a very long time, and they’re clearly a massive supplier to food service, to the processed food industry, and it’s a really ubiquitous ingredient. So it’s going to keep getting bigger for a while, as they really kind of grapple with what was going on in this plant and the reach of this company. It seems like an enormous amount of product was coming out of this plant every day, and it really—they weren’t doing what they were supposed to do in terms of safety.
AMY GOODMAN: So, is it whole peanuts, Patty? Or is it once—does the salmonella contaminate when it’s crushed, when it becomes paste or peanut butter?
PATTY LOVERA: That’s one of the things we were hoping they would know by now, so there’s a lot of questions. You know, were the raw peanuts coming into the plant with salmonella? But, you know, they roast them, and they do things to them that should take care of it. Were they not doing those steps? Or was the plant dirty and it got—you know, the product got re-contaminated. This is all of the stuff that this investigation should tell us. It hasn’t yet. But it does seem like they’ve done sampling in the plant, and they’ve found salmonella in the plant. So it seems like there’s sanitation problems, as well.
So the products that are involved are everything in this plant. So that’s whole peanuts that were used as an ingredient and then various types of processed peanuts, like peanut butter or peanut paste they would use to thicken something. So it’s really a wide array of products that go out then into the food chain through these other processed foods.
AMY GOODMAN: Patty Lovera, then explain what salmonella is and then what it does when ingested.
PATTY LOVERA: So, salmonella is a pathogen. It is found in many forms. There’s different strains, and that’s one of the issues with this investigation, is which strain was found in which product and in the plant. And it’s often associated with animal production, and so there’s—that’s a logical question. You know, what do we know about the fields where these peanuts were grown? You know, were they being treated with animal waste? From what kind of facility? We don’t know any of that yet.
And then also, salmonella can be found in the environment. And so, in previous peanut butter problems, they’ve found salmonella coming in through leaking roofs and things like that. And so, it’s really very present in the environment, but it’s also considered an indication of how the sanitation of a plant is, how clean is it, how often are they keeping—are they doing cleanings? Are they keeping products, you know, raw products separated from finished product? So it’s really a good indicator of the processes in this plant, and clearly these processes weren’t up to speed.
And so, when people are exposed to salmonella, it’s really a digestive system issue. People get diarrhea. They get very sick. And people that are vulnerable to diseases, like young children or older people or people with immune system problems, are most at risk.
AMY GOODMAN: David Wallinga, you’re the director of food and health at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in Minneapolis. Talk about this second part of a major health threat right now in this country. High-fructose corn syrup, in itself, has problems when we’re talking about issues like obesity, of course. Tell us what you’ve found.
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, let me just lay a little context first for the two studies that came out. Really at the core of it is that there are large chemical plants, chlorine alkali plants worldwide, that make a variety of chemicals, and many of them are used commonly in food production, including in the production of high-fructose corn syrup and some other things.
And the first study, which came out Monday, was a scientific study. It was in a peer-reviewed journal. And it talked about high-fructose corn syrup samples that were collected when the lead author was at the FDA as a public servant and then tested for total mercury. And lo and behold, what they find was about half of the twenty samples that were collected of the high-fructose corn syrup had detectable mercury at varying levels.
And then the second study was one that my own group did that tried to extend on this problem and finding and go out to supermarkets and actually look for common brand-name food and beverage products and test them for total mercury, as well. And we found that about one-in-three of the fifty-five products that we sampled had detectable mercury in them.
AMY GOODMAN: How does it happen? How does the mercury contaminate the corn syrup?
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, how it happens is like this. These huge chlorine plants, many of them continue to use a really outdated technology that’s based on mercury cells. It’s not the only technology they could use. It’s only one of three, but many still use it, despite the fact that we’ve known for a long time that they are big polluters of mercury into the environment.
What was kind of an open secret in the industry, though, was that the food-grade chemicals that came out of these plants could also be contaminated with mercury. And so, what these new studies shed the light on is the possibility that we’re getting significant exposure to mercury through these contaminated food chemicals.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the FDA doing about this?
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, unfortunately, you know, like the previous speaker said, the FDA’s problems kind of speak for themselves. Their response this week was basically, “We’re dealing with salmonella. We don’t have time to worry about high-fructose corn syrup.”
I think it reflects a bigger problem, though, in that not only is the FDA kind of asleep at the switch, but they’ve probably been underinvested. In other words, society has just decided that public health investments to protect the food supply or to look for salmonella are not a good investment, and so we’re suffering the consequences now, I think, from that lack of oversight and investment.
AMY GOODMAN: And the use of high-fructose corn syrup—I mean, a lot of people might say, “What are you talking about? Sugar, right?”
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, high-fructose corn syrup is a sweetener, just like sugar or honey and molasses are sweeteners. And what’s different is that high-fructose corn syrup’s really only been widely used in the US food industry since maybe the mid-’70s and only used in soda pop since the early ’80s, but it’s rapidly become the major sweetener, to the point where now one-in-ten calories that the average American eats comes from high-fructose corn syrup, and that’s the USDA’s own figures.
AMY GOODMAN: And the politics of corn and how it’s come to replace sugar?
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, I think it’s politics and economics. As everyone knows, or should know by now, as a country, we produce a heck of a lot of corn. And that, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing, but some of our policies have made corn extremely inexpensive for people to make all sorts of things out of it, including sweeteners, but as well fuels and other things.
So high-fructose corn syrup as a sweetener has been a pretty cheap staple for the food industry, and they’ve found—they’ve been very imaginative in finding lots of different food products to put it in, you know, everything from fast foods, where it’s pretty ubiquitous, to salad dressings to barbeque sauce, as well as soda pop, of course.
AMY GOODMAN: Has the embargo against Cuba helped with keeping the corn syrup prices low and sugar prices high? I assume that the high-fructose corn syrup lobby has been a great supporter of the embargo.
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, you’re getting a little far afield from what I’m looking at in these studies, so I don’t know about that. But I think the issue here isn’t just about high-fructose corn syrup, but, you know, the bigger point to the story, I think, is that we have an alternative way of making these products. The caustic soda, for example, is integral to the production of high-fructose corn syrup. You can make caustic soda using mercury, or you can make it without using mercury. Unfortunately, we still have plants in the US, and even more abroad, that continue to use this outdated mercury technology that can contaminate the caustic soda with mercury. And that’s what, in turn, we think, may be contaminating the high-fructose corn syrup. So, then-Senator Obama actually was a co-sponsor of Senate legislation in 2007 that would have phased out the use of mercury in making caustic soda in these plants, but the legislation never passed. We think it would be a—
AMY GOODMAN: The Corn Refiners Association has rejected the mercury study. Audrae Erickson of the Corn Refiners Association said in a statement, quote, “This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance. Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two re-agents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years. […] It is important that Americans are provided accurate, science-based information. They should know that high fructose corn syrup is safe. In 1983, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration formally listed high fructose corn syrup as safe for use in food and reaffirmed that decision in 1996.”
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Yeah, well, I think there’s two important points from that statement. The first is, the data that came out this week is the only public data available. So, neither the FDA nor the Corn Refiners Association has come forward with any data. The scientific study collected high-fructose corn syrup samples in 2005 and tested them, so that’s the only data we have to go on. Our report dealt with supermarket foods that were collected this fall in the Twin Cities. So that’s pretty up-to-date, I think.
AMY GOODMAN: Let me play for you the Corn Refiners Association ad. They launched a marketing campaign to defend high-fructose corn syrup. The lobbying group ran several television ads promoting the sweetener to be a natural product, just like regular sugar.
TEENAGER 1: Once again, you’re demonstrating an inferior intellect.
TEENAGER 2: That cereal has high-fructose corn syrup in it.
TEENAGER 1: So?
TEENAGER 2: So even a dufus like you must have heard what they say about it.
TEENAGER 1: What?
TEENAGER 2: Well, dude, I mean, you know, I mean…
TEENAGER 1: That it’s made from corn? And it’s nutritionally the same as sugar? And it’s just fine in moderation?
TEENAGER 2: Whatever, dude.
TEENAGER 1: Did Mom and Dad teach you any manners?
NARRATOR: Get the facts. You’re in for a sweet surprise.
AMY GOODMAN: Your response, Dr. David Wallinga?
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, you know, I don’t think our research says something either way about the healthfulness of high-fructose corn syrup, per se. I think what it points to is that there’s different ways to make it, and we think we ought to be making high-fructose corn syrup without chemicals that can be mercury-contaminated. And we have the technology to do that. I think the industry just needs kind of a good solid push in that direction, and Senator Obama’s legislation and that sponsored by others would do that.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the dangers of mercury, especially when it comes to kids?
DR. DAVID WALLINGA: Well, mercury, in general, comes in a lot of different forms, and all the forms are basically toxic to varying degrees. We know the most about a particular form called methylmercury, and people will recognize that because it’s the one in fish and seafood. And all the federal standards are based on methylmercury. We don’t really know what kind of mercury is in high-fructose corn syrup. I would hope that if FDA does further testing—and I hope they do—that that’s one of the questions they would answer, is—what’s the mixture of mercury in the high-fructose corn syrup that we’re finding?
But even beyond that—you know, because you could spend years having debates over that, I think, is this point that there are different ways to make high-fructose corn syrup. We could easily transition the industry to only making high-fructose corn syrup and other food products using chemicals that aren’t mercury-contaminated because of these plants that use this outdated technology. That’s where I think we need to go.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, back on the issue of the peanuts, I want to ask Patty Lovera if she agrees with senior congressional and state officials, like Congress member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, calling for a federal probe of possible criminal violations at the Georgia peanut processing plant.
PATTY LOVERA: Yes. Sadly, I mean, I think that’s what it’s come to. I mean, this is a plant—I mean, everything that the FDA does is basically voluntary. They ask these plants to regulate themselves, and then they act surprised when it goes badly. But this plant did some testing, saw a problem—
AMY GOODMAN: Five seconds.
PATTY LOVERA: —and just did more testing until it came up OK. And that should be investigated, and they should have some penalty for that.
AMY GOODMAN: Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch and David Wallinga of Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, thanks so much for joining us.
As someone who cares about humane drug policy, I expect politicians to disappoint me. Obama created a rare glimmer of light here with his honesty about his own experience--but his choice of drug warriors like Joe Biden and Rahm Emmanuel for high level posts has made me wary.
Now, with a new raid on California's medical marijuana dispensaries and with Bush holdovers trying to push the UN to drop support for needle exchange and other harm reduction programs in its document to set drug policy for the next ten years, I am beginning to lose hope.
Amazingly, however, progressives in Congress (!) are speaking out about the possible UN fiasco--sending a letter to our new UN Ambassador Susan Rice to protest the actions of these officials. Reps. Henry Waxman, Jose Serrano and Barbara Lee write:
Unfortunately, we understand that the U.S. delegation in Vienna has been actively blocking the efforts of some of our closest allies--including the European Union--to incorporate into the declaration reference to harm reduction measures such as needle exchange. We find it hard to understand how the U.S. delegation could object to language which would not obligate any country to adopt particular policies with which it disagrees.
I will go further. Obama has said that he supports lifting the federal ban on funding for needle exchange programs in the U.S. and that he supports science-based policy, which backs this action. He has said that he will end the raids on medical marijuana in states that have legalized it.
I suspect that he's afraid that any action in this direction will be jumped on with glee by right-wing critics. I think he fears a repeat of the Clinton administration's "Don't ask, don't tell," culture war disaster. But as he pointed out to his critics in relation to economic policy, "I won."
That's right, Mr. President, you won! And you won not despite taking evidence-based positions on tough issues--but because you did so.
I think you'll find that when people are worried about their jobs, it's hard for them to work up steam about imaginary bogeymen like those hyped by drug warriors. When you face real problems like feeding your kids, false hypotheticals like needle exchange "sending the wrong message" and turning us into a nation of junkies just don't get traction. (Quick question: would making clean needles available make you start shooting up? Didn't think so-- and same is true for everyone who is not already doing so!).
When your financial future is at risk, it's hard to see spending money on raiding and incarcerating medical marijuana users and distributors as a good investment--or even to see medical marijuana use as a problem, let alone one worthy of expensive and ineffective police intervention. (Has medical marijuana made your or your kids into dope fiends? Surveys find states with it tend to have *less* use by youth).
Take advantage of this rare opportunity to expose the tired rhetoric of the drug war and do the right thing, as you promised. Support harm reduction like the rest of the developed world does. Recognize how out of touch the U.S. has become in its drug strategy.
This is not the 70's or even the 80's or 90's-- like Bush's economic policies, his drug policies have visibly and risibly failed. The main power drug warriors have left is politicians' outsized fear of their past success. Don't give them undue credit--and don't underestimate how the ground has shifted in favor of sane, humane drug strategy, not war.
By Cynthia McKinney. Posted at On The Wilder Side and Green Party Watch. Reposted to IPR by Paulie. Cynthia McKinney was the 2008 Presidential nominee of the US Green Party, and Leonard Peltier was the 2004 Presidential nominee of the Peace and Freedom Party.
Today, I sent this message to the President:
“Mr. President, Justice delayed is justice denied. Leonard Peltier’s family report that he has been brutally beaten while in custody. Peltier should be released. He has become a global symbol of injustice and prison abuse. Imprisoned in the late 1970s, Peltier has never been given a fair trial. Yet he has been a model prisoner. In April he wrote: “Given the choice of lying down to die or standing up to live, we chose to live.” Let Peltier live. Please free Leonard Peltier now.”
It’s easy to send a message to President Obama to help him deliver on the hope and change he promised. Now is the time for us to act.
Unfortunately, the President has already signed an order allowing the continued bombing of Pakistan and his promised Afghanistan surge is underway. What that means for all of us is more war.
If we are to have true and lasting peace, it should be clear by now that we won’t get it by confining our electoral choices to only the ones presented to us in sophisticated, highly managed public relations campaigns. True and lasting peace will come only with justice. Freeing our political prisoners, including Peltier, Mumia, Sundiata, Mutulu, Imam El-Amin, our Puerto Rican political prisoners, and so many more is but a down payment on the path of justice and reconciliation that our country so sorely needs.
Israel continues to bombard areas of Gaza despite its declaration of a ceasefire. Earlier today, at least nine Palestinians, including seven girls, were wounded in an Israeli air strike on Khan Yunis. The attack came hours after Israel also attacked a metal foundry in the town of Rafah. Israel says it’s responding to a small number of rocket attacks from Gaza that haven’t caused any injuries.
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The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published a new report titled Generations Online in 2009 which breaks down online activities by generation. After defining the scope of the generations, the study goes on to summarize that Teens and Generation Y are the most likely to utilize the Web for entertainment purposes while older generations use the Internet primarily for conducting information searches, email, and online shopping. However there are some universal activities that span the generation gaps such as downloading videos, online banking, travel reservations, and job searching. The report has an excellent chart which breaks down each activity type by generation.
by: Stewart A. AlexanderJanuary 28, 2009Within the past two years, Democrats in Washington DC have spent more than $1.5 trillion to help rescue the struggling U.S. economy out of the worst recession since the Great Depression; now, both Houses of Congress are fast-tracking a stimulus package for President Barack Obama that will likely cost the nation more than $1 trillion. Socialists nationwide are rejecting this new call for deficit spending and are calling for programs that will meet the short and long term needs of the nation and create immediate employment for the millions of working people that are unemployed or under-employed.The massive spending proposals that are now in the Senate and House will cut taxes while offering limited benefits to veterans, seniors and colleges students; and the proposals will offer some relief for the millions that are now unemployed. Millions of seniors that are Social Security beneficiaries would receive a one time $300 payment under the Senate’s version of the economic recovery plan. Veterans receiving disability or pension payments would also receive a one time cash bonus of $300.In addition to the cash bonus, the Senate’s stimulus plan would provide tax relief for individuals and couples. According to the Associated Press, individuals would receive “$500 per-worker, $1,000 per-couple tax cut for two years, costing about $142 billion.” The plan would also include tax benefits for businesses to claim tax credits on past profits; the plan would also include tax credits totaling $31 billion to boost renewable energy production.Other provisions in the stimulus plan would provide limited aid to the poor and unemployed. The Associated Press reports the Senate plan has “$40 billion to provide extended unemployment benefits through Dec. 31, increase them by $25 a week and provide them to part-time and other workers.” Presently, unemployment nationwide has climbed above 7 percent and many economists believe unemployment may reach double digits before the end of 2009; in some regions of the U.S., unemployment is now above 15 percent. At a time when hundred of thousands are joining the ranks of the unemployed monthly, much more will be needed by Congress to put the nation back to work.Within the past year, Congress approved a $168 billion stimulus package that failed to jump start the U.S. economy. That program provided more than 135 million Americans a one time payment of $300 to $600 to help boost the U.S. economy by energizing consumer spending; the program failed to produce any positive results while increasing the national debt. Also, within the past year, Congress has invested more than $1.5 trillion to help rescue wealthy billionaires, troubled banks and Wall Street. During the final weeks of the Bush administration, Congress approved a massive $700 billion bank bailout that has failed to free up credit for the banks that were burdened with troubled assets. Just last week, Congress release the addition $350 billion of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package, the Trouble Assets Relief Program (TARP), to the Obama administration. Now President Obama and Congress are preparing to take a gamble with $825 billion on another trial-and-error approach that will likely produce minimal results and will not create jobs for the millions of working people that are now unemployed.With less than 10 days in office, President Barack Obama has indicated that his $825 billion economic stimulus package will energize the U.S. economy and create future jobs for more than three million Americans; socialists believe millions of jobs can be created by the end of 2010 by addressing the critical needs that are now being faced by working people everywhere. Addressing the health care needs of 49 million working people, that are now uninsured, and more than 120 million Americans that find health insurance unaffordable, is an item at the top of the socialist agenda. Socialists are calling for a single-payer health care system that will provide coverage for everyone; a system that will provide useful, long term employment for working people.President Obama has introduced various programs that will possibly produce long term results for the capitalists ruling elite; however, these programs will not put food on the table for the millions of working people that are now unemployed or under-employed today. Those program include building and repairing bridges, increasing the production of alternative energy, modernizing federal buildings, computerizing medical recording within the next five years, and investing in science, research and technology.Socialists believe the current “financial crisis” is not just a temporary setback or because of the lack of regulation in the financial sector; the collapse of the financial sector is indicative of the total failure of the capitalist economy. Socialist Party USA recently stated, “As socialist, we understand that there can no longer be any rational debate on the question of pursuing the “free market” as an alternative to the compelling urgency for a socialist transformation of society. The need of the largest capitalist firms to wipe out competition has already led to the centralization of economic power, but in the form of private ownership of an unaccountable ruling class of professional speculators, not of working people.”It is unlikely the proposed $825 billion stimulus package will have a measurable impact on a national recession that is moving like a category five hurricane. The U.S. recession is deeply related to the expanding global recession; it is likely the U.S. government would need to invest more than $10 trillion dollars into the economy to accomplish any measurable results. Even if such funding were available, socialists believe a socialist transformation of society is necessary; this will require radical demands on the existing system, demands that challenge the basic assumption of a capitalist market economy while pointing the way to a new society. For more information search the Web for: Stewart A. Alexanderhttp://socialistparty-usa.org/statements/nobailout0908.htmlhttp://StewartAlexanderCares.comhttp://peaceandfreedom-sjv.org/home/http://www.sp-usa.org/
[Very cool link from the awesome Miss Anne at The Open Pie Hole blog...]
By Steven Levy 09.22.08
From King James to James Bond, Chaucer to Sputnik, a personal library like no other.
Photo: Andrew Moore
The View From Above Looming over the library is an original Sputnik 1 satellite, one of several backups the Soviets built. At far left is a model of NASA's experimental X-29 jet, with forward-swept wings. "It's the first plane that a pilot can't fly—only computers can handle it," Walker says. On the top of the center shelves are "scholar's rocks," natural formations believed by the Chinese to spur contemplation. Behind the rocks is a 15-foot-long model of the Saturn V rocket.
Nothing quite prepares you for the culture shock of Jay Walker's library. You exit the austere parlor of his New England home and pass through a hallway into the bibliographic equivalent of a Disney ride. Stuffed with landmark tomes and eye-grabbing historical objects—on the walls, on tables, standing on the floor—the room occupies about 3,600 square feet on three mazelike levels. Is that a Sputnik? (Yes.) Hey, those books appear to be bound in rubies. (They are.) That edition of Chaucer ... is it a Kelmscott? (Natch.) Gee, that chandelier looks like the one in the James Bond flick Die Another Day. (Because it is.) No matter where you turn in this ziggurat, another treasure beckons you—a 1665 Bills of Mortality chronicle of London (you can track plague fatalities by week), the instruction manual for the Saturn V rocket (which launched the Apollo 11 capsule to the moon), a framed napkin from 1943 on which Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined his plan to win World War II. In no time, your mind is stretched like hot taffy.
Jay's Anatomy "What's so wonderful about our knowledge of the human body is how remarkably constrained it has been over time," Walker says. In the center of the table sits the Anatomia universa, an early-19th-century medical masterwork by the Italian illustrator Paolo Mascagni. At front right is a field tool kit for Civil War surgeons. Grasping the box of prosthetic eyeballs at left is the original "Thing" hand from the TV show The Addams Family, signed by the cast. In front of the 19th-century phrenological bust is a book, from about 1500, containing the first published illustrations of surgery on humans. "Pre-anesthesia, of course" Walker says. At the rear are a 300 million-year-old trilobite fossil, a raptor skeleton, and a clutch of fossilized dinosaur eggs.
Wearing a huge can-you-believe-it grin is the collection's impresario, the 52-year-old Internet entrepreneur and founder of Walker Digital — a think tank churning out ideas and patents, it's best-known for its lucrative Priceline.com. "I started an R&D lab and have been an entrepreneur. So I have a big affinity for the human imagination," he says. "About a dozen years ago, my collection got so big that I said, 'It's time to build a room, a library, that would be about human imagination.'"
Walker's house was constructed specifically to accommodate his massive library. To create the space, which was constructed in 2002, Walker and architect Mark Finlay first built a 7-foot-long model. Then they used miniature cameras to help visualize what it would be like to move around inside. In a conscious nod to M. C. Escher (whose graphics are echoed in the wood tiling), the labyrinthine platforms seem to float in space, an illusion amplified by the glass-paneled bridges connecting the platforms. Walker commissioned decorative etched glass, dynamic lighting, and even a custom soundtrack that sets the tone for the cerebral adventures hidden in this cabinet of curiosities. "I said to the architect, 'Think of it as a theater, from a lighting and engineering standpoint,'" Walker says. "But it's not a performance space. It's an engagement space."
Planetarium The massive "book" by the window is a specially commissioned, internally lit 2.5-ton Clyde Lynds sculpture. It's meant to embody the spirit of the library: the mind on the right page, the universe on the left. Pointing out to that universe is a powerful Questar 7 telescope. On the rear of the table (from left) are a globe of the moon signed by nine of the 12 astronauts who walked on it, a rare 19th-century sky atlas with white stars against a black sky, and a fragment from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that fell in Russia in 1947—it's tiny but weighs 15 pounds. In the foreground is Andrea Cellarius' hand-painted celestial atlas from 1660. "It has the first published maps where Earth was not the center of the solar system," Walker says. "It divides the age of faith from the age of reason."
Inspiration Point Walker frequently meets with the Walker Digital brain trust in the seating area of the library, hoping to draw inspiration from the surroundings. Artist Clyde Lynds (known for integrating fiber optics into his work) created the intricate illuminated glass panels and many other visual elements. Walker himself designed the Escher-like tile floor, modeled after a tumbling block pattern from the Victorian age. He bought the chandelier (seen in the Bond film Die Another Day) at an auction and rewired it with 6,000 LEDs. The open book on the table features watercolor illustrations for an 18th-century papal palace that was never built. The globe has special meaning for Walker: "It was a wedding gift Eileen and I received in 1982."
Reading Room In the foreground are several early-20th-century volumes with jeweled bindings—gold, rubies, and diamonds—crafted by the legendary firm Sangorski & Sutcliffe. On the table (first row, from left) is a 16th-century book of jousting, a Dickens novel decorated with the author's portrait, and (open, with Post-it flags) an original copy of the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the first illustrated history book. Second row: the 1535 Coverdale Bible (the first completely translated into modern English), a medieval tome with intricate illustrations of dwarfs, a collection of portraits commissioned at a 17th-century German festival ("Facebook in 1610!"), a tree-bark Indonesian guide to cannibalism, and a Middle Eastern mother goddess icon from around 5000 BC.
Walker shuns the sort of bibliomania that covets first editions for their own sake—many of the volumes that decorate the library's walls are leather-bound Franklin Press reprints. What gets him excited are things that changed the way people think, like Robert Hooke's Micrographia. Published in 1665, it was the first book to contain illustrations made possible by the microscope. He's also drawn to objects that embody a revelatory (or just plain weird) train of thought. "I get offered things that collectors don't," he says. "Nobody else would want a book on dwarfs, with pages beautifully hand-painted in silver and gold, but for me that makes perfect sense."
What excites him even more is using his treasures to make mind-expanding connections. He loves juxtapositions, like placing a 16th-century map that combines experience and guesswork—"the first one showing North and South America," he says—next to a modern map carried by astronauts to the moon. "If this is what can happen in 500 years, nothing is impossible."
Gadget Lab A brand-new One Laptop per Child XO, far left, sits next to a relatively ancient RadioShack TRS-80 Model 100. In back, a 1911 typewriting machine and a 1909 Kent radio. The large contraption at center is the Nazis' supposedly unbreakable Enigma code machine. The book to its left is a copy of Johannes Trithemius' 1518 Polygraphiae, a cryptographic landmark. On the right is an Apple II motherboard signed by Woz. An Edison kinetoscope sits beside an 1890 Edison phonograph (along with three of the wax cylinders it uses for recording). Nearby is a faithful copy of Edison's lightbulb. The gadget with the tubes is an IBM processor circa 1960. In front of it stands a truly ancient storage device, a Sumerian clay cone used to record surplus grain.
Walker struggles to balance privacy with his impulse to share his finds with the outside world. Schoolchildren often visit by invitation, as do executives, politicians, and scholars. Last February, the organizers of the TED conference persuaded him to decorate their stage with some of his treasures. But he's never invited any press in to see the collection—until now.
Senior writer Steven Levy (steven_levy@wired.com) profiled sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in issue 16.09.
Amazonian indians have taken part, concerned with their plight
Tens of thousands of social activists and environmental and political groups have gathered in the Brazilian city of Belem for the World Social Forum.
The event is timed deliberately to coincide with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Organisers say the global financial crisis has given the six-day meeting new importance in providing an alternative perspective.
Environmental issues are featuring prominently in the discussions.
Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will join four other presidents from across South America at the forum later this week.
Amazon's future
The city of Belem, not far from the mouth of the Amazon River, is a location of symbolic importance for the tens of thousands of political and environmental activists who have gathered there.
The future of the Amazon itself is a key concern for those taking part in the World Social Forum, among them representatives of Brazil's Indigenous population.
The protesters are making the most of Belem's moment in the spotlight
There has already been a chaotic protest as Indian groups along with many thousands of demonstrators marched and danced through the streets of city, calling on the world to protect the rainforest.
The World Social Forum was first held in Brazil in 2001, and as in previous years the gathering has been timed to present an alternative view to the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland.
The theme of the forum in Brazil is that "another world is possible" and that during a period of economic crisis for many countries the time is right for change.
The broadly-based gathering has attracted a range of individuals and groups from faith healers to communists and peace activists.
The economic crisis has undoubtedly raised the profile of the social forum. Local officials believe that as many as 100,000 people are in Belem for what organisers say has grown to become the biggest anti-globalisation event on the planet.
Third-party candidate fined $80k for candidacyPosted by Amelia Ray
Carl Romanelli, who ran for U.S. Senate as a Green Party candidate in 2006, is being forced to pay over $80,000 in court costs because his nomination petitions were sucessfully challenged by Pennsylvania Democrats. (Commonwealth Court alerted him Friday that he will have ten days to pay the bill.) Ralph Nader’s 2004 presidential campaign on the Green Party ticket was the first to incur such costly court bills in U.S. history, as his petitions were also challenged by Democrats in PA, the only state requiring defendants to reimburse their challengers’ court costs.
The challenging of third-party candidate nomination petitions, including those of Romanelli and Nader, is currently under the scrutiny of Attorney General Tom Corbett in the “Bonusgate” investigation. Employees and House Democratic Caucus members - a dozen so far - have already been charged in the scandal that uncovers taxpayer-funded bonus payments for challenging nominating petitions for third-party candidates.
History shows that minor-party platforms have introduced some of our most important issues, including abolition and women’s suffrage, which were adopted by major parties after gaining sufficient voter support. Major parties have since adopted practices that seek to eliminate political competition at the expense of the voter and of democracy.
If you want to run for public office in Pennsylvania, and you're neither a Republican nor a Democrat, you'd better be prepared to bet the farm. Carl Romanelli learned that lesson the hard way after campaigning for U.S. Senate on the Green Party ticket in 2006.
After a successful challenge to his nomination petitions by Democrats, represented by Thorp, Reed & Armstrong, the Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg charged Romanelli with more than $80,000 in litigation costs. Romanelli, a retired family court officer, says that would "destroy" him financially.
Romanelli's is only the second candidacy in U.S. history to be hit with such costs. My 2004 presidential candidacy was the first. Represented by Reed Smith, Democrats successfully challenged my nomination petitions, and the Commonwealth Court ordered us to pick up the legal bill - once again, more than $80,000.
Both petition challenges are now under investigation by state Attorney General Tom Corbett, who is looking into the alleged misuse of taxpayer funds and resources for this kind of political work. The scandal is known as "Bonusgate" because state employees allegedly received taxpayer-funded bonuses for preparing the challenges. Corbett has already filed charges against 10 employees and two members of the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus, and more arrests are expected.
But while Corbett's criminal prosecution takes a big step toward cleaning up corruption in Harrisburg, it won't restore even a semblance of competitive democracy to Pennsylvania. Fortunately, State Sen. Mike Folmer (R., Lebanon) is expected to introduce a bill, known as the Voter Choice Act, that would provide the needed reforms.
In the 19th century, voters could choose from a wide array of candidates representing a broad spectrum of agendas. That was before Pennsylvania and many other states enacted unnecessarily restrictive ballot-access laws, requiring minor-party and independent candidates to submit nomination petitions with tens of thousands of signatures.
Minor-party candidates were the first to run in support of abolition, women's suffrage, labor rights and farmers' rights. Major-party candidates eventually adopted these "radical" positions, but only after voters expressed support for them through other parties. The right of minor-party candidates to appear on the ballot thus reinforced the voter's right to competitive elections with genuine choices.
Pennsylvania's electoral process, by contrast, has become a members-only club, with Republicans and Democrats guarding the door. In the Bonusgate proceedings, House Democratic Caucus employees testified under oath that they routinely used petition challenges to knock candidates off the ballot without regard for their qualifications.
In 2004, for example, Democrats challenged the Nader-Camejo ticket for the benefit of John Kerry. In 2006, they challenged Romanelli to help Bob Casey win a U.S. Senate seat. Both challenges, a grand jury found, were brought with a goal of "winnowing . . . the Election Day field."
These anti-democratic, exclusionary exercises attained an aura of legitimacy through unfounded allegations of "fraud." For example, pranksters or saboteurs planted a handful of signatures from the likes of Mickey Mouse and Fred Flintstone among thousands of genuine signatures on Nader-Camejo petitions. That led a compliant judge to conclude - contrary to his own factual findings - that entire petitions were fraudulent.
Romanelli suffered a similar fate. The court found he had submitted more than 58,000 valid signatures, but it accused him of "bad faith" because he couldn't afford an army of attorneys to defend his petitions.
Similar abuses of the petition-challenge process occur in other states. Pennsylvania is unique, however, in requiring defending candidates to pay their challengers' court costs.
These judgments, as Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas Saylor noted in a dissenting opinion, are not authorized by Pennsylvania's election code. Moreover, they are "most certainly unconstitutional," according to Capital University Law Professor Mark R. Brown, because they violate U.S. Supreme Court decisions striking down excessive filing fees, poll taxes, and other state-imposed financial burdens on candidates and voters.
How ironic that courts in the birthplace of America have begun to render judgments straight out of the Jim Crow South.
Commonwealth Court remains undeterred. On Friday, it ordered Romanelli to pay its punitive, unlawful judgment within 10 days. As a result, he could lose house and home to people who may be implicated in the continuing criminal prosecution.
Folmer's legislation would lower Pennsylvania's draconian barriers to ballot access, dismantling a major-party blockade on political competition. Reform is the word of the day in Harrisburg now that the attorney general is investigating, and this legislation would translate that talk into action. For people like Carl Romanelli, that can't happen soon enough.
By NORMAN FINKELSTEINEarly speculation on the motive behind Israel’s slaughter in Gaza that began on 27 December 2008 and continued till 18 January 2009 centered on the upcoming elections in Israel. The jockeying for votes was no doubt a factor in this Sparta-like society consumed by “revenge and the thirst for blood,” where killing Arabs is a sure crowd-pleaser. (Polls during the war showed that 80-90 percent of Israeli Jews supported it.) But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy pointed out on Democracy Now!, “Israel went through a very similar war…two-and-a-half years ago [in Lebanon], when there were no elections.” When crucial state interests are at stake, Israeli ruling elites seldom launch major operations for narrowly electoral gains. It is true that Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s decision to bomb the Iraqi OSIRAK reactor in 1981 was an electoral ploy, but the strategic stakes in the strike on Iraq were puny; contrary to widespread belief, Saddam Hussein had not embarked on a nuclear weapons program prior to the bombing. The fundamental motives behind the latest Israeli attack on Gaza lie elsewhere: (1) in the need to restore Israel’s “deterrence capacity,” and (2) in the threat posed by a new Palestinian “peace offensive.” Israel’s “larger concern” in the current offensive, New York Times Middle East correspondent Ethan Bronner reported, quoting Israeli sources, was to “re-establish Israeli deterrence,” because “its enemies are less afraid of it than they once were, or should be.” Preserving its deterrence capacity has always loomed large in Israeli strategic doctrine. Indeed, it was the main impetus behind Israel’s first-strike against Egypt in June 1967 that resulted in Israel’s occupation of Gaza (and the West Bank). To justify the onslaught on Gaza, Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote that “[m]any Israelis feel that the walls…are closing in…much as they felt in early June 1967.” Ordinary Israelis no doubt felt threatened in June 1967, but—as Morris surely knows—the Israeli leadership experienced no such trepidation. After Israel threatened and laid plans to attack Syria, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared the Straits of Tiran closed to Israeli shipping, but Israel made almost no use of the Straits (apart from the passage of oil, of which Israel then had ample stocks) and, anyhow, Nasser did not in practice enforce the blockade, vessels passing freely through the Straits within days of his announcement. In addition, multiple U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that the Egyptians did not intend to attack Israel and that, in the improbable case that they did, alone or in concert with other Arab countries, Israel would—in President Lyndon Johnson’s words—“whip the hell out of them.” The head of the Mossad told senior American officials on 1 June 1967 that “there were no differences between the U.S. and the Israelis on the military intelligence picture or its interpretation.” The predicament for Israel was rather the growing perception in the Arab world, spurred by Nasser’s radical nationalism and climaxing in his defiant gestures in May 1967, that it would no longer have to follow Israeli orders. Thus, Divisional Commander Ariel Sharon admonished those in the Israeli cabinet hesitant to launch a first-strike that Israel was losing its “deterrence capability…our main weapon—the fear of us.” Israel unleashed the June 1967 war “to restore the credibility of Israeli deterrence” (Israeli strategic analyst Zeev Maoz).The expulsion of the Israeli occupying army by Hezbollah in May 2000 posed a major new challenge to Israel’s deterrence capacity. The fact that Israel suffered a humiliating defeat, one celebrated throughout the Arab world, made another war well-nigh inevitable. Israel almost immediately began planning for the next round, and in summer 2006 found a pretext when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers (several others were killed in the firefight) and demanded in exchange the release of Lebanese prisoners held by Israel. Although Israel unleashed the fury of its air force and geared up for a ground invasion, it suffered yet another ignominious defeat. A respected American military analyst despite being partial to Israel nonetheless concluded, “the IAF, the arm of the Israel military that had once destroyed whole air forces in a few days, not only proved unable to stop Hezbollah rocket strikes but even to do enough damage to prevent Hezbollah’s rapid recovery”; that “once ground forces did cross into Lebanon…, they failed to overtake Hezbollah strongholds, even those close to the border”; that “in terms of Israel’s objectives, the kidnapped Israeli soldiers were neither rescued nor released; Hezbollah’s rocket fire was never suppressed, not even its long-range fire…; and Israeli ground forces were badly shaken and bogged down by a well-equipped and capable foe”; and that “more troops and a massive ground invasion would indeed have produced a different outcome, but the notion that somehow that effort would have resulted in a more decisive victory over Hezbollah…has no basis in historical example or logic.” The juxtaposition of several figures further highlights the magnitude of the setback: Israel deployed 30,000 troops as against 2,000 regular Hezbollah fighters and 4,000 irregular Hezbollah and non-Hezbollah fighters; Israel delivered and fired 162,000 weapons whereas Hezbollah fired 5,000 weapons (4,000 rockets and projectiles at Israel and 1,000 antitank missiles inside Lebanon). Moreover, “the vast majority of the fighters who defended villages such as Ayta ash Shab, Bint Jbeil, and Maroun al-Ras were not, in fact, regular Hezbollah fighters and in some cases were not even members of Hezbollah,” and “many of Hezbollah’s best and most skilled fighters never saw action, lying in wait along the Litani River with the expectation that the IDF assault would be much deeper and arrive much faster than it did.” Yet another indication of Israel’s reversal of fortune was that, unlike any of its previous armed conflicts, in the final stages of the 2006 war it fought not in defiance of a U.N. ceasefire resolution but in the hope of a U.N. resolution to rescue it.After the 2006 Lebanon war Israel was itching to take on Hezbollah again, but did not yet have a military option against it. In mid-2008 Israel desperately sought to conscript the U.S. for an attack on Iran, which would also decapitate Hezbollah, and thereby humble the main challengers to its regional hegemony. Israel and its quasi-official emissaries such as Benny Morris threatened that if the U.S. did not go along “then non-conventional weaponry will have to be used,” and “many innocent Iranians will die.” To Israel’s chagrin and humiliation, the attack never materialized and Iran has gone its merry way, while the credibility of Israel’s capacity to terrorize slipped another notch. It was high time to find a defenseless target to annihilate. Enter Gaza, Israel’s favorite shooting gallery. Even there the feebly armed Islamic movement Hamas had defiantly resisted Israeli diktat, in June 2008 even compelling Israel to agree to a ceasefire.During the 2006 Lebanon war Israel flattened the southern suburb of Beirut known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah commanded much popular support. In the war’s aftermath Israeli military officers began referring to the “Dahiya strategy”: “We shall pulverize the 160 Shiite villages [in Lebanon] that have turned into Shiite army bases,” the IDF Northern Command Chief explained, “and we shall not show mercy when it comes to hitting the national infrastructure of a state that, in practice, is controlled by Hezbollah.” In the event of hostilities, a reserve Colonel at the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies chimed in, Israel needs “to act immediately, decisively, and with force that is disproportionate….Such a response aims at inflicting damage and meting out punishment to an extent that will demand long and expensive reconstruction processes.” The new strategy was to be used against all of Israel’s regional adversaries who had waxed defiant—“the Palestinians in Gaza are all Khaled Mashaal, the Lebanese are all Nasrallah, and the Iranians are all Ahmadinejad”—but Gaza was the prime target for this blitzkrieg-cum-bloodbath strategy. “Too bad it did not take hold immediately after the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the first rocket barrages,” a respected Israeli columnist lamented. “Had we immediately adopted the Dahiya strategy, we would have likely spared ourselves much trouble.” After a Palestinian rocket attack, Israel’s Interior Minister urged in late September 2008, “the IDF should…decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it.” And, insofar as the Dahiya strategy could not be inflicted just yet on Lebanon and Iran, it was predictably pre-tested in Gaza. The operative plan for the Gaza bloodbath can be gleaned from authoritative statements after the war got underway: “What we have to do is act systematically with the aim of punishing all the organizations that are firing the rockets and mortars, as well as the civilians who are enabling them to fire and hide” (reserve Major-General); “After this operation there will not be one Hamas building left standing in Gaza” (Deputy IDF Chief of Staff); “Anything affiliated with Hamas is a legitimate target” (IDF Spokesperson’s Office). Whereas Israel killed a mere 55 Lebanese during the first two days of the 2006 war, the Israeli media exulted at Israel’s “shock and awe” (Maariv) as it killed more than 300 Palestinians in the first two days of the attack on Gaza. Several days into the slaughter an informed Israeli strategic analyst observed, “The IDF, which planned to attack buildings and sites populated by hundreds of people, did not warn them in advance to leave, but intended to kill a great many of them, and succeeded.” Morris could barely contain his pride at “Israel’s highly efficient air assault on Hamas.” The Israeli columnist B. Michael was less impressed by the dispatch of helicopter gunships and jet planes “over a giant prison and firing at its people” —for example, “70…traffic cops at their graduation ceremony, young men in desperate search of a livelihood who thought they’d found it in the police and instead found death from the skies.” As Israel targeted schools, mosques, hospitals, ambulances, and U.N. sanctuaries, as it slaughtered and incinerated Gaza’s defenseless civilian population (one-third of the 1,200 reported casualties were children), Israeli commentators gloated that “Gaza is to Lebanon as the second sitting for an exam is to the first—a second chance to get it right,” and that this time around Israel had “hurled [Gaza] back,” not 20 years as it promised to do in Lebanon, but “into the 1940s. Electricity is available only for a few hours a day”; that “Israel regained its deterrence capabilities” because “the war in Gaza has compensated for the shortcomings of the [2006] Second Lebanon War”; and that “There is no doubt that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is upset these days….There will no longer be anyone in the Arab world who can claim that Israel is weak.”New York Times foreign affairs expert Thomas Friedman joined in the chorus of hallelujahs. Israel in fact won the 2006 Lebanon war, according to Friedman, because it had inflicted “substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large,” thereby administering an “education” to Hezbollah: fearing the Lebanese people’s wrath, Hezbollah would “think three times next time” before defying Israel. He expressed hope that Israel was likewise “trying to ‘educate’ Hamas by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population.” To justify the targeting of Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure Friedman asserted that Israel had no other option because “Hezbollah created a very ‘flat’ military network…deeply embedded in the local towns and villages,” and that because “Hezbollah nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians…to restrain Hezbollah in the future.” Leaving aside Friedman’s hollow coinages—what does “flat” mean?—and leaving aside that he alleged that the killing of civilians was unavoidable but also recommends targeting civilians as a “deterrence” strategy: is it even true that Hezbollah was “embedded in,” “nested among,” and “intertwined” with the Lebanese civilian population? Here’s what Human Rights Watch concluded after an exhaustive investigation: “we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.” And again, “in all but a few of the cases of civilian deaths we investigated, Hezbollah fighters had not mixed with the civilian population or taken other actions to contribute to the targeting of a particular home or vehicle by Israeli forces.” Indeed, “Israel’s own firing patterns in Lebanon support the conclusion that Hezbollah fired large numbers of its rockets from tobacco fields, banana, olive and citrus groves, and more remote, unpopulated valleys.” A U.S. Army War College study based largely on interviews with Israeli participants in the Lebanon war similarly found that “the key battlefields in the land campaign south of the Litani River were mostly devoid of civilians, and IDF participants consistently report little or no meaningful intermingling of Hezbollah fighters and noncombatants. Nor is there any systematic reporting of Hezbollah using civilians in the combat zone as shields.” On a related note, the authors report that “the great majority of Hezbollah’s fighters wore uniforms. In fact, their equipment and clothing were remarkably similar to many state militaries’—desert or green fatigues, helmets, web vests, body armor, dog tags, and rank insignia.”Friedman further asserted that, “rather than confronting Israel’s Army head-on,” Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s civilian population to provoke Israeli retaliatory strikes, inevitably killing Lebanese civilians and “inflaming the Arab-Muslim street.” Yet, numerous studies have shown, and Israeli officials themselves conceded that, during its guerrilla war against the Israeli occupying army, Hezbollah only targeted Israeli civilians after Israel targeted Lebanese civilians. In conformity with past practice Hezbollah started firing rockets toward Israeli civilian concentrations during the 2006 war only after Israel inflicted heavy casualties on Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah avowed that it would target Israeli civilians “as long as the enemy undertakes its aggression without limits or red lines.”If Israel targeted the Lebanese civilian population and infrastructure during the 2006 war, it was not because it had no choice, and not because Hezbollah had provoked it, but because terrorizing the civilian population was a relatively cost-free method of “education,” much to be preferred over fighting a real foe and suffering heavy casualties, although Hezbollah’s unexpectedly fierce resistance prevented Israel from achieving a victory on the battlefield. In the case of Gaza it was able both to “educate” the population and achieve a military victory because—in the words of Gideon Levy—the “fighting in Gaza” was“war deluxe.” Compared with previous wars, it is child’s play—pilots bombing unimpeded as if on practice runs, tank and artillery soldiers shelling houses and civilians from their armored vehicles, combat engineering troops destroying entire streets in their ominous protected vehicles without facing serious opposition. A large, broad army is fighting against a helpless population and a weak, ragged organization that has fled the conflict zones and is barely putting up a fight.The justification put forth by Friedman in the pages of the Times for targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure amounted to apologetics for state terrorism. It might be recalled that although Hitler had stripped Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher of all his political power by 1940, and his newspaper Der St?rmer had a circulation of only some 15,000 during the war, the International Tribunal at Nuremberg nonetheless sentenced him to death for his murderous incitement. Beyond restoring its deterrence capacity, Israel’s main goal in the Gaza slaughter was to fend off the latest threat posed by Palestinian moderation. For the past three decades the international community has consistently supported a settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict that calls for two states based on a full Israeli withdrawal to its June 1967 border, and a “just resolution” of the refugee question based on the right of return and compensation. The vote on the annual U.N. General Assembly resolution, “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine,” supporting these terms for resolving the conflict in 2008 was 164 in favor, 7 against (Israel, United States, Australia, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau), and 3 abstentions. At the regional level the Arab League in March 2002 unanimously put forth a peace initiative on this basis, which it has subsequently reaffirmed. In recent times Hamas has repeatedly signaled its own acceptance of such a settlement. For example, in March 2008 Khalid Mishal, head of Hamas’s Political Bureau, stated in an interview:There is an opportunity to deal with this conflict in a manner different than Israel and, behind it, the U.S. is dealing with it today. There is an opportunity to achieve a Palestinian national consensus on a political program based on the 1967 borders, and this is an exceptional circumstance, in which most Palestinian forces, including Hamas, accept a state on the 1967 borders….There is also an Arab consensus on this demand, and this is a historic situation. But no one is taking advantage of this opportunity. No one is moving to cooperate with this opportunity. Even this minimum that has been accepted by the Palestinians and the Arabs has been rejected by Israel and by the U.S. Israel is fully cognizant that the Hamas Charter is not an insurmountable obstacle to a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. “[T]he Hamas leadership has recognized that its ideological goal is not attainable and will not be in the foreseeable future,” a former Mossad head recently observed. “[T]hey are ready and willing to see the establishment of a Palestinian state in the temporary borders of 1967….They know that the moment a Palestinian state is established with their cooperation, they will be obligated to change the rules of the game: They will have to adopt a path that could lead them far from their original ideological goals.” In addition, Hamas was “careful to maintain the ceasefire” it entered into with Israel in June 2008, according to an official Israeli publication, despite Israel’s reneging on the crucial component of the truce that it ease the economic siege of Gaza. “The lull was sporadically violated by rocket and mortar shell fire, carried out by rogue terrorist organizations,” the source continues. “At the same time, the [Hamas] movement tried to enforce the terms of the arrangement on the other terrorist organizations and to prevent them from violating it.” Moreover, Hamas was “interested in renewing the relative calm with Israel” (Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin).The Islamic movement could thus be trusted to stand by its word, making it a credible negotiating partner, while its apparent ability to extract concessions from Israel, unlike the hapless Palestinian Authority doing Israel’s bidding but getting no returns, enhanced Hamas’s stature among Palestinians. For Israel these developments constituted a veritable disaster. It could no longer justify shunning Hamas, and it would be only a matter of time before international pressure in particular from the Europeans would be exerted on it to negotiate. The prospect of an incoming U.S. administration negotiating with Iran and Hamas, and moving closer to the international consensus for settling the Israel-Palestine conflict, which some U.S. policymakers now advocate, would have further highlighted Israel’s intransigence. In an alternative scenario, speculated on by Nasrallah, the incoming American administration plans to convene an international peace conference of “Americans, Israelis, Europeans and so-called Arab moderates” to impose a settlement. The one obstacle is “Palestinian resistance and the Hamas government in Gaza,” and “getting rid of this stumbling block is…the true goal of the war.” In either case, Israel needed to provoke Hamas into breaking the truce, and then radicalize or destroy it, thereby eliminating it as a legitimate negotiating partner. It is not the first time Israel confronted such a diabolical threat—an Arab League peace initiative, Palestinian support for a two-state settlement and a Palestinian ceasefire—and not the first time it embarked on provocation and war to overcome it.In the mid-1970s the PLO mainstream began supporting a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. In addition, the PLO, headquartered in Lebanon, was strictly adhering to a truce with Israel that had been negotiated in July 1981. In August 1981 Saudi Arabia unveiled, and the Arab League subsequently approved, a peace plan based on the two-state settlement. Israel reacted in September 1981 by stepping up preparations to destroy the PLO. In his analysis of the buildup to the 1982 Lebanon war, Israeli strategic analyst Avner Yaniv reported that Yasser Arafat was contemplating a historic compromise with the “Zionist state,” whereas “all Israeli cabinets since 1967” as well as “leading mainstream doves” opposed a Palestinian state. Fearing diplomatic pressures, Israel maneuvered to sabotage the two-state settlement. It conducted punitive military raids “deliberately out of proportion” against “Palestinian and Lebanese civilians” in order to weaken “PLO moderates,” strengthen the hand of Arafat’s “radical rivals,” and guarantee the PLO’s “inflexibility.” However, Israel eventually had to choose between a pair of stark options: “a political move leading to a historic compromise with the PLO, or preemptive military action against it.” To fend off Arafat’s “peace offensive”—Yaniv’s telling phrase—Israel embarked on military action in June 1982. The Israeli invasion “had been preceded by more than a year of effective ceasefire with the PLO,” but after murderous Israeli provocations, the last of which left as many as 200 civilians dead (including 60 occupants of a Palestinian children’s hospital), the PLO finally retaliated, causing a single Israeli casualty. Although Israel used the PLO’s resumption of attacks as the pretext for its invasion, Yaniv concluded that the “raison d’être of the entire operation” was “destroying the PLO as a political force capable of claiming a Palestinian state on the West Bank.” It deserves passing notice that in his new history of the “peace process,” Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, provides this capsule summary of the sequence of events just narrated: “In 1982, Arafat’s terrorist activities eventually provoked the Israeli government of Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon into a full-scale invasion of Lebanon.”Fast forward to 2008. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated in early December 2008 that although Israel wanted to create a temporary period of calm with Hamas, an extended truce “harms the Israeli strategic goal, empowers Hamas, and gives the impression that Israel recognizes the movement.” Translation: a protracted ceasefire that enhanced Hamas’s credibility would have undermined Israel’s strategic goal of retaining control of the West Bank. As far back as March 2007 Israel had decided on attacking Hamas, and only negotiated the June truce because “the Israeli army needed time to prepare.” Once all the pieces were in place, Israel only lacked a pretext. On 4 November, while the American media were riveted on election day, Israel broke the ceasefire by killing seven Palestinian militants, on the flimsy excuse that Hamas was digging a tunnel to abduct Israeli soldiers, and knowing full well that its operation would provoke Hamas into hitting back. “Last week’s ‘ticking tunnel,’ dug ostensibly to facilitate the abduction of Israeli soldiers,” Haaretz reported in mid-Novemberwas not a clear and present danger: Its existence was always known and its use could have been prevented on the Israeli side, or at least the soldiers stationed beside it removed from harm’s way. It is impossible to claim that those who decided to blow up the tunnel were simply being thoughtless. The military establishment was aware of the immediate implications of the measure, as well as of the fact that the policy of “controlled entry” into a narrow area of the Strip leads to the same place: an end to the lull. That is policy—not a tactical decision by a commander on the ground.After Hamas predictably resumed its rocket attacks “[i]n retaliation” (Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center), Israel could embark on yet another murderous invasion in order to foil yet another Palestinian peace offensive. Norman Finkelstein is author of five books, including Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Beyond Chutzpah and The Holocaust Industry, which have been translated into more than 40 foreign editions. He is the son of Holocaust survivors. This article is an edited extract of the views of Finkelstein given at DemocracyNow.org. His website is www.NormanFinkelstein.comNotes.
WASHINGTON — When U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates accused Iran of “subversive activity” in Latin America Tuesday, it raised the question whether he is trying to discourage President Barack Obama from abandoning the hard line policy of coercive diplomacy toward Iran he has favored for nearly three decades.
In making a new accusation against Iran, just as Obama is still considering his diplomatic options on Iran, Gates appears to reprising his role in undermining a plan by President George H. W. Bush in early 1992 to announce goodwill gestures to Iran as reciprocity for Iranian help in freeing U.S. hostages from Lebanon.
Bush ultimately abandoned the plan, which had been three years in the making, after Gates, as CIA director, claimed in Congressional appearances that new intelligence showed Iran was seeking weapons of mass destruction and planning terrorist attacks.
In his Senate armed services committee testimony Tuesday, Gates said Iran was “opening a lot of offices and a lot of fronts behind which they interfere in what is going on.” Gates offered no further explanation for what sounded like a Cold War-era propaganda charge against the Soviet Union.
It was not clear why Gates would make such an accusation on a non-military issue unless he was hoping to throw sand in the diplomatic gears on Iran.
Gates has made no secret of his skepticism about any softening of U.S. policy toward Iran. In response to a question at the National Defense University last September on how he would advise the next president to improve relations with Iran, Gates implicitly rejected what he called “outreach” to Iran as useless.
“[W]e have to look at the history of outreach [to Iran] that was very real, under successive presidents, and did not yield any results,” he said.
In the 1980s, Gates was known at the CIA as a hardliner not only on the Soviet Union but on Iran as well. Former CIA official Graham Fuller recalled in an interview that Gates often repeated in staff meetings, “The only moderate Iranian is one who has run out of bullets.”
Gates’s 1992 sabotage of the Bush plan for reciprocating Iran’s goodwill relied in part on making public charges against Iran which created a more unfavorable political climate in Washington for such a policy.
Bush had referred in his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 1989, to U.S. hostages being held by militant groups in Lebanon and suggested that “assistance” on the issue would be “long remembered,” adding, “Goodwill begets goodwill.” That was a clear signal to Iran of a willingness to respond positively to Iranian assistance in freeing the hostages.
After Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative, was elected Iranian president in July 1989, Bush asked U.N. Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar to convey a message to Rafsanjani: Bush was ready to improve US-Iran relations if Iran used its influence in Lebanon to free the U.S. hostages. Giandomenico Picco, the U.N. negotiator sent to meet with Rafsanjani, recalled in an interview with Inter Press Service that he repeated Bush’s inaugural pledge to the Iranian president.
In 1991, Rafsanjani used both secret intermediaries and shuttle diplomacy by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akhbar Velayati to ensure the release of hostages held by anti-Western groups in Lebanon. Rafsanjani later told Picco that he had to use considerable Iranian political capital in Lebanon to get the hostages released in the expectation that it would bring a U.S. reciprocal gesture, according to the U.N. negotiator.
In a meeting with Picco six weeks after the last U.S. hostage was released in early December 1991, Bush’s National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft said “it might be possible” to take Iran off the terrorist list, reduce economic sanctions and further compensate Iranians for the July 1988 shoot-down of an Iranian civilian Airbus by the U.S. navy, which had killed all 290 Iranian passengers and crew. Scowcroft believed a decision might be made in early March.
Picco took personal notes of the meeting, from which he quoted in the interview.
On Feb. 25, 1992, Scowcroft again met Picco and told him that the administration was considering allowing the sale of some airplanes and parts and easing other economic sanctions, according to Picco’s notes.
But at a meeting in Washington on Apr. 10, Scowcroft informed Picco that there would be “no goodwill to beget goodwill.”
Scowcroft explained the sudden scuttling of the initiative by citing new intelligence on Iran. He referred to an alleged assassination of an Iranian national in Connecticut by Iranian agents and intelligence reports that Iran would use “Hezbollah types” in Europe and elsewhere to respond to Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Abbas Mussawi in southern Lebanon in February.
Scowcroft also cited intelligence that Iran had made a policy decision to follow “a different road” from one that would have allowed improved relations with Washington. He said that intelligence related to Iranian “rearmament” and to its nuclear program, according to Picco’s notes.
But the alleged new intelligence on Iran cited by Scowcroft reflected the personal views of Gates, who had become CIA director for the second time in November 1991.
Gates was assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor from 1989 to 1991, and was well aware of the plan to make a gesture to Iran. His response after returning as CIA director was to launch a series of new accusations about the threat from Iran.
In Congressional testimony in January 1992, Gates said Iran’s rearmament effort included “programs in weapons of mass destruction not only to prepare for the potential reemergence of the Iraqi special weapons threat but to solidify Iran’s preeminent position in the gulf and Southeast [sic] Asia.”
Gates testified in February 1992 that Iran was “building up its special weapons capabilities” and the following month, he told Congress that Iran was seeking nuclear, chemical and biological weapons “capabilities”” and was “probably” going to”promote terrorism.”
But Gates was not accurately reflecting a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran that had been completed on Oct. 17, 1991, just before he became director. New York Times reporter Elaine Sciolino wrote just two weeks after the NIE was completed that it concluded only that “some” Iranian leaders were calling for a nuclear weapons program, and that the nuclear program was still in its infancy.
Sciolino reported that “some administration officials” believed the NIE “underestimates the scope of Iranian intentions,” suggesting that it had not supported Gates’s personal views on the issue.
The current intelligence reports sent to the White House to strengthen the argument against any gesture to Iran also turned out to be misleading. No allegation of an Iranian role in a murder in Connecticut has ever surfaced. And no terrorist attack by “Hezbollah types” in retaliation for the Israeli assassination is known to have occurred.
That was not even the first time Gates had sought to use intelligence to torpedo an effort to achieve an opening with an adversary. During the Ronald Reagan administration, Gates, as CIA deputy director and then director, had discouraged any warming toward the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, asserting that he would not be able to alter Soviet policy toward the United States. Former Secretary of State George Shultz decried Gates’s politicized intelligence to bolster the case against policy change his 1993 memoirs.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy.
The open education movement got a little stronger this week with the launch of Academic Earth. Run by Richard Ludlow, a new social entrepreneur only a couple of years out of Yale, Academic Earth brings video lectures from leading universities into a centralized user-friendly site. What you’ll see here is an impressive early implementation of where Academic Earth plans to go. Take content-rich videos from universities, organize the videos well, make the visual experience attractive, add personal customization functionality and the ability to engage with the content, and you have a very useful service to bring to the world. I first started talking with Richard back in the fall and am really glad to see his site now ready for show time. Check it out in beta and watch it grow.
by Amy Goodman
Karl Rove recently described George W. Bush as a book lover, writing, “There is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one.” There will be many histories written about the Bush administration. What will they use for source material? The Bush White House was sued for losing e-mails, and for skirting laws intended to protect public records. A federal judge ordered White House computers scoured for e-mails just days before Bush left office. Three hundred million e-mails reportedly went to the National Archives, but 23 million e-mails remain “lost.” Vice President Dick Cheney left office in a wheelchair due to a back injury suffered when moving boxes out of his office. He has not only hobbled a nation in his attempt to sequester information—he hobbled himself. Cheney also won court approval to decide which of his records remain private.
Barack Obama was questioned by George Stephanopoulos about the possibility of prosecuting Bush administration officials. Obama said: “We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth. ... I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. ... [W]hat we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.”
Legal writer Karen Greenberg notes in Mother Jones magazine, “The list of potential legal breaches is, of course, enormous; by one count, the administration has broken 269 laws, both domestic and international.”
Torture, wiretapping and “extraordinary rendition”—these are serious crimes that have been alleged. President Obama now has, more than anyone else, the power to investigate.
John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has just subpoenaed Karl Rove while investigating the politicization of the Justice Department and the political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Rove previously invoked executive privilege to avoid congressional subpoenas. Conyers said in a press release: “I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court. ... Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who blocked impeachment hearings, is at least now calling for an investigation. She told Fox News: “I think that we have to learn from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of the—for example, the Justice Department—to go unreviewed. ... I want to see the truth come forth.”
Why not take it a step further?
Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who led the charge in Congress for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, has called for “the establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth-seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.”
Millions have served time in U.S. prisons for crimes that fall far short of those attributed to the Bush administration. Some criminals, it seems, are like banks judged too big to fail: too big to jail, too powerful to prosecute. What if we apply President Obama’s legal theory to the small guys? Why look back? Crimes, large or small, can be forgiven, in the spirit of unity. But few would endorse letting muggers, rapists or armed robbers of convenience stores off scot-free. So why the different treatment for those potentially guilty of torture, widespread illegal spying and leading a nation into wars that have killed untold numbers?
Which brings us back to George Bush and books. Ray Bradbury’s novel “Fahrenheit 451” is one of the titles in the National Endowment for the Arts’ “The Big Read.” This ambitious program is “designed to restore reading to the center of American culture.” Cities, towns, even entire states choose a book and encourage everyone to read it. In “Fahrenheit 451” (the temperature at which paper spontaneously combusts), books are outlawed. Firemen don’t put out fires, they start them, burning down houses that contain books. Bradbury said: “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” The secretive Bush administration is out of power; the transparency-proclaiming Obama administration is in. But transparency is useful only when accompanied by accountability.
Without thorough, aggressive, public investigations of the full spectrum of crimes alleged of the Bush administration, there will be no accountability, and the complete record of this chapter of U.S. history will never be written.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the “Alternative Nobel” prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.
What large, dark hands are those at the window
Grasping in the golden light
Which weaves its way through the evening wind
At my heart's delight?
Ah, only the leaves! But in the west
I see a redness suddenly come
Into the evening's anxious breast--
'Tis the wound of love goes home!
The woodbine creeps abroad
Calling low to her lover:
The sunlit flirt who all the day
Has poised above her lips in play
And stolen kisses, shallow and gay
Of pollen, now has gone away--
She woos the moth with her sweet, low word;
And when above her his moth-wings hover
Then her bright breast she will uncover
And yield her honey-drop to her lover.
Into the yellow, evening glow
Saunters a man from the farm below;
Leans, and looks in at the low-built shed
Where the swallow has hung her marriage bed.
The bird lies warm against the wall.
She glances quick her startled eyes
Towards him, then she turns away
Her small head, making warm display
Of red upon the throat. Her terrors sway
Her out of the nest's warm, busy ball,
Whose plaintive cry is heard as she flies
In one blue stoop from out the sties
Into the twilight's empty hall.
Oh, water-hen, beside the rushes
Ride your quaintly scarlet blushes,
Still your quick tall, lie still as dead,
Till the distance folds over his ominous tread!
The rabbit presses back her ears,
Turns back her liquid, anguished eyes
And crouches low; then with wild spring
Spurts from the terror of his oncoming;
To be choked back, the wire ring
Her frantic effort throttling:
Piteous brown ball of quivering fears!
Ah, soon in his large, hard hands she dies,
And swings all loose from the swing of his walk!
Yet calm and kindly are his eyes
And ready to open in brown surprise
Should I not answer to his talk
Or should he my tears surmise.
I hear his hand on the latch, and rise from my chair
Watching the door open; he flashes bare
His strong teeth in a smile, and flashes his eyes
In a smile like triumph upon me; then careless-wise
He flings the rabbit soft on the table board
And comes towards me: ah! the uplifted sword
Of his hand against my bosom! and oh, the broad
Blade of his glance that asks me to applaud
His coming! With his hand he turns my face to him
And caresses me with his fingers that still smell grim
Of the rabbit's fur! God, I am caught in a snare!
I know not what fine wire is round my throat;
I only know I let him finger there
My pulse of life, and let him nose like a stoat
Who sniffs with joy before he drinks the blood.
And down his mouth comes to my mouth! and down
His bright dark eyes come over me, like a hood
Upon my mind! his lips meet mine, and a flood
Of sweet fire sweeps across me, so I drown
Against him, die, and find death good.
From: http://www.razoo.com/We’ve all learned about the courageous acts of former slaves in American history like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman—but while the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 officially put an end to slavery in the United States, human trafficking is still at critical mass and rising in many parts of the world, with more than 27 million people enslaved today. The modern-day human trafficking trade needs new heroes to speak up for themselves to put an end to the abuse and exploitation. Here are five inspiring former slaves who’ve stepped up to the challenge.
Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded labor at a carpet factory in his native Pakistan at the age of four. For six years, he was forced to work 12-hour days in a dark room, tied in place to the carpet loom he worked on. He was never permitted to go outside, and was fed so little that he looked like a boy half his age.
At ten, he ran away from the carpet factory to hear a speech by the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF), and realized that he was entitled to the same rights as any other citizen. He refused to return to the factory, and began to travel the world, visiting rallies, meetings, and even elementary school classrooms, to tell the story of the abuses he had suffered as a child slave, imploring others to help fight for an end to human trafficking.
Iqbal was honored with many awards for his bravery, but tragically, he was assassinated at the age of 12. His murderer was never found, but many believe that it was a member of the “Carpet Mafia,” attempting to silence his criticism of the industry. Iqbal’s short life served as an inspiration to many—including a young boy named Craig Kielberger, who was inspired to start a nonprofit organization called Free the Children to help free child laborers in honor of the brave young boy who’d lost his life.
Though slavery has been officially outlawed throughout Africa, the practice still persists in certain regions, including Niger, where over 43,000 tribal members are estimated to be enslaved. Hadijatou Mani’s story is typical of her tribe: she was sold into slavery at the age of 12 for $500, and spent over a decade working without pay in her master’s fields. She was raped and beaten daily.
After Mani was finally set free at the age of 24, she decided to take action—not just against her captor, but against the government that had allowed the abusive practice. Mani brought a lawsuit against the Niger government, claiming that they hadn’t enforced their anti-slavery laws to protect her.
In October 2008, after a long trial that featured Mani’s heartbreaking testimonials, Mani won the case—a landmark ruling in the human trafficking world. A regional tribunal forced the government to pay Mani $19,000 in damages, and the decision has put major pressure on Niger’s government to finally put an end to human trafficking within its borders.
For Mani, the case was about more than her own enslavement—it was for all who faced the same abuses. “Nobody deserves to be enslaved,” she said in a statement. “We are all equal and deserve to be treated the same. I hope that everybody in slavery today can find their freedom. No woman should suffer the way I did."
Born in a small town in southern Sudan, Simon Deng was abducted at the age of nine, torn from his family and forced to work for a family in northern Sudan’s Arab militia. Deng was never permitted to attend school, and instead spent his days journeying across the desert with heavy pails of water for the family he worked for—a job normally delegated to donkeys. When he was too exhausted to work, he was beaten into submission.
Deng was much luckier than many of his fellow slaves: after three and a half years in captivity, he managed to escape with one of his fellow tribe members. Deng, now 47, is a United States citizen who works as a lifeguard on Coney Island. But his primary mission is raising awareness of human trafficking in Sudan, both through speeches and as the leader of the Sudan Freedom Walk, a 300-mile trek from the United Nations’ headquarters in New York City to Capitol Hill. The 2006 Freedom Walk served as Deng’s personal protest of the human rights abuses in Sudan, and drew support from members of Congress and the NBA alike.
“Back in Sudan, my people are walking for months to get to a place for safety; they are walking months to go and get to a place where there is shelter; they are walking for days and days to get to places and find there is no food,” he explained. “If they are [walking], then why should I not do it here too?”
Somaly Mam, a Cambodian orphan, never knew her parents. She doesn’t even know how old she is. She endured a miserable childhood of abuse at an orphanage, and was forced into marriage with an older man. Around the age of 16, she was sold to a brothel in Phnom Penh, where she was beaten, raped, and abused by pimps and clients more times than she could count. When she finally escaped the brothel at age 21 after a friend’s murder, Mam vowed to devote the rest of her life to helping other sex slaves go free.
Since that day, Mam has aided the escape and recovery of sex trafficking victims in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam through her nonprofit organizations, the European-based AFESIP (translated as “Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances”) and the Somaly Mam Foundation, based in the U.S. As a speaker and activist, she shares her own story to publicize the important cause of sex trafficking, and works with government officials to lobby for the passage of anti-trafficking laws. She also solicits other former slaves and celebrity spokespeople to talk about sexual slavery. Since escaping the brothel, Mam has helped more than 4,000 former sex slaves to go free in search of a better life.
Given Kachepa, an orphan from Zambia, was a member of a children’s choir in his homeland. When a charity organization asked the child singers to move to Texas and perform there, Kachepa thought his life had turned around. The organization claimed that he would receive an education and a salary, that he would be able to send money to his siblings at home, and even help pay to build a school in Zambia.
But everything he’d been told was a lie: when Kachepa arrived in the United States, he and his fellow singers had no access to money or education. They were forced to perform up to seven concerts a day, and were forced to go without food when they misbehaved. Although the crowds who came to their concerts paid money to see the shows, the boys never saw a penny for their work. In America, supposed land of the free, the children were being kept as slaves.
After Kachepa had been forced to sing in the choir for a year, the INS removed the boys from the organization's care, letting the boys remain in the United States. Kachepa found a loving foster family to live with, and is now attending college. Today, Kachepa is committed to speaking out against slavery, and frequently shares his own story at lectures, rallies, and in the media, in hopes that he might make others aware of the cause.
“In my heart, I resolved to help rid the world of human trafficking,” he told BlackNews.com. “I do not want anyone else to suffer the mental brutality and psychological trauma victims endure.”
Visit Razoo's Slavery Giving Guide to learn about and make free, secure donations to some of the best organizations working to abolish human trafficking.
Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative is a decentralized community of artists who have banded together to both sell their work online in a central location and to collaborate with and support each other and social movements. Our website is not just a place to shop, but also a destination to find out about current events in radical art and culture. Our blog covers political printmaking, socially engaged street art, and culture related to social movements. We believe in the power of personal expression in concert with collective action to transform society.
History
Justseeds was originally started in 1998 by artist Josh MacPhee as a way to distribute his art and the Celebrate People's History poster series. He slowly expanded Justseeds to include the work of like-minded artists. In 2004 it grew too large to hold in MacPhee's apartment and order fulfillment was taken on by Clamor Magazine and their new online sales venture Infoshop Direct. Both Justseeds and Infoshop Direct continued to grow, but in late 2006, serious financial problems at Infoshop Direct caused it to unexpectedly and immediately shut down. Justseeds was left with no functioning website, no order fulfillment service, and over $8,000 in debt; things looked pretty bleak. Amazingly, a grassroots effort of hundreds of people donating relatively small amounts of money helped Justseeds pay off all it's debt, and a couple of successful benefit art shows raised enough money to launch a new and improved website.
During this difficult time, MacPhee reached out to a dozen like-minded artists and previous collaborators as well as the political street art blog Visual Resistance in order to re-create Justseeds as a cooperative effort. Justseeds was transformed into Justseeds/Visual Resistance Artists' Cooperative, an artist/worker owned and run cooperative, that launched in the summer of 2007.
About this blogThe purpose of Revolution by the Book, the AK Press blog, is to inform people about anarchist publishing in general and AK Press in particular.
We will post interviews with AK authors, reviews of and excerpts from AK books, and reports on the events at AK. We will also post news about other anarchist publishers and booksellers, translations, interviews with activists behind other projects, and lists of relevant conferences. We will use video and audio whenever possible.
Initially, we will post new material three times per week, although we hope to publish with greater frequency in the near future. We encourage anyone interested to subscribe to our RSS feed and stop by as often as possible.
We would also like to know what you think about this blog. Posters will be required to register (which you do here) and please bear in mind that we expect participants to be nice to each other (we will delete off-topic comments and ad-hominem attacks).
We would be honored if one day our friends and comrades count this blog among the many others in which important and helpful discussions occur.
Please go here to learn more about AK Press and go here to browse our catalog.
Source: Congress, backed by Obama, gave hundreds of billions of dollars to the financial sector in the bailout.
But it fought every cent of the $14.5 billion given to the auto companies. Why? Because those are amongst the last holdouts of organized labor.
When the applause dies down, the first African-American President of the United States will have to deal with things less cheerful than his Inaugural Ball. The US is losing close to 16,000 jobs a day on average. (That was 14,000 a day just a month ago.)
It lost over 1.1 million jobs in just the two months of November and December. And the December loss in payroll employment (5,24,000) recorded by the Bureau of Labour Statistics, is a provisional figure. It is likely be revised upwards by several thousand - as were the numbers of earlier months.
This means that 2008, with 2.75 million jobs lost, was the worst year for layoffs in the United States since 1945. What does President Obama do? And what will he have to confront in doing it?
He will have to create jobs on a scale unheard of in decades in his nation. Unemployment benefits, giant public works, massive infrastructure spending, a good health system, all these would also help lessen the hardship ahead.
He will need - assuming he wants that - to flip a system where wealth still flows most disproportionately towards the top 1 per cent. In any effort he makes, he will run into an awesome corporate power - already regrouping from Meltdown Phase I.
Parallels with Franklin Delano Roosevelt are tempting - and dicey. True, FDR did not start out as a progressive. Quite the contrary. But circumstances forced him to take a path he might not have dreamed of. In that, there is perhaps hope for Obama.
However, FDR lived and worked in a very different era. In an America where Labour and poor people had a voice. Where unions mattered. Where many diverse political currents had their own following.
Where Socialists, Populists, Communists, Anarchists and others made an impact on political thought and process. In such a world, it was not only easier to do the bold thing - it was perhaps unavoidable.
What kind of diversity is there now? Obama can choose to toe the corporate line broadly. Or he can choose to toe the corporate line narrowly.
Anything else would be radical. It was great to have Pete Seeger at the inaugural concert. Alas, it won't be that best-loved folk singer calling the tune now,
The America Obama inherits is one where most Democrats and Republicans in Congress unite to stifle Labour. Where the simplest of statements during the poll campaign already drew charges of "Socialism" against Obama.
Note that Congress swiftly cleared hundreds of billions of dollars for the banks and insurance giants in the bailout.
But it grudged and fought every cent of the $14.5 billion given to the auto companies. Why? Because those are amongst the last holdouts of organised labour. Workers and unions in those companies had already given up many benefits and made major concessions even before the meltdown began.
But the bailout was most generous with a gang that used even this public money to hand out rewards to corporate executives some of whom ought to have been in prison. The banks laughed all the way to the banks.
No society in the world has been so fully under corporate sway as the United States. (This is the model our own elite so admire and lust for.)
And corporate privileges have grown under every American administration. According to the Government Accountability Office, two-thirds of corporations in America paid no federal income taxes at all between 1998 and 2005.
This includes a fourth of all large US companies. (That is, those with at least $ 250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts). And this, despite all these corporations collectively reporting trillions of dollars in sales.
Indeed, corporate profits were on record highs. By 2006, they made up a historic 14.1 per cent of the nation's total income. Yet, as the New York Times says: "the percentage of these profits paid out in taxes is near its lowest since the 1930s."
(An earlier GAO report showed that 61 per cent of US corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1996 and 2000 - also a period of high growth and huge corporate profits.)
Enough to have one wit declare that America had moved from the historic slogan of "No taxation without representation" to "Representation with no taxation."
There's 'corporate governance' for you - they simply run the country. Administrations exist. Corporations govern. US corporations govern a number of other countries, too. But that's another story.
Yet, even during the race for the presidency, Senator John McCain claimed that US companies faced the highest corporate income taxes in the world, bar Japan. The poor lambs needed relief from their burden.
Oddly, the man who will head the Internal Revenue Service -- America's tax agency -- apologised this week for failing to pay taxes of $ 34,000 himself, dating back to 2001.
Tim Geithner, chosen as Treasury Secretary by Barack Obama, now says of his "errors" that they were "careless" and "avoidable."
The noises from Obama's Dream Team are uninspiring. The Summers and Geithners still think problems can be fixed the old way.
And a lot of others, too, seem to believe it's about things like getting folks to go out and start spending. They won't. Not so easily.
Too many people have taken a beating. Millions have lost their jobs. Large numbers find it harder to afford basic needs.
The credit card catastrophe looms ahead. Many more have seen their pension funds plummet in value. Housing prices are a nightmare.
You could of course improve some things on the spending front if salaries went up nicely. But here's a Congress and a country that has been beating the stuffing out of existing wages.
So how likely is that to happen? If anything, people are now far more likely to save than they have been in decades. Some 25 years ago, Americans saved about ten per cent of their income.
More recently it has been below two per cent - sometimes worse. By 2008, consumer debt had risen to 98 per cent of GDP. People are trying and will try to reduce their spending. They will try to save more.
Meanwhile, as they stand, things are set to get worse, not better. Not only are we seeing just the tip of the Wall Street iceberg, there are more to come. As the economist Nouriel Roubini points out, this crisis is now global.
And it isn't just about a housing bubble in the USA. Bubbles dot the economic landscape like it's bath foam.
In Roubini's words, "a housing bubble, a mortgage bubble, an equity bubble, a bond bubble, a credit bubble, a commodity bubble, a private equity bubble, and a hedge funds bubble -- are all now bursting simultaneously."
The costs and fallout of that will also be global. And there is this problem, too: as long as you try fixing it within a dead framework, things will only get worse.
Typically, governments will come up tomorrow with something that might have worked yesterday. And then too little of it. India, though, is different. Our government seems set to come up tomorrow with things that never worked on any day, anywhere.
Actions whose insanity lies bare in the ruins of the US collapse (like trying to prise open the Insurance sector still further.)
And a now pathetic pretence that neo-liberal policies had nothing to do with the trouble the world is in. There's even at this point a smug complacence, that our genius has somehow insulated us from the fate of most of the Western world.
Meanwhile, the crowds have departed and the dancers have left the floor. The Inaugural is over. And yes, it was a truly historic election and a great victory that the world can justly be happy about.
It's different from hereon, though. With a team full of flacks from neo-liberalism's ancien regime, President Barack Obama will try and present his people with change they can believe in. So far, they're only gripped by change they can't believe they're seeing.
Tuesday 27 January 2009, by: James Lieber, The Village Voice
Financial news streams across NASDAQ's studio on Times Square in New York. (Photo: Q. Sakamaki / Redux)
It wasn't your overdue mortgage.
It's 2009. You're laid off, furloughed, foreclosed on, or you know someone who is. You wonder where you'll fit into the grim new semi-socialistic post-post-industrial economy colloquially known as "this mess."
You're astonished and possibly ashamed that mutant financial instruments dreamed up in your great country have spawned worldwide misery. You can't comprehend, much less trim, the amount of bailout money parachuting into the laps of incompetents, hoarders, and miscreants. It's been a tough century so far: 9/11, Iraq, and now this. At least we have a bright new president. He'll give you a job painting a bridge. You may need it to keep body and soul together.
The basic story line so far is that we are all to blame, including homeowners who bit off more than they could chew, lenders who wrote absurd adjustable-rate mortgages, and greedy investment bankers.
Credit derivatives also figure heavily in the plot. Apologists say that these became so complicated that even Wall Street couldn't understand them and that they created "an unacceptable level of risk." Then these blowhards tell us that the bailout will pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the credit arteries and save the patient, which is the world's financial system. It will take time - maybe a year or so - but if everyone hangs in there, we'll be all right. No structural damage has been done, and all's well that ends well.
Sorry, but that's drivel. In fact, what we are living through is the worst financial scandal in history. It dwarfs 1929, Ponzi's scheme, Teapot Dome, the South Sea Bubble, tulip bulbs, you name it. Bernie Madoff? He's peanuts.
Credit derivatives - those securities that few have ever seen - are one reason why this crisis is so different from 1929.
Derivatives weren't initially evil. They began as insurance policies on large loans. A bank that wished to lend money to a big, but shaky, venture, like what Ford or GM have become, could hedge its bet by buying a credit derivative to cover losses if the debtor defaulted. Derivatives weren't cheap, but in the era of globalization and declining American competitiveness, they were prudent. Interestingly, the company that put the basic hardware and software together for pricing and clearing derivatives was Bloomberg. It was quite expensive for a financial institution - say, a bank - to get a Bloomberg machine and receive the specialized training required to certify analysts who would figure out the terms of the insurance. These Bloomberg terminals, originally called Market Masters, were first installed at Merrill Lynch in the late 1980s.
Subsequently, thousands of units have been placed in trading and financial institutions; they became the cornerstone of Michael Bloomberg's wealth, marrying his skills as a securities trader and an electrical engineer.
It's an open question when or if he or his company knew how they would be misused over time to devastate the world's economy.
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Fast-forward to the early years of the Clinton administration. After an initial surge of regulatory behavior in favor of fair markets, especially in antitrust, that sort of behavior was abandoned, and free markets triumphed. The result was a morass of white-collar sociopathy at Archer Daniels Midland, Enron, and WorldCom, and in a host of markets ranging from oil to vitamins.
This was the beginning of the heyday of hedge funds. Unregulated investment houses were originally based on the questionable but legal practice of short-selling - selling a financial instrument you don't own in hopes of buying it back later at a lower price. That way, you hedge your bets: You cover your investment in a company in case a company's stock price falls.
But hedge funds later diversified their practices beyond that easy definition. These funds acquired a good deal of popular mystique. They made scads of money. Their notoriously high entry fees - up to 5 percent of the investment, plus as much as 36 percent of profits - served as barriers to all but the richest investors, who gave fortunes to the funds to play with. The funds boasted of having genius analysts and fabulous proprietary algorithms. Few could discern what they really did, but the returns, for those who could buy in, often seemed magical.
But it wasn't magic. It amounted to the return of the age-old scam called "bucket shops." Also sometimes known as "boiler rooms," bucket shops emerged after the Civil War. Usually, they were storefronts where people came to bet on stocks without owning them. Unlike their customers, the shops actually owned blocks of stock. If customers were betting that a stock would go up, the shops would sell it and the price would plunge; if bettors were bearish, the shops would buy. In this way, they cleaned out their customers. Frenetic bucket-shop activity caused the Panic of 1907. By 1909, New York had banned bucket shops, and every other state soon followed.
In the mid-'90s, though, the credit-derivatives industry was hitting its stride and argued vehemently for exclusion from all state and federal anti-bucket-shop regulations. On the side of the industry were Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and his deputy, Lawrence Summers. Holding the fort for the regulators was Brooksley Born, who headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The three financial titans ridiculed the virtually unknown and cloutless, but brilliant and prophetic Born, who warned that unrestricted derivatives trading would "threaten our regulated markets, or indeed, our economy, without any federal agency knowing about it." Warren Buffett also weighed in against deregulation.
But Congress loved Greenspan - a/k/a "the Maestro" and "the Oracle" - and Clinton loved Rubin. The sleepy hearings received almost no public attention. The upshot was that Congress removed oversight of derivatives from the CFTC and preempted all state anti-bucket-shop laws. Born resigned shortly afterward.
Soon, something odd started to happen. Legitimate big investors, often with millions of dollars to place, found that they couldn't get into certain hedge funds, despite the fact that they were willing to pay steep fees. In retrospect, it seems as if these funds did not want fussy outsiders looking into what they were doing with derivatives.
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Imagine that a person is terminally ill. He or she would not be able to buy a life insurance policy with a huge death benefit. Obviously, third parties could not purchase policies on the soon-to-be-dead person's life. Yet something like that occurred in the financial world.
This was not caused by imprudent mortgage lending, though that was a piece of the puzzle. Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were put on steroids during the '90s, and some people got into mortgages who shouldn't have. But the vast majority of homeowners paid their mortgages. Only about 5 to 10 percent of these loans failed - not enough to cause systemic financial failure. (The dollar amount of defaulted mortgages in the U.S. is about $1.2 trillion, which seems like a princely sum, but it's not nearly enough to drag down the entire civilized world.)
Much more dangerous was the notorious bundling of mortgages. Investment banks gathered these loans into batches and turned them into securities called collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). Many included high-risk loans. These securities were then rated by Standard & Poor's, Fitch Ratings, or Moody's Investors Services, who were paid at premium rates and gave investment grades. This was like putting lipstick on pigs with the plague. Banks like Wachovia, National City, Washington Mutual, and Lehman Brothers loaded up on this financial trash, which soon proved to be practically worthless. Today, those banks are extinct. But even that was not enough to cause a worldwide financial crisis.
What did cause the crisis was the writing of credit derivatives. In theory, they were insurance policies for investors; in practice, they became a guarantee of global financial collapse.
As insurance, they were poised to pay off fabulously when these weak bundled securities failed. And who was waiting to collect? Well, every gambler is looking for a sure bet. Most never find it. But the hedge funds and their ilk did.
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The mantra of entrepreneurial culture is that high risk goes with high reward. But unregulated and opaque derivatives trading was countercultural in the sense that low or no risk led to quick, astronomically high rewards. By plunking down millions of dollars, a hedge fund could reap billions once these fatally constructed securities plunged. Again, the funds did not need to own the securities; they just needed to pay for the derivatives - the insurance policies for the securities. And they could pay for them again and again. This was known as replicating. It became an addiction.
About $2 trillion in credit derivatives in 1989 jumped to $8 trillion in 1994 and skyrocketed to $100 trillion in 2002. Last year, the Bank for International Settlements, a consortium of the world's central banks based in Basel (the Fed chair, Ben Bernanke, sits on its board), reported the gross value of these commitments at $596 trillion. Some are due, and some will mature soon. Typically, they involve contracts of five years or less.
Credit derivatives are breaking and will continue to break the world's financial system and cause an unending crisis of liquidity and gummed-up credit. Warren Buffett branded derivatives the "financial weapons of mass destruction." Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who organized the bailout of New York a generation ago, called them "financial hydrogen bombs."
Both are right. At almost $600 trillion, over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives dwarf the value of publicly traded equities on world exchanges, which totaled $62.5 trillion in the fall of 2007 and fell to $36.6 trillion a year later.
The nice thing about public markets is that they act as canaries that give warnings as they did in 1929, 1987 (the program trading debacle), and 2001 (the dot-com bubble), so we can scramble out with our economic lives. But completely private and unregulated, the OTC derivatives trade is justly known as the "dark market."
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The heart of darkness was the AIG Financial Products (AIGFP) office in London, where a large proportion of the derivatives were written. AIG had placed this unit outside American borders, which meant that it would not have to abide by American insurance reserve requirements. In other words, the derivatives clerks in London could sell as many products as they could write - even if it would bankrupt the company.
The president of AIGFP, a tyrannical super-salesman named Joseph Cassano, certainly had the experience. In the 1980s, he was an executive at Drexel Burnham Lambert, the now-defunct brokerage that became the pivot of the junk-bond scandal that led to the jailing of Michael Milken, David Levine, and Ivan Boesky.
During the peak years of derivatives trading, the 400 or so employees of the London unit reportedly averaged earnings in excess of a million dollars a year. They sold "protection" - this Runyonesque term was favored - worth more than three times the value of parent company AIG. How could they have not known that they were putting at risk the largest insurer in the world and all the businesses and individuals that it covered?
This scheme that smacks of securities fraud facilitated the dreams of buyers called "counterparties" willing to ante up. Hedge fund offices sprouted in Kensington and Mayfair like mushrooms after a summer shower. Revenue from premiums for derivatives at AIGFP rose from $737 million in 1999 to $3.26 billion in 2005. Cassano reportedly hectored ever-willing counterparties to "play the power game" - in other words, gobble up all the credit derivatives backing CDOs that they could grab. As the bundled adjustable-rate mortgages ballooned, stretched home buyers defaulted, and the exciting power game became about as risky as blasting sitting ducks with a Glock.
People still seem surprised to read that hedge principals have raked in billions of dollars in a single year. They shouldn't be. These subprime-time players knew how to score. The scam bled AIG white. In mid-September, when it was on the ropes, AIG received an astonishing $85 billion emergency line of credit from the Fed. Soon, that was supplemented by another $67 billion. Much of that money, to use the government's euphemism, has already been "drawn down." Shamefully, neither Washington nor AIG will explain where the billions went. But the answer is increasingly clear: It went to counterparties who bought derivatives from Cassano's shop in London.
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Imagine if a ring of cashiers at a local bank made thousands of bad loans, aware that they could break the bank. They would be prosecuted for fraud and racketeering under the anti-gangster RICO Act. If their counterparties - the debtors - were in on the scam and understood that they didn't have to pay off the loans, they could be charged, too. In fact, this scenario played out at subprime-pushing outlets of a host of banks, including Washington Mutual (acquired last year by JP Morgan Chase, which itself received a $25 billion bailout); IndyMac (which was seized by FDIC regulators); and Lehman Brothers (which went belly-up). About 150 prosecutions of this type of fraud are going forward.
The top of the swamp's food chain, where the muck was derivatives rather than mortgages, must also be scrutinized. Apparently, that is the case. AIGFP's Cassano has hired top white-collar litigator and former prosecutor F. Joseph Warin (profiled in the 2004 Washingtonian piece, "Who to Call When You're Under Investigation!"). Neither Cassano nor his attorney responded to interview requests.
AIG's lavishly compensated counterparties were willing participants and likewise could be considered for prosecution, depending on what they knew. Who were they?
At a 2007 conference, Cassano defined them as a "global swath" that included "banks and investment banks, pension funds, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, hedge funds, money managers, high-net-worth individuals, municipalities, sovereigns, and supranationals." Abetting the scheme, ratings agencies like Standard & Poor's gave high grades to the shaky mortgage-backed securities bundled by investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers.
After the relative worthlessness of these CDOs became clear, the raters rushed to downgrade them to junk status. This occurred suddenly with more than 4,000 CDOs in the first quarter of 2008 - the financial community now regards them as "toxic waste." Of course, the sudden massive downgrading raises the question: Why had CDOs been artificially elevated in the first place, leading banks to buy them and giving them protective coloring just because the derivatives writers "insured" them?
After the raters got real (i.e., got scared), the gig was up. Hedge funds fled in droves from their luxe digs in London. The industry remains murky, but some observers feel that more than half of all hedges will fold this year. Not necessarily a good sign, it seems to show that the funds were one-trick ponies living mainly off the derivatives play.
We know that AIG was not the only firm that sold derivatives: Lehman and Bear Stearns both dealt them and died. About 20 years ago, JP Morgan, the now-defunct investment bank, had brought the idea to AIGFP in London, which ran with it. Seeing the Cassano group's success, Morgan jumped in with both feet. Specializing in credit default swaps - a type of derivative triggered to pay off by negative events in the lives of loans, like defaults, foreclosures, and restructurings - Morgan had a distinctive marketing spin. Its "quants" were classy young dealers who could really do the math, which of course gave them credibility with those who couldn't. They abjured street slang like "protection." They pitched their sophisticated swaps as "technologies." The market adored them. They, in turn, oversold the product, made huge commissions, and wounded Morgan, which had to sell itself to Chase, becoming JP Morgan Chase - now the country's biggest bank.
Today, the real question is whether the Morgan quants knew the swaps didn't work and actually were grenades with pulled pins. Like Joseph Cassano, such people should consult attorneys.
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Secrecy shrouds the bailout. The 21 banks that each received more than $1 billion from the Fed won't disclose how, or even if, they're lending it, which hardly quells fears of hoarding. The Treasury says it can't force disclosure because it took only preferred (non-voting) stock in exchange for the money.
If anything, the Fed had been less candid. It stonewalls requests to reveal the winners (mainly banks and corporations) of $1.5 trillion in loans, as well as the securities it received as collateral. A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit to obtain this information by Bloomberg News has been rebuffed by the Fed, which insists that a loophole in FOIA exempts it. Bloomberg will probably lose the case, but at least it's trying to probe the black hole of bailout money. Of course, Barack Obama could tell the Fed to release the information, plus generally open the bailout to public eyes. That would be change that we could believe in.
As for Bloomberg, its business side, Bloomberg L.P., has been less than forthcoming. Requests to interview someone from the company - and Michael Bloomberg, who retains a controlling interest - about the derivatives trade went unanswered.
In his economic address at Cooper Union last spring, Obama argued for new regulations, which he called "the rules of the road," and for a $30 billion stimulus package, that now seems quaint. In the OTC swaps trade, the Bloomberg L.P.'s computer terminals are the road, bridges, and tunnels for "real-time" transactions. The L.P.'s promotional materials declare: "You're either in front of a Bloomberg or behind it." In terms of electronic trading of certain securities, including credit default swaps: "Access to a dealer's inventory is based upon client relationships with Bloomberg as the only conduit." In short, the L.P. looks like a dominant player - possibly, a monopoly. If it has a true competitor, I can't find it. But then, this is a very dark market.
Did Bloomberg L.P. do anything illegal? Absolutely not. We prosecute hit-and-run drivers, not roads. But there are many questions - about the size of the derivatives market, the names of the counterparties, the amount of replication of derivatives, the role of securities ratings in Bloomberg calculations (in other words, could puffing up be detected and potentially stop a swap?), and how the OTC industry should be reported and regulated in order to prevent future catastrophes. Bloomberg is a privately held company - to the chagrin of would-be investors - and quite private about its business, so this information probably won't surface without subpoenas.
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So what do we do now? In 2000, the 106th Congress as its final effort passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), and, disgracefully, President Clinton signed it. It opened up the bucket-shop loophole that capsized the world's economic system. With the stroke of a presidential pen, a century of valuable protection was lost.
Even with that, the dangerous swaps still almost found themselves subjected to state oversight. In 2000, AIG asked the New York State Insurance Department to decide if it wanted to regulate them, but the department's superintendent, Neil Levin, said no. The question was not posed by AIGFP, but by the company's main office through its general counsel, a reminder that not long ago, AIG was a blue chip with a triple-A rating that touted its integrity.
We can't know why Levin rejected the chance to regulate the tricky trade. He died in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11. A Pataki-appointed former Goldman Sachs vice president, Levin may have shared other Wall Streeters' love of derivatives as the last big-money sure thing as the IPO craze wound down. Or maybe he saw swaps as gambling rather than insurance, hence beyond his jurisdiction. Regardless, current Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo told me, "I don't agree with his answer." Maybe the economic crisis could have been averted if Levin had answered otherwise. "How close we came ..." Dinallo mused.
Deeply occupied with keeping AIG, the parent company, afloat since the bailout, Dinallo saw the carnage that the swaps caused and, with the support of Governor Paterson, pushed anew for regulatory oversight, a position also adopted by the President's Working Group (PWG), which includes the Treasury, Fed, SEC, and CFTC.
But regulation isn't enough to stop a phenomenon called "de-supervision" that occurs when officials can't, or won't, oversee a market. For instance, the Fed under Greenspan had authority to regulate mortgage bankers and brokers, the industry's cowboys who kicked off this fiasco. Because Greenspan's libertarian sensibilities prevented him from invoking the Fed's control, the mortgage market careened corruptly until the wheels came off. Notoriously lax and understaffed, the SEC did nothing to limit investment banks that bundled, pitched, and puffed non-prime mortgages as the raters cheered. It's doubtful that any agency can be relied on to control lucrative default swaps, which should be made illegal again. The bucket-shop loophole must be closed. The evil genie should go back in the bottle.
Will Obama re-criminalize these financial weapons by pushing for repeal of the CFMA? This should be a no-brainer for Obama, who, before becoming a community organizer in Chicago, worked on Wall Street, studied derivatives, and by now undoubtedly knows their destructive power.
What about the $600 trillion in credit derivatives that are still out there, sucking vital liquidity and credit out of the system? It's the tyrannosaurus in the mall, the one that made Henry Paulson, the former Treasury Secretary who looks like Daddy Warbucks, get down on his knees and beg Nancy Pelosi for a bailout.
Even with the bailout, no one can get their arms around this monster. Obviously, the $600 trillion includes not only many unseemly replicated death bets, but also some benign derivatives that creditors bought to hedge risky loans. Instead of sorting them out, the Bush administration tried to protect them all, while keeping the counterparties happy and anonymous.
Paulson has taken flack for spending little to bring mortgages in line with falling home values. Sheila Bair, the FDIC chief who often scrapped with Paulson, said this would cost a measly $25 billion and that without it, 10 million Americans could lose their homes over the next five years. Paulson thought it would take three times as much and balked. Congress is bristling because the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (EESA) could provide mortgage relief - and some derivatives won't detonate if homeowners don't default. Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, could back such relief at his hearings.
The other key appointment is attorney general. A century ago, when powerful trusts distorted the market system, we had AGs who relentlessly tracked and busted them. Today's crisis is missing, so far, an advocate as dynamic and energetic as the mortgage bankers, brokers, bundlers, raters, and quants who, in a few short years, littered the world with rotten loans, diseased CDOs, and lethal derivatives. During the Bush years, white-collar law enforcement actually dropped as FBI agents were transferred to antiterrorism. Even so, according to William Black, an effective federal litigator and regulator during the 1980s savings-and-loan scandal, by 2004, the FBI perceived an epidemic of fraud. Now a professor of law and finance at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, Black has testified to Congress about the current crisis and paints it as "control fraud" at every level. Such fraud flows from the top tiers of corporations - typically CEOs and CFOs, who control perverse compensation systems that reward cheating and volume rather than quality, and circumvent standard due diligence such as underwriting and accounting. For instance, AIGFP's Cassano reportedly rebuffed AIG's internal auditor.
The environment from the top of the chain - derivatives gang leaders - to the bottom of the chain - subprime, no-doc loan officers - became "criminogenic," Black says. The only real response? Aggressive prosecution of "elites" at all stages in this twisted mess. Black says sentences should not be the light, six-month slaps that white-collar criminals usually get, or the Madoff-style penthouse arrest.
As staggering as the Madoff meltdown was, it had a refreshing side - the funds were frozen. In the bailout, on the other hand, the government often seems to be completing the scam by quietly passing the proceeds to counterparties.
The advantage of treating these players like racketeers under federal law is that their ill-gotten gains could be forfeited. The government could recoup these odious gambling debts instead of simply paying them off. In finance, the bottom line is the bottom line. The bottom line in this scandal is that fantastically wealthy entities positioned themselves to make unfathomable fortunes by betting that average Americans - Joe Six-Packs and hockey moms - would fail.
Black suggests that derivatives should be "unwound" and that the payouts cease: "Close out the positions - most of them have no social utility." And where there has been fraud, he adds, "clawback makes perfect sense." That would include taking back the ludicrously large bonuses and other forms of compensation given to CEOs at bailed-out companies.
No one knows how much could be clawed back from the soiled derivatives reap. Clearly, it's not $600 trillion. William Bergman, formerly a market analyst at the Chicago Fed in "netting" - what's left after financial institutions pay each other off for ongoing deals and debts - makes a "guess" that perhaps only 5 percent could be recouped, which he concedes is unfortunately low. Still, that's $30 trillion, a huge number, more than 10 times what the Fed can deploy and over twice the U.S. gross domestic product. Such a sum, if recovered through the criminal justice process, could ease the liquidity crisis and actually get the credit arteries flowing. Not everyone would like it. What's left of Wall Street and hedge funds want their derivatives gains; so do foreign banks.
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A tangle of secrecy, conflicts of interest, and favoritism plagues the process of recovery.
Lehman drowned, but Goldman Sachs, where Paulson was formerly CEO, was saved. The day before AIG reaped its initial $85 billion bonanza, Paulson met with his successor, Lloyd Blankfein, who reportedly argued that Goldman would lose $20 billion and fail unless AIG was rescued. AIG got the money.
Had Goldman bought from AIG credit derivatives that it needed to redeem? Like most other huge financial traders, Goldman has a secretive hedge fund, Global Alpha, that refuses to reveal its transactions. Regardless, Paulson's meeting with Blankfein was a low point. If Dick Cheney had met with his successor at Halliburton and, the very next day, written a check for billions that guaranteed its survival, the press would have screamed for his head.
The second most shifty bailout went to Citigroup, a money sewer that won last year's layoff super bowl with 73,000. Instead of being parceled to efficient operators, Citi received a $45 billion bailout and $300 billion loan package, at least in part because of Robert Rubin's juice. While Treasury Secretary under Clinton, Rubin led us into the derivatives maelstrom, deported jobs with NAFTA, and championed bank deregulation so that companies like Citi could mimic Wall Street speculators. After he joined Citi's leadership in 1999, the bank went long on mortgages and other risks du jour, enmeshed itself in Enron's web, tanked in value, and suffered haphazard management, while Rubin made more than $100 million.
Rubin remained a director and "senior counselor" at Citi until January 9, 2009, and is an economic adviser to Obama. In truth, he probably shouldn't be a senior counselor anywhere except possibly at Camp Granada. Like Greenspan, he should retire before he breaks something again, and we have to pay for it. (Incidentally, the British bailout, which is more open than ours and mandates mortgage relief, makes corporate welfare contingent on the removal of bad management.)
The third strangest rescue involved the Fed's announcement just before Christmas that hedge funds for the first time could borrow from it. Apparently, the new $200 billion credit line relates to recently revealed securitized debts including bundled credit card bills, student loans, and auto loans. Obviously, it's worrisome that the crisis may be morphing beyond its real estate roots.
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To say the bailout hasn't worked so far is putting it mildly. Since the crisis broke, Washington's reaction has been chaotic, lenient to favorites, secretive, and staggeringly expensive. An estimated $7.36 trillion, more than double the total American outlay for World War II (even correcting for inflation), has been thrown at the problem, according to press reports. Along the way, banking, insurance, and car companies have been nationalized, and no one has been brought to justice.
Combined unemployment and underemployment (those who have stopped looking, and part-timers) runs at nearly 20 percent, the highest since 1945. Housing prices continue to hemorrhage - last fall's 18 percent drop could double. Holiday shopping fizzled: 160,000 stores closed last year, and 200,000 more are expected to shutter in '09. Some forecasts place eventual retail darkness at 25 percent. In 2008, the Dow dropped further - 34 percent - than at any time since 1931. There is no sound sector in the economy; the only members of the 30 Dow Jones Industrials posting gains last year were Wal-Mart and McDonald's.
Does Obama's choice for attorney general, Eric Holder, have the tenacity and will to tackle the widest fraud in American history? Parts of his background don't necessarily augur well: He worked on a pardon for Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire tax evader once on the FBI's Most Wanted List whom Clinton cleared. After leaving the Clinton era's Justice Department, Holder went to work for Covington & Burling, a D.C. firm that represents corporate heavies including Big Tobacco. He defended Chiquita Brands in a notorious case, in which it paid a $25 million fine for using terrorists in Columbia as security. Holder fits well within the gaggle of elite D.C. lawyers who move back and forth between government and defending corporate criminals. He doesn't exactly have the sort of résumé that startles robber barons.
Can Holder design and orchestrate a muscular legal response, including prosecution and stern punishment of top executives, plus aggressive clawbacks of money? There seems little question that he has the skill, so the decision on how aggressive the Justice Department will be is up to Obama.
Holder could ask for and get well-organized FBI white-collar teams. The personnel hole caused by shifts to antiterrorism would have to be more than filled to their pre-9/ll staffing if the incoming administration decides to break this criminogenic cycle rather than merely address it symbolically.
Black contends that aggressive prosecution would be good for the economy because it may help prevent cheating and fraud that inevitably cause bubbles and destroy wealth. The Sarbanes-Oxley law passed in Enron's wake, for instance, is supposed to make corporations now keep the kinds of documents necessary to assess criminality. Whether the CEOs, CFOs, and others who controlled the current frauds will do so is another matter.
"Don't count on them keeping records for long," Black warns. "It's time to get out the subpoenas."
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James Lieber is a lawyer whose books on business and politics include "Friendly Takeover" (Penguin) and "Rats in the Grain" (Basic Books). This is his fifth article for The Voice.
And the anti-nuclear activist William Thomas has died in Washington, D.C. Thomas is best known for setting up a permanent peace vigil outside the White House. For twenty-seven years, Thomas held daily vigils against US militarism and nuclear weapons in Lafayette Park across from the White House.
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William Thomas, dedicated peace and anti-nuke activist, passed away Friday morning at home. He was co-pilot of the 24-hour seven-day a week vigil at the White House for 27 years. He is survived by his wife Ellen and vigil co-pilot Concepcion. I remember Thomas from my high school years years early in on his vigil. Millions of people from hundred of countries visited Thomas as he kept vigiling, warning them of the dangers of nuclear holocaust and the ravages of war. He will be greatly missed by the peace and justice movement.
An excerpt from an article in The Washington Post by David Montgomery, published a couple years ago:
WASHINGTON — William Thomas first introduced fanny to brick on the White House sidewalk on June 3, 1981. His sign said, "Wanted: Wisdom and Honesty." He's been there ever since, still squatting, still wanting.
A few months after he began, he was joined by Concepcion Picciotto, who has remained similarly steadfast.
War is not over, but the peace protesters have won. Sort of. Lafayette Square, the oasis of green across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, is theirs.
Get rid of the shelter made of a battered patio umbrella, a weathered plastic tarp and those faded anti-nuke signs erected by Thomas and Picciotto?
It wouldn't be the same park.
Anarchism, as its derivation indicates, is the theory which is opposed to every kind of forcible government. It is opposed to the State as the embodiment of the force employed in the government of the community. Such government as Anarchism can tolerate must be free government, not merely in the sense that it is that of a majority, but in the sense that it is that assented to by all. Anarchists object to such institutions as the police and the criminal law, by means of which the will of one part of the community is forced upon another part. In their view, the democratic form of government is not very enormously preferable to other forms so long as minorities are compelled by force or its potentiality to submit to the will of majorities. Liberty is the supreme good in the Anarchist creed, and liberty is sought by the direct road of abolishing all forcible control over the individual by the community.
In wee morning hours on Friday, January 23, a U.S. spy plane killed at least 15 in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. It was Barack Obama’s first blood and the U.S.’s first violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty under the new administration. The attack was an early sign that the newly minted president may not be overhauling the War on Terror this week, or even next.
As the U.S. government fired upon alleged terrorists in the rugged outback of Pakistan, Obama was back in Washington appointing Richard Holbrooke as a special U.S. representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Unfortunately, like the remote control bombing that claimed human life, Obama’s vision for the region, in the embodiment of Holbrooke, may not be a drastic departure from the failed Bush doctrine. Or a departure at all.
"[Holbrooke] is one of the most talented diplomats of his generation," Obama said during a January 22 press conference at the State Department. In his speech Obama declared that both Afghanistan and Pakistan will be the "central front" in the War on Terror. "There, as in the Middle East, we must understand that we cannot deal with our problems in isolation," he said.
Despite Obama’s insistence that Holbrooke is qualified to leave the U.S.’s new efforts in the War on Terror, history seems to disagree.
In 1975, during Gerald Ford's administration, Indonesia invaded East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 indigenous Timorese. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor set the stage for a long and bloody occupation that recently ended after an international peacekeeping force was introduced in 1999.
Transcripts of meetings among Indonesian dictator Mohamed Suharto, Gerald Ford, and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have shown conclusively that Kissinger and Ford authorized and encouraged Suhatro's murderous actions. "We will understand and will not press you on the issue [of East Timor]," said President Ford in a meeting with Suharto and Kissinger in early December 1975, days before Suharto's bloodbath. "We understand the problem and the intentions you have," he added.
Henry Kissinger also stressed at the meeting that "the use of US-made arms could create problems," but then added, "It depends on how we construe it; whether it is in self-defense or is a foreign operation." Thus, Kissinger's concern was not about whether US arms would be used offensively, but whether the act could be interpreted as illegal. Kissinger went on: "It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly."
After Gerald Ford's loss and Jimmy Carter's ascendance into the White House in 1976, Indonesia requested additional arms to continue its brutal occupation, even though there was a supposed ban on arms trades to Suharto's government. It was Carter's appointee to the Department of State's Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Richard Holbrooke, who authorized additional arms shipments to Indonesia during this supposed blockade. Many scholars have noted that this was the period when the Indonesian suppression of the Timorese reached genocidal levels.
During his testimony before Congress in February 1978, Professor Benedict Anderson cited a report that proved there was never an US arms ban, and that during the period of the alleged ban the US initiated new offers of military weaponry to the Indonesians:
"If we are curious as to why the Indonesians never felt the force of the U.S. government's 'anguish,' the answer is quite simple. In flat contradiction to express statements by General Fish, Mr. Oakley and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Richard Holbrooke, at least four separate offers of military equipment were made to the Indonesian government during the January–June 1976 'administrative suspension.' This equipment consisted mainly of supplies and parts for OV-10 Broncos, Vietnam War era planes designed for counterinsurgency operations against adversaries without effective anti-aircraft weapons, and wholly useless for defending Indonesia from a foreign enemy. The policy of supplying the Indonesian regime with Broncos, as well as other counterinsurgency-related equipment has continued without substantial change from the Ford through the present Carter administrations."
If we track Holbrooke's recent statements, the disturbing symbiosis between him and figures like überhawk Paul Wolfowitz is startling.
"In an unguarded moment just before the 2000 election, Richard Holbrooke opened a foreign policy speech with a fawning tribute to his host, Paul Wolfowitz, who was then the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington," reported First of the Month following the terrorist attacks in 2001.
The article continued: "Holbrooke, a senior adviser to Al Gore, was acutely aware that either he or Wolfowitz would be playing important roles in the next administration. Looking perhaps to assure the world of the continuity of US foreign policy, he told his audience that Wolfowitz's 'recent activities illustrate something that's very important about American foreign policy in an election year, and that is the degree to which there are still common themes between the parties.' The example he chose to illustrate his point was East Timor, which was invaded and occupied in 1975 by Indonesia with US weapons – a security policy backed and partly shaped by Holbrooke and Wolfowitz. 'Paul and I,' he said, 'have been in frequent touch to make sure that we keep [East Timor] out of the presidential campaign, where it would do no good to American or Indonesian interests."
In sum, Holbrooke has worked vigorously to keep his bloody campaign silent. The results of which appear to have paid off. In chilling words, Holbrooke describes the motivations behind support of Indonesia's genocidal actions:
"The situation in East Timor is one of the number of very important concerns of the United States in Indonesia. Indonesia, with a population of 150 million people, is the fifth largest nation in the world, is a moderate member of the Non-Aligned Movement, is an important oil producer – which plays a moderate role within OPEC – and occupies a strategic position astride the sea lanes between the Pacific and Indian Oceans ... We highly value our cooperative relationship with Indonesia."
If his bloody history in East Timor is anything, it's a sign that Richard Holbrooke is not qualified to lead the US's policies in a new direction in today's Middle East -- a region that has been brutalized by the illegitimate War on Terror.
[This article is very in line with David Korten who was on Democracy Now yesterday]By WINSLOW T. WHEELERAs the economic news darkens in the United States, the ideas for stimulating new jobs get worse. A sure-fire way to advance deeper into recession is now being spread around: spend even more on the Department of Defense (DoD). Doing that will not generate new jobs effectively and it will perpetuate serious problems in the Pentagon. The newly inaugurated President Barack Obama would be well advised to go in precisely the opposite direction.Harvard economist Professor Martin Feldstein has advocated in the Wall Street Journal (‘Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus’, 24 December 2008) the addition of USD30 billion or so to the Pentagon’s budget for the purpose of generating 300,000 new jobs. It is my assertion, however, that pushing the DoD as a jobs engine is a mistake.With its huge overhead costs, glacial payout rates and ultra-high costs of materials, I believe the Pentagon can generate jobs by spending but neither as many nor as soon as is suggested.A classic foible is Feldstein’s recommendation to surge the economy with “additional funding [that] would allow the [US] Air Force [USAF] to increase the production of fighter planes”. The USAF has two fighter aircraft in production: the F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). The F-22 has reached the end of approved production (with 183 units) but the air force would love at least 60 more. However, even if Congress appropriated today the USD11 billion needed for them, the work would not start until 2010: too late for the stimulus everyone agrees is needed now.Feldstein thinks it can be otherwise. He is probably thinking of the Second World War model where production lines cranked out thousands of aircraft each month: as fast as the government could stuff money, materials and workers into the assembly line.The problem is that there is no such assembly line for the F-22. Although they are fabricated in a large facility where aircraft production hummed in bygone eras, F-22s are today hand-built, pre-Henry Ford style. Go to Lockheed Martin’s plant; you will find no detectable movement of aircraft out the door. Instead you will see virtually stationary aircraft and workers applying parts in a manner more evocative of hand-crafting. This ‘production rate’ generates one F-22 every 18 days or so.The current rate for the F-35, now at the start of production, is even slower, although the USAF would like to get its rate up to a whopping 10 to 15 aircraft per month.Why do we not just speed things up?We can’t. The specialised materials that the F-22 requires must be purchased a year or two ahead of time and, with advance contracting and all the other regulations that exist today, the Pentagon’s bureaucracy is functionally incapable of speeding production up anytime soon, if ever.In fact, adding more F-22 production money will not increase the production rate or the total number of jobs involved. It will simply extend the current F-22 production rate of 20 aircraft per year into the future. Existing jobs will be saved but no new jobs will be created.Note also that the USD11 billion that 60 more F-22s would gobble up is more than a third of the USD30 billion that Feldstein wants to give to the DoD. How he would create 300,000 new jobs with the rest of the money is a mystery. More F-22 spending would be a money surge for Lockheed Martin but not a jobs engine for the nation.Even if one could speed up production of the other fighter, the JSF, it would be stupid to do so. The F-35 is just beginning the testing phase and it has been having some major problems, requiring design changes. That discovery process is far from over. The aircraft should be put into full production after, not before, all the needed modifications are identified.Over-anxious to push things along much too quickly to permit a ‘fly before you buy’ strategy, the USAF has already scheduled the production of around 500 F-35s before testing is complete. Going even more quickly would make a bad acquisition plan even worse.Even other economists are sceptical about Feldstein’s numbers. An October 2007 paper from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst found that each USD1 billion spent on defence would generate 8,555 jobs, not the 10,000 calculated by Feldstein. Given the problems with the F-22 just discussed and the lack of jobs I believe it will generate, even this lower estimate sounds extremely optimistic.More importantly, the same amount of money spent elsewhere would generate more jobs, often better ones, and it would do it faster. For example, according to the above study, USD1 billion in spending for mass transit would generate 19,795 jobs (131 per cent more than for the DoD) and in education would generate 17,687 jobs (107 per cent more) – and the hiring could start in early 2009.In fact, if employment is the aim, it makes more sense to cut defence spending and use the money in programmes that do it better. As for the defence budget, less money offers the opportunity for reform – just what the doctor ordered. Despite high levels of spending, the combat formations of the services are smaller than at any point since 1946. Major equipment is, on average, older, and, according to key measurables, our forces are less ready to fight.The F-22 and F-35 programmes typify the broken system that fostered this decline. Real reform would do much more for national security than giving the Pentagon more money to spend poorly.Winslow T. Wheeler spent 31 years working on Capitol Hill with senators from both political parties and the Government Accountability Office, specializing in national security affairs. Currently, he directs the Straus Military Reform Project of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. He is author of The Wastrels of Defense and the editor of a new anthology: ‘America’s Defense Meltdown: Pentagon Reform for President Obama and the New Congress’.
Protesters dump copies of the
Washington Post at the steps of
the newspaper's office building,
Washington, D.C., Jan. 16.
"I would give most of the American media an F minus", says Brian Becker, the National Coordinator of ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism). He spoke to me on Jan. 16th in Washington, D.C. at a protest ANSWER organized outside The Washington Post offices.
ANSWER (which tends not to do street theater but to hold fairly straight-forward marches and rallies) decided to "send a dramatic message that this is not acceptable" and so members brought a wheelbarrow full of copies of The Washington Post and dumped them all over the institution’s front steps. Click here. About 60 activists stood on the sidewalk outside the Post offices for a couple of hours at the end of the coldest day Washington had experienced in years, and accused the Post of extreme bias and racism against Arabs.
Though Becker criticized the corporate media as a whole for its coverage of Gaza and Israel-Palestine issues, the Jan. 16th protest sponsored by ANSWER and MAS (the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation) demonstrated at the Post in particular because, at the height of Israel’s assault on Gaza, four major protests against Israel’s actions took place in Washington and the Post did not cover any of them.
"Not one word has been written about any of the protests", Becker complained. While the Post is usually seen as one of the four most prestigious and influential newspapers in the U.S. and is expected to cover important national issues and debates on foreign policy, their news blackout on the protests also had a local component: "The Post prides itself on having very strong local coverage," Becker claimed. "The Arab-American community, which is an important part of Washington, D.C., came out in tens of thousands and were totally ignored by the Post."
The snub that instigated the "Dump the Post" protest was The Washington Post’s refusal to report on the large D.C. protest against the carnage in Gaza on Jan. 10th. That march drew about 30,000, one of the protesters, Renee, told me; and was part of a National Day of Emergency Mass Action coordinated by ANSWER and its coalition partners. Click here.
On that day, hundreds of thousands of Americans came out for peace in cities across the country I saw at least 10,000 participants of various races and walks of life rallying in Los Angeles, for instance, yet the Washington Post, which Becker alleges sent a photographer and journalist and interviewed him at the D.C. rally, pulled the article that their correspondent wrote even though the reporter had called Becker for a final fact-check.
"It’s as if the Washington Post can’t see Arab people, either the suffering people in Gaza or the Arab-Americans right here in D.C.," said Becker. "We think that is an act of racism and bigotry, the same way the African-American community, decades ago, was treated as an invisible force by the Washington Post."
"There’s a consensus within the media and the political establishment that Israel must be supported and defended always. Corporate-dominated media has been awful because they are just" repeating the U.S. government position, which Becker describes as: "Every time the Israelis attack Gaza it’s considered self-defense; every time the Palestinians shoot back it’s considered terrorism." Becker pointed out that at the same time, the corporate media "failed to cover" Israel’s 18-month blockade of the Gaza Strip, a blockade which "by all international standards is an act of war."
"That’s not news coverage, that’s propaganda."
Similar protests were organized against bias in media by other ANSWER chapters: in
California, the San Francisco Chronicle was picketed on Jan. 15th for grossly underestimating the number of people who turned out for that city’s Jan. 10th protest, ANSWER-SF issued a statement about the San Francisco Chronicle’s performance:
"On the day after 10,000 people marched and rallied in San Francisco on January 10 to demand ‘Let Gaza Live,’ the San Francisco Chronicle reported the demonstration had been just ‘more than 1,000 people.’…Immediately after the march…the Chronicle’s website featured the march as its top story under the headline, ‘Thousands Protest in San Francisco.’ By the time the Sunday paper was printed, however, the number of participants had been reduced to ‘more than 1,000.’"
ANSWER-SF also claimed the paper was sent "irrefutable video and photo evidence that they had massively undercounted the number of people" but the Chronicle did not correct their estimate. ANSWER-SF also noted that the Chronicle had promoted in advance the pro-Israeli counter-protest.
In Chicago, ANSWER protested the local ABC News station for what they saw as biased coverage of the Chicago protests. Becker criticized the Chicago Tribune’s reporting as well.
Becker believes that the media’s censorship and under-representation of the protests on behalf of Gaza is actually worse than the similar way the media downplayed the protests against the Iraq War. At least there was "some difference of opinion" about the Iraq War, Becker recalls, but on the issue of Israel’s right to do whatever it wants, "U.S. media is united."
Though Israel-defenders like the Anti-Defamation League criticize ANSWER’s protests about Gaza as if the protests were merely about Israel and therefore anti-Jewish, Becker, like ANSWER members and other activists I’ve spoken with at L.A. protests, holds the U.S. to be utterly complicit.
"Israel functions as an extension of American power," Becker explained, claiming that the U.S. "uses Israel as a bludgeon" against others in the Middle East "considered to be an enemy by the U.S." -- countries which, according to Becker, just want self-determination.
The blockade against the people of Gaza was a joint endeavor, he believes. "The US and Israel used food and medicine against the people for having voted the wrong way", in other words, for having voted for Hamas.
It was outrage at this ‘special relationship,’ as U.S. joint actions with Israel are officially called, that spurred representatives of Jews Against the Occupation and also of Partnership for Civil Justice (a legal organization for civil and human rights), as well as two-time U.S. Congresswoman and former presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, repeat presidential candidate Ralph Nader, and Rev. Graylan Hagler, the National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice, to speak at the Jan. 10th protest rally in D.C.
Rev. Hagler is featured in the anti-war documentary Finding Our Voices: Stories of American Dissent, and his organization is the 1.2 million-member "clergy component of the mainline Protestant denomination United Church of Christ," a church which, according to Wikipedia, has had many famous members such as Howard Dean, Bob Graham, theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, best-selling author Dean Koontz, and also Oprah Winfrey. In fact, even Barack Obama is on Wikipedia’s list of notable names connected with the United Church of Christ.
An argument could be made that some of that might be newsworthy, but the Washington Post begged to differ.
Interestingly, some Gaza protests outside the U.S. have also been ignored by American mainstream media. Even when Time magazine’s commemorative issue (Feb. 2) on Obama’s inauguration ran an article on Israeli peaceniks, "Lonesome Doves," its sub-title read: "After the Gaza offensive, Israel’s peace activists are losing heart, numbers, and influence." Its author, Tim McGirk, claimed that "inside Israel, peace demonstrations gathered only a few hundred protestors." And yet, reports from alternative sources such as the Jewish Peace News and Democracy Now! reported that 10,000 Jews and Arabs attended a demonstration on Jan. 3rd in Tel Aviv. This salient information has not been reported widely, and certainly not in that Time article; instead the article’s only photos of protesters showed a huddle of pro-war demonstrators holding giant Israeli flags.
Indeed, outspoken media critic Jon Stewart skewered the corporate media’s one-sidedness on the region early in the Gaza offensive, in a Daily Show segment that has circulated the web.
Back in L.A., ANSWER-L.A. held a teach-in on Palestine on Jan. 24th: "The U.S./Israeli War on Gaza & the Cease-Fire: The Real Aims Behind the Media Lies." About 75 activists attended to hear talks by Jerusalem law professor Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kervorkian, of the Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa; community organizer and UCLA Ph.D. student Rana Sharif, of the Palestinian American Women’s Association; and Yousef Abudayyeh, founding member of the National Council of Arab Americans and National Coordinator of the Free Palestine Alliance.
Several of ANSWER-L.A.’s most active organizers shared their thoughts on the media’s behavior toward Gaza. Longtime ANSWER-L.A. spokesperson Preston Wood explained that U.S. corporate interests reflected in the media "are united to oppress and dominate all of the Middle East," and that part of the U.S. mass media’s agenda is "to undermine the right of people in that region for sovereignty and self-determination."
Carlos Alvarez, candidate for L.A. Mayor on March 3rd in opposition to vocal Israel-defender, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, criticized the U.S. media for lopsided coverage and recalled that "very few media outlets did stories" on the Israeli bombings of U.N. shelters, when Israel "told people to go there, sent messages ‘evacuate your house within 20 minutes and you should go here’ and then they bombed the place they’d told them to go." He recalls that when the media did cover this, "we heard that rockets were being fired from there, but the U.N. denied that."
Muna Coobtee, ANSWER Steering Committee member and a presenter at the forum, was matter-of-fact about the unanimity of the U.S. media on Palestine. "It’s not a big huge conspiracy, it’s actually very overt. The line of the media is very much in line with U.S. foreign policy."
Coobtee noted that prior to Jan. 10th, the second National Day of Emergency Mass Action on Gaza, (the first having been Dec. 30th) there had been a "surprising" amount of coverage of the frequent protests, considering expectations people in the movement have about the corporate media. She believes such coverage happened because there was "such worldwide opposition", because "the protests were so widespread," and because of "the extreme nature of the attacks" by Israel on Gaza. At the same time, she noted, the U.S. media tended to "make 2,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators equal 200 pro-Israeli demonstrators, or maybe even film from the side of the Israelis."
However, Coobtee says "there was very minimal coverage about Jan. 10th," which was the largest day of protest of all, when a total of hundreds of thousands came out in many different cities.
Alvarez agreed that "there was more than average coverage before Jan. 20th", though it was "problematic, because they often put a big fat equal sign between Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters, even though there’d be thousands of pro-Palestinians and only a handful of Israeli" counter-demonstrators. Right at the peak of the protests on Jan. 10th, though, Alvarez saw "a complete suppression" of coverage; "suddenly you weren’t hearing anything about those protests."
Wood added: "it’s been a long-standing practice to try to ignore the expression of anti-war sentiment, to try to minimize dissent in this country." He thinks all people who care about peace and justice should be outraged that "the media in the U.S. have once again ignored the suffering" of civilians in the Middle East and downplayed the reality of the events in Gaza, which are particularly shocking" and include "the most flagrant violations of international law, such as use of depleted uranium and fragmentation bombs that literally rip the flesh off of children."
Although the ANSWER Coalition was one of the most central groups organizing these recent anti-war protests for Gaza (just as they also played a key role in pulling together the even more massive protests against the war on Iraq), they are by no means alone in continuing to be concerned about peace and justice in Gaza. The Bail Out the People Movement (which joins labor, Latino, and Black organizations working for the rights of ordinary people during the economic crisis) gave public talks in L.A. about Gaza on both Saturday and Sunday. Also in L.A. this past weekend, a benefit concert raised money for humanitarian aid to Gaza, as did a pre-ceasefire L.A. event featuring Cynthia McKinney, the former Congresswoman and the survivor of the Israeli-military ramming of her humanitarian-mission boat. (McKinney is part of the Free Gaza Movement, an international group of activists who for some months had been giving their time and risking their safety to attempt to bring aid by sea to the blockaded Gaza Strip.)
In D.C., the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is holding a grassroots advocacy training and lobbying conference for activists from all over the country on Feb. 1st & 2nd.
The Palestine Media Project continues to monitor media coverage of Israel-Palestine issues and to analyze its trends (and biases).
ANSWER-L.A.’s Preston Wood remains optimistic. He thinks that despite media silence, the anti-war voices opposed to the U.S.-Israeli actions "will be heard…. The movement cannot be stopped."
Jennifer Epps is an anti-war protester, feminist, environmentalist, and activist with the L.A. Area Impeachment Center. She is also a screenwriter, stage director and former film critic.
On Friday January 23, 2008, Annette Garcia, a mother three, was shot to death by Riverside Sheriffs after they received calls that she was suicidal and under duress due to a marriage dispute. Reports by the family and witnesses report that she posed no harm to the officers involved and was shot at six times until a bullet finally hit her in the back as she tried to run for cover. It took over an hour to get medical attention and she died in the arms of her own children. Due to this outrage and other recent police misconducts and abuse around the nation, several community members from Watsonville and Santa Cruz held a candlelight vigil/ protest to denounce these vicious attacks by law enforcement. Participants held signs demanding an end to police brutality, Justice for Oscar Grant, Justice for Rudy Cardenas, and **** the police!. Other actions are planned in the upcoming week.
NATIONAL EMERGENCY CANDLELIGHT VIGILS AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY!
CALL TO ACTION!!!
Sunday January 25, 2009
5PM
Bring Out Your Hood!!!
Get Organized & Informed!!!
RIP Annete Garcia!
RIP Oscar Grant!
RIP Sean Bell!
Annette Garcia, a mother of three children, was shot in the back Wednesday evening by a Riverside County Sheriffs deputy. The name of the shooter has not been released but according to the Riverside County Sheriff's Perris Station, the deputy has been placed on "paid" administrative leave pending an investigation.
The call was made due to a domestic dispute. The police started shooting from a block away, and was in NO DANGER.
The deputy arrived by himself at a home at the 16900 block of Lake Mathews Drive and shot at Annette Garcia six times while she was walking away. She was distressed, carrying a knife while walking AWAY FROM THE OFFICER. The officer began to shoot from behind, at which point, Annette Garcia started running for safety to her home. Five of the shots missed but one hit Annette Garcia in the back. She bled to death in from of her children.
The 29 year old mother was rushed to the Riverside County Regional Medical Center in Moreno Valley but was pronounced dead on arrival.
The cowardly murder of Anne Garcia has sent shocked waves throughout Aztlan and there is a call by the leadership of the Brown Berets and ALL organizations in solidarity with us and against police violence to undertake energetic protests and demonstrations.
The candlelight vigil is just the first step…get your people in the streets!!!
Judge Orders Kevin Trudeau to Pay More Than $37 Million for False Claims About Weight-Loss BookA federal judge has ordered infomercial marketer Kevin Trudeau to pay more than $37 million for violating a 2004 stipulated order by misrepresenting the content of his book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About.”In August 2008, Judge Robert W. Gettleman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois had ordered Trudeau to pay more than $5 million and banned him, for three years, from producing or publishing infomercials for products in which he has an interest. The ruling confirmed an earlier contempt finding, the second such finding against Trudeau in the past four years.Urged by both the FTC and Trudeau to reconsider aspects of its August order, on November 4 Judge Gettleman amended the judgment to $37,616,161, the amount consumers paid in response to the deceptive infomercials. The judge also revised the three-year ban to prohibit Trudeau from “disseminating or assisting others in disseminating” any infomercial for any informational publication in which he has an interest. On December 11, the court denied Trudeau’s request to reconsider or stay this ruling.The FTC filed its first lawsuit against Trudeau in 1998, charging him with making false and misleading claims in infomercials for products he claimed could cause significant weight loss and cure addictions to heroin, alcohol, and cigarettes, as well as enable users to achieve a photographic memory. A stipulated court order resolving that case barred Trudeau from making false claims for products in the future, ordered him to pay $500,000 in consumer redress, and established a $500,000 performance bond to ensure compliance.In 2003, the Commission charged Trudeau with violating the 1998 order by falsely claiming in infomercials that a product, Coral Calcium Supreme, could cure cancer. The court subsequently entered a preliminary injunction that ordered him not to make such claims. When Trudeau continued to make cancer-cure claims about Coral Calcium, he was found in contempt. In 2004, Trudeau agreed to an order that resolved the Coral Calcium matter. He was directed to pay $2 million in consumer redress and banned from infomercials, except for informational publications such as books, provided that he “must not misrepresent the content”of those publications. The 2004 injunction remains in effect.The Federal Trade Commission works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint in English or Spanish, visit the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or call 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357). The FTC enters complaints into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to more than 1,500 civil and criminal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad. The FTC’s Web site provides free information on a variety of consumer topics.MEDIA CONTACT: Frank Dorman, Office of Public Affairs 202-326-2674STAFF CONTACT: Laureen Kapin, Bureau of Consumer Protection 202-326-3237
From the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists
Despite news of a massive economic crisis sounding throughout the nation, we in Philly seemingly got a break from the bad news in the later weeks of October into November. We partied. The Phil’s won the World Series, resulting in wild, rowdy festivities up and down Broad Street (and a wee bit of rioting). Halloween celebrations went off across the city with their usual flair and fun. Then, in early November the wild street parties went off again when the election of Barack Obama on Tuesday, November 4th brought to an end eight years of neoconservative rule.
Then, announcing a sweeping round of cuts to social services and city government to balance the budget, Mayor Nutter crashed the party on November 6th. . I’ll be fair and say that the budget crisis is not entirely of the Mayor’s making. He’s dealing with an economic crisis brought about by the misdeeds and quest for profit-at-any-expense brought about by Wall Street, major financial institutions, and the rich, which is now hitting home in many major American cities and municipalities. Wall Street has been bailed out while working people have been thrown out of their homes and jobs, have left college for lack of tuition and cities have been left to fend for themselves.
I’ll say it how I feel it, Nutter has tried to solve the crisis with sweeping budget cuts directly attacking working people, the poor, various neighborhoods, youth and union while pandering to wealthy developers and city hall hacks. What civil servant needs a six figure salary? Why do wealthy developers get a 10 year tax abatement while our neighborhoods have to lose libraries, pools and fire engine and ladder companies?
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As of print here is a partial list of some of the original cuts:
Closing 5 fire engine companies and 2 ladder companies
Getting rid of street cleaning and snow removal on more small neighborhood streets…unless the snow is a foot deep!
220 city workers to be laid off ( as of print time the number has dropped to down to about 100)
A 2 million dollar cut in funding to The Community College of Philadelphia (Again, in fairness, Nutter increased CCP funding by 4 million before making the 2 million cut…but CCP students still need that money not real estate developers or casinos!)
Nutter’s announcement of the cuts sparked outrage among many Philly residents, particularly around the closure of the libraries and fire engine and ladder companies. However, the pools are also a big deal to most people. It’s likely that the public outrage about their closures will rise along with the temperature next year when kids have no place to cool off and learn how to swim. Citizens will also likely be up in arms when a snowstorm covers the city with anything less than a foot of snow and residents have to shovel out their entire block to get to work.
Get Your Hands Off Our Books You F***N Crooks!
“You reach a certain point where you say, ‘I’m not doing that! If you want someone to do this to the library system that I love, find somebody else. I will not implement that kind of drastic cut…. I will leave and I will tell the public why!’”- Councilman Nutter after being awarded a ‘Politician of the Year’” by Library Journal in 2005
It made me proud to be a Philadelphian when right after the announcement of library closures my neighborhood in Southwest Philadelphia, Kingsessing, had posters against the library closures stapled to telephone poles, taped to street poles and a petition drive underway just days after Nutter announced his plans. I was even happier when I attended my first rally against the library closures in Fishtown, which is also losing a fire engine company. The rally drew well over two hundred people to this tight, scrappy, well-organized neighborhood. People had signs printed up, a banner and dozens of letters from kids in Fishtown to deliver to the mayor.
It would be generous to say that there are a few things that are lost on Mayor Nutter and Free Library Director Siobhan Reardon (who orchestrated the branch closures when the Mayor declared the Free Library system would need to make an 8 million cut to their budget.) We are, as the old cliché goes, a city of neighborhoods and our branch libraries are incredibly important to us.
Our branch libraries are much more then a place where you can check out a book, they are a hub of services for residents. For people without internet access at home, Libraries are the only public place that bridges the digital divide and allow residents access to information and services they would otherwise not have such as: internet based employment searches, tutorials on writing a resume, the ability to send an e-mail to a relative in another state or to search out knowledge on things that have caught their interest. Our branch libraries provide invaluable children’s programs such as: Storyhour, Science in the Summer and the highly valued LEAP program, in which students receive tutoring for school work, mentoring and have a safe place to ask questions and get answers. In addition, branch libraries supplement area public schools since many schools do not have their own libraries or (limited library services) and their students depend upon the branch libraries for access to books!
Van courtesy of True Majority.
Photo courtesy of California Nurses Association.
[Click title for direct link to LARGE image]
Iqbal Masih was sold into bonded labor at a carpet factory in his native Pakistan at the age of four. For six years, he was forced to work 12-hour days in a dark room, tied in place to the carpet loom he worked on. He was never permitted to go outside, and was fed so little that he looked like a boy half his age.
At ten, he ran away from the carpet factory to hear a speech by the Bonded Labor Liberation Front (BLLF), and realized that he was entitled to the same rights as any other citizen. He refused to return to the factory, and began to travel the world, visiting rallies, meetings, and even elementary school classrooms, to tell the story of the abuses he had suffered as a child slave, imploring others to help fight for an end to human trafficking.
Though slavery has been officially outlawed throughout Africa, the practice still persists in certain regions, including Niger, where over 43,000 tribal members are estimated to be enslaved. Hadijatou Mani’s story is typical of her tribe: she was sold into slavery at the age of 12 for $500, and spent over a decade working without pay in her master’s fields. She was raped and beaten daily.
After Mani was finally set free at the age of 24, she decided to take action—not just against her captor, but against the government that had allowed the abusive practice. Mani brought a lawsuit against the Niger government, claiming that they hadn’t enforced their anti-slavery laws to protect her.
In October 2008, after a long trial that featured Mani’s heartbreaking testimonials, 
Born in a small town in southern Sudan, Simon Deng was abducted at the age of nine, torn from his family and forced to work for a family in northern Sudan’s Arab militia. Deng was never permitted to attend school, and instead spent his days journeying across the desert with heavy pails of water for the family he worked for—a job normally delegated to donkeys. When he was too exhausted to work, he was beaten into submission.
Deng was much luckier than many of his fellow slaves: after three and a half years in captivity, he managed to escape with one of his fellow tribe members. Deng, now 47, is a United States citizen who works as a lifeguard on Coney Island. But his primary mission is raising awareness of human trafficking in Sudan, both through speeches and as the leader of the 
Somaly Mam, a Cambodian orphan, never knew her parents. She doesn’t even know how old she is. She endured a miserable childhood of abuse at an orphanage, and was forced into marriage with an older man. Around the age of 16, she was sold to a brothel in Phnom Penh, where she was beaten, raped, and abused by pimps and clients more times than she could count. When she finally escaped the brothel at age 21 after a friend’s murder, Mam vowed to devote the rest of her life to helping other sex slaves go free.
Since that day, Mam has aided the escape and recovery of sex trafficking victims in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam through her nonprofit organizations, the European-based AFESIP (translated as “Acting for Women in Distressing Circumstances”) and the 
Given Kachepa, an orphan from Zambia, was a member of a children’s choir in his homeland. When a charity organization asked the child singers to move to Texas and perform there, Kachepa thought his life had turned around. The organization claimed that he would receive an education and a salary, that he would be able to send money to his siblings at home, and even help pay to build a school in Zambia.
But everything he’d been told was a lie: when Kachepa arrived in the United States, he and his fellow singers had no access to money or education. They were forced to perform up to seven concerts a day, and were forced to go without food when they misbehaved. Although the crowds who came to their concerts paid money to see the shows, the boys never saw a penny for their work. In America, supposed land of the free, the children were being kept as slaves.
After Kachepa had been forced to sing in the choir for a year, the INS removed the boys from the organization's care, letting the boys remain in the United States. Kachepa found a loving foster family to live with, and is now attending college. Today, Kachepa is committed to speaking out against slavery, and frequently shares his own story at lectures, rallies, and in the media, in hopes that he might make others aware of the cause.
“In my heart, I resolved to help rid the world of human trafficking,” he told 
*
Protesters dump copies of the
Washington Post at the steps of
the newspaper's office building,
Washington, D.C., Jan. 16.
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Despite news of a massive economic crisis sounding throughout the nation, we in Philly seemingly got a break from the bad news in the later weeks of October into November. We partied. The Phil’s won the World Series, resulting in wild, rowdy festivities up and down Broad Street (and a wee bit of rioting). Halloween celebrations went off across the city with their usual flair and fun. Then, in early November the wild street parties went off again when the election of Barack Obama on Tuesday, November 4th brought to an end eight years of neoconservative rule.
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