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!
The importance of neighborhood libraries was expressed best when I attended the two rallies at my local branch library, Kingsessing. The first, on Saturday November 15th, fortunately fell on an unseasonably warm day, and as I approached the library I could hear a DJ spinning some classic numbers, and saw people gathering around the demonstration. The protest drew hundreds of people to hear community residents, old and young alike, express not only their love for the libraries, but their outrage at the budget cuts as well.
On the following Saturday, November 22nd residents across the city braved the cold and demonstrated in front of the branch libraries in their neighborhoods. At the Kingsessing branch, people were “fired up despite the cold” as one blog put it. Local youth put on a performance piece, along with many speakers and a gospel group. It was amazing to see nearly a hundred people out despite the frigid conditions, and later on television, to watch as people came out all over the city to protest the cuts and defend their branch libraries.
Behond the rallies were amazing community organizing efforts led by neighborhood associations. These grassroots organizers have brought many people together to defend their communities and put pressure on decision makers. Included in this effort has been The Friends of the Free Library, which has devoted many resources to defending the branches.
Unfortunately, without the input of the communities, The Friends of the Free Library offered a concession to the administration, allowing them to make cuts across all branches so they would be open three days a week. Curiously, this even fell short even of Councilman Bill Green’s proposal to conduct a survey of when the specific branches were underutilized and cut hours accordingly. In any struggle, it’s common sense to put pressure on your opponent and let them offer a concession rather than lowering the bar for them.
The Friends of the Free Library was limited in their ability to take more effective action by their role as a non profit that needs to maintain a relationship with Siobhan Reardon after this struggle is over. Various block captains, residents and organizers quickly grasped this fact and brought together The Coalition to Save Our Libraries, an organization freed from the constraints of ongoing political relationships, free to organize more “in your face” style protests and free to take direct action if needed.
The importance of the The Friends of the Free Library was highlighted, however, when council passed a non-binding resolution on December 6th calling on Mayor Nutter for a six-month moratorium on library closures while a study could be conducted on the impact of the closures and possible alternatives. First-term Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez of the 7th district introduced the resolution. The resolution passed 12-5. The five who opposed the resolution were Council President Anna Verna (District 2), Frank DiCicco (District1), Marian Tasco (District 9) and at-large council members James Kenney and William Greenlee. Let’s not allow the five council people who voted against the resolution forget their choice, especially Anna Verna, who as council president refused to hold the hearings the resolution called for by arguing that council was powerless and the decision to close libraries “…was strictly up to the mayor.” As this resolution was non-binding, Mayor Nutter was quick to respond stating that library closures would go ahead as planned.
A large, vibrant demonstration of over 300 people from the various neighborhoods took place at the Central Library branch on December 6th. Many people spoke: children from local schools, community leaders, and council people. At the end of the rally youth from the Philadelphia Student Union and various community groups led a march to city hall and demanded to speak to the mayor or a representative. According to the protest police (aka Civil Affairs), the mayor’s entire team were all at the Army/Navy football game at that time.
The mayor’s unwillingness to speak to the crowd (or at least to have a representative on hand), and his haste to disregard council’s resolution for a moratorium, illustrated the arrogance of Nutter’s administration and their insulation from public opinion. Pride comes before the fall indeed!
Many residents had been putting pressure on Nutter during the ‘town hall’ meetings he’d been holding to talk about his budget cuts. These ‘town hall’ meetings were essentially ‘dog and pony’ shows where the mayor would explain his rationale for the cuts and during ‘Q & A’ would repeatedly cut people off, not answer questions directly, essentially refusing to engage in any meaningful dialogue. While people bravely spoke out during all the town meetings, Nutter was certainly in for a surprise when he came to the Kingsessing Rec Center where the people filling the facility started booing and chanting ‘Save Our Libraries” before he even got up to speak. Free Library Director Siobhan Reardon was literally booed off stage when she was introduced and looked visibly shaken throughout the meeting. One highlight of the town meetings was watching the mayor being caught off guard when he couldn’t name the schools lacking libraries in proximity to them, but most touching was the feeling of community and solidarity that pervaded the room. Whenever the mayor tried to dodge a question, a chorus of people, shouted “answer the question”. When people would bring up ending the tax abatements, or downplay children having to walk two miles to the nearest library, spontaneous chants of “Tax the Rich” or “Save Our Libraries” would break out.
While the town meetings throughout Philly let people blow off some steam, there was clearly still a fight to be had, and this fight would shortly take a surprising new direction.
Two separate lawsuits were filed citing a 1988 city ordinance that prohibits the mayor from closing public facilities without City Council’s approval. In one–a class action lawsuit–attorney Irv Acklesberg represented plaintiffs from various neighborhoods that would be negatively affected by the library closures. In another City Council members Bill Green, Jannie L. Blackwell, and Jack Kelly filed suit claiming, essentially, that the mayor was not doing his job by failing to put the closures up for a council vote.
People mobilized through The Coalition to Save Our Libraries, as well as other groups, to pack the courtrooms at city hall and to speak their opposition at a press conference Mayor Nutter was holding on the first day of the hearings. Nutter’s press conference was met by a crowd holding signs and hollering at the mayor’s announcement that the LEAP after-school-program was going to be transferred to the Rec centers and that the libraries slated for closing would eventually be privatized and reopened as “Knowledge Centers.” Details on the “Knowledge Centers” were slim; no details were givien on what companies or foundations would fund and operate them and when the libraries would reopen as “Knowledge Centers.” One person held up a sign that read “Restored Service is a Cheap Knockoff” giving voice to many peoples’ suspicions that the announcement was a way to deflect criticism, and to avoid legal arguments. To date, no concrete plan explaining the “Knowledge Centers” has been released. Why? Perhaps there is no plan.
On the second day of the hearings, residents with The Coalition to Save the Libraries held a gathering outside city hall and delivered a “People’s Indictment” of Mayor Nutter charging him with abandoning the task of educating youth, eliminating safe havens for them, expanding the digital divide, ignoring the peoples’ will along with other misdeeds. Then people filed into the courthouse for the final testimony and the judge’s ruling.
People openly wept and cheered when Judge Fox ruled that the libraries could not be shut down without city council approval and issued an injunction prohibiting the libraries from closing. The next day, January 31st, the Kingsessing branch library hosted a large multi-neighborhood celebration in its basement. People danced and sang, got up on the mic to testify to the amazing victory, shared food and conversation and a lot of smiles. Importantly, people stated emphatically that the struggle is far from over.
It is certain that Mayor Nutter will appeal Judge Fox’s ruling and request expedited legal proceedings that could possibly overrule the injunction which is keeping the libraries open. If the ruling is upheld, we will need to hold city council accountable by putting pressure on them to keep the libraries open.
Already, Mayor Nutter has deployed a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. Mayor Nutter is instituting rolling, unpredictable closures throughout the entire library branch system. This will cause the inconvenience of unforseen, poorly announced disruptions of library service. Mayor Nutter claims this is the result of a crisis due to staff lay offs in anticipation of the closures. Rather than fixing this crisis, it appears he is attempting to pit neighborhoods against one another by creating inconvenience and unpredictability throughout the whole system.
Clearly, the struggle is far from over. The Coalition To Save the Libraries is meeting and strategizing for the struggle ahead. For more information get down to your neighborhood library, get on the web and check out http://coalitiontosavethelibraries.blogspot.com or shoot them an e-mail save.11.libraries@gmail.com.
Wow Nutter! Thanks for Letting My House Burn To The Ground!
In the city that gave birth the modern Fire Department, Nutter wants to cut back five Fire Engine companies and two ladder companies–mostly in poor and working class neighborhoods.
Losing the engine and ladder companies will rob Philadelphia of more than just the ability to keep our homes from burning. In this city, where the ambulance system is overburdened, often the first responders to a medical emergency will be–you guessed it–fire fighters. They call them “shoe runs”, because they don’t put on the boots they need to fight fires. According to data released from the Philadelphia Fire Department, “the engine and ladder companies slated to be cut responded to a total of 5,761 fires, 6,016 ‘shoe runs’ (medical emergencies)” and only 16 false alarms last year. Two companies are slated to be cut in Center City and one each in South, North and Northeast Philly, Kensington/Port Richmond and Roxborough/Manyunk.
Whether firefighters are performing CPR on a victim of a heart attack, pulling children out of burning buildings, or putting out a blaze and saving someone’s home, the cutbacks on Fire Engine companies no. 1,6,8 and 14, and the Ladder companies no. 1 and 11 mean one thing for people in the affected neighborhoods: People will die. The difference between minutes lost in travel time mean lives lost.
The Philadelphia Firefighter Union’s (IAFF Local 22) has taken its fight and the fight of the communities it serves to the streets. Engine No. 6 rallied community members and its rank and file to take over the intersection of Aramingo Ave and Huffington Street for over an hour. At Mayor Nutter’s town hall meeting at Kensington High, firefighters and residents were out in full force. Recently, I was told by a friend in the Francisville section of North Philadelphia, that in their neighborhood, firefighters occupied a busy intersection along with residents as well.
On December 15th, firefighters from IAFF Local 22 marched five hundred strong alongside members of other unions and community residents to protest the cuts at city hall. Brian McBride IAFF Local 22 president was quoted as saying, “The Mayor’s study fails to consider the critical facts …It’s not ok to tell someone whose house is burning down they need to wait a little longer because ‘our study’ says so. When lives are at stake you can’t afford to close these engines and ladders.”
On December 16th IAFF Local 22 filed suit against the city to halt the closures. The suit aimed for an injunction so that a grievance on workplace-safety issues, filed with the city on Dec. 3, could be heard before the engine and ladder company closures.
On December 30th Common Pleas Judge Gary DiVito struck a blow against the safety of all Philadelphians when he ruled against the Firefighters’ injunction.
IAFF Local 22 responded quickly filing an emergency appeal with the Commonwealth Court on December 31st. IAFF Local 22 President Brian McBride said in a statement, “I have reviewed the judge’s decision. It is a disgrace, it has no basis in law or fact, and it basically rubber-stamps the Nutter Administration’s dangerous plan to cut fire protection. From my vantage point, it looks like the judge simply didn’t want to rock the boat.”
Currently, the engines and ladder companies are being closed down and the fight will continue in the courts. However, we, as Philadelphians, can make a difference by keeping an eye on the news and supporting any rally the firefighter’s call together.
You can keep up to date by checking out the union’s website at iaff22.org.
The Struggle Ahead: Next Year’s Budget and Some Class Struggle Conclusions
With the struggle against the current cuts in social services, and next year’s budgeting process on the horizon, we need to strategize for the new battles around the corner. Philadelphians will have to band together, form coalitions, and bring more of our neighbors into the fight in order to increase the pressure on the administration with more protests, campaigns and direct actions.
The mobilization against the cuts has seen some amazing accomplishments. In the struggle against the branch library cuts, neighborhoods have not been divided along lines of race or geography, rather, they have stood together in saying “no” to the closure all of the branches rather than merely focussing on the interests of their own neighborhood.
I offer a few suggestions in building our fight against Nutter’s budget proposal and the broader fight we’ll be facing in the coming years of the economic crisis, against cuts in social services and against working people, unions and our communities.
A Coalition of Neighborhood Associations:
We in Philadelphia could only be advanced in our struggles and day-to-day lives by a network of neighborhood associations not tied to our city council people. We could share in our common struggles, and build trust and relationships by showing solidarity with each other, in our particular neighborhood struggles. The Coalition to Save The Libraries is a fresh effort in that direction and ought to be supported.
Cross-Pollinate:
People who are fighting the fire engine closures need to represent at protests against the library closures and vice versa. A blow against one is a blow against all and we need to further network and support each other in our citywide fight against the administration. As their contracts expire, the unions will be facing one hell of a fight next year and we need to stand by them. Addionally, the fight to save our city pools has yet to begin
Broaden the Base and Deepen The Struggle:
We need to be organizing and bringing more new people into the struggles (i.e. broadening) while escalating our tactics in a diverse manner against Mayor Nutter and other decision makers. Of course, the bottom line on any action we take is that we need to make sure our neighbors, co-workers and allies are taking these actions alongside of us, and that we are not alienating people who are ready to fight. We need to reach people ‘where they’re at’ and create exciting levels of involvement for everyone who is ready to fight in their own way.
Our Job Is To Fight For What WE Want:
We should be demanding what WE as citizens want in our city rather than making policy suggestions to Mayor Nutter and other “decision makers” on balancing the budget… Our success should be a measure of the popular power we’re able to build, not a reinforcement of the power of the Nutter administration.
As a class struggle Anarchist, I envision and struggle for a society where the people who live in the neighborhoods and work the jobs can dispose of politicians and bosses and make decisions about their work and their communities through direct democracy and popular assemblies. There is a proud tradition of such struggles—in which Anarchists have played a part—including the struggle for the eight hour work day, struggles for civil rights, women’s rights and much more. We continue to fight today to defend the rights of working people against attacks by the ruling class, and protect the gains of past struggles.
With the latest economic crisis the capitalist economy has caused, it’s hard to imagine such a utopia. However, I’m confident that we here in Philly can build a powerful struggle and fight to win despite the hard times to come. This crisis didn’t strart in November and won’t end this December. Keep loving, keep fighting!
Today's Weekend Funnies is more of a Weekend :-( as several news agencies are reporting that Mad Magazine will no longer be a monthly. The news came after years of the magazine experimenting with different page layouts in hopes of getting more readers (you just weren't the same when you went from black to color...there's no humor in color...everyone knows that).
The magazine will now be published four times a year as a quarterly. When asked to comment, the magazine said, "What, me worry?" The now cliche Mad phrase wasn't even funny this time around...it was just sad.
Bolivian President Evo Morales has claimed victory after voters approved a new constitution that would advance indigenous rights and reaffirm state control over Bolivia’s natural gas reserves.
Evo Morales: “The colonial state ends here. Internal colonialism and external colonialism end here. Sisters and brothers, neoliberalism ends here, too.”
About 60 percent of voters approved the referendum. The new constitution will give the indigenous majority more seats in Congress and greater clout in the justice system. It also officially recognizes their pre-Columbian spiritual traditions and promotes indigenous languages.
In a basic way, it is against nature's purposes to contemplate a dire future, for all of nature operates on the premise that the future is assured. Nature is everywhere filled with promise--not only the promise of mere survival, but the promise of beauty and fulfillment.
...Children spontaneously take it for granted that their acts will result in the most favorable circumstances, and that any given situation will have a favorable end result. These attitudes pervade in the animal kingdom also. They are embedded in the life of insects, and in fish and fowl. They are the directions that provided life with purpose, direction, and impetus. No organism automatically expects to find starvation or disappointment or detrimental conditions--yet even when such circumstances are encountered, they in no way affect the magnificent optimism that is at the heart of life.
...Foxman is trying to diminish the seriousness of Olmert’s major political gaffe. He wants to prevent the incident from becoming a full scale political controversy which might enable more Americans to learn about the Jews’ death grip over the Bush regime and American political system. He doesn’t want the American public questioning the power that the Jews-only state has over America, a military hyperpower. Such a controversy might end up destroying the taboos the Jewish lobby has so carefully nurtured in America over the last six decades. It could harm the zionist state’s chances of dominating future American administrations. Foxman wants the American public to continue to believe in the zionist-nurtured fantasy that America is the greatest nation on Earth rather than a pathetic puppet which makes massive annual tribute payments, and supplies endless quantities of weapons, to its Jewish masters on the other side of the planet....
Any act of legislation is going to have its proponents as well as its critics. My parents, both retired teachers, were staunch critics of the No Child Left Behind Act signed into law in 2001 shortly after our now infamous 43rd president of the United States, George W. Bush, was sworn into office. I hadn't much thought about the No Child Left Behind Act until my sixteen year old daughter suddenly started getting calls from military recruiters.
Our family is quite familiar with military service and how recruiting new members really works.
My ex-husband served in the Navy and had mentioned how he was lied to by recruiters when he enlisted, desperate to fill quotas (he could write a book on all the broken promises, lies, and downright manipulation of the system that caused him and our family a lot of heartache and sleepless nights).
To his credit, he proudly served his country, winning many awards, but thought that those who enlisted should be told the truth about what they were actually signing up for and not misled by false promises and out right lies.
Needless to say, he was furious that his baby girl had been contacted by a military recruiter without our permission. We soon found out that the military did not need our permission and that the high school she attended was required by law to give military recruiters the name, phone number, email address, areas of study and interest of every student enrolled in their school.
This requirement came about from the No Child Left Behind Act and can be found at the following link: http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg112.html#sec9528
As parents, we can opt our children out of this requirement, but we at least need to be aware we can do this, which I was not. You will notice that schools are required to notify you of this right but neither I, nor other parents I've spoken with about this matter, had been told we had a choice or that this requirement even existed. Something this serious should require an opt-in form, not some cleverly hidden opt-out one, that way there is no doubt.
In doing my research for this article, I kept coming across the name, Cindy Sheehan. You may remember her as the mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq who became a very vocal anti-war activist. The media did a great job painting her as quite the lunatic, camped out in a ditch in front of George Bush's Texas ranch dubbing her make shift diggs, "Camp Casey" named after her dead son.
I never followed her story close enough to gain an understanding of just what it was she had been protesting. Constant sound bites from television and radio made me think that she had lost a son in the war and was now protesting our invasion of Iraq. My thoughts were that he had joined the military and that's what militaries do; yes her loss was tragic but no different than the thousands of others who had also paid the ultimate sacrifice.
But why was she constantly coming up in my research into the No Child Left Behind Act? Well, it seems that is how her son found himself in a distant land with an enemy hell bent on killing him and doing so just five days after him setting foot on foreign soil.
Most would argue that he joined the military when he was 21 so he was old enough to know what he was doing and to understand what might come a long with that decision.
Her argument, which I'm not sure many people are aware of, was that the military recruiters had pursued him since he was in high school and the years following and had used several underhanded tactics to finally get him signed up. This of course rings true with what my ex had told me.
Her opinion was her son never should have been put in harms way in the first place because he never had any interest in joining the military until he was contacted repeatedly by recruiters. As more information came out about the war, she thought the invasion of Iraq was as unnecessary as her son's death had been and all of it the products of lies so she joined that front as well.
I'm not here to voice my opinion of the ongoing war in Iraq. I simply want parents to be aware that they can opt out of the requirement for their child's information to be freely handed over to military recruiters. I believe this sneaky collection of children's names is a violation of privacy and more should be done to let parents know it is happening and that you should expect a call from your local recruiter.
Military service is a noble profession and without it, we would lose the few remaining freedoms we still have left. However, I believe that no one has the right to lie to my child, behind my back, about how wonderful military life is and make attractive promises they never intend to keep to get them to sign up.
If it was such an attractive line of work, the government would not have to come up with unlawful ways to get peoples information and force recruiters to tell bold face lies because of pressure to meet enlistment quotas. I know these lies happen because my ex-husband and I were victims of them; plain and simple…just thought you might like to know.
Please, no comments from close minded individuals looking to pick a fight. I love my country, and I love and support our military. My family and I have done our time so I have a right to give my opinion on this important matter.
You can get the opt-out forms and more information by going here: http://leavemychildalone.org/lmca_fo...rm_Parents.pdf
For more from the mind of Myla, please go to http://www.mylamadson.com http://searchwarp.com/swa425429.htm
Want to know another good thing about soaring gasoline prices? Clothing-optional coves, lakes, ponds, rivers, waterfalls, meadows, and paths are less crowded than they have been in a decade. Many people, it seems, are cutting back on their driving, even if it's to their friendly nude beach.
Over the first few weeks of this year's beach season, fewer people have showed up at even the most popular nude sites than during the same period just last year. Sure, there are other issues - at Red Rock Beach, for example, greater sand erosion than usual means less beach. But visitors to Northern California's shorelines cite escalating gas prices as the top reason for planning trips more carefully and communing with nature less often. "Every time I go to Limantour [a clothing-optional beach in Point Reyes], it costs me $12 to $15 in gas. So the weather has to be perfect, or I won't go," said North Bay resident Michael Velkoff. Before leaving, he likes to check weather sites: www.stinson-beach-cwd.dst.ca.us/weather/Current_Vantage_Pro.htm or www.littlebeachmaui.com/redrock/elements.htm (click on "satellite photo of fog over Bay Area").
For those who do go, there's more room than ever for visitors interested in a naked daytime or lunar hike, a hunt for jade on the beach while wearing nothing, clothes-free whale-watching, bare-bottom Ultimate Frisbee or Scrabble, a free surfing show while sunbathing in the buff, or skinny-dipping at a site so isolated you have to swing on a rope to get there.
If any of this interests you, we've got the info on how, where, and when to do it all in our updated 34th Nude Beaches Guide. Whether you want to spice up your life with adventure (who knew you could be nude next to a waterfall at Marin's Alamere Falls, or walk naked on two different trails in the East Bay and one in the North Bay?) or just kick back with a good book, towel, and some thongs (the shoe kind, of course), our guide will help you find an array of choices in and around the Bay Area.
Speaking of choices, would you like to help improve our guide? Please send suggestions, new beach finds, better directions (especially road milepost numbers), and trip reports to garhan@aol.com or via snail mail to Gary Hanauer, c/o San Francisco Bay Guardian, 135 Mississippi St., San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your phone number so we can fact-check.
About the ratings: We awarded an A to places that are large or well-established and where the crowd is mostly nude; B to places where less than 50 percent of the visitors are nude; C to small or emerging nude areas, and D to spots we suggest you avoid.
On the fourth day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he approved missiles strikes in Pakistan.
Déjà vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would say, begging the question why more strikes if America voted for change? But this was the news in the UK’s Guardian, President orders air strikes on villages in tribal area. “Barak Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.
“Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the ‘war on terror’ policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.”
I guess he had to get his feet wet with blood to show the right he was no wuss on terror, something for everybody. But to say this act is impulsive and poorly thought out is an understatement given that he was consulted by US commanders. That’s it? What about the Congress, the people who voted for him? What about the longstanding suspicion Osama is dead of the deadly kidney disease he was treated for as early as August 2000 in a hospital in Dubai, where he was reputed to have met with his CIA handler, by then CIA station-chief Robert Baer, according to Baer’s his book, Sleeping With the Devil.
What about the highly thought of notion that Bin Laden was a patsy as were the Saudi hijackers and that that the strike on 9/11 was a false-flag operation to turn the West against the Muslim world in its New World Order hegemonic moronic quest for power? What’s more, if Bin Laden was so important, why was he taken off the FBI’s most wanted list awhile ago and George Bush said Osama was of no longer of interest to him.
And now the Guardian reports, “The US believes they [Al-Qaeda] are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Ah, and attacking Pakistan villages and killing villagers pell-mell will make it all right. Not.
And where is Obama’s backroom political advisor, Zbigniew Bzrezinsky, to remind everyone that he and the CIA set up Al-Qaeda (actually a file-name on Bin Laden’s laptop, meaning “the base”). Zbig and the Company financed, recruited, trained and armed Al Qaida to fight a jihad against the atheist Russians who had invaded Afghanistan in 1979, unsettling the US, which already considered the Middle East terrain a sphere of oil interest.
And, as expected, “The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said ‘the time is right’ to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.”
Well, Conway got the first half right that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq. But not from a no-win conflict with Pakistan and Afghanistan, which conflict will serve to unify Muslim and Middle Eastern bad feelings and resources towards the US. The troops should be redeployed home, to America, to relieve them of the incredible burden they have been carrying and the numerous over-deployments and the massive incidence of brain injuries not to mention 4,000 plus deaths. What rabbit-hole did Obama stumble down, and so fast?
Only two days earlier George McGovern, former South Dakota Senator and Democratic nominee for president in 1972, wrote in an editorial in the Washington Post, and directed at President Obama, Calling a Time Out, “As you settle into the Oval Office, Mr. President, may I offer a suggestion? Please do not try to put Afghanistan aright with the U.S. military. To send our troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan would be a near-perfect example of going from the frying pan into the fire. There is reason to believe some of our top military commanders privately share this view. And so does a broad and growing swath of your party and your supporters.
“True, the United States is the world’s greatest power — but so was the British Empire a century ago when it tried to pacify the warlords and tribes of Afghanistan, only to be forced out after excruciating losses. For that matter, the Soviet Union was also a superpower when it poured some 100,000 troops into Afghanistan in 1979. They limped home, broken and defeated, a decade later, having helped pave the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“It is logical to conclude that our massive military dominance and supposedly good motives should let us work our will in Afghanistan. But logic does not always prevail in South Asia. With belligerent Afghan warlords sitting atop each mountain glowering at one another, the one factor that could unite them is the invasion of their country by a foreign power, whether British, Russian or American.” This I’m sure went from McGovern’s mouth to God’s ear, bypassing Obama’s formidable ears.
McGovern, like a solid uncle, pointed out to Obama that he believed military power wasn’t really the answer to terrorism, but rather the Middle East’s resentment of US policies, the occupation in Iraq, backing repressive regimes in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and, by gosh, our support of Israel (sorry, Mr. Emanuel and AIPAC). These factors, McGovern pointed out were the drivers of the terrorist impulse against the US and would be better resolved by concluding our military presence “throughout the arc of conflict,” which includes Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Caspian Sea Basin, et al.
He also prudently advised that we need to close down the “imposing US military bases in this section of the globe, which do so little to expand our security and so much to stoke local resentment.” He reminded Obama again of the British failed efforts over Iraq, and even how our own “13 little colonies drove the mighty British Empire from American soil.” He reminded President Obama of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz estimating the total coast of Iraq as more than $3 trillion, and how it has weakened our economy, the armed forces and made our national debt soar. He pointed out to Obama how we’re teetering on the abyss here, and the last thing we need is another costly war.
He also said that like President Obama he didn’t oppose all wars. “I risked my life in World War II to protect our country against genuine danger,” wrote McGovern. “But it is the memory of my fellow airmen being shot out of the sky on all sides of me in a war we had to fight that makes me cautious about sending our youth into needless conflicts that weaken us at home and abroad, and may even weaken us in the eyes of God.” So, like Obama, McGovern is not just a former fighting man but a religious man as well.
He went on to a suggest something that was true change: “a five-year time-out on war — unless, of course, there is a genuine threat to the nation.” He proposed that during that time we could work with the UN World Food Program and overseas churches, synagogues, mosques and volunteer agencies to provide a nutritious lunch every day for every school-age child in Afghanistan and other poor countries. He also mentioned we could add to these efforts nutritional packages for low-income pregnant and nursing mothers and their infants, birth through five, as we do in the US via WIC, Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants and Children. That said, ask yourself, don’t these ideas seem more in line with the kinds of solutions Obama talked about all through his campaign?
McGovern closed, “Is this proposal pie-in-the-sky? I don’t think so. It’s food in the stomachs of hungry kids. I would draw them to school and enable them to learn and grow into better citizens. It would cost a small fraction of warfare’s cost, but it might well be a stronger antidote to terrorism. There will always be time for another war. But hunger can’t wait.” Those are tough lines to follow, but worth a try for our own people as well as those of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It’s also interesting to remember as well that McGovern ran against Nixon, who sought a second term as president, after Nixon and his war criminal buddy Henry Kissinger sabotaged Johnson’s initial successes at a peace with the North Vietnamese in 1968. Additionally, George Wallace had also entered that 1972 race as an independent and could have possibly split the conservative Nixon vote, which would have given McGovern a good chance at victory.
Unfortunately, an assassination attempt on Wallace by another classic “lone gunman,” fair-haired 21-year old Arthur Bremer, effectively left Wallace paralyzed for life and wheeled out of the race. And, of course, the Vietnam War continued to its official end in 1973, with 58,000 Americans killed and some 2 million Vietnamese as well. So, what do we learn from this, Mr. Obama, that Mr. McGovern, war hero and private citizen knows so well?
Shall it be, as the Guardian story pointed out another flight to madness, “Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.”
In fact, the US missiles were fired by the latest and not so greatest unmanned Predator drones, which hang in the sky gathering intelligence through surveillance and, when commanded and directed by remote control, launch attacks. How truly lovely this sounds, as the Dow dances into oblivion.
The Guardian also adds this piece of idiocy: “The strikes will help Obama portray himself as a leader who, though ready to shift the balance of American power towards diplomacy, is not afraid of military action.” Let me remind the Guardian, President Obama’s mandate was peace, change, reconstruction of the economy, not the continued destruction of Pakistan and us.
The 65 million Americans who voted for Obama take no pride in reports like this, “The first attack yesterday was on the village of Zharki, in Waziristan; three missiles destroyed two houses and killed 10 people. One villager told Reuters by phone that of nine bodies pulled from the rubble of one house, six were its owner and his relatives; Reuters added that intelligence officials said some foreign militants were also killed. A second attack hours later also in Warizistan killed eight people.”
This is why we rid ourselves of Bush, Cheney and their pack of killers. And this is why the American people and the world are now railing against the brutal overreactions of the Israeli military against Gaza, another issue President Obama was supposed to address to calm passions in the Middle East. But maybe he’s saving that for another day.
Nevertheless, the Guardian reports that, “The Pakistan government publicly expressed hope that the arrival of Obama would see a halt to such strikes, which stir up hostility from Pakistanis towards the government; in private, the government may be more relaxed about such attacks.” I wish them luck given what we’ve all seen so far of the US’s ability to tear a nation into pieces, including its own.
The Guardian concludes, “There is a lot of nervousness in the new administration about the fragility of Pakistan, particularly as it has nuclear weapons, but it also sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being linked. In the face of Taliban resurgence, there is despair in Washington over the leadership of the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, and there will not be much disappointment if he is replaced in elections later this year.”
Ah well, didn’t the administration know about Pakistan’s nuclear weapons before they struck? It’s old news even for the slowest among us. What’s more, their despair should be that we put the puppet Karzai there in the first place, a former employee of the infamous California oil company, Unocal, to watch the would-be pipelines to be built through Afghanistan from the Caspian Basin and through Pakistan to the Indian ocean. Argh!
On a final déjà vu all over again, the Guardian laments, “But Washington insists on seeing as one of its biggest problems the ability of the Taliban and al-Qaida to maintain havens in Pakistan. Obama on Thursday announced he was making veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke by phone to the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari.” I’m sure Mr. Holbrooke will be able to confuse the situation even more, not to mention Mrs. Clinton by telephone.
It’s all really unbelievable! As a friend of my 19-year old son commented without the bat of an eye, “The more things change, the more they say the same.” Such prescience! This kid’s got a chance to make it in this Brave New Old World Order. I’m not sure about the rest of us. Maybe it’s just an Obama-aberration. Maybe it’s welcome to the future.
Alabama voters talk a lot about independence, about not being bound to either of the major parties, but they seldom get the chance to vote for independent candidates. There just aren't many of them, in large part because the state's ballot access laws impose unreasonable requirements for them to get on the ballot.
Third-party candidates have major obstacles to overcome as well. The system plainly favors the Democratic and Republican parties, neither of which -- predictably -- has shown a lot of interest in changing the rules of political contests in the state.
A lawsuit pending in federal court in Montgomery challenges Alabama's ballot access regulations. The outcome of that lawsuit is uncertain. It is entirely possible that the system is not unconstitutional, as the lawsuit alleges, but there is little doubt that the system is needlessly restrictive. It may well be lawful, but it doesn't serve the public interest.
"It doesn't make a lot of sense, except to exclude people from the ballot," Arlene Richardson, attorney for plaintiff Andy Shugart, told The Associated Press. "It's why you usually don't see anyone on the ballot in Alabama except Democrats and Republicans."
Independent or third-party candidates for president have the easiest path to the ballot in Alabama. They have to collect 5,000 signatures. That's probably the only Alabama ballot access law that doesn't need changing.
Those running for other offices have higher hurdles to clear. In Shugart's case, he wanted to run as an independent for Congress from the 6th District. He would have had to gather signatures totaling 3 percent of the votes cast in the last governor's race. In that district, Shugart would have needed more than 6,000 signatures on his petition -- far more than a candidate for president would have needed to gather from the entire state.
To mount a campaign for statewide office next year -- for governor, for example -- an independent or third-party candidate would need that same 3 percent of the 2006 vote total, or about 37,500 signatures.
Shugart's lawsuit asks the court to prohibit the state from requiring any independent or third-party candidate to gather more than the 5,000 signatures required of a presidential candidate. Should he prevail, that would be an improvement in the ballot access rules.
However, 5,000 signatures are still a lot to demand in a single congressional district. A better approach would be a smaller percentage of votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election.
Alabama law requires third parties to get 20 percent of the vote in an election in order to have their candidates automatically on the ballot in the next one. That is an unreasonably high threshold that could be at least halved without concern for the process.
It is important not to make ballot access too easy. That could clog the ballot with numerous candidacies that aren't serious and that don't represent any appreciable degree of support. However, overly restrictive rules only serve to protect the entrenched parties.
Regardless of the outcome of Shugart's suit, the Legislature should amend Alabama's access laws to allow independents and third parties a fair shot at the ballot.
ZNet Interview with John Gibler about his new book(1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what Mexico Unconquered is about? What is it trying to communicate? Mexico Unconquered is about the ongoing social struggles that grip Mexico, the overwhelming violence of the state on the one hand and the vibrant and massive peoples' movements for land, autonomy, freedom, and dignity on the other. The book traces contemporary social conflicts in Mexico from the period of the Spanish Conquest, through the early years of Independence, and the political chaos following the 1910-1920 Mexican Revolution, when the modern state in Mexico was reconfigured from the remains of centuries of colonialism into an autocratic one party state with only minimal and cosmetic dressings of electoral democracy.The bulk of the book is divided between the exploration and denunciation of state violence and contemporary forms of conquest and the chronicling and study of peoples' movements and contemporary forms of revolt (rebelión in Spanish). What does the book try to communicate? Moral outrage and social dignity. The book tries to disrobe the ideologies of the state used to rationalize horrid violence (seemingly innocent concepts like the rule of law, poverty, and migration) and to awaken moral outrage at the realities hidden under the glaze of normalcy. But instead of leaving the reader with the despair of finding such brutality under the surface of everyday reality in Mexico, the book tries to communicate the immense strength and dignity of the ordinary Mexicans taking stands against the brutality. Here the book tries to communicate the urgent importance of gripping this spirit of revolt when facing seemingly intractable enemies, of risking the impossible (to quote Slavoj Zizek quoting the Paris walls in 1968). (2) Can you tell ZNet something about writing the book? Where does the content come from? What went into making the book what it is?The book stems from over ten years of traveling to and inside of Mexico, particularly my experiences working in Guerrero state in 2000 and later my coverage of the Zapatistas' Other Campaign, the devastating police crack down in San Salvador Atenco, and the months-long unarmed popular uprising in Oaxaca, all in 2006. These experiences form the lived core of the book. From there I spent almost two more years researching, reading, interviewing, reporting, and thinking to flesh out the ideas and structure born of those on-the-ground experiences. The book is also my attempt to follow through with the commitment of the alternative media in the Other Campaign to take the words of Mexico's rebels and underdogs (l@s de abajo) and spread them to other parts of the world. Throughout the caravan of the Other Campaign, Subcomandante Marcos always pointed to the ragged band of alternative reporters on the edges of the meetings and said, more or less: "Ellos son los que van a llevar su palabra a otros estados del pais, y otros paises del mundo." ("They are the ones who will take your word to other states across the country, and other countries across the world.") I tried to fulfill that task at the time through my reporting, but felt the need to go deeper than the short articles written on deadline would allow. Thus this book is a part of that on-going commitment. The book is a mix of reporting, reading and research, and reflection. In the book I try to mix several styles of writing: straight journalism and narrative journalism, academic writing, personal narrative, lyrical descriptions and theoretical argumentation. I move between these different forms within chapters and between chapters, always seeking to cultivate the voice that best works to tell the stories and express the ideas and emotions at hand, and hoping that the asymmetrical dynamics actively engage the reader in the building of the argument throughout the book. I move between academic and theoretical citations and direct quotations from the people in the streets with absolutely no hierarchical ordering between them. (3) What are your hopes for Mexico Unconquered? What do you hope it will contribute or achieve politically? Given the effort and aspirations you have for the book, what will you deem to be a success? What would leave you happy about the whole undertaking? What would leave you wondering if it was worth all the time and effort?Realistically: I hope the book touches a few hearts and contributes a nudge in the direction of the revolt and dignity already alive and flourishing in those hearts it reaches. Quixotically: I hope it will light small flames of intense critical reflection in the United states (and, perhaps, elsewhere) where rebels think deeply about the dynamics of revolt in Mexico and step away having taken of their spirit of dignity and strength to heart. If the book truly touches one heart and awakens therein one spark of revolt, then it will have been worth all the time and effort. (4) Chapter seven of Mexico Unconquered is titled "The Guerrilla." In it you interview Gloria Arenas Agis and describe how she joined a clandestine guerrilla group in Mexico. Can you tell us a little about what went into writing that chapter and what the significance of guerrilla movements is in Mexico today?That chapter is based on extensive interviews with Gloria Arenas conducted inside the Mexico State Prison in Ecatepec over the course of several months. Getting inside the prison to visit her became a small part of the story itself as I was struck by the jarring irony of having to pay bribes to prison guards to interview a woman who has been imprisoned for her fight for justice. Gloria Arenas first participated in social movements in her home state of Veracruz. She was abducted and interrogated by state police for her activism and soon thereafter took her young daughter and fled to Acapulco. Over the course of several years she established contact with one of the armed movements that had survived the brutal Dirty War of the 1970s and she, with her daughter, established a clandestine life. In the chapter she tells her story.But once she was deeply involved in the movement that would become the Ejército Popular Revolucionario (EPR), she and her partner, Jacobo Silva Nogales, had an experience very similar to that of Subcomandante Marcos in the jungles of Chiapas. That is, they realized that the theory of the guerrilla vanguard arriving in isolated villages to politicize the peasants would not get them very far. Instead of showing up and giving orders, they needed to listen.She then tells the story of the creation of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente (ERPI), a story that is very similar to the experience of the Zapatistas. And this lesser known story, together with the Zapatistas' fifteen years of struggle and construction of autonomy, gives us an indication of the significance of guerrilla movements for Mexico today: the peoples' will to try all forms of protest, but also to take up arms to defend their land and dignity when all else fails. (5) Mexico Unconquered also discusses the violence and propaganda now being experienced in Mexico as a result of the narco war there. Everyday there seems to be news about corruption and violence reaching up to the highest levels of Mexican government. What's your take? How, if at all, does the drug war impact independent journalism and Mexican social struggles?The drug war is, first of all, not a war between the government and the drug cartels. It is simply a war between the cartels—all of which have so deeply infiltrated the government that the term "corruption" has lost all its descriptive power. Thus, to report on the drug war, is really to report on the nature of the contemporary state in Mexico and, for that matter, in the United States. And in that sense the incredible violence and complete impunity in Mexico makes covering the story the second most deadly beat on the planet after the Iraq war. The drug war has many impacts on social struggles. First, the state manipulates its anti-terror discourse to include protests and resistance movements in the targets of police and military violence. Bowing their heads to the legitimate outcry over the drug-related violence, lawmakers in Mexico have passed laws criminalizing protest while the United States aids this effort to the tune of $1.4 billion in police and military aid which will go to the very institutions that have been so thoroughly penetrated by the drug cartels. Also, the flood of horrendous images of beheadings and the bodies of the executed lumped in piles, threatens to desensitize people to images of violence and thus normalize, if not make seem even light, the images of police ad military repression of protests and social movements. (6) Okay, but how can you reconcile that with the fact that the escalation of violence seems to have been instigated by President Felipe Calderon; i.e., are you suggesting that the Calderon administration is narco and just putting on a show? If not, please clarify.The escalation of violence was not instigated by Calderon; he responded to it. The escalation began in early 2006, almost a full year before Calderon assumed office amidst cries of electoral fraud. Calderon responded to the spike in drug killings by sending some 20,000 soldiers into the streets in late December 2006. Sure enough, the military "surge" has led to an even greater number of killings. In 2007, 2,794 people were executed. In 2008, the number was 5,661. I am not suggesting that the Calderon administration is narco. I am saying that every branch of government has been infiltrated by the drug cartels and thus that the fight between the cartels for control of the trafficking routes across the Mexico-U.S. border is a fight that also occurs inside the structure of the state. Thus key people in the current administration are undoubtedly taking sides. Just one recent example: on November 22, 2008 the former head of Mexico's top federal anti-narcotics agency, Noé Ramírez Mandujano, was arrested for taking $450,000 in bribes from the Pacific Cartel. One of many. (7) How has U.S. policy against the narco war impacted social movements in Mexico?In 2008, the U.S. awarded the Mexican government $1.4 billion in police and military aid to combat the drug cartels. Known as the Merida Initiative and also called Plan Mexico (for its parallels to the pseudo-antidrug counterinsurgency U.S. aid to Colombia called Plan Colombia) the money will go to the very institutions that have been infiltrated by the cartels. It is no wonder that the most feared elite troupe of cartel assassins, Los Zetas (The Z's) was created by ex-special forces soldiers from the Mexican Army who had received elite training from the United States. The U.S. "support" in the drug war feeds directly into the machinery of drug-related violence, but also contributes to the overall militarization of Mexico and the Mexican government's policy of criminalizing protest and dissent. # # #Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and RevoltBy John GiblerCity Lights Bookswww.citylights.com
Dear President Obama:
Underneath many of our country’s economic problems is the thirty-year collapse of consumer protection—both of the regulatory kind and of the self-help kind known as proper access to justice.
Last month major consumer groups sent you a letter proposing action to rein in exploitation of consumers as debtors, as buyers of oil, gas and electricity, as patients needing health insurance and as eaters wanting safe goods.
Under the Bush regime, the words “consumer protection” were rarely uttered and the Bush administration almost never initiated any pro-consumer efforts, even with massive evidence before it, such as predatory lending and credit card abuses.
You need to recognize and elevate the GDP significance of fair consumer policies along with their moral and just attributes at a time of worsening recession.I suggest you focus on the state of the poorest consumers in the urban and rural ghettos. As you know from your days with the New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG) and as a community organizer in Chicago, the consumers in these areas are the most gouged and least protected. That the “poor pay more” has been extensively documented by civic, official and academic studies, and numerous local newspaper and television news reports.Unfortunately, neither Congress nor the Executive branch have paid adequate attention to the tens of millions of people who lose at least 25 percent of their consumer dollars to multiple frauds and shoddy merchandise. You should establish special task forces in the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission on their plight and on the many proven but unused remedies to assure a fair marketplace with effective enforcement and grievance procedures.Working with and galvanizing local and state agencies to enlarge their capacity and staff—with stimulus monies—can produce a triple-header—making the federal effort more effective, providing valuable jobs and freeing up billions of consumer dollars from the financial sink-hole of commercial crimes.It requires the visibility and eloquence of your personal leadership to launch this long-overdue defense of poor people.A second area of action is simply to update major areas of regulatory health and safety that have been frozen for thirty years. These include modernizing standards for auto and tire safety, food safety, aviation and railroad safety and occupational health and trauma protection.New knowledge, new marketing forays, and new technologies have accumulated during this period without application. It is the obsolescence of so many safety standards hailing from the fifties, sixties and seventies that permits the tricky, corporate advertising claims that products “exceed federal safety standards.”Note for example that the SEC has never come close to regulating the recent explosion of myriad collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). The massive speculation in this area is destabilizing the national and world economies.Third, you need to articulate and provide a high profile to what western Europeans have long called “social consumerism.” Citizens are consumers of government services for which they pay as taxpayers. In return they are entitled to prompt, accurate and courteous responses to their inquiries and to their perceived needs as embraced by the authorizing statutes.To begin with, Americans need to be able to get through to their government agencies and departments. Being put on hold interminably with automated messages to nowhere, not receiving replies of any kind to their letters, and generally getting the brush-off even with the deadlines explicated in the Freedom of Information Act have been a bi-partisan failure.However, under the Bush regime, not answering serious letters from dedicated individuals and groups on time-sensitive matters of policy and action—as with the Iraq war and occupation—became standard operating procedure—starting with President Bush himself.This stonewalling has turned people off so much that they do not even bother to “ask their government” for assistance and that includes an astonishingly unresponsive Congress (other than for ministerial requests such as locating lost VA or social security checks.)As you shape the Obama White House, bear in mind that the “change you can believe in” is one of kind, not just degree.Sincerely yours,Ralph Nader
In a press conference this morning from the Illinois State Capital, The Free and Equal Elections Foundation announced an ambitious campaign to help place an Independent and/or Third Party candidate on the ballot in EVERY SINGLECongressionalDistrict for the 2010 mid term elections.
“While engaging in lobbying and litigation for improved ballot access laws as this year goes forward, Free & Equal will be fundraising to issue grants to prospective 2010 candidates to pay for the petitioning necessary to achieve a ballot line,” said Founder and Chairman of the Board Christina Tobin. “We must make sure that people all across America are able to have their voices heard, and that they are able to cast their vote for a candidate of principle, not a just candidate of the two party duopoly.”
“The goal of placing an Independent and/or Third Party candidate on the ballot in every single one of the 435 congressional districts is quite a daunting task, and we have no illusions that it will take extraordinary effort and extraordinary fundraising to make this a reality,” said Executive Director Christopher Thrasher.
Due to 501c4 constraints, Free & Equal will pay for the petitioning to place candidates on the ballot directly, in lieu of donating to a candidate. Free & Equal is committed to ensuring that ALL candidates have a reasonable chance of placing their names on the ballot, including Democrats and Republicans. Free & Equal will not be endorsing candidates, nor will any money be directed to the candidates themselves.
Recently, Free & Equal announced that Richard Winger, the leading advocate for reforming restrictive ballot access laws across the nation, has joined the Board of Directors. Winger is the editor and publisher of Ballot Access News, a newsletter covering Independent and Third Parties, as well as developments in election law reform. Ballot Access News is published monthly and is available online at http://www.ballot-access.org/.
“We are thrilled to have Richard Winger join the board of directors of Free and Equal,” said Tobin. “Richard brings with him a wealth of knowledge and an unmatched determination to reform ballot access laws. No one has worked harder to ensure that the voters have a real choice in the ballot box over the last forty years.”
Free & Equal has identified several potential lawsuits against restrictive ballot access laws, and is seeking sponsors for bills to ease signature requirements in many states.
Free & Equal is also at this time reaching out to activists across the ideological spectrum to complete the Board of Directors of the foundation.
……
The Free and Equal Elections Foundation is a non partisan, non profit 501c(4) organization dedicated to eliminating restrictive ballot access laws that target Independent and Third-Party Candidates.
Free & Equal will challenge these laws, through lobbying of state legislators, court challenges, and initiatives, in addition to the campaign announced today to place an Independent and/or Third Party candidate on the ballot in each of the 435 congressional districts for the 2010 mid-term elections.
Submitted by Ms_Anthrope on Sat, 01/24/2009 - 11:30pm.
the Clintons when no one (MUCH) got out and did anything -- like taking over buidings and KEEPING the Issues in the forefront. But NOW you Bitch, "It Was The Clintons." No it wasn't. IT WAS THE PEOPLE -- That did nothing!
...
When did they start ignoring our letters? I wrote them back then, and got polite replies. Who knows.
But, I think alot of us WERE fooled by that 'cracker barrel persona' of Clinton's, fooled by the national tour on A BUS for heaven's sake -- 'he's one of us', we believed. Why didn't we peel back that coffee-at-McDonalds-in-a-sweatsuit to REALLY understand Clinton truly is a corporatist, a Bilderberger, a globalist? Maybe because we needed to see him refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement and needed to see it was obvious WTO/NAFTA did us no good whatsoever and NEVER would. (Does Clinton still stop at McDonalds for coffee today? Or was all that just an everyman touch devised for the suckers out here? I still wonder....)
Yeah, we let it happen. Because we can be fooled.
Look how we were fooled Tuesday--
===========================
Sad music.
Submitted by nora on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 12:03pm.
How are they keeping those instruments in tune in the cold???
» ====================================
Something told me I was NOT witnessing reality, but I did not go all the way and conclude the music had been TAPED! We were not watching these famous musicians play live, we were fooled! (So much like the 9/11 Myth born whole with pictures of the hijackers on the news the very morning (was it?) of the WTC impacts! I mean, why do we buy this stuff?)
Can Trust be restored again? I want it. For me it isn't a matter of the Dems or anybody 'eating their own', but the prey (us) no longer being able to spot the predators.
Back before the election I came across a youtube video of lions attacking a baby water buffalo, and in fright and discomfort I was fumbling to turn it off when suddenly the herd of water buffalo rushes in to save the baby. It was incredible. I started to shake and cry uncontrollably. THAT is what WE need to do now, for the sake our children and grandchildren -- go after the predators. IF WATER BUFFALOS CAN DO IT, WHY CAN'T WE?!! We can tell who the predators are as for the Bushes and Cheneys and their entourage. But who else can we trust? Who do we now consider a friend who will betray us afterall? I want to find out NOW, not (as usual) later. And I think we might be able to trust those who help us GO AFTER the obvious predators.
Activists take food off the shelves and invite shoppers to dine with them to highlight the plight of 'Generation Y'
In exactly a week's time, in a supermarket somewhere in or around Paris, a couple of dozen young French activists are going to choose an aisle, unfold tables, put on some music and, taking what they want from the shelves, start a little picnic. The group "L'Appel et la Pioche" (The call and the pick axe) will have struck again - fruit and veg, dairy or the fish counter will have been transformed into a flash protest against global capitalism, rampant consumerism, bank bail-outs, poor housing, expensive food, profit margins and pretty much everything else that is wrong in the world.
The "supermarket picnic" will go on for as long as it can - before the security guards throw the activists out or the police arrive. Shoppers will be invited to join in, either bringing what they want from the shelves or just taking something lifted lightly from among the crisps, sweets or quality fruit already on the tables.
"L'Appel et la Pioche" have struck four times so far and have no intention of stopping what they claim is a highly effective new way of protesting.
"Everyone is bored of demonstrations. And handing out tracts at 6am at a market is neither effective nor fun," said Leïla Chaïbi, 26, the leader of the group. "This is fun, festive, non-threatening and attracts the media. It's the perfect way of getting our message across."
Linked to a new left-wing political party committed to a renewal of politics and activism, Chaïbi's group represents more than just a radical fringe and has been gaining nationwide attention.
A veteran of fights to get pay and better conditions for young people doing work experience, Chaïbi claims to represent millions of young Frenchmen and women who feel betrayed by the system.
"We played the game and worked hard and got a good education because we were told we would get a flat and a job at the end of it. But it wasn't true," said Victor, 34, another member of the group. "We have huge difficulty getting a proper job and a decent apartment."
Chaïbi, who works on short-term contracts in public relations and is currently looking for work, told the Observer that the group's aspirations were limited. "I am not asking for thousands and thousands of euros a month as a salary or a vast five-room apartment. Just something decent."
In recent years, the problems of France's "Generation Y" or "babylosers" have made headlines. As with many other European societies, after decades of growth, this is the first set of young people for centuries who are likely to have standards of living lower than their parents. According to recent research, in 1973, only 6% of recent university leavers were unemployed, currently the rate is 25-30%; salaries have stagnated for 20 years while property prices have doubled or trebled; in 1970, salaries for 50-year-olds were only 15% higher than those for workers aged 30, the gap now is 40%. The young are also likely to be hard hit by the economic crisis.
New ways of working mean new ways of demonstrating, too. "We are already on precarious short-term contracts, so there's no point in going on strike," said Chaïbi. "But a supermarket is very public and we make sure the media are there to cover our actions."
So far reactions have been good, the group claims. In one supermarket in a suburb of Paris, the activists say they got a spontaneous round of applause from the checkout workers. Elsewhere, security guards have been "friendly". Everywhere in France, the problem of a weakening "pouvoir d'achat" - the buying power of static wages - is a cause for resentment.
The economic crisis is further fuelling anger. Though not yet as badly hit as the UK, thanks to tighter regulation and much lower levels of personal borrowing, French businesses have still been laying off staff amid predictions of a massive rise in unemployment this year. Unions have been largely passive in the face of threatened redundancies, accepting go-slows to preserve jobs.
With the French Socialist party in disarray, alternative forms of political protest on the left, particularly a breakaway communist faction led by charismatic postman Olivier Besancenot, have made inroads. Protests about the homeless or against the expulsion of immigrants have largely taken place independently of the Socialist party, which is mired in feuds and ideological incoherence.
One new group is the Jeudi Noir, which organises heavily publicised squats of vacant buildings in Paris. Named Black Thursday after the day classified advertisements for flats appear, activists recently took over a clinic that has lain empty at the heart of the Left Bank for nearly five years.
"This is not just about finding myself somewhere to live," said Julien Bayou, 28, who is now living in one of the former clinic's offices. "We are making a political point. We just think it is wrong that a building in perfect condition should be empty for years when so many people need somewhere to live."
Chaïbi sat in the kitchen of the former clinic. "It's not just about the supermarkets," she said. "It's about fighting the system."
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for individuals to denounce the corporate bands which threaten to homogenize our cities and our souls, we must celebrate the powers that make us unique and declare the causes which compel us to remain independent.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all stores are not created equal, that some are endowed by their owners, their staff, and their communities with certain incomparable heights, that among these are Personality, Purpose and Passion. The history of the present indies is a history of experiences and excitement, which we will continue to establish as we set our sights on a more unconstrained state. To prove this, let’s bring each other along and submit our own experiences to an unchained world.
We, therefore, the Kindred Spirits of IndieBound, in the name of our convictions, do publish and declare that these united minds are, and darn well ought to be, Free Thinkers and Independent Souls. That we are linked by the passions that differentiate us. That we seek out soul mates to share our excitement. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the strength of our identities, we respectively and mutually pledge to lead the way as we all declare that we are IndieBound!
----------------
Imagine if Chomsky had not been published by an independent.
Who supported and published your favorite writers?
Thank independents for fighting the corporate media and publishing giants.
Support your community independent bookstores.
p.s. Free thinkers, far-leftists, happy 'n' gay people, feminists, Latin lovers, social activists, and anarchists are known to associate at some local book shops.
On 22 January 2009 an Indymedia server was seized by the Police in Manchester. This was related to postings about the recent Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) trial.
Kent Police had e-mailed imc-uk-contact in the morning requesting that personal information about the Judge from the recent SHAC trial in the UK be removed from the site. However this information had already been quickly removed in line with IMC UK policy. The e-mail also requested information relating to the poster be retained. Indymedia as an open posting news service does not log such information about its sources.
The machine was handed to the Police by the management of UK Grid, a Manchester based colocation facility, without a warrant being shown. It is believed that a warrant for this one server may exist and have been issued by a Chief Inspector. As the server was a mirror of the site, it can be concluded that the validity of the seizure wasn't checked, and the police attacked Indymedia infrastructure in the UK.
NEW MOON IN AQUARIUS
01.25.09
11:55 pm PST
Keywords: liberation, detaching from old emotional patterns, collaborating and networking, exchanging ideas and concepts, community activism, visionary insight, marching to the beat of a different drummer, manifesting idealism to benefit the planet.
The last moon period may have been heavy and difficult but this upcoming New Moon will be inspirational and uplifting. What shifted for you in a big way over the last month?
"The whole world is hoping that Obama can cleanse the horrific, negative fields conjured up by the Bush/Cheney regime…the whole world must get back on course." Barbara Hand Clow - Astro Flash – a great site for political insights.
THE YEAR AHEAD FOR AQUARIUS OR AQUARIUS RISING:
The expansive planet Jupiter entered the sign of Aquarius for the first time in 12 years on January 5th and will remain there for the next year, The beneficent Jupiter offers travel, worldly insights, adventure and lucky opportunities to those who are willing to expand their horizons.
The Gift: the ability to envision and seize new possibilities and potentials for the future. A time to be independent, imaginative, eccentric and rebellious.
The Challenge: Temptation may lull you into foolish, overconfident and arrogant behavior. Watch out for rigidity and radical, unpredictable aloofness.
NEW MOON SOLAR ECLIPSE
01.25.09
11:58 pm PST
A solar eclipse is a conjunction of the Sun and Moon – the Moon actually blocks the Sun’s light inviting archetypal realms to flood our consciousness and making possible rapid and permanent changes in our brains.
During this time of awakening we will be able to open ourselves to accept and welcome the entire Universe in order to move beyond our limited Earthly perspective.
Eclipses catalyze our soul’s deeper calling and offer us a time of deep transformation. Since ancient times astrologers have used the eclipse as a means of prediction. To determine the effect of a specific eclipse, check your natal chart and find out in what house the eclipse falls. Each house governs a specific activity or area. The effects of an eclipse are felt whether it’s visible or not. You can find the exact degree of the eclipse in your own astrological birth chart to help identify potential release points where your inner potential will seek to reveal and release itself.
MERCURY RETROGRADE
01.11.09 - 01.30.09
Mercury is currently retrograde until January 30th. So if you are having any sort of computer, car, communication, travel problems and life appears to be moving forward at a snail’s pace then at least you will know why. Take advantage of this time to reflect, relax and de-stress.
MID-WINTER CELEBRATION TIME
02.02.09
February 2nd marks Mid-Winter, the halfway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. Other holiday names for this seasonal turning point are: Imbolc, The Feast of Lights, Candlemas, Chinese New Year and Ground Hog’s Day. It is a time of celebration, prophecy, purification and initiation.
What groups are you starting up or joining? What are you celebrating? How has your view of the big picture changed? Tell us about it!
If you are interested in having a reading done to find out how this New Moon will be influencing and effecting you personally, please check out my New Moon Soul Reading.
The January New Moon Newsletter sign up Winner is Betty Rood - you have won "Silkie - a Celtic Mermaid" print. Thank you to all 33 brand new Newsletter Subscribers who entered this contest!
8:15pm:Constitution Passing with 57%
The results are still preliminary and vary somewhat depending on the media source, but the margins are all wide enough that there is little doubt of the result. The constitution backed by President Evo Morales and MAS will be approved by a solid majority of about 57% Yes / 43% No.
Bolivians are still waiting for their President to walk out onto the balcony over Plaza Murillo in La Paz, to make his victory comments, and for his adversaries to have their word as well. In Cochabamba groups are setting up in the Central Plaza to mark the victory with music. But a few things are key to note based on these preliminary results.
One is how deeply polarized Bolivians remain by region. According to UNITL, for example, the constitution was approved 75% to 25% in La Paz, while it was defeated 35% to 65% in Santa Cruz. In fact, the Morales/MAS victory, while substantial, is based on winning four out of nine of the nation’s departments.
Similarly, the nation is deeply polarized between rural and urban voters. ATB reports that, with 95% of the votes in, urban voters approved the constitution a 52% Yes / 48% No, while rural voters backed it 82% to 18%.
What does all this mean?
It means that Bolivia has a new constitution, passed legally and fair. It means that there are likely to be conflicts ahead as the regions that reject it declare that they are not bound by it. It means that if the opposition has any real desire to become a marginal force nationally, it needs to figure out how to do more than run commercials with Jesus on television and begin to speak to rural voters who never saw their ads. It means, as before, that Morales continues to enjoy solid majority support for his political agenda, but no so solid as four months ago (when he won 67%). And it means that Bolivia remains a fractured country that will be hard to govern.
6:30 pm:OAS Says all Normal
Well, the polls are closed now and the counting has begun. Amidst charges of fraud from Morales opponents, the OAS, which has 68 election observers out in the field today, has issued its first statement.
The OAS says it looks to it that the voting took place with full regularity. But that preliminary analysis is based simply on a finding that most all of the nation's polling places has the required equipment and materials so that people could vote. It is doubtful that MAS opponents, especially if they lose as expected, will drop their charges of pressure on voters. But if they believe that Morales support in the rural areas of the country is manufactured rather than valid, they haven't spent much time talking to people in the countryside.
1:00 pm:A Quiet Day of Voting
We’ll be blogging here periodically throughout the day. As of 12:35pm it appears that voting is going smoothly throughout the country, on this day without cars on the roads or legal drinking (both are banned on Election Day). Radio Erbol reports that 40% of the nearly 4 million eligible voters had already gone to the polls by noon.
Some of the opposition governors – the usual Evo adversaries from Chuquisaca, Santa Cruz, and Tarija –have been claiming for weeks that the National Election Court is engineering electoral fraud today on behalf of President Evo Morales and his backers and they have called on international observers to go to the countryside where, the governors claim, pressure is being used on voters to support Morales and his proposed constitution.
Nevertheless, it seems commonly believed here that the new constitution backed by Morales and his MAS political party will easily win the simple majority vote (50% plus one) that it needs to gain approval, though it may receive substantially less than the 67% support Morales won in last August’s referendum vote.
The campaign was marked by remarkably little activity on the street, except in the very final days, but a virtual carpeting of the radio and television airwaves by both sides, much of it pretty wild. The religious-backed ads featuring rival pictures of Morales and Jesus, may have crossed a new high water mark for political overstatement. But that’s a tough competition to win.
What does seem clear from most of my conversations the past few weeks is that this vote, like all of the recent national votes (the August 2008 referendum on Morales and the governors, the Constituent Assembly vote in 2006) is not so much about what is on the ballot as the person not on the ballot today, Morales. The content of the proposed constitution seems to be secondary to the basic question: Do you support Evo or oppose him?
Today Morales remains politically strong, mainly because out in the countryside and in places like El Alto, he can count on 4 out of 5 voters to support him on virtually anything. In August that translated into a renewed mandate and the dispatch of two key rivals among the governors. Today it will likely mean approval of a new constitution. But if those numbers drop substantially below what he won four months ago, that will also be a measure of how solid his support will remain as the opposition struggles to unify behind and anti-Morales candidate in the December elections that would be triggered by that same new constitution.
More later today, and we hope others will use the comments space today to share their observations as Bolivians vote.
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
-Dr. Seuss
Take action: Political prisoner Leonard Peltier at risk!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
By: Gloria La Riva
Assault against Peltier could become pretext to deny parole
The life of political prisoner Leonard Peltier is in danger, and family and supporters have launched an urgent campaign demanding his safety.
Activists hold an emergency
rally in support of Peltier,
San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 23.
Photo: Bill Hackwell
Imprisoned in U.S. federal prison for 33 years after an FBI frame-up, Peltier was recently transferred to Canaan prison from Lewisburg, both of them in Pennsylvania. On Jan. 13, Peltier was moved into general population in Canaan soon after his transfer. Some inmates jumped and beat him—a highly unusual attack given that Peltier had just arrived.
His supporters have strong reason to believe that Peltier is the target of continued FBI repression. Another Native American inmate, Standing Deer, was recruited by a prison official and an outside civilian believed to be an FBI agent to kill Peltier in 1978. Both Standing Deer and Peltier were in Marion prison in Illinois at the time. Standing Dear revealed the plot to Peltier, and they became close friends.
The incident could be used to deny parole to Peltier in his upcoming hearing, despite his record of 25 years as a model prisoner. Betty Peltier-Solano, Peltier’s sister and coordinator of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee, has issued an urgent public letter about the Jan. 13 attack:
"We feel that prison authorities, at the prompting of the FBI, orchestrated this attack and thus, we are greatly concerned about his safety. It may be that the attackers, whom Leonard did not even know, were offered reduced sentences for carrying out this heinous assault.
"Since Leonard is up for parole soon, this could be a conspiracy to discredit a model prisoner. He was placed in solitary confinement and only given one meal; this is generally done when you won’t name your attackers."
In the brutal U.S. prison system, the authorities often single out the victim. If Peltier were to reveal who beat him, he would be labeled a "snitch." For his own protection, he must remain silent. Yet, the officials are now punishing Peltier for his silence.
Peltier’s case: 33 years of injustice
The FBI has persecuted Peltier ever since a 1975 FBI armed raid on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, in which two of their agents were killed.
The raid was the culmination of three years of a murderous U.S. government war on the residents of Pine Ridge, in which over 60 traditional members and American Indian Movement activists were murdered. Leonard Peltier was among the young AIM members who came to Pine Ridge to protect elder residents who had pleaded for AIM’s protection.
On June 26, 1975, using the theft of a pair of boots as a pretext, the FBI agents raided a reservation ranch of the Jumping Bull family, racing onto the land in an unmarked car. A shoot-out ensued. One Native man, Joe Stuntz, and the two FBI agents, were killed.
As dozens of FBI encircled the ranch in the hours that followed, several AIM members, including Peltier, escaped. Two AIM members, Bob Robideau and Darrell "Dino" Butler, were arrested and tried for the killing of the FBI agents, in Rapid City, Iowa. They were acquitted by an all-white jury, which agreed that their actions were in self-defense.
Because Peltier had successfully escaped to Canada and did not face trial, the FBI waged an all-out campaign so that someone would pay for the FBI deaths. The FBI fabricated a false claim to secure Peltier’s extradition from Canada. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.
Since then, numerous appeals for a new trial for Peltier have been denied on technical grounds, despite overwhelming evidence of massive FBI misconduct in the prosecution. Peltier has many supporters in the United States and around the world.
On Jan. 23, AIM-West, a new chapter of AIM, held a midday protest at the San Francisco federal building to expose the danger to Peltier and demand his freedom. More than 40 people rallied and marched. His longtime friend, Berta (Bird) Levy Strain, said, "I just spoke to Leonard recently. It breaks my heart to see him separated from his family all these years. He told me, ‘Bird, I just want to be home and be a father and grandfather to my family.’"
Tony Gonzales, AIM-West director and rally organizer, urged continued phone calls to the prison administration and Congress members. He led a delegation after the rally to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s office to urge her intervention on behalf of Peltier’s safety. Other speakers included ex-political prisoner Bato Talamantez, and Gloria La Riva, both of ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five.
People are asked to write or call the prison and government officials listed below to demand Peltier’s safety and urge a granting of parole in his upcoming hearing:
[Ed Johnston visits my town now and then - Way to go Ed!]Jan-11-2009 12:09 An Argument for Prohibiting Fingerprinting or Bar-Coding of Students for Lunch Participation Salem-News.com
How much further must we go before somebody, somewhere puts the foot down and says “NO.” This legislation would “just say no” to friendly fascism.
Salem-News.com
(SALEM, Ore.) - An Oregonian named Ed Johnston has drafted a letter for the Oregon Legislature highlighting serious concerns over fingerprinting and bar-coding of students for school lunch purposes.
A group called Cascade Consulting has already managed to sell this concept to Bend, Oregon schools. Johnston says it is a serious violation of Civil Rights, and he plans to pursue to matter until it is changed and that change is reflected in Oregon's laws.
---------------------------------------------------------
TO the state legislators of Oregon
FROM Ed Johnston
An argument for prohibiting fingerprinting or bar-coding of students for lunch participation
Dear Senators and Representatives: It is with shock and sadness that I propose legislation to prohibit the taking of student fingerprints and also ban the bar-coding, on their body or persons or property, of students in Oregon schools.
That matters have come this far towards “friendly fascism” is bad enough: the procedure of doing fingerprints in one school in Bend, under a contract with Cascade Consulting of Terrebone, is not some movie fantasy, it is real and happening.
That fingerprinting of Oregon citizens without any crime having been alleged or committed, and that the possibility of actually requiring students to have on their hand or arm or perhaps school lunch bag or backpack, a barcode, rendering them no longer even “consumers” but another commodity that is tracked, numbered and metaphorically consumed, is bad enough. But that it should be the students of our schools, who are in our care and trust—we being the state and hence the taxpayers of Oregon—makes this even worse.
Fingerprinting without probable cause that the person fingerprinted has committed a crime nor even any alleged crime is clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in our persons, houses, papers and effects—whether imposed on adults or youth.
It also clearly is an assault upon the idea of “innocent until proven guilty,” in that it makes the students’ fingerprints now public property, and potentially places those prints into circulation in and among many offices and departments of state government—as I predicted would happen if the legislature passed SB 449, nearly a decade ago, which provided for sharing of data among state agencies, for the student’s own good, of course. Then there is the cost.
Cascade Consulting purports this technology would reduce school costs by regularizing school lunches. But at $170 to $200 per student per year, Cascade Consulting would end up charging large school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars, small districts tens of thousands, each year.
We have lost our art and music classes, our wood and metal shop classes, our auto mechanic classes, and our home economics classes. If we have the money for this totalitarian business, we can easily find better uses for it.
There is the story of the Arab and his camel. It is a cold night and the Arab, about to go to sleep, is surprised when his camel sticks his nose in the tent. “It is cold outside and my nose is freezing,” said the camel. “Do you think I could keep my nose in the tent?” The Arab said yes, and was about to fall asleep when the camel asked, “my eyes are freezing. Could I move my head into the tent.” The Arab again said yes. Next, the camel asked to get his neck; and then his whole body, into the tent. Eventually, the Arab was outside and the camel inside, the tent.
How far into the tent of “friendly fascism” have we gone already?
How much further must we go before somebody, somewhere puts the foot down and says “NO.” This legislation would “just say no” to friendly fascism.
As to the rest of this bill, please recall that I submitted this earlier, at it became SB 26.
School questionnaires or surveys that ask students about their alleged drug and alcohol use and about the alleged drug and alcohol use of their parents remain a totalitarian intrusion into family life and personal privacy. Even if for good intentions, to see how well we are doing combating Alleged teen drug and alcohol use, for instance, there are other metrics available—such as drug arrests of youth.
We do not need to make “informers” of our students to fight dangerous drugs and youthful drunk driving.
Finally, we certainly do not need to ask kids to inform if their parents own guns. There remains the Second Amendment, which the Supreme Court has sustained in operation via the case of District of Columbia v. Heller. I should think that case makes it clear that we do not have the right, as a state, to turn children into informers on their parents if their parents are doing something legal and constitutionally protected, like owning firearms.
Similarly, we do not have the right to make kids inform when their parents are breaking the law, with alleged drug use or bad alcoholic habits. Bad as these things are, it is up to children to be children, police officers to be police officers, and we confuse the two at great risk to our children, our citizens, our families and our freedom.
NOTE: Matter within { + braces and plus signs + } in anamended section is new. Matter within { - braces and minussigns - } is existing law to be omitted. New sections are within{ + braces and plus signs + }.
Senate Or House Bill ____
A BILL FOR AN ACT Relating to school surveys.
Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon:
SECTION 1. { + (1) As used in this section, 'informed parentalconsent' means consent given after the parent or legal guardianhas been provided a copy of the survey that the school districtdesires to administer to the student.
(2) A school district may not administer, without prior writteninformed parental consent, any survey that asks for or revealsinformation concerning:
(a) Drugs or drug use by the student or a member of thestudent's family;
(b) Sexual behavior, activity or attitudes of the student or amember of the student's family;
(c) Guns or gun ownership by the student or a member of thestudent's family; or(d) Criminal activity by the student or a member of thestudent's family. + }
SECTION 2. { + Section 1 of this 2001 Act shall first apply toschool districts for the 2002-2003 school year. + }----------
Rights groups say white phosphorus shells were fired into built-up areas of GazaAny Israeli soldiers accused of war crimes in the Gaza Strip will be given state protection from prosecution overseas, the country's PM has said.Ehud Olmert said troops should know Israel would keep them safe after they acted to protect their country.Palestinians say 1,300 people died during the offensive, and UN officials want independent probes into whether war crimes were committed.Meanwhile, a Hamas delegation is in Egypt for talks on cementing a truce.Israel ended its military operation in Gaza on 18 January, and Hamas declared a ceasefire hours later.No formal framework for a lasting ceasefire has yet been agreed.While Israel says it requires Hamas to end weapons smuggling into Gaza and rocket attacks on Israel, Hamas has demanded that Israel lift its economic blockade of the territory.In Gaza, Hamas has begun handing out cash to people who had their homes destroyed, or lost relatives.Hamas insists it will make payments based on the scale of each person's loss, not on their political affiliation.But the BBC's Aleem Maqbool, in Gaza, says there are those who will simply see this as a way of buying support.Soldiers 'safe'In Israel, Prime Minister Olmert told a weekly cabinet meeting that soldiers who had put their lives on the line for their country need not fear prosecution for war crimes overseas."The commanders and soldiers that were sent on the task in Gaza should know that they are safe from any tribunal and that the State of Israel will assist them in this issue and protect them as they protected us with their bodies during the military operation in Gaza," he said.View of devastation from JabaliyaIsrael's military tactics have come under intense scrutiny as evidence has emerged of the high numbers of Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza.Among complaints made by human rights groups are accusations of indiscriminate firing and the use of white phosphorus shells in civilian areas.Israel has admitted using white phosphorus in Gaza but says it did not break international law in doing so.White phosphorus is legal for creating smokescreens in open battleground. But rights groups and journalists say it was used in crowded civilian areas.The weapon sticks to human skin and will burn through to the bone.Truce talksIn Cairo, delegates from Hamas met Egyptian intelligence officials on Sunday as they sought to bolster the week-long calm in Gaza.Palestinians near the ruins of a home in Jabaliya, Gaza (21 January 2008)Hamas says it will pay Palestinians whose homes were damagedRepresentatives from Fatah, the main rival Palestinian faction, were also due to attend the talks.There was no word of the substance of discussions in Egypt with Omar Suleiman, the Egyptian intelligence chief who brokered a previous six-month truce between Israel and Hamas.Mr Suleiman held talks with an Israeli envoy on Thursday.In a statement, Egyptian state media said Hamas and Mr Suleiman discussed "Egyptian efforts to consolidate the ceasefire, reach a [permanent] truce, reopen Gaza crossings and resume Palestinian national dialogue".Israel and Egypt tightened their blockade of Gaza when Hamas seized control of the territory in mid-2007.
Barack Obama gave the go-ahead for his first military action yesterday, missile strikes against suspected militants in Pakistan which killed at least 18 people.
Four days after assuming the presidency, he was consulted by US commanders before they launched the two attacks. Although Obama has abandoned many of the "war on terror" policies of George Bush while he was president, he is not retreating from the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.
The US believes they are hiding in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, and made 30 strikes last year in which more than 200 people were killed. In the election, Obama hinted at increased operations in Pakistan, saying he thought Bush had made a mistake in switching to Iraq before completing the job against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The US marine corp commander said yesterday that his 22,000 troops should be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan. Gen James Conway said "the time is right" to leave Iraq now the war had become largely nation-building rather than the pitched fighting in which the corps excelled; he wanted the marines in Afghanistan, especially in the south where insurgents, and the Taliban and al-Qaida, benefit from both a nearby safe haven in Pakistan and a booming trade in narcotics.
Obama has warned that he is prepared to bomb inside Pakistan if he gets relevant intelligence about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. He had also said he would act against militants along the border if the Pakistan government failed to.
The US missiles were fired by unmanned Predator drones, which hang in the sky gathering intelligence through surveillance and, when commanded and directed by remote control, to launch attacks.
The strikes will help Obama portray himself as a leader who, though ready to shift the balance of American power towards diplomacy, is not afraid of military action.
The first attack yesterday was on the village of Zharki, in Waziristan; three missiles destroyed two houses and killed 10 people. One villager told Reuters of phonethat of nine bodies pulled from the rubble of one house, six were its owner and his relatives; Reuters added that intelligence officials said some foreign militants were also killed. A second attack hours later also in Warizistan killed eight people.
The Pakistan government publicly expressed hope that the arrival of Obama would see a halt to such strikes, which stir up hostility from Pakistanis towards the government; in private, the government may be more relaxed about such attacks.
There is a lot of nervousness in the new administration about the fragility of Pakistan, particularly as it has nuclear weapons, but it also sees Afghanistan and Pakistan as being linked. In the face of a Taliban resurgence, there is despair in Washington over the leadership of the Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, and there will not be much disappointment if he is replaced in elections later this year.
But Washington insists on seeing as one of its biggest problems the ability of the Taliban and al-Qaida to maintain havens in Pakistan. Obama on Thursday announced he was making veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke a special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, spoke by phone to the Pakistan president, Asif Ali Zardari.
*
Afghan villagers shout slogans against the U.S. and Afghan government during a demonstration following
KABUL, Afghanistan – President Hamid Karzai condemned a U.S. operation he said killed 16 Afghan civilians, while hundreds of villagers denounced the American military during an angry demonstration Sunday.
Karzai said the killing of innocent Afghans during U.S. military operations "is strengthening the terrorists."
He also announced that his Ministry of Defense sent Washington a draft technical agreement that seeks to give Afghanistan more oversight over U.S. military operations. The same letter has also been sent to NATO headquarters.
Karzai in recent weeks has increasingly lashed out at his Western backers over the issue of civilian casualties, even as U.S. politicians and a top NATO official have publicly criticized Karzai for the slow pace of progress here.
The back-and-forth comes as the new administration of President Barack Obama must decide whether to support Karzai as he seeks re-election later this year as part of the United States' overall Afghan strategy.
Karzai's latest criticism follows a Saturday raid in Laghman province that the U.S. says killed 15 armed militants, including a woman with an RPG, but that Afghan officials say killed civilians.
Two women and three children were among the 16 dead civilians, Karzai said in a statement.
In Laghman's capital, hundreds of angry demonstrators denounced the U.S. military Sunday and demanded an end to overnight raids. U.S. military leaders, victims' relatives and Afghan officials — including two top Karzai advisers — met at the governor's compound to discuss the issue, Gov. Latifullah Mashal said.
"The U.S. military said 'We are sorry for this incident and after this we are going to coordinate our operations with Afghan forces,'" Mashal said.
Civilian deaths during U.S. operations have been a huge point of friction between the Afghan government and U.S. and NATO militaries. Many of the deaths happen on overnight raids by U.S. Special Forces who launch operations against specific insurgent leaders.
A U.S. investigative team that had planned to travel to the village — 40 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of the capital, Kabul — was canceled Sunday because of bad weather. U.S. military spokesman Col. Greg Julian said American officials hoped to visit the site on Tuesday, weather permitting.
"We do want to find out what the bottom line is, and we're kind of in a hands-tied position until we can get out there," Julian said. "And even when we get out there, it's based on what people say rather than being able to do a full forensic-type investigation."
Julian said that the U.S. military has photos showing militants fighting the U.S. coalition forces, but that the photos cannot be released to the public. He said the photos would be shown to Afghan officials.
Karzai last week told parliament that the U.S. and NATO have not heeded his calls to stop airstrikes in civilian areas. Karzai has recently sought to have more control over what kinds of activities U.S. and NATO forces can carry out. According to a copy obtained by The Associated Press last week, the draft technical agreement Karzai's government sent to Washington and NATO headquarters calls for:
• The deployment of additional U.S. or NATO troops and their location carried out only with Afghan government approval.
• Full coordination between Afghan and NATO defense authorities "at the highest possible level for all phases of military and ground operations."
• House searches and detention operations to be carried out only by Afghan security forces.
Civilian deaths are an extremely complicated issue in Afghanistan. Afghan villagers have been known to exaggerate civilian death claims in order to receive more compensation from the U.S. military, and officials have said that insurgents sometimes force villagers to make false death claims.
But the U.S. military has also been known to not fully acknowledge when it killed civilians.
After a battle in August in the village of Azizabad, the U.S. military at first said no civilians were killed. A day later it said about five died, and eventually a more thorough U.S. investigation found 33 civilians were killed. The Afghan government and the U.N. said 90 civilians were killed.
The Polixeni Papapetrou photograph featured on the cover of the controversial “protest” edition of Australian magazine Art Monthly is actually a tribute to the early photography of Lewis Carroll, the legendary creator of Alice in Wonderland.
The Federal Police have once again been called in to investigate and the publication will be reviewed by the Classification Board. The same Classification Board that rated Bill Henson's photographs G with the most “explicit” image of the confiscated works earning a PG rating.
Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), the authors pen name, was also a highly respected visual artist who created over 3000 photographs under his real name Charles Dodgson. Lewis Carroll (Dodgson) became interested in photography in the infancy of this scientific art form and is now regarded as one of the very best Victorian photographers. Of all the Victorian photographers Carroll has had the most influence on modern art photographers.
Most of Carroll’s nude photographs were destroyed, at his instruction, when he died. Out of the 1000 photographs that still exist today only six of them are surviving nudes. Four of the surviving nude portraits are of girls, Evelyn and Beatrice Hatch, and Annie and Frances Henderson.
Lewis Carroll was a Reverend in addition to being the creator of several stories for children and an amateur photographer. Carroll had a tender relationship with Evelyn Hatch, Ethel Hatch and Beatrice Hatch, the daughters of the Reverend Edwin Hatch.
The original Carroll nude photograph featuring Beatrice Hatch:
This nude portrait is professionally coloured with a fantasy setting painted in behind the model. Beatrice Hatch sits on a rock with white cliffs behind her. It has been described as whimsical and trite. Carroll was interested in documenting the human body in a time where adult nudity was taboo but child nudity was considered natural.
Papapetrou’s works aim to address the challenge of children in art by photographing her daughter Olympia. In her 2003 series “Dreamchild” Olympia was six years old and posed to replicate the groundbreaking photography of Lewis Carroll. The series merges the past with the present and examines gender, ethnicity, and the human body. In “Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs” we see Olympia, seated nude on a rock, staring out at the viewer with a naïve yet attentive gaze. The possible interpretation of Olympia as a sexual being is tamed here by the mother-artist who creates a sort of filter between her daughter and the viewer, permitting the child’s innocence to emerge.
The choice of Papapetrou’s Olympia as Lewis Carroll’s Beatrice Hatch before White Cliffs (2003) for our cover may be seen as controversial but is made in the hope of restoring some dignity to the debate; to validate nudity and childhood as subjects for art; to surrender to the power of the imagination (in children and adults) and dialogue without crippling them through fear-mongering and repression.
excerpt from Editorial by Maurice O'Riordan in Art Monthly
The Great Dragon: (first voice-over) No young man, no matter how great, can know his destiny. He cannot glimpse his part in the great story that is about to unfold. Like everyone, he must live and learn. And so it shall be for the young warlock (?!) arriving at the gates of Camelot. A boy that will in time father a legend. His name... Merlin.
general tagline: In a land of Myth and a time of Magick the destiny of a great kingdom rests on the shoulders of a young boy, his name, Merlin.
A flawed but decent fantasy show, I'll do a synchromystic write-up of a new and much better fantasy show in the near future. Merlin is a commoner boy, with natural born Magickal powers, that gets sent to Camelot to work with a Scientist/Secret Magician named Gaia, I mean Gaius. For his own safety by his mother as the villagers were beginning to suspect him a little. Though kinda ambiguous, as magick is forbidden throughout the land by order of the king, at least Gaius can protect and guide him.
Merlin: Hello? Gaius? (He spots Gaius standing and clears his throat. Gaius is startled and falls.)Gaius: Whoa!(Merlin uses magic to move a bed. Gaius falls on the bed. He stands up and looks at Merlin.)Gaius: What did you just do?
Merlin: Ehm
Gaius: Tell me.
Merlin: I ... I ... I have no idea what just happened.
Gaius: If anyone has seen that ...
Merlin: Oh no, that was .. that was nothing to do with me, that was.
Gaius: I know what it was. I just want to know where you learned how to do it.
Merlin: No I..
Gaius: So how is it that you know magic.
Merlin: I don't. Blablabla... I was born this way.
When he first arrives in Camelot - btw is Came-a-lot code for the twisted orgies that supposedly go down at castles or what? ;p I'm sorry - in the first episode: the Dragon's Call, the tone is set immediately:
King Uther: Let this serve as a lesson to all. This man, Thomas James Collins, is adjudged guilty of conspiring to use enchantments and magic and- pursuiant to the laws of Camelot- I, Uther Pendragon, have decreed that such practices are banned on penalty of death. I pride myself as a fair and just king, but for the crime of sorcery there is but one sentence I can pass. (Uther raises his hand and Thomas is executed) When I came to this land, this kingdom was mired in chaos but, with the people's help, magic was driven from the realm. So I declare a festival to celebrate twenty years since the Great Dragon was captured and Camelot freed from the evil of sorcery. Let the celebrations begin!
Loud scream from the crowd
Mary Collins: There is only one evil in this land but it is not magic. It is you! With your hatred and your ignorance! You took my son... But I promise you, before these celebrations are over, you will share my tears. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a son for a son!
Before they can seize her at the King's orders, she vanishes into lots of air.
Merlin receives a calling early by a Dragon trapped in the catacombs of Camelot (symbolizing the latent Kundalini power, "trapped" and dormant at the base of the spine), who tells him about his destiny.
The Great Dragon: How small you are, for such a great destiny.
Merlin: Why? What do you mean? What destiny?
The Great Dragon: Your gift, Merlin, was given to you for a reason.
Merlin: So there is a reason!The Great Dragon: Arthur is the once and future king who will unite the land of Albion...
Merlin: Right?
The Great Dragon: But he faces many threats from friend and foe alike.
Merlin: I don't see what this has to do with me.
The Great Dragon: Everything! Without you, Arthur will never succeed. Without you, there will be no Albion!
Merlin: No! No, you've got this wrong!
The Great Dragon: There is no right or wrong. Only what is and what isn't.
Merlin: But I'm serious! If anyone wants to go and kill him, they can go ahead. In fact, I'll give them a hand.
Merlin said this jokingly cause upon arrival he quickly got into a fight with Arthur, the prince to be king, who is a ROYAL PRICK. (Interesting expression). Though Merlin gets into some trouble, he saves Arthur's life from the vengeful mother, who probably, kinda, had every right to but hey, Arthur the future King needed protecting, and King Uther (played by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Giles - Anthony Head, whose character is even more of a royal pain in the ass, again interesting expression, than his son) rewards him by naming Merlin Arthur's... servant. Ah the royals and their twisted values.
Uther: You saved my boy's life. A debt must be repaid.
Merlin: Um... well...
Uther: Don't be so modest. You shall be rewarded.
Merlin: No, honestly, you don't have to, Your Highness.
Uther: No, absolutely. This merits something quite special.
Merlin: Well...
Uther: You shall be awarded a position in the Royal Household. You shall be Prince Arthur's manservant!
Yay :p Let's play with some etymology:
Merlin: Sea (of consciousness). Arthur: Bear, Ra Thor. Uther Pendragon: Pendragon means Dragon's head. Morgana: Fata Morgana. Gaius: Gaia, (secret) magician and doctor, scientist:
"Magicians and scientists are, on the face of it, poles apart. Certainly, a group of people who often dress strangely, live in a world of their own, speak a specialized language and frequently make statements that appear to be in flagrant breach of common sense have nothing in common with a group of people who often dress strangely, speak a specialized language, live in ... er ..."
Terry Pratchett
IT’S BEEN MORE THAN TWO WEEKS SINCE THE murder of Oscar Grant, and the struggle is still raging: people’s anger is still intense—and there have been further eruptions of protest and much speaking out. Meanwhile, the system responsible for Oscar’s murder is doing everything it can—from trying to steal and suppress videos of the murder, targeting and brutalzing the protestors, to calling meeting after meeting to control peoples’ rage, to behind-the-scenes legal maneuvering to contain and misdirect peoples’ rage and protect the legitimacy of their armed enforcers.
On January 13, after repeated eruptions of defiant protest and rebellion, killer cop Johannes Mehserle, who had not been detained since the killing, was suddenly arrested in Nevada, brought back to Oakland and charged with murder. Although cops are responsible for 100 homicides (1/17 Oakland Murder Mystery by Tim Rutten, LA Times) per year in California, this is the first time anyone can remember a cop being charged with murder for a killing committed while on duty.
oscar-grant-350.jpg
What was different this time? For one thing, the police execution of Oscar Grant was caught live on video by courageous witnesses who in at least one case refused demands by police to turn over their cameras. The videos which clearly show the cop pulling out his gun and shooting Oscar Grant point blank as Grant lay face down on the ground, with no sign of resistance were viewed over a million times on YouTube. But even then, the authorities didn’t bring murder changes until the courageous, determined, sustained protests and rebellion. Still, being charged is a long way off from being convicted, and no doubt there will be other efforts to protect the legitimacy of their police and their “right” to monopolize violence.
In no way can people think that a murder charge means justice has been done. The police who pumped 50 bullets into Sean Bell’s car, killing him, were indicted, and walked away free (and Barack Obama told people they had to “respect the verdict.”) The four police who fired 41 shots at Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man, and killed him in his doorway as he reached for his wallet were acquitted. Even the police who brutally beat Rodney King, and who were caught on video, were acquitted. It was only because people reacted forcefully to that verdict that the police were retried.
Oscar Grant's Murder
Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Black man who worked as a butcher at Farmer Joes, a family-owned grocery store that is an institution in the Fruitvale district of Oakland. He was trying to take care of his 4-year-old daughter. Even on New Year’s Eve he tried to make the “right” decision. His aunt was saying as she was sobbing that Oscar and his friends had decided—very responsibly was her implication—to take public transportation when they were celebrating New Year’s so they would not be driving when they had been drinking, and look what this got him!! This is a bitter reminder that “smart choices” in the end do not matter under this system.
After the murder, Oscar’s family and friends publicly demanded that the cop be arrested. Three days after the murder they hired an attorney who launched his own investigation, released more shocking eye-witness videos to the public, and filed a 25 million dollar lawsuit. But for a week, BART, police and the authorities were urging calm, calling the videos “inconclusive.” They made every possible excuse for the cop and brought up things from Oscar Grant’s past, announcing he had a criminal record, and had been in jail before, as if that itself was grounds for a police execution. They suggested different scenarios that might exonerate the cop: Oscar must have been struggling when the gun went off, or the cop mistook the gun for his taser. The cop seemed “too relaxed” on the video to be capable of an intentional shooting. Etcetera. The BART spokesman, Linton Johnson made daily appearances on TV news, urging calm, piously invoking “fairness” and cautioning against anything that would “taint” the investigation. And every day there was some kind of meeting: a BART official’s meeting, a meeting of the clergy and the District Attorney, a community meeting in a church, and still, for 13 days, no arrest was made.
The cop, Mehserle, was allowed to resign on January 7, and on January 13 the BART Police Department sent a report of their “investigation” to the district attorney that didn’t even recommend prosecution.
After many days, the murder, the video, and then the system’s refusal to take action was too much for the people—on January 7, after Oscar’s funeral, the anger exploded in righteous rebellion in downtown Oakland that sent shockwaves through the area.
An afternoon protest at the BART station spilled onto the streets in an evening march downtown. Here, youth yelled at a riot line of cops, “this is 2009, we ain’t taking that 2008 shit anymore.” There, one of Oscar’s aunts, Bertina Grant, held a sign and stood alone, in the middle of Broadway demanding that the cop who murdered her nephew be arrested. Police moved in with a big armored vehicle that looked like a tank. Then cars went up in flames. Windows broke. Something like 120 people were arrested. Thursday, the next night, a smaller crowd of 100 took the streets of downtown, with police helicopters once again hovering over the downtown area for hours, and there were more arrests. On Friday there were walkouts at Oakland High and other schools. On Monday a rowdy evening protest marched through downtown San Francisco, and there were more arrests.
Since the January 7 rebellion there is a different mood in the air, a complex mix of defiance on the part of some masses, along with criticisms of the rebellion by some clergy and small businesses owners whose businesses were damaged. At the same time, police and politicians, mainstream media, and rightwing bloggers are slandering the protests, targeting revolutionaries, attempting to isolate people and divert and contain peoples’ anger. And there is a big struggle to understand what this murder represented, and what needs to be done, as the struggle continues to change and erupt.
We Are All Oscar Grant
In Oakland, a predominantly Black city, youth of color have endured a lifetime of insults and threats from police. And almost everyone has a story, often too painful to tell, of some sudden, often random abuse. Like a sharp, raw memory of being six years old and seeing your brother beaten by police. Like why you are in that wheelchair. Like your uncle doing 25 to life. When asked to look up the file, an African American clerk at the Oakland Courthouse turned to a reporter and said, “That’s the man who killed that boy. I’d like to see that file. It could have been my son.”
And the face of Oscar Grant appeared on murals, on posters and soon in rap tributes to Oscar on the internet. These songs show a snapshot of American history. Images of slavery, lynching, snarling police dogs and the 1992 video of the Rodney King beating: giving a taste of how these artists see that shit comes from the system and is deep, pervasive and it is past time for it to end. Some of these tributes also comment on Obama, how people's hopes were high but how he will change nothing, even while illusions remain about Obama. They show clips of news footage of the January 7 rebellion, promising more. Some talk of revolution.
Losing Faith in the System, Firemen to the Rescue
Ron Dellums, Oakland’s Black mayor, did not step in to condemn the killing or do anything until 6 days after the murder. Some three hours into the rebellion he suddenly rushed out into the street to try to quiet the anger and defend and restore faith in the system. Videos show him struggling to speak in the dark to an angry crowd. In a chastising tone he asks for calm, civility and respect and people answer angrily that what the cops did was not civil, that they did not act with respect when they killed Oscar Grant. He says, “I understand that you have lost confidence in a process because you have seen what you believe has been a homicide.” He insists that “we are a nation of laws” and tells people to disperse and leave in the “spirit of peace”. “Tell the police to leave” someone shouted, and “It’s been seven days. You can tell that stuff to people who don’t know.” The rage in the streets only intensified after Dellums tried to drown it.
On January 11, State Attorney General Jerry Brown held a news conference to say that he, too, wanted to assure "the community that it's moving at the proper pace and no stone is unturned" and would appoint an “independent observer” to the investigation. Even though, "There's no evidence that anything has been done wrong in the investigation so far." he said.
Media Machine of Lies and Spin
Since January 7, the mainstream media has tried to morph the story from the outrage over the murder of Oscar Grant to outrage over broken windows. They have tried to deflect people's anger away from the system and aim it at the people who are protesting. The police and the media exaggerated the number of stores that were damaged in the outbreak, at first claiming in headlines that 300 stores had been damaged but later admitting that the number was about 45. The media articles used words like “ thugs" and "a mob" to criminalize the youth who took part in the rebellion. Ron Dellums was quoted in the SF Chronicle saying those who took part were "no different than somebody today picking up a gun in anger and blowing someone's brains out."
The whole way that the mainstream press has dealt with this shows that they are part of the machinery of the state, bent on preserving the legitimacy of an unjust system at the cost of the truth. A system that holds private property as more important than the life of a young man. Where was the outrage in the media at the murder of seven other people by Oakland Police over the last 15 months: Gary King, age 20, Vallvatin Villa, 26; Andre Moppin, 20; artist Casper Banjo, 71; Jose Luis Buenrostro-Gonzalez, 15; Lesley Xavier Allen, 20; Mac "Jody" Woodfox, 27. And what about the San Pablo Police who shot Rosalyne McHenry 18 times when they responded to a domestic dispute? Or in Berkeley, when police there shot Anita Gay twice in the back! Where are the muckraking reporters of the objective mainstream press? Out investigating police murder? No! Taking dictation from the murdering cops and the authorities!
Targeting Revolution Books
Early after the murder Revolution Books made posters saying “the whole damn system is guilty.” People in the Revolution Club and around the bookstore distributed Revolution newspaper broadly in protests and gatherings, bringing out that the same criminal system of capitalism was killing the people of Gaza and sending thugs with badges to patrol and oppress on the streets of Oakland. The San Francisco Chronicle immediately targeted people from Revolution Books as part of the “core group of the mob.” Mainstream TV and print reporters came into and called the store for interviews. With few exceptions they had no interest in the bookstore's views on the murder of Oscar Grant, or exposure of this murder as just the latest killing. They were not interested in what we tried to tell them about the source of this oppression and what should be done to end it. They mainly asked two questions, “when did the protest turn ugly?” and “Who was responsible?”
To this, a staffer from Revolution Books said she upheld the protest as “a "righteous rebellion" that stemmed from a “long history of oppression and police brutality.” Since then the bookstore has gotten support from people who want to stand up against police brutality. And off this they have taken up copies of Revolution newspaper have been distributed, as an indispensable tool in this struggle, pointing to the system as the source of police murder, and awakening people to the possibility of revolution. But the store and revolutionaries have also been targets of email and phone threats from some people who don't give a damn that Oscar Grant was killed. Some come from people who are upset about the property damage during the protests from the point of view of the small businessman. But others are blatantly racist and reactionary, including threats to break the store’s windows and racist statements saying that the protesters should go "back to Africa.”
It’s Right to Rebel Against Oppression and Injustice!
First of all, let's be clear, it is right to rebel! And it is beautiful and not ugly when people stand up and act after a lifetime of injustice, brutality, and dead-end choices offered by this system. These rebellions are the only way people can get even a shred of justice under this system as has been proven repeatedly throughout history, from the civil war to the civil rights movements and the Black liberation struggles of the 1960s.
Second, youth who take to the streets against police murder are not thugs, but the people’s future, in rough, raw, embryonic form. Without outbreaks of resistance against things like police murder, the people cannot build a revolutionary movement.
The only thug who used a gun to kill someone was the murdering cop people were in the streets protesting. Pictures from that night show youth lying down on the pavement in front of police in riot gear, demonstrating the position Oscar Grant was in when he was killed. Demonstrators were shouting at the cops "I am Oscar Grant" and wearing signs on their back saying "shoot me." These courageous youth faced down lines of cops with riot gear who used tear gas and rubber bullets—and even brought out an armored tanklike vehicle to try to quell the rebellion.
“Inexcusable Behavior"?
The attacks on the rebellion have also come from those who claim to be opposing police violence, while protecting the system. So they end up spouting the same shit the mayor, the police and the media are putting out. In this vein, a letter from the Ella Baker Center condemned "some people" who "lashed out with inexcusable behavior," adding that they do not "condone vandalism or the destruction of property while speaking truth to power."
Another group, The Coalition Against Police Executions (CAPE), after condemning the “violence” of the previous Wednesday, made a point of meeting with the police to work together to create a “peaceful” protest on January 14, enlisting dozens of people as security to stand between the police and the protesters if the youth got out of hand. They featured Oakland Mayor Dellums at their rally, again pleading for faith in the system—and they preached at people to “be peaceful”, as if the people, and not the murdering cops, were the problem. They said people should not show anger lest the media portray them as "animals"—as if that racist characterization of the youth was correct. They called for the city to build “healing centers” for the youth. But how can there be healing when the murderers are still in the streets? They pointedly refused to demand that all the charges on the people arrested on January 7 be dropped. After a short, controlled march they tried to end the protest, telling people to “go home”. But then, as a Cal Grad student wrote, a crowd of “youth of all colors” refused to let the protest be squelched and had had enough. Soon, the windows of a Wells Fargo shattered to the ground, followed by Jamba Juice and Radio Shack. Police and youth played cat and mouse, and helicopters buzzed late into the night again, with police on the ground beating and arresting about 20 people.
When people rise up against the forces that are oppressing them it isn't all nice and neat. That's what Mao meant when he said, "A revolution is not a dinner party." People who want justice for Oscar Grant need to stop attacking the protesters, when what is needed is to continue and intensify the struggle. Stop standing on the sidelines, or getting in the way. Instead everyone who desires justice must join with the struggle and help people fight better. An indictment does not mean justice has been done! Right now what is needed is more resistance.
People are going to strike back at various forces including some who are not the enemy. The question for people is do you stand with the people or do you oppose them? Do you help lead them forward (including to unite with potential allies and to aim their anger at the real enemy) or do you block their path or stand on the sidelines criticizing?
While some middle class people have joined the authorities and media's attack on the protesters, others have stood firmly with the people. An example of this is the stand taken by Ken Epstein, a reporter for the Oakland Post who told CBS Channel 5: “I was writing a story for the paper about how upset people are and how unjust the killing of Oscar Grant was and my car was being burned up. But at the same time I really understand how outraged people are and I’m outraged myself.”
Right now, many youth and others are beginning to resist the system and are speaking out and acting in many ways. The authorities are counter attacking and there have been some outrageous acts of police violence against protesters (see article of high school protests). There are also dozens of possible cases against people who have been arrested and an important part of the battle at this point is for many people to raise the demand that all charges against all protesters be dropped.
The intolerable murder of Oscar Grant has shown a spotlight on a whole set up of oppression and brutality, it has brought deep anger to the surface, and has caused many people in the Bay Area to lift their heads, to start to fight, and it shows the need for a real, deep change—revolution.
WE ARE ALL OSCAR GRANT!
THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY!
Weekend Edition Saturday,January 24, 2009 · Rape has become a savage weapon in the civil wars of Congo, as much as guns or knives. Hundreds of thousands of women have reportedly been systematically sexually attacked during the conflict.
Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda was arrested in Rwanda Friday. Groups such as Human Rights Watch have said that soldiers under his command have been responsible for some of the widespread violence against women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
NPR's Scott Simon talks with Eve Ensler, playwright and activist, and Dr. Denis Mukwege, the founder of a hospital in Congo that's helping victims of rape and mutilation, about their upcoming tour to raise awareness of what's happening to women and girls in Congo.
Dr. Mukwege is a gynecologist by training. He founded the Panzi hospital in the Congo — a place where victims can find treatment and counseling. He's been honored by the United Nations for his humanitarian work there.
Ensler founded V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women. She is also the author of The Vagina Monologues.
In a traditional game of political whack-a-mole, the Obama White House has moved quickly to freeze all pending regulations proposed by the former president's administration, including president Bush's attempts to roll back large swathes of environmental legislation.
President Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel issued a memo on inauguration day warning federal agencies not to send proposed or final regulations to the Office of the Federal Register for publication. The Oval Office is to review each of them first.
The White House memo also gives the president's designates the chance to re-evaluate rules that have already been published in the federal register, but which agencies have not yet brought into effect.
Last-minute rules, known as midnight regulations, are common when one administration leaves office. The Bush administration was working on a swathe of regulations in the run-up to the transition, many of which carried an environmental impact.
For example, on Tuesday, as president Obama took office, a rule exempting factory farms from reporting pollution emissions from animal waste came into effect. It had been finalised on 18 December.
Other rules that took effect in the previous week governed the reclassification of hazardous waste as fuel, allowing it to be burned, and the opening of two million acres of western land to leasing for oil shale development. Last Thursday, a regulation also came into effect allowing federal representatives to approve projects without considering global warming, and without consulting biological health experts about the effect on endangered species.
A report called After Midnightby OMB Watch and the Center for American Progress listed a number of options for the new administration as it seeks to draw a line under Bush policy and impose its own rule. Proposed regulations are easy to stop. The Oval Office simply tells agencies to stop working on them. However, " final rules present a more difficult problem. Executive branch agencies cannot throw out a final Bush rule with the stroke of a pen," warned the report. "They must conduct an entirely new rulemaking – the legal process by which regulations are made – which often consumes significant time and resources."
The Congressional Review Act also allows Congress to overturn Bush regulations completed after 15 May last year, which include many of the attempts to relax environmental rules. "Funding also may be withheld to block implementation or enforcement of undesirable rules," the report added. In addition, lawsuits can be brought against the rules, which the new government could settle.
The Bush administration rushed through 157 regulations in the fourth quarter of last year, compared with 83 the year before. However, while midnight regulations are often criticised they are not unusual; the struggle to stop the previous administration's last-minute rule-making is a regular occurrence during presidential transitions. President Clinton also signed many midnight regulations into effect.
[I heard about this worker coop on the Sam Seder and Marc Maron show on Air America Radio called Breakroom Live. This is from their Just Coffee Legend page]
http://justcoffee.coop/http://www.justcoffee.org/The Just Coffee LegendLegend has it that Just Coffee was started by a "college boy" and a farmer who met some revolutionary coffee growers in a place called Chiapas. They struck up a friendship and went back to their homeland of Wisconsin to help sell their compas' beans to people who would not seek to rip these fine growers off. After meeting some semi-shady and disinterested "coffee men" who turned up their noses and acted rudely, they sought out the advice of fair trade veterans in the justice league of coffee roasters known as Co-op Coffees.
After several pep talks, they became reluctant entrepreneurs, joined Co-op Coffees and bought a traditional coffee roaster. Thus Just Coffee was born!!!
After adding a much needed environmental engineer (every fair trade roaster should have one, really) they promptly ignored their shiny new coffee roasting machine and began roasting beans in a very odd looking contraption that they acquired from a very nice Madison roaster. The results were simply smashing.
Soon they began traveling the world in search of cool new producer co-ops to work with while simultaneously adding great folks from Madison to their bulging roster. As a team this rag tag crew of farmers, activists, bikers, writers, dancers, zen parents, actors, circus clowns, and fellow travelers have concocted a plan to overthrow the neo-liberal coffee menace.
My three-year-old son Sammy walked into my room uninvited as I sorted through another batch of fresh photos from Gaza.
I was looking for a specific image, one that would humanise Palestinians as living, breathing human beings, neither masked nor mutilated. But to no avail.
All the photos I received spoke of the reality that is Gaza today - homes, schools and civilian infrastructure bombed beyond description. All the faces were either of dead or dying people.
I paused as I reached a horrifying photo in the slideshow of a young boy and his sister huddled on a single hospital trolley waiting to be identified and buried. Their faces were darkened as if they were charcoal and their lifeless eyes were still widened with the horror that they experienced as they were burned slowly by a white phosphorus shell.
It was just then that Sammy walked into my room snooping around for a missing toy. “What is this, daddy?” he inquired.
I rushed to click past the horrific image, only to find myself introducing a no less shocking one. Fretfully, I turned the monitor off, then turned to my son as he stood puzzled. His eyes sparkled inquisitively as he tried to make sense of what he had just seen.
He needed to know about these kids whose little bodies had been burned beyond recognition.
“Where are their mummies and daddies? Why are they all so smoky all the time?”
I explained to him that they are Palestinians, that they were hurting “just a little” and that their “mummies and daddies will be right back.”
The reality is that these children and thousands like them in Gaza have experienced the most profound pain, a pain that we may never in our lives comprehend.
“I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons,” Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor who had recently returned from Gaza told reporters in Oslo.
“This is a new generation of very powerful small explosives that detonates with extreme power and dissipates its power within a range of five to 10 metres
“We have not seen the casualties affected directly by the bomb, because they are normally torn to pieces and do not survive, but we have seen a number of very brutal amputations.”
The dreadful weapons are known as dense inert metal explosives (DIME), “an experimental kind of explosive” but only one of several new weapons that Israel has been using in Gaza, the world’s most densely populated regions.
Israel could not possibly have found a better place to experiment with DIME or the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas than Gaza.
The hapless inhabitants of the strip have been disowned. The power of the media, political coercion, intimidation and manipulation have demonised this imprisoned nation fighting for its life in the tiny spaces left of its land.
No wonder Israel refused to allow foreign journalists into the tiny enclave and brazenly bombed the remaining international presence in Gaza.
As long as there are no witnesses to the war crimes committed in Gaza, Israel is confident that it can sell a fabricated story to the world that it is, as always, the victim, one that has been terrorised and, strangely enough, demonised as well.
The Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on January 15.
“Livni said that these were hard times for Israel, but that the government was forced to act in Gaza in order to protect Israeli citizens.
“She stated that Gaza was ruled by a terrorist regime and that Israel must carry on a dialogue with moderate sources while simultaneously fighting terror.”
The same peculiar message was conveyed by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as he declared his one-sided ceasefire on January 17.
Never mind that the “terrorist regime” was democratically elected and had honoured a ceasefire agreement with Israel for six months, receiving nothing in return but a lethal siege interrupted by an occasional round of death and destruction.
Livni is not as perceptive and shrewd as the US media fantasies. Blunt-speaking Ehud Barak and stiff-faced Mark Regev are not convincing men of wisdom. Their logic is bizarre and wouldn’t stand the test of reason.
But they have unfettered access to the media, where they are hardly challenged by journalists who know well that protecting one’s citizens doesn’t require the violation of international and humanitarian laws, targeting medical workers, sniper fire at children and demolishing homes with entire families holed up inside. Securing your borders doesn’t require imprisoning and starving your neighbours and turning their homes to smoking heaps of rubble.
Olmert wants to “break the will” of Hamas, i.e. the Palestinians, since the Hamas government was elected and backed by the majority of the Palestinian people.
Isn’t 60 years of suffering and survival enough to convince Olmert that the will of the Palestinians cannot be broken? How many heaps of wreckage and mutilated bodies will be enough to convince the prime minister that those who fight for their freedom will either be free or will die trying?
Far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman, a rising star in Israel, is not yet convinced. He thinks that more can be done to “secure” his country, which was established in 1948 on the ruins of destroyed Palestinian towns and villages. He has a plan.
“We must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II,” said the head of ultra-nationalist opposition party Yisrael Beitenu.
A selective reader of history, Lieberman could only think of the 1945 atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But something else happened during those years that Lieberman carefully omitted. It’s called the Holocaust, a term that many are increasingly using to describe the Israeli massacres in the Gaza Strip.
It is strange that conventional Israeli wisdom still dictates that “the Arabs understand only the language of force.” If that were true, then they would have conceded their rights after the first massacre in 1948. But, following more than 60 years filled with massacres new and old, they continue to resist.
“Freedom or death,” is the popular Palestinian mantra. These are not simply words, but a rule by which Palestinians live and die. Gaza is the proof and Israeli leaders are yet to understand.
My son persisted. “Why are Palestinians so smoky all the time, Daddy?”
“When you grow up, you’ll understand.”
- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, “The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle” (Pluto Press, London).
To further your sociopolitical education, strengthen your connection with the radical community, and deepen your participation in forming an egalitarian, just, ecological, non-speciesist and democratic society, visit the Transformative Studies Institute at http://transformativestudies.org/ and the Institute for Critical Animal Studies at http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/
Over here in the UK I have been following the programmes of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a TV chef with a difference. As he has journeyed into self-sufficiency over the past ten years at his smallholding River Cottage, his programmes have charted that journey whilst he himself has been involved in and even started several campaigns regarding organic eating and self-sufficiency, mostly aimed at showing how anyone can do it. His latest programme, River Cottage Autumn, has featured a number of initiatives springing up over here lately (among them Guerrilla Gardening and Transition Towns) in between Hugh cooking up feasts foraged from the countryside around him and laying on quirky menus at the recently opened River Cottage Canteen. The newest project of his was revealed here on his most recent series. It is called Landshare.
At present the Landshare project is just a website seeking subscribers. In the vein of Guerrilla Gardening and aspects of the Transition Town movement it hopes to get people growing on unused land and allotments, whether you live in the town or the country. For example, one person featured on the show lived in a flat with no space to grow things. Through the Transition Town network, she got together with someone in her community who has a garden and they now both eat freshly grown vegetables. Whilst these other projects incorporate other aspects or approaches to dealing with peak oil, Landshare focuses on this one vital aspect.
Currently, you join by categorising yourself as one of four things: a Grower (one who seeks to grow but has nowhere to do so); Landowner (those with land to share or offer, whether its a back garden or even a rooftop space); Land-Spotter (people who might know of unused, derelict-looking land that may be available to grow on or that is owned but might become available if the owners are willing); or a Facilitator (those able to offer any kind of general help from helping the elderly and others having trouble getting involved with Landshare to paperwork, meetings, computer skills and, of course, advice on growing fruit and vegetables). The project is looking to launch properly in early 2009, having garnered support of those who sign up to get involved now, whatever category you fall into.
This is another of several projects that extends the ideals of co-operation and empathy to those in your community. These days we are often left at a loss for what we can do to positively affect the outcome of a seemingly unsurpassable world situation, but with projects such as this we are enabled once more. Apart from meaning that we interact with our community more and can make a concerted effort at leaving a lighter footfall on the planet, whichever way the cookie crumbles, there are undoubtedly hard times ahead. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has drawn upon the idea of government ministers of wartime Britain who urged the public to ‘Dig for Victory’ to provide themselves with healthy food in a time when mass produced goods were rationed.
I personally do not doubt that we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with regards to food shortages in certain countries around the world now and that the current financial situation and global climatic condition could present problems greater than where we get our food from. But what better way to try and deal with now than this kind of activity? It gets you meeting people in your community for the specific purpose of helping one another, you get fresh air and exercise, you do something soulful and earthy (in every sense of the word!), you learn new skills, and you get to eat (and probably share) the end result!
Ideas such as Landshare, Transition Towns or Guerrilla Gardening all started as just that – ideas. They are great examples of simple grass-roots organisation, meaning anyone can start one or get involved in one, anywhere. It is the sort of thing that has ridden on the back of the success of the permaculture movement, which has managed to apply its principles to numerous diverse situations and contexts around the globe. Yet it all seems like a little bit of history repeating ... or should that be history evolving? As mentioned, the Ministry of Food’s nationwide campaign during the scarcity of wartime Britain succeeded in encouraging people to be more self-sufficient. But this also smacks of agrarian brotherhoods of the much yonder past – namely, the seventeenth century “Diggers”, who organised in protest against land laws and what was effectively a redistribution of common property of the time. By planting and working on common ground, the Diggers formed what were essentially communities on this common land as a reaction to rising food prices, drawn together in adverse times for survival.
Many of us are not quite yet facing such shortage and adversity, in the West anyway. But many of us are so detached from our earthly skills and abilities, alienated from nature and community themselves, that it needs refreshing. With the help of technology like the Internet, projects like Landshare give us hope of nurturing that which is slightly less technological. They can enable small ways in which everyone in fringe, alternative communities and those more mainstream can reconnect with the Gaian cycles of the planet. It is an excellent site of where the spiritual and material intersect, and the skills and knowledge in both areas could prove utterly necessary if we are headed towards times of greater scarcity.
Just imagine (and I offer this partly in speculation, for further discussion) if we got a strong foothold of common land now. The idea of land belonging to and providing for many people could prove invaluable if a situation similar to that which caused the Diggers to react as they did arose again in our future. The period of British history in which such a defiant declaration of common rights became necessary is often associated with the phrase ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ which appeared in all manner of literature and culture of the times. Maybe our world will get turned upside down. Maybe it is being. At least we will be firmly rooted to the earth.
Physicists have teleported quantum information between two atoms separated by a significant distance, for the first time. Until now this feat had only been achieved between photons, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. According to researchers, this advance could be a significant milestone in the quest for a workable quantum computer.
Quantum teleportation is a remarkable form of transport only available to particles at the atomic and subatomic scales. Information such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon can be transferred between particles without travelling across a physical medium. Teleportation is made possible by the feature of quantum mechanics known as “entanglement”.
Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale ‘quantum repeater’ that can network quantum memories over vast distances Christopher Monroe, University of Maryland
According to quantum mechanics, when particles become entangled, the very act of measuring the quantum state of one particle instantly reveals information about the state of the second. In theory, this effect should occur regardless of distance between particles. In practise, it is very difficult to observe because of external influences: if the particles interact uncontrollably with the environment or if you try to record two quantum states directly – entanglement vanishes.
Now researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan have successfully teleported quantum information between two ytterbium ions separated by one metre, reporting a 90 per cent success rate. They employ a new method of teleportation where ions are stimulated to emit photons and the quantum states are inferred from the colour of these emissions (Science323 486).
“Our system has the potential to form the basis for a large-scale ‘quantum repeater’ that can network quantum memories over vast distances” said group leader Christopher Monroe of the University of Maryland.
Double entanglement
In quantum teleportation the sender (Alice) instantaneously transfers the quantum state of a particle to a receiver (Bob). In 1997 physicists achieved teleportation of quantum states between photons for the first time. Their methods exploited the uncertainty principle: Alice could not know the exact state of her photon, but the effect of entanglement meant she could still teleport her state to Bob.
Then in 2004 separate teams of physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Colorado and the University of Innsbruck in Austria demonstrated teleportation at the atomic scale for the first time. Using slightly different methods, they transferred spin between pairs of ions trapped in a harmonic potential. Unfortunately, teleportation – using these methods – is restricted to very short distances because harmonic potentials are molecular in scale.
Now Monroe and his team have taken teleportation in a different direction. They first isolate the ytterbium atoms in separate vacuum traps surrounded by electromagnetic fields. Each ion – in its ground state – is then irradiated with a microwave burst which puts the ions in a superposition of two different quantum states. Next, a short laser pulse excites each ion which subsequently leads them to emit photons whose colour is a superposition of red and blue – linked with the two available quantum states.
The red photon or the blue one?
Once generated, these photons are then directed towards a beamsplitter where they have an equal chance of passing through or being reflected. There is a detector on either side of the splitter. According to the researchers, a red-blue combination detected at exactly the same time is a clear sign that the ytterbium atoms are entangled. When this occurs the researchers immediately return to the ions where they determine the quantum states using a process known as quantum tomography.
“One particularly attractive aspect of our method is that it combines the unique advantages of both photons and atoms,” said Monroe. “Photons are ideal for transferring information fast over long distances, whereas atoms offer a valuable medium for long-lived quantum memory.”
The next step for this research is to further improve the success rate of the measurements. “We are looking into putting an optical cavity around each atom - which could yield orders of magnitude improvement in the success rate of the system” said Steven Olmschenk, a member of the research team.
Boris Blinov at the University of Washington told physicsworld.com, “Olmshenk and his colleagues have generated an entanglement and used it to teleport quantum data in what I consider the most promising ‘qubit’ [quantum bit] candidate yet - the trapped ion system.” He added, “We are one major step closer to the our elusive goal.”
S. Olmschenk,1*D. N. Matsukevich,1P. Maunz,1D. Hayes,1L.-M. Duan,2C. Monroe1
Quantum teleportation is the faithful transfer of quantum statesbetween systems, relying on the prior establishment of entanglementand using only classical communication during the transmission.We report teleportation of quantum information between atomicquantum memories separated by about 1 meter. A quantum bit storedin a single trapped ytterbium ion (Yb+) is teleported to a secondYb+ atom with an average fidelity of 90% over a replete setof states. The teleportation protocol is based on the heraldedentanglement of the atoms through interference and detectionof photons emitted from each atom and guided through opticalfibers. This scheme may be used for scalable quantum computationand quantum communication.
1 Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) and Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.
2 FOCUS Center and Department of Physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: smolms@umd.edu
THIS past Tuesday, January 20, 2009, Barack Obama took over the leadership of the empire as president No. 11 of the United Sates since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959.
Nobody could doubt the sincerity of his words when he affirms that he will turn the country into a model of liberty, respect for human rights in the world and the independence of other peoples. Of course, without this offending barely anyone, except the misanthropes out there in the world. He now has said comfortably that imprisonment and torture on the illegally-occupied Guantánamo base will cease immediately, which is beginning to sow doubts among those who worship terror as a necessary instrument of their country’s foreign policy.
The intelligent and noble face of the first black president of the United States since its founding as an independent republic two and one-third centuries ago had transformed itself, with the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, becoming a living symbol of the American dream.
However, despite all the tests that he has withstood, Obama has not passed the central one. What will he do when the immense power in his hands proves absolutely useless for overcoming the system’s insoluble antagonistic contradictions?
I have shortened my "Reflections," just as I resolved to do this year, in order not to interfere or get in the way of the comrades of the Party and state as they make constant decisions about objective difficulties stemming from the world economic crisis. I am fine, but I insist, none of them should feel constrained by any of my Reflections, the seriousness of my condition or my death.
I am reviewing the speeches and materials I have elaborated over more than half a century.
I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long period of time. I receive information and meditate calmly on the events. I don’t expect to have that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term will have concluded.
In a visit to the State Department Thursday, President Obama made his first substantive comments on the Middle East conflict since Israel’s attack on Gaza. Obama first mentioned his commitment to Israel’s security, without affirming his commitment to Palestinian security. He condemned Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns, but didn’t criticize the U.S.-backed Israeli bombings of densely-populated Gaza. But in a departure from the Bush administration, Obama acknowledged Palestinian suffering and said Gaza’s borders should be opened to aid. We speak with MIT professor, Noam Chomsky.
President Obama has made his first first substantive remarks on the crisis in Gaza since being elected. Obama was speaking at the state department flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as he named two key envoys: Retired Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who negotiated a lasting agreement in Northern Ireland, will be Middle East envoy. And Richard Holbrook, who brokered a deal in the Balkans in the mid-90s, will be envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In his remarks, Obama backed Israel"s three week attack on Gaza as a defensive move against Hamas rocket fire but also said he was deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation for Palestinians in Gaza. The twenty-two-day assault killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, at least a third children. More than 5,500 were injured. 13 Israelis were killed over the same period, 10 of them soldiers, four by friendly fire.
A Hamas spokesperson told Al Jazeera television Obama’s position toward the Palestinians does not represent change. Osama Hamdan said, “I think this is an unfortunate start for President Obama in the region and the Middle East issue. And it looks like the next four years, if it continues with the same tone, will be a total failure.” For more we are joined on the telephone by Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over a half-century, he has written over a hundred books, including “Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.”
Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over a half-century and written over a hundred books.
A Historic MomentSince the start of the new millennium, popular movements in Bolivia have learned to mobilize en masse to form a united front of class and ethnicity to oust two presidents and reject a third candidate. Bolivians have also elected one of their own, who without strong middle class and mestizo support, probably would not have won. Evo Morales, a full-blooded Aymaran indigenous, became Bolivia’s first native president in December 2005 with 53.7 percent of the vote, an unprecedented majority in a country where support from a quarter of the electorate is considered respectable. He took office in January 2006 and has since acted to change the internal structure of the country to reflect the ambitions and interests of those social movements which are intent on rallying behind him.
On October 21, 2008, Bolivia came one step closer to holding a referendum that eventually could have the potential to shape the country for generations to come. On that date, January 25, 2009, Congress approved when the vote would be staged to determine whether or not the country adopts a new constitution. The proposed draft is designed to redress centuries of structural oppression and humiliation faced by Bolivia’s indigenous and working class majority. A second vote would be staged on the referendum on whether to hold a second referendum which was also approved on the same day regarding whether to deal with the unresolved issue of limiting excessive and disproportionate land ownership. People will be given the choice between capping future individual landholdings at levels of either 5,000 or 10,000 hectares.
If it passes as expected, the new constitution will furbish a profound improvement for social progress for those, like the indigenous, who were previously disenfranchised in the country. The new structure would mean the consolidation and institutionalization of Bolivia’s indigenous nationalist movement, composed of workers’ unions, indigenous communities, and popular interest groups across the country. Such a feat has only been made possible because of Morales’ political grouping “Movement towards Socialism” (MAS) ability to harness the momentum of Bolivia’s current social movements towards the political advancement of his cause. As a result, Bolivia now stands ready to implement dramatic social reforms, which have been hundreds of years in the waiting.
A Land Divided
Bolivia has experienced a history of biased development and political corruption that continues to haunt the current MAS administration. As a result, the country has a long legacy of mobilization and activism. Until 1982, it had experienced more coups than it had years of democratic governances. Today, political instability continues to reflect the status quo. This is exemplified in the fact that although technically democratically elected, there have been six presidents in the last eight years. This high turnover can, in part, be attributed to the fractured state of Bolivian society, which is divided along geographic, ethnic, ideological and class-based lines.
Bolivia’s indigenous comprise almost two-thirds of the national population, yet historically have been relegated to the periphery of Bolivia’s civic, economic and political institutions. The two largest indigenous groups are the Quechua, comprising 30 percent of the total population, and the Aymara, another 25 percent. These communities live predominantly as subsistence farmers in the Cochabamban valley and the western highlands of La Paz, Oruro and Potosi respectively. This population ranges from poor to extremely destitute and routinely have been excluded from authentic political, economic, and social processes throughout much of Bolivia’s history. The situation east of the Andes, meanwhile, is quite different. There, a wealthy minority, largely of European descent, has partitioned the country’s best agricultural land and natural gas reserves for their own benefit. A system of elite control Bolivia’s leading businesses, media outlets and traditional political parties, while these residents in the east enjoy a higher standard of living than most South Americans.
The stark contrast of rich and poor Bolivian society is certainly not a recent phenomenon and neither is resistance against the status quo. To appreciate Bolivia’s recent ongoing turmoil, it is important to understand the specific facets of social movement and protest in the country as today’s trends are certainly in part shaped by the successes and failures of years past.
Domination and Resistance
The first major phase of social protest in Bolivia started in 1780 as an indigenous movement against Spanish colonial rule. In August of that year, Tupaj Katari led an insurgency in the Potosí department which sparked a chain of local movements that soon spread unrest across the western altiplano and beyond. Indigenous militias, aided by their intimate knowledge of the land and backed by popular support, were successful in clearing the Spanish from the countryside. However, when it reached the edge of the city of La Paz, the indigenous uprising failed. Katari led a five month siege on La Paz, the stronghold of colonial power, yet was unable to take control. He was ultimately captured in 1781, and the Spanish retained control of the country until 1825, when Bolivia’s independence was declared. This early insurgency set the pattern for subsequent Indian risings. They fought for communal sovereignty and cultural recognition and were led by a strong and charismatic figure. Although the main movement was able to mobilize the countryside en masse, it ultimately failed because it was unable to forge any urban allies.
Over a century and a half later, a different type of social movement broke out. In 1952, an urban insurrection was formed by organized labor, students, intellectuals, and a progressive middle class under the leadership of Víctor Paz Estenssoro. The latter had been elected president on the National Revolutionary Movement (MNR) ticket, yet was prevented at the time from assuming power by the incumbent government. The MNR was a quasi Marxist political party committed to nationalize Bolivia’s mining industry and combat international imperialism. The 1952 uprising was a movement of class consciousness that soon succeeded in placing Estenssoro in power. This was in marked contrast to Katari’s earlier rebellion, which fought in vain for indigenous sovereignty, and while he never succeeded because he lacked support in urban areas, the MNR ultimately failed because it did not address the institutional barriers that excluded the indigenous, on a defacto basis, from civil society. Moreover, Katari was unable to maintain any sort of rural support and neglected to forge close ties among the campesino and alliances with the miners.
In 1964, at the start of his third term, Estenssoro was overthrown by a military coup, followed by nearly two decades of coups and right-wing military dictatorships. However, not all was lost during this time in terms of social activism. In 1973, an indigenous revolutionary group known as the kataristas issued the ‘Manifesto of Tiwanaku,’ a radical document that merged peasant class consciousness with indigenous ethnic consciousness and identified both colonialism and capitalism as responsible for continued exploitation. The kataristas were able to forge alliances with the working class, petty merchants, and the non-indigenous peasantry, forming a powerful alliance between otherwise disconnected groups. Such alliances would set the pattern for successful social movements in the future.
‘Transition’ in the 1980s
The kataristas led a series of mass mobilizations in the late 1970s, and procedural democracy was restored in 1982. In that year, the Democratic Popular Unity (UDP) ticket, a loose coalition of 20-odd leftist and non-aligned political parties and movements, was elected to power with the goal of resuming the nationalist project of the MNR 30 years prior. However, the UDP proved unable to maintain any sort of collective unity, which became the Achilles’ heel of 20th century social movements in Bolivia. Debt and hyperinflation ravaged the country and internal rifts, combined with active opposition forces, crippled the UDP until it folded its reformist attempt and called for early elections in 1985.
The subsequent regime was headed by former MNR president Paz Estenssoro, who now was bitter in his old age. With the help of Planning Minister and future President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, the 78-year old Estenssoro “set out to dismantle whatever remained of the revolution he had forged three decades earlier.” In a manner similar to Augusto Pinochet, and persuaded by the same ‘Chicago Boys’as in Chile , Estenssoro implemented a harsh series of austerity measures drafted by students of Jeffrey Sachs, who was then at Harvard University. In the process, the power and profits of key resource industries were concentrated in the hands of an elite minority of owners in the eastern lowlands and abroad. The political left, still stymied by the failures of the UDP, was unable to present any sort of formidable resistance or alternative model, and the social safety nets that had previously addressed Bolivia’s social crises, at least on a surface level, were all but vanquished.
The result was the best and worst of free markets. Inflation rates dropped from a whopping 8,170 percent to a more manageable 9 percent within a year. Meanwhile 35,000 factory workers and 20,000 miners lost their jobs due to privatization. This, combined with the worst El Niño in 200 years, coincided with a downturn in global tin prices. The cost of commodities in Bolivia soared, the middle class slipped into poverty and thousands were forced to relocate in search of work. According to journalist Benjamin Dangle, the displacement of Bolivia’s once-radical, now-unemployed working class served to “spread the embers of the fire around Bolivia.” The effect of this was that the most ardent opposition to the country’s ruling political elites was no longer limited to a particular region or industry; but rather was diffused throughout the country, along with their nationalist sentiments and honed union labor organizational skills. Many went to look for a new life in the city, namely El Alto and Cochabamba, while others went to work on the plantations in the eastern lowlands. Meanwhile, most militants of the displaced workers resettled in Bolivia’s central regions to work alongside indigenous cocaleros (coca growers). Among them was a young Evo Morales.
The Emergence of ‘Indigenous Nationalism’
Coca farming attracted a sizeable portion of out-of-work campesinos because it offered steady employment and relatively high wages. Not long after, coca became one of Bolivia’s most profitable exports and supported entire regional economies through the influx of cash and the jobs which it created. Coca would be flown out of the Chapare in light aircraft by Colombian cartels to foreign destinations, where it was processed into cocaine. The next stop would be to the United States where a frenzied consumer base avidly awaited its appearances. The US responded to its growing consumer problem with the ‘War on Drugs,’ which was international in scope. Instead of addressing demand at home, the northern behemoth opted to target suppliers of cocaine, as well as growers of coca.
Eradication however, was not well received by indigenous communities, which historically had depended on the social and economic value of coca. The plant is relatively easy to grow, and its leaves are used to remedy the burdensome effects of heavy labor at high altitude. According to current president and cocalero leader, Evo Morales, citing the economic stimulus and the sense of collective identity it provides, coca is “the backbone of quechua-aymara culture.” Accordingly, eradication efforts by the US Drug Enforcement Agency during the ‘coca zero’ campaign were not well received. Cocaleros perceived eradication as an attack on their indigenous culture and way of life, and strongly resisted it. Former miners experienced in unionization and aggressive resistance campaigning a way of mobilizing the frustrations of indigenous cocaleros into a formidable social movement. As momentum grew, the power of the cocaleros was consolidated to form a new political movement that eventually became the current political party: the Movimiento al Socialismo (Movement towards Socialism - MAS). The MAS was created to be the political conduit to the coca growers’ union and other, mostly indigenous peasant social movements. Under the leadership of Evo Morales, MAS would later gain national prominence as a viable political alternative to the existing order.
However, not every Bolivian displaced by neoliberal processes went to grow coca. The city proved to be an equally popular choice, and new liberal policy contributed to the near doubling of Bolivia’s urban population. The country’s regional control points - La Paz, Cochabamba, and Santa Cruz - took in displaced farmers and workers. El Alto, a poor suburb of La Paz, grew substantially, and would prove particularly important, due to its proximity to the capital. This process of urbanization would prove critical for the successes of Bolivian social movements. It allowed for the crossing of indigenous groups with the proletariat on a grand scale, and instead of breaking down traditional ties within specific groups, allowed for solidarities to be forged between groups around a shared sense of exclusion and marginalization. The radicalism and organizational skills of the working class became infused within the collective identity of the indigenous masses to create a sense of ‘indigenous nationalism’ in urban centers which paralleled that of the coca regions. The U.S., as the leading proponent of neoliberalism and coca eradication policies, was branded as imperialist, and vast regions of frustrated Bolivians were able to unite under the same cry.
The growth of this common identity coincided with increased opportunities for political empowerment. In 1993, Sánchez de Lozada became president and enacted the Law of Popular Participation (LPP), which decentralized state power to provincial and municipal levels. From a conservative standpoint, the LPP was meant to create a new space for the opposition by working to incorporate social movements into the mainstream. It was believed that disharmonies and internal power struggles for electoral support would consume the energies of social movements, and perhaps weaken them in the process, creating a stable environment conducive to foreign investment. For some time, the LPP worked as planned. Whereas social movements did achieve some gains – the coca growers’ union won municipal seats in the Cochabamba area in 1995, and six peasant leaders (including Morales) were elected to congress in 1997 – such progress was slow. The new minority leaders were hampered by internal disputes and powerful pundits faithful to the old social order. Otherwise, the status quo was maintained. The empowerment of local political structures demonstrated adherence to “democracy and good governance” by the Bolivian government which was well received by international investors. The LPP provided, however, a foundation from which social movements would legitimately challenge the hegemony of traditional ruling forces in the new millennium, and made real the potential for the “democratic revolution” espoused by Morales.
A Breaking Point
Government violence and mismanagement occurred during the Cochabamba Water War in 2001, and the Water and Gas Wars between the La Paz police and the military in 2003. These events elevated social movements and affiliated political parties to a position of national prominence. In late 1999, President Hugo Banzar, under pressure from international lending organizations, granted control of Cochabamba’s water utilities through a concession to the US-based Bechtel, and rates subsequently were to increase by as much as 200 percent. An ad hoc resistance group, the Coalition for the Defense of Water and Life, protested with marches, strikes and roadblocks. Banzar ordered 1,200 military personnel to regain control of the city; in the ensuing conflicts one person was killed and hundreds injured. In response, 100,000 citizens – including factory workers, farmers, cocaleros, peasants, unionists, former miners, students, intellectuals, civic organizations, neighborhood associations, and environmentalists – converged on the city’s central square where the government realized it had to cancel the concession. Although the Water War was regional in participation, it became the first crack in Bolivia’s neoliberal developmental model. This crack was blown wide open in 2003 during the September and October Gas War , in which protestors from the La Paz suburb of El Alto and elsewhere resisted the export of gas by pipeline through Chile, a historic rival. In October 2003, scores of protestors were killed by government forces, and Bolivia’s once-limited pockets of resistance exploded onto the national scene. More than 1,000 members of the middle class, mostly white urbanites, conducted a series of hunger strikes in solidarity with the indigenous protestors, who organized marches, strikes, and road blockades. Although the October protests were enough to oust President Sanchez de Lozada from power, both the Water War and the Gas War made it clear that social movements were not enough to create the structural reform that Bolivia demanded. True, the insurgents and demonstrators were enough to paralyze the function of the state temporarily, but without a long-term alternative model, they ultimately lost their momentum. A new political map that prioritized the demands of the protesting social groups was desperately needed.
The Institutionalization of MASIn every advanced society, the fate of workers, the jobless, and the poor hinges on the capacity of progressive political forces to harness the agency of the state to reduce economic inequality, bridge glaring social gaps, and protect the most vulnerable members of the civic community from the unfettered rule of capital and the blind discipline of the market.
–Loic Wacquant, Review Symposium 2002.
In 2002, MAS achieved important gains within the political arena. For the first time, the party expanded beyond its mountainous origins to the lowland Amazonian jungle of Chaapre. MAS candidates won seats in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, and Morales lost the presidential race by only 1.6 percent. The formal advance of MAS into the political arena reflects its ability to mobilize a variety of protest groups into a common cause. Historians identify the 2002 election results as a “clear sign” that social movements “were tilting the balance of political forces” in Bolivia.
Once in opposition, Morales proceeded to play the political arena so as to advance his party. According to Petras and Veltmeyer, “The line taken by Morales and the MAS executive [following the 2002 election] is very different from the revolutionary line of mass mobilization taken by Morales not that long before as leader of the cocaleros.” He began to advocate for change and reform from within the system, applying “parliamentary rather than mobilizational pressure.” Indeed, Morales took a conciliatory position to the administration of Carlos Mesa, the successor of Sanchez de Lozada. He supported many of Mesa’s moderate proposals, and only disagreed when popular support demanded that he do so. Morales went to the extreme to distance himself from his radical origins. He even ceded his leadership position of Bolivia’s various revolutionary movements to his old adversary, Felipe Quispe. As his prominence grew, Morales gave up some of his old tactics, such as mass rallies and roadblocks, for a more subtle approach: the ballot-box.
There are, of course, difficulties in transforming the energy of social movements into electoral victories. In modern politics, every vote counts equally, and the voice of one lone protestor is reduced to scarcely better than the murmur of a normally disengaged voter. Knowing he had widespread support among rank and file indigenous voters, Morales shifted his attention to the middle class during the 2005 presidential election, which turned out to be a very significant move. He sold his party as the only one that could tame social turmoil, reminding frustrated middle class voters that the only organizations which had proven capable of destabilizing Bolivia’s government were in fact a part of MAS. Indeed, Petras and Veltmeyer list a multitude of social movements in which MAS, “without a doubt,” carries significant political influence.
Evo Morales as President
The 2005 presidential election had an 85 percent voter turnout, the highest Bolivia had ever seen. Winning 53.7 percent of the vote, Evo Morales became Bolivia’s first indigenous president, the only candidate ever to be elected with a majority of the vote and the first winner with origins outside the traditional political system.
Legitimacy brings with it certain responsibilities and drawbacks. As president, Morales is called on to represent all Bolivians. He must satisfy the far left, from which he receives his most ardent support, by making good on the full range of his electoral campaign’s social and economic promises. In addition, however, Morales must appease the more conservative flanks of the opposition which controls practically every privately owned money-making venture in the country not controlled by the State. In fact, Morales has been far from moderate; he reclaimed ownership of Bolivia’s hydrocarbon industry in 2006. Few presidents on the left have made meaningful concessions to the political right, but Morales has, at times, maintained a hard-line approach in government negotiations with labor unions and increased coca eradication efforts in certain regions. Most notably, Morales ceded certain major concessions of his draft constitution in order to set the right to agree to a date for staging the referendum. Such actions have outraged many radical groups, including militant miners’ organizations and cocalero unions. The cocaleros, where Morales got his start, remain firmly with Evo, even though some believe that this represents a step backwards for Bolivia’s social movements, as well as providing the potential for much needed reform that will weaken the left. According to Petras and Veltmeyer, “participation in electoral politics is designed to weaken and demobilize revolutionary movements; every further step in electoral politics is a step backwards or away from … the popular movement.”
The fact of the matter is Morales holds a position far more powerful than most social movement leaders could ever dream of. He is president of a country rich in natural gas, he has widespread support in the legislature’s lower house and has the approval of the electorate on a scale never before envisioned in the country. As a leader in a country where most are out of work, Morales has had an incredibly difficult path to achieve political preeminence. He and his party have gone through stages of necessary radicalism and a movement away from militancy. As with any minority opposition group, MAS in its time has made ties with a variety of actors in seeking increased numbers to support its cause. In the 1990s and 2000s, Bolivians harbored a sentiment of ‘indigenous nationalism’ and sustained a common voice that was against neoliberal policies imposed by the US. Morales and MAS best articulated the shared vision of Bolivia’s primary social movements, and transformed their popular support into key electoral victories. It is to be expected that sacrifices and concessions are required along the way of institutional progress. Morales has sacrificed his most polarizing alliances as bargaining chips to reach a consensus with political foes to neutralize their power and gain hegemonic control for his own side, but this has cost him.
The goal is a new constitution. Although MAS has ascended within Bolivia’s political framework and Morales to the top of its structure, the people, ideas, and movements that the party represents have not yet been institutionalized. This cannot happen until a new constitution is promulgated which is aimed at redressing Bolivia’s uneven development over the years. The country’s social, economic, and political structures demand reform in order to include the entire populace. Whether or not the proposed constitution will be able to accomplish this, if it passes, is a matter for the future. What is clear is that the potential for change exists in the proposed document because the movement became institutionalized once it entered the political process. Morales has followed the most pragmatic route to success of this goal - turning the angst of Bolivia‘s indigenous and working class majority into support at the ballot box. His rise in popularity from three years ago, 54 to 67 percent, as seen in an August 2008 recall vote, has given him the de facto mandate to proceed with reform as planned. The combined ability to mobilize social agents, court the middle class, and negotiate with the traditional aristocracy has made MAS more effective than any of its revolutionary counterparts. In the past it had worked as a social movement by knowing how to act outside the law, and then later succeeded as a political party by knowing when to work within the law. By doing so, MAS is now favored to change the law and to revolutionize the nation’s political structures.
The primary roadblock in Bolivia’s future is an amalgamation of business interests operating under the auspices of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee. SCCC is a powerful grouping of a minority class in the country’s largest and most economically significant city. The group effectively leads the opposition against the government. Gabriela Montano, a government representative in Santa Cruz, has accused the Civic Committee of operating a campaign to de-legitimize the government so as to weaken its ability to enact desired reforms. This can be understood as recognition on behalf of MAS’s opposition that the institutional route taken by the leftist party is working and is most likely to win out
The rich and well placed are scared that their wealth will be expropriated through legal means, and some have turned to advocating violence. Radical youth groups act as de facto street gangs fighting for turf against the ruling political movement. Following August’s contentious recall referendum, the young thugs went on a rampage. In city centers across Bolivia’s eastern region which represents a conservative stronghold, they vandalized, burned, and took over government buildings. They also blew up a gas pipeline going to Brazil, and stoked a climate of fear and polarity across the country. On September 11, a paramilitary band loyal to Leopoldo Fernández, prefect of the Pando department, shot and killed at least 18 peasant MAS supporters. Morales authorized the use of force, a power the leader of a social movement does not wield, and declared martial law in the region. This contrasts sharply to October 2003, when the notorious Sanchez de Lozada ordered martial law against the protests which MAS had helped instigate.
The outrage provoked by the continued violence against MAS has helped to ensure widespread support for pro-government forces. The improper use of state violence in 2001, and especially 2003, opened the door for a new party like the MAS to surface and enter the national political arena. Middle class voters, tired of instability and desiring reform, gave the party an unexpected boost on election day in 2005. The more recent violence once again has rallied support for the MAS, both domestically and abroad.
Similar to his legitimate use of military force, Morales’ institutional positions give him near universal support from the international community that he would not have received as the leader of a confrontational social movement. The calls for autonomy from the eastern departments and the violence to which they led in Pando have worked counterproductively throughout the international community, in Morales’ favor. In light of these challenges to the government, leaders from across Latin America, Europe, and Asia reaffirmed their support for the democratic processes of the current administration. By backing Morales, elected foreign officials are not only supporting their own democratic systems. Indeed, many scholars identify international support for Morales, and the condemnation of the violence committed by the opposition, as the primary reason why the opposition had been weakened enough to set a date for the national referendum on the draft constitution.
Conclusion
Over 10 years ago, Evo Morales and the MAS party made the choice to enter the political arena to advocate the social change they desired. This institutional route to national reform caused Morales and his MAS to lose some allies on the party’s fringe; but it also has provided the opportunity to enact real and lasting change. The driving force behind Morales’ administration has been the implementation of a new constitution, which will be voted on in a matter of hours. The January vote marks a critical moment in Bolivia’s history, one which could overturn forms of structural oppression and exclusion, and transform society for generations to come. To reach this point, Bolivia has endured a long history of social unrest and protest. A series of economic and political liberal reforms in the 1980s and 1990s led to the amalgamation of existing social movements and the formation of some new ones. Extreme cases of repressive government violence in struggles over basic resources served to mobilize these forces en masse and draw to them the support of some of the middle class. Different social movements representing varied interests and shaped by different pasts were brought together because of, and in response to, government policy and mismanagement under Sanchez de Lozada. In this case, geographical concerns of displacement, migration, urbanization, resource management, government militarization and other controversial issues taken together help explain the current revolutionary epoch in Bolivia. Now a formidable political party, the MAS has emerged from the chaos of broad social unrest and now represents much of the thrust of Bolivia’s social movements in the political arena. The movement, having secured at least short term power, now looks to implement reform that would institutionalize the fundamental changes sought by social movements around the country and make them permanent.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Chris Sweeney
Thirteen North American colonies left the British Empire in 1776, but that was not really the birth date of the American colossus. History’s wealthiest and most powerful nation-state was not actually launched until the summer of 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Revolutionaries the world over have cribbed from the Declaration of Independence, but the successful ones, those who manage to overturn the social order and establish regimes of their own, find their inspiration not in the Declaration but in the Constitution. Anyone seeking the real origins of the United States must begin by asking why it was that, scarcely a decade after the free inhabitants of thirteen British colonies proclaimed each of them an autonomous state, they decided to meld those thirteen sovereignties together and launch an empire of their own.
Today politicians as well as judges profess an almost religious reverence for the Framers’ original intent. And yet what do we really know about the motives that set fifty-five of the nation’s most prominent citizens—men like George Washington, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton—on the road to Philadelphia? The Framers’ motivations remain nearly as obscure today as they were that muggy summer of 1787, when the Constitutional Convention delegates voted to maintain the strictest secrecy—and thwarted eavesdroppers by keeping the fetid chamber’s doors and windows closed and latched.
High school textbooks and popular histories of the Revolutionary War locate the origins of the Constitution in the nasty conflicts that kept threatening to tear the federal convention apart—and in the brilliant compromises that, again and again, brought the delegates back together. Should every state have the same number of representatives in Congress, or should representation be weighted in favor of the more populous ones? Solution: proportional representation in the House of Representatives and state equality in the Senate. Should the national government be allowed to abolish the African slave trade? Solution: yes, but not until 1808. In apportioning congressional representation among the states, should enslaved Americans be considered people, giving their owners bonus representatives? What about in allocating the tax burden among the states—should slaves be counted as people there? Solution to both controversies: count each slave as three-fifths of a person.
Whether the title is Miracle at Philadelphia or The Grand Convention or The Great Rehearsal or The Summer of 1787, it is almost as though the same book has been written over and over again, by different authors, every few years.
The textbooks and the popular histories give surprisingly short shrift to the Framers’ motivations. What almost all of them do say is that harsh experience had exposed the previous government, under the Articles of Confederation (1781–89), as too weak. What makes this emphasis strange is that the Framers’ own statements reveal another, more pressing motive. Early in the Constitutional Convention, James Madison urged his colleagues to tackle “the evils . . . which prevail within the States individually as well as those which affect them collectively.” The “mutability” and “injustice” of “the laws of the States” had, Madison declared shortly after leaving Philadelphia, “contributed more to that uneasiness which produced the Convention, and prepared the public mind for a general reform, than those which accrued to our national character and interest from the inadequacy of the Confederation.”
Madison’s preoccupation with what he later called the “the internal administration of the States” was by no means unique. On the eve of the convention, expressions of concern about the weakness of Congress, numerous as they were, were vastly outnumbered by complaints against the state governments. “What led to the appointment of this Convention?” Maryland delegate John Francis Mercer asked his colleagues. Was it not “the corruption & mutability of the Legislative Councils of the States”?
Once the Constitution had been sent out to the thirteen states for ratification, its supporters affirmed that some of the most lethal diseases it was designed to cure were to be found within those same states. William Plumer of New Hampshire embraced the new national government out of a conviction that “our rights & property are now the sport of ignorant unprincipled State legislators.” In the last of the Federalist Papers—the series of eighty-five newspaper essays that are widely seen as America’s premier contribution to political science—Alexander Hamilton praised the Constitution for placing salutary “restraints” on “the ambition of powerful individuals in single states.”
What was wrong with the state assemblies? Given the modern perception that the Founding Fathers had devoted their lives to the principle of government by the people, it is jarring to read their specific grievances. An essay appearing in a Connecticut newspaper in September 1786 complained that the state’s representatives paid “too great an attention to popular notions.” At least one of those Connecticut assemblymen thoroughly agreed. In May 1787, just as the federal convention assembled, he observed that even the southern states, which under British rule had been aristocratic bastions, had “run into the extremes of democracy” since declaring independence.
What these men were saying was that the American Revolution had gone too far. Their great hope was that the federal convention would find a way to put the democratic genie back in the bottle. Alexander Hamilton, the most ostentatiously conservative of the convention delegates, affirmed that many Americans—not just himself—were growing “tired of an excess of democracy.” Others identified the problem as “a headstrong democracy,” a “prevailing rage of excessive democracy,” a “republican frenzy,” “democratical tyranny,” and “democratic licentiousness.”
During the eighteenth century the primary means of land transportation—other than walking—was the horse. Writers and speakers often expressed their anxiety about the changes occurring in their fellow Americans by calling them “unruly steeds.”11 To Silas Deane it seemed that “the reins of Government” were held with too “feeble a hand.”
What had persuaded the Framers and many of the most prominent Americans of the postwar era that the Revolution had gotten out of hand? Consider the case of James Madison, “the father of the Constitution.” Madison is widely credited with writing the “Virginia Plan,” the Constitutional Convention’s first draft. Having addressed the convention more often than all but one other delegate, he went on to become one of the two principal authors of the Federalist Papers, the best-known brief for ratification. When it became clear that roughly half the electorate would refuse to accept the Constitution until it contained a bill of rights, it was Madison who drew up those first ten amendments.
In seeking to explain the desperate urgency with which Madison championed the new national government, his biographers have made much of the fact that in 1784 he asked his friend Thomas Jefferson, the official American envoy to King Louis XVI of France, to rummage through the bookstalls on the left bank of the Seine and ship him a crateful of works on Renaissance and Enlightenment history and philosophy. We can easily imagine Madison’s delight as one of his slaves pried open the chest, revealing everything from Plutarch’s Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans to Barthélemy de Felice’s thirteen-volume Code de l’humanité, ou La legislation universelle, naturelle, civile et politique.
One reason historians have always found Madison such an appealing character is that he himself was something of a bookworm. Short and sickly, he more than once predicted that he would not live long. (As it turned out, he made it to the then-extraordinary age of eighty-five.) It is difficult to imagine him mustering sufficient stamina for a modern political campaign and easy to conceive of him as something of a monk. Yet one subject seemed to fuel Madison with a limitless energy and to draw him from the tranquillity of his study. This was his disgust with the state governments that emerged from the Revolutionary War. Madison’s desperate desire to rein in the thirteen state governments was not born in a contemplative philosophical vacuum; it reflected his own day-to-day experience as a political animal.
Madison’s political career began in earnest in 1776, when his Orange County, Virginia, neighbors sent him to the convention that wrote the state’s first constitution. Elected to the founding session of the House of Delegates a short time later, he was defeated the very next year. No matter, for his real passion was for politics on a national scale. In 1780 his former colleagues in the assembly gave him his first year-long term in Congress, and he served until the three-term limit in the Articles of Confederation forced him out, whereupon he immediately got himself reelected to the Virginia legislature.
The Articles permitted former congressmen to reclaim their seats after a three-year hiatus, and as soon as Madison’s three years were up, he was back in Congress. In the summer of 1787 this “feeble,” “sickly” man would muster the energy not only to address the Constitutional Convention on scores of occasions but to take copious notes on nearly every speech given by every other delegate, a task to which he applied himself six days a week for nearly four months.
By the spring of 1786, when Madison received Jefferson’s “literary cargo,” he no longer had any illusions about what he would find in those books. He did not need a crateful of ancient and modern philosophy and history to figure out why the young republic had lost its way, for he had already formed his opinions in the course of day-to-day political struggles. What Madison was looking for as he performed his research was persuasive historical evidence for what his own practical experience had already taught him: that the state constitutions were fatally flawed. In his view, the Founders had rescued white Americans from kingly despotism only to subject them to something worse: the tyranny of “the major number of the constituents.”
What really alarmed Madison was the specific legislation the assemblies had adopted. More than anything else, it was the desire to overturn these state laws that set him on the road to Philadelphia. Nor was he alone. Another Constitutional Convention delegate, Pennsylvania’s Gouverneur Morris, enumerated various kinds of iniquitous state laws he hoped his colleagues would guard against in the new national charter, concluding that “experience evinces the truth of this remark without having recourse to reading.”
What had the thirteen assemblies done wrong? The “evils which had more perhaps than any thing else, produced this convention,” Madison told his colleagues in Philadelphia, were the states’ countless “Interferences” with “the security of private rights, and the steady dispensation of Justice.”
All this talk about “rights” and “Justice” may seem today like glittering generalities. Actually, the transgressions that the Founding Fathers laid at the feet of the thirteen state legislatures were quite specific. Most glaringly, representatives had shown excessive indulgence to debtors and taxpayers. They had refused to force farmers to pay what they owed.
Insects, drought—even invading armies—fearsome as they all are, have rarely been what rural Americans dread most. That distinction belongs to the farmers’ creditors—not only the men and women who have lent them cash but the merchants who have supplied them with tools and other merchandise on credit and the government officials who press them to pay their back taxes. In the wake of the Revolutionary War the thirteen legislatures had ridden to the farmers’ rescue. They had allowed debtors to satisfy their creditors with property—even pine barrens and “old Horses”—instead of hard money (gold and silver). In some cases public officials had temporarily shut down the legal system that was the neglected creditor’s only recourse. Worst of all, Congress and every state assembly had funded the war effort partly by printing paper money. They emitted far more currency than the economy could bear, and the result was runaway inflation. In several states a person who owed £1,000 could get out of the debt with money that was actually worth only £1. Even after peace was declared in 1783, seven state legislatures printed additional currency.
The state governments also had debtors of their own to worry about. In most states thousands of citizens were behind on their taxes. Just like private debtors, delinquent taxpayers had received too much indulgence from state officials, the Framers believed. What may have seemed like a strictly state-level concern actually had national implications, since Congress relied upon the states for its own funding. The Articles of Confederation delegated the power of raising “Continental” funds to the thirteen state assemblies. To many Americans it seemed the states had botched this task. They knew why, too: representatives were reluctant to load their constituents down with burdensome federal taxes.
Tax relief crippled government operations. Even worse, it prevented public officials from meeting their single largest obligation, namely servicing the enormous debts they had amassed during the war. When Congress and the states failed to redeem the war bonds or even pay interest on them, Madison declared in Federalist Number 10, the owners of the securities were not the only ones who suffered. By begetting a “prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements,” this terrible “injustice” had doomed the state and federal governments themselves.
For men like Madison, writing the Constitution was like appealing an unfavorable jury verdict to a higher court. If the thirteen state legislatures could not muster the fortitude to crack down on delinquent debtors and taxpayers, they reasoned, they would create a national government that could.
The Framers believed the only way to prevent state assemblymen from giving the taxpayer a free ride was to get them out of the business of collecting—or not collecting—“Continental” taxes. Article I, Section 8 gave the national government what it had never had before, its own power to tax. Article I, Section 10 imposed a similar crackdown on private debtors. It prohibited the states from rescuing farmers by issuing paper money or by “impairing the obligation of contracts” using any of the other devices they had discovered during the 1780s.
As a result of the protection that Section 10 afforded creditors, more people proclaimed that clause “the best in the Constitution” than any other in the document. Section 10 was even touted as “the soul of the Constitution.” Virginia governor Edmund Randolph pronounced Section 10 “a great favourite of mine.” “Nothing, in the whole Federal Constitution, is more necessary than this very section,” a New Jersey Federalist claimed. Two prominent Pennsylvanians, attorney James Wilson and physician Benjamin Rush, independently reached the conclusion that even if the Constitution did nothing more than ban paper money, that alone would still, in Rush’s words, be “eno’ to recommend it to honest men.”
Rush was exaggerating, of course, but suppose for a moment that the Constitution had contained no other provisions besides those found in Sections 8 and 10 of Article I. The danger would have remained that the new national government would itself go easy on debtors and taxpayers—or at least look the other way when the states did so. It was largely in order to eliminate these possibilities that the Framers made the Constitution considerably less responsive to the popular will than any of the states. Only one element of the new government, the House of Representatives, would be elected directly by the people, and its initiatives could be derailed by the senators (who would not be chosen directly by the voters until 1913), the president, or the Supreme Court. Whereas most state legislators and even governors had to run for reelection every year, presidents would serve for four years and senators for six. As long as they committed no crimes, judges could remain in office for life.
Even the one element of the national government that would be elected directly by the people, the House of Representatives, would be considerably less responsive to the voters than any of the state assemblies. The reason was that every congressman would represent many more voters than state legislators did. The best way to shield the government from popular pressure, Madison believed, was to “extend the sphere” of both individual election districts and the overall polity. Expanding legislative constituencies would enhance the likelihood that representatives would be wealthy men. Larger districts would also offer congressmen a measure of protection against grassroots pressure. Finally, as Madison famously pointed out in Federalist Number 10, the new national government would embrace much greater diversity than any of the states. With a wide variety of interests and proposals jockeying for popular support, none was likely to attract a majority. Thus members of Congress would be free to make their own decisions.
A month before writing Federalist Number 10, Madison privately summarized it, employing an expression he did not dare use in that public essay: “Divide et impera, the reprobated axiom of tyranny, is under certain qualifications, the only policy, by which a republic can be administered on just principles.” “Divide et impera” is Latin for “divide and conquer.”
An Open Letter from the Supreme Leader to the President Elect
Ali Hoseyni Khāmenei, Supreme Leader of the Iranian Revolution
to
Barack Obama, President-elect of the United States of America
Dear Senator Obama,
Congratulations on your victory in the presidential election. During the campaign you said that if elected, you would talk with the Iranian leadership without preconditions. I hope you will follow through on this campaign promise. To set the agenda, here is what I believe we should talk about, including some things on which we will have to agree to disagree, and some things on which we can agree.
1. Satan and Evil
The leaders of both of our countries have been guilty of demonizing the other. Let’s talk about how to stop it.
Beginning with our revolution in 1978, Iranian leaders have found it useful to whip up domestic political support by branding America as the Great Satan. President Bush, for the same reason, found it useful to brand Iran as a member of the Axis of Evil. But please understand this: although our current president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is given to rhetorical excesses neither he nor Ayatollah Khomeini whose Farsi words he was merely repeating verbatim, has ever said anything that can be accurately translated into English as “Israel will be wiped off the map.”
This is a mis-translation (apparently by the New York Times). If you don’t believe me, please ask Hooman Majd, the Iranian-American who has been the simultaneous Farsi-to English translator for several Iranian presidential speeches at the UN, including those of Ahmadinejad. During Majd’s interview with Terry Gross on her Fresh Air radio show of September 25, 2008, Majd says that a more accurate English translation of Khomeini’s words is “Israel will vanish from the pages of time.”
2. Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah
Also please understand this: the UN’s 1947 decision to partition Palestine and create the state of Israel is seen by Iranians and most other people in the Middle East as a profound injustice — a morally indefensible attempt by Europe, Russia and the USA to expiate their guilt over the Holocaust not at their own expense, but at the expense of the Palestinian people. The people of the Middle East, including the Iranian people, believe that Israel was the illegitimate creation of outside powers, and has no right to exist. And because we believe this, we hope and expect that it will eventually vanish from the pages of time.
The question of Israel’s legitimacy is one on which the American and Iranian people will have to agree to disagree. However, we can agree that this question should not be resolved by force. Iran has given military support to Hezbollah and Hamas — enemies of Israel. America has given military support to Israel — enemies of Hamas and Hezbollah. By arming our respective allies, neither of us is contributing to a solution. This should stop, and we should talk about how to stop it. And neither of us should require the other to accept our position on the legitimacy of a Jewish state in Palestine as a pre-condition of starting these talks.
3. Iraq
In Iraq we share some common objectives: first, the withdrawal of American troops as quickly as possible without reversing the progress that has been made in recent months towards security and political reconciliation. In the longer term, we share the objective of seeing Iraq evolve into a state that is at peace with itself and its neighbours.
However, Iranians and Americans do not agree on the political culture that Iraq should embrace. While you and we agree that nations should be governed by law, you believe that the laws should be decided by the people, whereas Iranians believe that the laws have been given to us by the Almighty and cannot be altered or undone by the will of the people. This is another thing on which Americans and Iranians must agree to disagree.
As for Iraq, however, we can agree that the decision between these two legal and political cultures should be not be imposed by either Iran or America, but should be decided by the Iraqis themselves. If Iraqis decide for an Islamic state, America must accept this. The same applies to Iran in case Iraq decides for democracy. Our talks should lead to an agreement on how to make this happen. And neither of us should require the other to accept our position on the role of democracy in Iraq as a pre-condition for starting these talks.
In a visit to the State Department Thursday, President Obama made his first substantive comments on the Middle East conflict since Israel’s attack on Gaza. Obama first mentioned his commitment to Israel’s security, without affirming his commitment to Palestinian security. He condemned Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israeli towns, but didn’t criticize the US-backed Israeli bombings of densely populated Gaza. But in a departure from the Bush administration, Obama acknowledged Palestinian suffering and said Gaza’s borders should be opened to aid. We speak with MIT professor, Noam Chomsky.
JUAN GONZALEZ: President Obama has made his first substantive remarks on the crisis in Gaza since being elected. Obama was speaking at the State Department, flanked by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as he named two key envoys. Retired Senate majority leader George Mitchell, who negotiated a lasting agreement in Northern Ireland, will be Middle East envoy. And Richard Holbrooke, who brokered a deal in the Balkans in the mid-1990s, will be envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In his remarks, Obama backed Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza as a defensive move against Hamas rocket fire but also said he was deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation for Palestinians in Gaza. The twenty-two-day assault killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, most of them civilians, at least a third children. More than 5,500 were injured. Thirteen Israelis were killed over the same period, ten of them soldiers, and four by friendly fire.
This is some of what President Obama had to say.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Let me be clear: America is committed to Israel’s security. And we will always support Israel’s right to defend itself against legitimate threats.
For years, Hamas has launched thousands of rockets at innocent Israeli citizens. No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people, nor should the international community, and neither should the Palestinian people themselves, whose interests are only set back by acts of terror.
To be a genuine party to peace, the Quartet has made it clear that Hamas must meet clear conditions: recognize Israel’s right to exist, renounce violence, and abide by past agreements. Going forward, the outline for a durable ceasefire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire; Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza; the United States and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot rearm.
Yesterday I spoke to President Mubarak and expressed my appreciation for the important role that Egypt played in achieving a ceasefire. And we look forward to Egypt’s continued leadership and partnership in laying a foundation for a broader peace through a commitment to end smuggling from within its borders.
Now, just as the terror of rocket fire aimed at innocent Israelis is intolerable, so, too, is a future without hope for the Palestinians. I was deeply concerned by the loss of Palestinian and Israeli life in recent days and by the substantial suffering and humanitarian needs in Gaza. Our hearts go out to Palestinian civilians who are in need of immediate food, clean water and basic medical care, and who’ve faced suffocating poverty for far too long.
Now we must extend a hand of opportunity to those who seek peace. As part of a lasting ceasefire, Gaza’s border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating. Relief efforts must be able to reach innocent Palestinians who depend on them. The United States will fully support an international donor’s conference to seek short-term humanitarian assistance and long-term reconstruction for the Palestinian economy. This assistance will be provided to and guided by the Palestinian Authority.
Lasting peace requires more than a long ceasefire, and that’s why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security. Senator Mitchell will carry forward this commitment, as well as the effort to help Israel reach a broader peace with the Arab world that recognizes its rightful place in the community of nations.
I should add that the Arab peace initiative contains constructive elements that could help advance these efforts. Now is the time for
Arab states to act on the initiative’s promise by supporting the
Palestinian government under President Abbas and Prime Minister
Fayyad, taking steps towards normalizing relations with Israel, and by standing up to extremism that threatens us all. Jordan’s constructive role in training Palestinian security forces and nurturing its relations with Israel provide a model for these efforts. And going forward, we must make it clear to all countries in the region that external support for terrorist organizations must stop.
AMY GOODMAN: President Obama, speaking at the State Department yesterday. A Hamas spokesperson told Al Jazeera television Obama’s position toward the Palestinians doesn’t represent a change. Osama Hamdan said, “I think this is an unfortunate start for President Obama in the region and the Middle East issue. And it looks like the next four years, if it continues with the same tone, will be a total failure.”
Well, for more on this, we are joined by Noam Chomsky, professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over half-a-century. He has written over a hundred books, including Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Noam.
NOAM CHOMSKY: Glad to be with you again.
AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Well, let’s start off by your response to President Obama’s statement and whether you think it represents a change.
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s approximately the Bush position. He began by saying that Israel, like any democracy, has a right to defend itself. That’s true, but there’s a gap in the reasoning. It has a right to defend itself. It doesn’t follow that it has a right to defend itself by force. So we might agree, say, that, you know, the British army in the United States in the colonies in 1776 had a right to defend itself from the terror of George Washington’s armies, which was quite real, but it didn’t follow they had a right to defend themselves by force, because they had no right to be here. So, yes, they had a right to defend themselves, and they had a way to do it—namely, leave. Same with the Nazis defending themselves against the terror of the partisans. They have no right to do it by force. In the case of Israel, it’s exactly the same. They have a right to defend themselves, and they can easily do it. One, in a narrow sense, they could have done it by accepting the ceasefire that Hamas proposed right before the invasion—I won’t go through the details—a ceasefire that had been in place and that Israel violated and broke.
But in a broader sense—and this is a crucial omission in everything Obama said, and if you know who his advisers are, you understand why—Israel can defend itself by stopping its crimes. Gaza and the West Bank are a unit. Israel, with US backing, is carrying out constant crimes, not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, where it is moving systematically with US support to take over the parts of the West Bank that it wants and to leave Palestinians isolated in unviable cantons, Bantustans, as Sharon called them. Well, stop those crimes, and resistance to them will stop.
Now, Israel has been able pretty much to stop resistance in the Occupied Territories, thanks in large part to the training that Obama praised by Jordan, of course with US funding and monitoring control. So, yes, they’ve managed to. They, in fact, have been suppressing demonstrations, even demonstrations, peaceful demonstrations, that called for support for the people of Gaza. They have carried out lots of arrests. In fact, they’re a collaborationist force, which supports the US and Israel in their effort to take over the West Bank.
Now, that’s what Obama—if Israel—there’s no question that all of these acts are in total violation of the foundations of international humanitarian law. Israel knows it. Their own advisers have told each other—legal advisers have explained that to them back in ’67. The World Court ruled on it. So it’s all total criminality. But they want to be able to persist without any objection. And that’s the thrust of Obama’s remarks. Not a single word about US-backed Israeli crimes, settlement development, cantonization, a takeover in the West Bank. Rather, everyone should be quiet and let the United States and Israel continue with it.
He spoke about the constructive steps of the peace—of the Arab peace agreement very selectively. He said they should move forward towards normalization of relations with Israel. But that wasn’t the main theme of the Arab League peace proposal. It was that there should be a two-state settlement, which the US blocks. I mean, he said some words about a two-state settlement, but not where or when or how or anything else. He said nothing about the core of the problem: the US-backed criminal activities both in Gaza, which they attacked at will, and crucially in the West Bank. That’s the core of the problem.
And you can understand it when you look at his advisers. So, say, Dennis Ross wrote an 800-page book about—in which he blamed Arafat for everything that’s happening—barely mentions the word “settlement” over—which was increasing steadily during the period when he was Clinton’s adviser, in fact peaked, a sharp increase in Clinton’s last year, not a word about it.
So the thrust of his remarks, Obama’s remarks, is that Israel has a right to defend itself by force, even though it has peaceful means to defend itself, that the Arabs must—states must move constructively to normalize relations with Israel, but very carefully omitting the main part of their proposal was that Israel, which is Israel and the United States, should join the overwhelming international consensus for a two-state settlement. That’s missing.
AMY GOODMAN: Noam, we have to break, but we’re going to come back to this discussion. Noam Chomsky, joining us from Massachusetts, a professor of linguistics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has written many books on the Middle East. We’ll be back with him in a moment.
You will probably find this weird, but most people have never seen a real cave in their whole lives; still, those who do remain permanently fascinated by this amazing display of natural force. Caves are definitely a wonder of nature themselves, but every once in a while you hear about one that’s so amazing you wouldn’t even believe it’s real. So is the case with the following caves, which I hope you’ll find at least interesting.
Cave of Crystals, Mexico
What more could be said about this cave?? Superheroes would bow down in front of these true giants of crystals, some measuring up to 11 meters. Mexico’s Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) is definitely a must see, if you’re interested in caves, or just in seeing something that’s absolutely unbelievable, if you don’t see it for yourself. It’s without a doubt another proof of what wonderful things can appear when water meets limestone.
It was discovered by two brothers, who named its antechamber the Queen’s Eye. The cave itself measures 290 meters underground, but these huge crystals of gypsum are way more fragile than you would probably believe. Hopefully people will understand its value and treat with care, as they should, when you’re dealing with such amazing beauties.
What the Mammoth cave lacks in “originality”, it makes up in size; it’s the largest cave system in the world, measuring just under 600 km, and it has some amazing features which make it an attraction for a significant number of tourists each year. Its limestone maze is not where you want to be going yourself, as you probably won’t have enough bread crums to get you out of there.
It’s also a national park, easy to access and with numerous attractions for everybody, from biking and hiking to speology and geology studies. The hypnotic display of stalactites and stalagmites fascinates and dazzles anybody who has the inspiration of visiting this caves in which people have lived since prehistoric times, but started really appreciating it just a few decades ago.
Located in a remote area of the Selma Plateau in Oman, Majlis al Jinn Cave humbles even the proudest of men. The entrance is made by one of two small pits which are visible from the outside and don’t give out the true dimensions of what awaits the explorer. Because once you go down a bit, you’ll find yourself in a chamber that’s 150 meters tall, and with a floor that’s 300 meters long and 200 meters wide.
Even the biggest egyptian pyramid would easily fit in this chamber. It’s a view that makes people look no bigger than ants, and despite the fact that it’s remote and hard to reach, if you ever get the chance to visit it, you will definitly have an experience that will remain with you, impossible to erase.
The world’s largest ice caves in the world represent an attraction for everybody who knows how to appreciate the true beauties our planet has to give. Located near Salzburg and stretching almost 40 km, it’s open from May to October for visiting.
The tour may be a bit tiring and chilli (it is an ice cave), but you will find it worth it. It includes visiting of the Great Ice Embankment, a huge formation of ice high of over 25 meters, and Hymir’s Castle, inspired from Mythology, and even a “cathedral”, Alexander von Mörk Cathedral, which is the resting place of von Mörk’s ashes.
Not a fascinating cave itself, it’s famous (as the name says)for its population of glowworms. Arachnocampa luminosa, is unique to New Zealand, and thousands of these unmistakable creatures span their light for visitors both from the country and from outside it.
Over your 45 minute guided tour, you have the chance of seeing these creatures spin a nest out of silk from the ceiling and then hang down; larva cover the ceiling sparkling light that resembles that of the stars. The limestone shafts are also amazing.
Another cave that has no amazing geological particularities or such, Zhong Dong cave is amazing by its use; whether you believe it or not, it’s actually a primary school. The teaching process takes place in a huge chamber that resembles a hangar, carved by air and water in millions of years.
It started to be used in 1984 and since it has grown considerably, now having 8 teachers and 186 students. Aside from the cave, it’s pretty much just as any other school, with a playing ground and classrooms.
Free Ebook: Thriving on Less - Simplifying in a Tough Economy
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” -Albert Einstein
A FREE download is available now: Leo Babauta has written a companion to The Power of Less — a free ebook called “THRIVING ON LESS: Simplifying in a Tough Economy“.
Feel free to share it on your blog, via email, on forums, in social media, or however you like! (Click on the “Tell-a-friend” button below to easily share with friends.)
Also, please help spread the word by adding this page to your Delicious bookmarks or on StumbleUpon!
From the introduction:
The recent economic recession has a lot of people worried, about their jobs, their businesses, their homes and their bills. When your income is dropping or in jeopardy and you still have a mountain of bills to pay, things can get pretty scary.
However, tough economic times do not have to be a time of struggles! If you look for the opportunity in the middle of difficulty, as Mr. Einstein suggested, then tough economic times become an opportunity to transform your life.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. A Simple Lifestyle
2. Focus on the Essentials
3. Thriving on Less, Not Struggling
4. Focusing on Enough, Not More
5. Make Small Financial Changes First
6. Look at Large Expenses for the Long Term
7. Changing Your Spending Habits
8. A Guide to Getting Out of Debt
9. Tools for a Frugal Life
10. Resources
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Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon
begins
a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals.
And other interesting insights into the eating habits of modern Presidents...We already know that Barack Obama will be one of the more health-conscious Presidents (with regards to food and exercise) when he assumes office in a few weeks — but how about past American leaders? Turns out that both Clinton and Bush dined on organic and local fare long before it was “hip” to do so. In a recent letter to the NY Times, the former executive chef to the White House from 1994-2005, Walter Scheib, revealed that the most famous residence in the world even has a rooftop garden. From his letter, From 1994 to 2005 I was the executive chef at the White House. This offered me not only the personal honor of serving two unique and interesting first families, but the professional challenge of fulfilling Hillary Clinton’s mandate of bringing contemporary American cuisine and nutritionally responsible food to the White House. This meant that nearly all the product used was obtained from local growers and suppliers. There was a small garden on the roof of the White House where produce was grown. The ethic of the purchasing and the cooking at the White House under my direction and under the continuing direction of Cris Comerford is one of respect for the pedigree of the product and manner it is grown, gathered, raised or caught. The Clinton and Bush families dined regularly on organic foods. Both wagyu and grass-fed beef were frequently used.Should be interesting to see if Obama takes this a step further. Writer Michael Pollan has suggested a five-acre fruit and vegetable garden for the White House. There’s even a activist website called EatTheView run by Kitchen Gardners International urging Obama to get out a shovel and inspire people to grow their own food.Sure would beat having just a small rooftop garden — especially with all of the property the White House could use for cultivation. What do you think?
Barack Obama's imagination management representatives were widely deployed on day one of his presidency. Fervent supporters were told to go slow - the NY Times described "sobering challenges," Congressman Dave Obey cautioned against looking for "economic salvation" while an Associated Press article praised Obama's "cold-eyed realism." No matter which analogy is employed, the widening gulf between popular expectations and governmental willingness [or unwillingness] to act is potential source for a more radical set of politics.
Of course, Obama is no George W. Bush. He knows well how to pick off the low-hanging political fruit in order to forestall decisions which threaten to bring his administration into conflict with organized interest blocs. Moving swiftly to close the moral eyesore that is the detention center in Guantanamo Bay signals a return to the normal operation of US Empire. Equally useful is his enactment of measures furthering governmental transparency. This may sooth lingering doubts about Obama's associations with now-impeached Illinois Governor Rod "Let's Make a Deal" Blagojevich. It would be difficult to discover many speakers - apart from those on the fringe of the radical right - willing to defend either Guantanamo or Presidential secrecy.
More significant resistance will be provided to any serious attempt to end the US occupation of Iraq. Evidence of this was provided during the nightly News Hour program aired on Wednesday January 21st. The segment was entitled "Next Steps for Iraq," and featured the pro-Bush retired General Jack Keane and the Obama-ally retired General Wesley Clarke. Both Keane and Clarke delivered a clear message - no troop removal anytime soon.
Keane, the military author of Bush's "surge strategy," claimed that Obama's campaign pledge to remove troops by 2010 "rather dramatically increases the risks" in Iraq. He recommended a "minimal force reduction" in order to "protect the political situation." Though a 2010 departure was "a risk that is unacceptable," Keane assured viewers that "Everyone knows that we are going to take our troops out of Iraq."
The Democratic Party's dog in the fight, Wesley Clarke had little bite as be agreed with Keane's assesment "it [Obama's troop removal pledge] is risky." "When President Obama made that pledge almost a year ago," Clarke claimed, "the context of what combat troops was, was taken from the legislation that was going back and forth through the House and the Senate." He then provided a key qualification, "Distinguishing combat troops from trainers, from counter-insurgency troops or counter-terrorist troops that would go against Al-Quada in Iraq and distinguishing them from the logistics troops." "So," Clarke concluded, "to say that all combat troops will be out in 2010 in sixteen months doesn't necessarily mean that all troops will be out by 2010."
If this double-speak was not enough, Clarke then provided another clear signal that the Obama campaign pledge may fall far short of anything resembling a remotely anti-war position. Clarke praised Keane as the architect of the surge policy and "the success that has been achieved through it."
Not surprisingly, Keane agreed with the non-combative Clarke. He "understands the distinction" between combat and other types of troops. Even if some combat troops were removed, Iraq would still require "a significant number of combat troops" to protect the other types of American troops. Clarke then introduced a new term to the discussion (any possibility of a debate had long since passed) - "re-deployed." He ended his contributions by highlighting the "the need for troops in Afghanistan."
The Clarke-Keane discussion should be quite useful for anti-war activists. It clearly signals that the "surge-consensus" forged by the Bush administration is still fully operative among the military establishment in Washington. Obama's desire for continuity in military strategy, signaled clearly through his re-appointment of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, should be understood as his acceptance of the positions articulated by Keane and Clarke. This presents a sharp challenge to the anti-war movement.
Two tasks are clear. The first is to articulate a clear demand for the complete removal of all US military forces from Iraq. The anti-war movement cannot allow distinctions to be made between combat or counter-insurgency troops, military advisers or technicians. All troops need to be removed immediately. Second, and perhaps even more challenging, is the demand to remove all troops from Afghanistan and to resist any attempt at re-deployment from Iraq. Perhaps a bit of "cold-eye realism," beginning with the fact that more than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the US occupation, should be employed by the anti-war movement as we begin the process of challenging an Obama presidency whose military policy has started off sounding a lot like a re-hashed version of George W. Bush.
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Gifts & Items Sent to the White House
Items sent to the White House are often significantly delayed and can be irreparably harmed during the security screening process. Therefore, please do not send items of personal importance, such as family photographs, because items may not be returned.
For security reasons, please do not send consumable gifts -- such as food, flowers, and other perishable items -- to the White House. While President Obama, the First Lady, Vice President Biden, and Dr. Biden appreciate your thoughtfulness, they request that instead you look to your local community for opportunities to assist your neighbors in need.
Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I'm Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog. A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House's new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world. Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement. Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:
Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.
Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it. We'd also like to hear from you -- what sort of things would you find valuable from WhiteHouse.gov? If you have an idea, use this form to let us know. Like the transition website and the campaign's before that, this online community will continue to be a work in progress as we develop new features and content for you. So thanks in advance for your patience and for your feedback. Later today, we’ll put up the video and the full text of President Obama’s Inaugural Address. There will also be slideshows of the Inaugural events, the Obamas’ move into the White House, and President Obama’s first days in office.*
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
A National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation
Moments ago, in his first official act since taking the oath of office, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation, calling on Americans to serve one another and our common purpose on this National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation. Check it out below, or read it on the WhiteHouse.gov proclamations page.
NATIONAL DAY OF RENEWAL AND RECONCILIATION, 2009
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
As I take the sacred oath of the highest office in the land, I am humbled by the responsibility placed upon my shoulders, renewed by the courage and decency of the American people, and fortified by my faith in an awesome God.
We are in the midst of a season of trial. Our Nation is being tested, and our people know great uncertainty. Yet the story of America is one of renewal in the face of adversity, reconciliation in a time of discord, and we know that there is a purpose for everything under heaven.
On this Inauguration Day, we are reminded that we are heirs to over two centuries of American democracy, and that this legacy is not simply a birthright -- it is a glorious burden. Now it falls to us to come together as a people to carry it forward once more.
So in the words of President Abraham Lincoln, let us remember that: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 20, 2009, a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, and call upon all of our citizens to serve one another and the common purpose of remaking this Nation for our new century.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twentieth day of January, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.
*
[This states that Obama signed executive orders today, though they are not on the website yet where Executive Orders can henceforth be found]
A moment-by-moment look at President Obama's first full day in office:
8:35 a.m. Obama enters the Oval Office for the first time as chief executive. Alone only briefly, he reads a note left to him by former President Bush.
8:45 a.m. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel enters the Oval Office to brief the president on the day's proceedings.
9:10 a.m. First Lady Michelle Obama joins the president in the Oval Office.
9:25 a.m. The Obamas walk to the presidential limousine, on the White House's south side.
9:36 a.m. The presidential motorcade arrives at Washington National Cathedral for a prayer service.
10 a.m. Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, enter the cathedral, with the president and first lady directly behind them. The four sit in the first row with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Clinton.
10:16 a.m. As the cathedral organ and choir perform the national anthem, Obama places his right hand over his heart and sings with the congregation.
11:17 a.m.: Service at the cathedral ends after the Obamas, Bidens and Clintons join the congregation in singing "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."
11:27 a.m. The presidential motorcade leaves National Cathedral.
11:36 a.m. The motorcade arrives back at the White House.
1:18 p.m. Obama addresses staff members and Cabinet secretaries in Room 450 of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
1:26-1:31 p.m. The president signs two executive orders and three presidential memorandums. Biden administers oaths for White House senior staffers.
2:30 p.m. Obama attends a White House open house. The president and first lady shake hands with the 200 guests in the Blue Room, which faces the Washington Monument.
3:15-3:45 p.m. Obama meets with economic advisors in a closed meeting in the Roosevelt Room.
4:15 p.m.-5:15 p.m. Obama meets with military commanders on Iraq in a closed meeting in the Situation Room.
7:35 p.m. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. re-administers the oath of office to Obama, at the White House. On Inauguration Day, Roberts -- and Obama repeating him -- had said the words of the oath slightly out of order. To make certain the oath met the constitutional requirement, they redid it. Both got it right this time.
8:30 p.m. Obama attends a party for White House staffers.
Source: White House press pool reports.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing_room/executive_orders/
Dear Mr. President: We are writing to urge you to avoid the disregard for international legal obligations that condemned your predecessor. The issue concerns investigating or prosecuting torture. The United States ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) in 1994. Article 12 of the CAT provides: “Each State Party shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction.” Former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney have both openly conceded that they authorized waterboarding on at least three prisoners. Among others, Attorney General-designate Eric Holder has characterized waterboarding as torture. Susan J. Crawford, a military commission leader, also informed Bob Woodward of The Washington Post: “We [the United States] tortured [Mohammed al-Qahtani].” In addition, there have been several additional credible reports about torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and at secret prisons. See Carol D. Leonning, “The Stories of Torture Sounded Made Up. They Weren’t,” Outlook B01, The Washington Post, January 18, 2009. The federal criminal code punishes torture in accord with the CAT. See 18 U.S.C. 2340A. The United States recently prosecuted and punished the son of Liberia’s Charles Taylor for torture perpetrated in Liberia. The public record clearly gives reasonable ground to believe Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their subordinates are implicated in torture. Article 12 of the CAT thus requires that your administration conduct a “prompt and impartial investigation” of the individuals and their superiors involved in waterboarding the prisoners and in interrogating Mohammed al-Qahtani. We urge that the investigation be conducted by a nonpartisan special prosecutor appointed by the Attorney General to forestall charges of partisanship. If no investigation is forthcoming, you will have violated Article 12. During your presidential campaign, you assailed the unilateralism of your predecessor which flouted international obligations or responsibilities. You promised change. You should not imitate former President Bush by defying Article 12 of the CAT. Sincerely, Bruce Fein Ralph Nader cc. Hillary Clinton Eric Holder
The earliest humans lived in a hunter-gatherer economy. And if we’re not careful, that’s the "new economy" to which we’ll return in the 21st century.
In a short version of world history, civilization dawned, followed by the agricultural revolution, the American revolution, the industrial revolution, the information (tech) revolution, and Bill Clinton’s anti-industrial revolution.
The United States has been in a backward slide ever since that latter matter—Bill Clinton’s trade policy—came about. Bill Clinton’s anti-industrial revolution was followed by George W. Bush’s anti-American or anti-civilization revolution.
The story of civilization was one of progress (albeit with setbacks too) for centuries—until U.S. Presidents of the Baby Boomer generation began their nefarious work of reversing everything. In my lexicon, "globalization" is "boomer-nomics." I stand safely in Generation X, and it wasn’t invented here!
Today was the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States. Baby Boomers exist in two tranches: from the first decade, they were called hippies. From the second decade, they were called yuppies. The new President, Barack Obama, comes from that second tranche. Too young to have fought in Vietnam, some people like to call his age group "Generation Jones." (However, if one adheres to 18 years per generation, yuppies are still technically Baby Boomers.)
Only five years of age separates Obama and myself. The first term of Ronald Reagan would have been my time in a Catholic high school, and Obama’s time in college. That’s when I was palling around in a group of geeky misfits – one cartoon artist and comic book collector; one future journalist and political hack; one left-handed paragon of immaturity who learned computer programming at my elbow; and myself, computer hobbyist and soon to be an independent 18-year-old write in candidate for U.S. President.
I am given to understand that Obama is both left-handed and a comic book collector; he might have been geeky enough to fit right in. Post-moon landing, post-Vietnam, and post-Watergate, the early eighties were a time of the "disco sucks" backlash, and my group was all agog about the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a book which had developed a cult following (as had the Rocky Horror Picture Show, another element in the day’s milieu). Besides comic books, Star Trek and Star Wars items were prized collectibles.
But, I digress. Civilization might have a splendid story from its hunter-gatherer beginnings up to the inauguration of Barack Obama, but for the setbacks which we can see in the story above, introduced by his two predecessors whom I would throw in jail, if I were coming to power. Those levels of malfeasance should not be acceptable, even if they are coming from the President of the United States.
I also have raised eyebrows for Ronald Reagan and for George H.W. Bush – the four Presidents of my adult lifetime amount to the ’Mount Rushmore of Corruption.’ I have also suggested Nuremberg-style trials for Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Dan Rather. Were I coming to power, they would indeed face correctional action.
There is a reason why Obama inherits myriad problems, with America in a dire and urgent condition of multiple, compound crises. It is because America has been badly wounded through the mismanagement of the past four Presidents.
The same harm, injury, and damage was ‘sold in’ by Jennings, Brokaw, and Rather—the three leading propagandists of late 20th-century America. Their levels of bamboozling and hoodwinking the public should not be acceptable, even if they are coming from ABC, CBS, and NBC—three unelected entities, as are all journalists.
I believe that America’s MSM must stop maintaining a narrative that has been anti-industrial, anti-American, and anti-civilization—and that they should pause to admit how flawed and faulty this propaganda has been. Now, any new President has a three item checklist of things to do: restore industry, restore America, and restore civilization.
I can believe that Barack Obama is well intentioned, and I do in fact wish good luck and good fortune upon him and America. But I did not vote for him, there being Ralph Nader who was an available alternative; and, Obama has yet to close the sale with me. I won’t be "unifying" based on what I have seen to date, which has been bluster, hot air, rhetoric, pomp, and circumstance. The foregoing may be necessary prologue, but actions speak louder than words.
So, I am being a "show me" type. To get my seal of approval, Obama must make me feel better about civilization, America, and industry. America’s finances and America’s news media also need repair. What would progress look like?
Civilization
Why was civilization better than barbarity? –It was better because it enabled survival of the individual, and survival of the species. It was a veneer of protection against capricious and arbitrary crime and murder.
To restore civilization, Obama should embrace the International Criminal Court (ICC), which exists to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Murderers belong in prisons, not in world leadership.
A very ugly signal is sent in the alternative. If Obama does not embrace the ICC, could that be because he reserves to himself the right to commit genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity? That is the political appearance which rejection of the ICC presents.
America
Why was America better than what came before? –Among many possible answers, it was better because of its legal system, with equality before the law and with no man above the law. The justice system was imperfect, but at least it was functional, and the rights upheld enabled scrutiny and further perfection.
To restore America, it is necessary to prosecute George W. Bush. With violations of the UN Charter, the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, international law, the Law Of Armed Conflict, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is no shortage of reasons to prosecute George Bush.
A signal must be sent that the U.S. justice system is back in business, is once more functional, and is up and running again. How is it that Bill Clinton’s blow job and Richard Nixon’s burglary each merited impeachment—but that George Bush’s gratuitous war (a far more deadly transgression) doesn’t merit correctional action?
The ICC is supposed to prosecute war crimes when the local justice system cannot do so. Therefore, if America does not take up the case of George Bush, then we will have the embarrassment of international prosecution of the same case, even if Obama has not embraced the ICC. That circumstance will send the signal that America’s justice system is dysfunctional.
The world should be looking at America and thinking, "You owe us atonement." Until we redress the grievous excesses of the Bush administration, it’s hard to ascribe credibility to the American justice system. If we fail at both embracing the ICC and at prosecuting George Bush, then that is the guilty demeanor of the U.S. government. Perhaps we could find a giant "Out of order" sign to tape up over the capital.
Industry
Bill Clinton’s trade deficit-inducing anti-industrial trade policy must be reversed.
America cannot "get back to normal" until all three of these steps are taken. Embrace the ICC; prosecute George Bush; and repudiate the anti-industrial revolution of Bill Clinton.
At that point, if and when America "gets back to normal," then what will it face? Broken finances, and a broken news media, masking gaps in health care and education, and deficit spending on too much militarism. In my adult lifetime, that is the normal condition of the U.S. polity. Those are the matters that I challenged in 1984, when I was the 18-year-old write in candidate for U.S. President.
To me, those latter matters are the "normal" problems of America, and every political candidate will have his or her own favorite answers, programs, and platform planks in that arena. That’s the "hum drum" political arena, and I myself have moved along to other fields of endeavor. I don’t need to tackle the hum drum, but I do continue to advocate about the matter of U.S.-China policy.
U.S.-China policy is the flip side, or the same coin, as Bill Clinton’s trade deficit-inducing anti-industrial trade policy. My advocacy on that matter can be picked up from a television interview at tinyurl.com/4vclfc.
Conclusion
I could continue to write about America’s finances and America’s news media (and previously, I have); but, those are hum drum issues. These days, I am not a politician—merely a concerned citizen. Above, I have spoken to some matters that are truly extraordinary—the hangover from recent Presidents who could be the ‘Mount Rushmore of Corruption.’
As noted, I am a well wisher to Barack Obama and to the United States of America. But as yet, I refuse to "unify" with his administration, because the future includes two possibilities. Either it will repudiate the Mount Rushmore of Corruption, or it will join it. My endorsement would be a blank check, indicating my carte blanche approval of any possible handling of these issues to come—and they are such major, important issues that there can be no blank check.
I hold it important, and will hew to my insistence, that there must be a civilization, an America, and industry that are functional, rather than malfunctioning. We cannot emerge from a time of crisis unless and until the U.S. government makes progress on these fronts. It is too early to declare that the crises have passed—although it is good news that these crises were self-inflicted. Made by U.S. Presidents, they can be removed by U.S. Presidents.
John Kusumi ran independently for U.S. President in 1984, as the teenager going up against Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale. He was the first Generation X politician in U.S. federal elections, and Ronald Reagan's youngest political opponent ever.
In 1989 Kusumi launched the China Support Network, a grassroots organization of Americans supporting the Chinese democracy movement - amid outpouring of response to the massacre of college students and other civilians in and around Tiananmen Square.
Relatives Say Peltier Beaten Following Prison Transfer
And the Native American activist Leonard Peltier has reportedly been severely beaten shortly after his transfer to a new prison. According to Peltier’s defense committee, Peltier was attacked by other prisoners after he was put into general population. Peltier’s sister, Betty Peltier-Solano, says she believes the attack could have been encouraged by prison officials seeking to discredit Peltier as he comes up for parole. Peltier suffers from diabetes. After the attack, he was put into solitary confinement. February 6 will mark thirty-three years since Peltier’s arrest. He was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and is widely considered a political prisoner in the United States. He is currently being held at the Canaan Federal Prison in Pennsylvania.
• Often delayed constitutional referendum now scheduled for Sunday, January 25th, with government projected to win comfortably.
• President Evo Morales takes to a last-minute offensive with anti-opposition rhetoric and arrests, and with plans to establish new state-owned newspaper along with another TV network.
• Despite optimistic government expectations surrounding referendum, 2009 likely to be characterised more by strife than compromise.
President Evo Morales is beginning 2009 hoping for a quick and decisive resolution to the political turmoil which has characterised his presidency to date. The much-delayed referendum to ratify Morales’ new constitution – originally intended to take last May – is now scheduled to be held on Sunday, January 25th. Polls indicate that Morales is comfortably on course to win the vote, although by a lesser margin than the 50-point landslide suggested in a survey conducted by the Observatorio de Gestión Pública (OGP or Centre for Public Management in Bolivia) and published by the government on January 4th.
The document on whose adoption the electorate will vote is a wide-ranging one, designed in the eyes of MAS (Morales’ ruling Movimiento al Socialismo) senator Felix Rojas to “refound” the Bolivian nation. It basically provides for increased autonomy for regional and local governments, as well as for indigenous groups. Further, the rights of Bolivia’s indigenous population would be enshrined in law for the first time, guaranteeing them representation in Congress and recognising their property rights as legal members of the community. The legitimacy of Morales’ various moves toward nationalising industries would also be underscored, and the project expanded.
Accompanying the constitutional referendum will be a second vote, through which the public will decide on the exact detail of another of Morales’ proposals, a land reform measure which is intended to achieve a more balanced distribution of resources in a country where two-thirds of the land is owned by one per cent of the population. Voters are being presented with a choice between capping individual landholdings at 5,000 or 10,000 hectares, as the constituent assembly failed to reach agreement on the issue in its debates.
The Path to Referendum
The constituent assembly first approved the draft constitution for presentation to Congress on November 23rd 2007, despite an opposition boycott which had argued that there had not been sufficient delegates present in the assembly to pass the document by the required two-thirds majority. Indeed, MAS’ movement of the assembly to various alternative locations, along with the absence of many delegates, made the document’s approval hardly legal or legitimate. Violence that had accompanied the assembly’s debates on the constitution immediately flared up once again, with the BBC reporting “at least three” deaths occurring in related street protests in de jure capital Sucre. The opposition’s continued boycott of the process saw it launch an attempt to achieve autonomy for the wealthy and educated, opposition-dominated eastern provinces of the country in May 2008, and a presidential recall referendum forced in August, which was won by the government. Consequently, proposed dates in May and September the constitutional referendum’s staging came and went, prompting some analysts to predict a brutal civil war and the likely disintegration of Bolivia.
Morales has, however, been able to adroitly take advantage of the factionalism which has recently emerged in the opposition Podemos alliance. Turning to diplomacy after his followers had engaged in months of political wrangling with an increasingly hostile opposition, the president, to his credit, managed last October to placate the moderates among his adversaries with a series of compromises. Indeed, COHA lauded the willingness to compromise shown by Morales in its November 19, 2008 statement, “Bolivia: Conflict and Compromise in La Paz, as Morales Visits Washington.” COHA also suggested at the time that Morales’ efforts at diplomacy were aided by the results of last August’s recall referendum – which saw the president win by a landslide – and the anti-opposition repercussions which immediately followed September’s tragedy in Pando where 18 MAS supporters were massacred, allegedly on the instructions of its Podemos prefect Leopoldo Fernández.
Morales reportedly gave the opposition his assurance that he would not seek re-election in late 2014, provided he wins a second term this December, despite the draft constitution’s provision allowing for one repeat presidential term. With this strategy, he has at least delayed Bolivia’s descent into the same fierce storm which surrounds Hugo Chávez’s proposed constitutional reforms in Venezuela. Furthermore, the key source of opposition to the constitution, the eastern provinces of the ‘Media Luna’ region, were placated with a guarantee that the constitution’s reform to cap landholdings would not be applied retroactively.
As a result of Morales’ efforts as well as his flexibility – and in the face of a brewing storm of angry MAS members outside in the streets of La Paz – on October 21st, Congress finally accepted Morales’ constitution by the required two-thirds majority. Having seen two previous votes postponed as a result of widespread violence, aided by legal backing and newfound broad political support for the referendum, Morales now has grounds to be more optimistic of electoral progress upon the third occasion of asking for it.
The Campaign Heats Up: Morales on the Offensive Against Media and Church
Having secured opposition support for the referendum and a comfortable lead in the polls, recent weeks have seen Morales take to the offensive, announcing on January 4th the government’s intention to launch a state-run newspaper, as well as a second public TV station – with a remit to “report the truth” – in the face of overt hostility from the established media. Indeed, Morales three weeks earlier had banished all national journalists from his press conferences on account of their supposedly biased reporting. Two days later, on January 6th, the president launched a verbal assault on the leaders of the country’s Catholic Church, whom he accused of siding with the opposition. Bishops and priests in Sucre had, according to Morales, been imploring the congregation at a day of prayer to “Choose God, vote for no”, in response to the constitution’s tacit provisions for abortion and same-sex marriage.
Moreover, in March 2008, the Bolivian Episcopal Conference said of the draft constitution: “Its excessive concentration of power in the executive breaks the necessary balance and independence between the branches of government.” This is a concern echoed by many opposition figures in Bolivia – indeed, MAS leaders have gone so far as to suggest the country’s congress and judiciary will be redundant for the remainder of the year. The constitution will also alter the privileged status of the Catholic Church within the state, a move defended by the government’s Rural Development Minister, Carlos Romero, who said: “In all modern countries, the separation between church and state is delineated. This is what we are trying to materialize in Bolivia, where there is no adequate separation of functions.”
Stoking the fire in this battle, Morales was recently quoted by the Bolivian newspaper La Razón as saying the “only real opponents remaining for the government are the press and the Roman Catholic Church.” Catholic leader Bishop Jesus Juarez later tried to distance the Church from the anti-reform effort, but nevertheless, Morales’ recent outbursts could be just the latest in a series of government attacks on different elements of the opposition. Individual opposition figures have been targeted by a campaign of rhetoric and arrests. Interior minister Alfredo Rada, for example, has been seeking retribution for crimes committed during September’s violence, threatening to charge right-wing businessman and opposition activist Branko Marinkovic with “terrorism” and detaining various civic leaders under legally questionable circumstances.
Neither is Morales’ offensive campaign restricted to domestic targets. The Bolivian government’s relationship with the United States has continued to sour over recent months, with a November 28th press release accusing the CIA of involvement in “the frustrated coup against [Morales’] government … in the months of August and September.” Earlier, on September 11th, Morales expelled the US ambassador Philip Goldberg from Bolivia, claiming that he had been “conspiring against democracy,” and on December 15th Prensa Latina reported that the US had decertified Bolivia, denying it the trade preferences it had enjoyed under ATPDEA (the Law of Andean Trade Preference and Drug Enforcement Act), for its alleged non-cooperation in the war on drugs.
A new harmony in Bolivia?
Bolivian politics has witnessed over the past few months – indeed, for the entirety of Morales’ presidency – an oscillation between violence and compromise, intransigence and progress towards the referendum. The capacity of Morales’ new constitution to engender any change in this respect is certainly questionable. Indeed, in some respects the successful approval of Morales’ draft constitution by Congress raises more questions than it answers about Bolivia’s future.
Despite his achievements in the past few months, Morales still presides over a fundamentally divided country. With this in mind, the president still faces problems of implementing the constitution’s provisions – particularly those relating to land reform and increased autonomy. While as a result of Morales’ compromises his proposed land reform will not be applied retroactively, it will inevitably provoke tension among ardent millionaire opposition supporters in the east of Bolivia. Given that this region is also home to Bolivia’s major natural gas reserves, any attempt to limit new landholdings there will most likely produce painful political and economic consequences. It also remains to be seen precisely how the government will choose to define ‘unproductive’ land fit for redistribution.
Autonomy is another thorny issue. The wealthier opposition provinces are in favour of it – as demonstrated by their own independent referendums on the issue in May 2008 and their agreement to the concept in a July 2006 referendum. However, the new constitution will not entirely satisfy the right wing in this respect. Indeed, the opposition’s attempts at achieving self-government would have seen provincial authorities, rather than the state, take control of Bolivia’s natural resources – a move directly at odds with Morales’ and the armed forces’ unitary vision for the country.
Taking into account other regional cases like that of Chávez in Venezuela – who has suffered politically as a result of dealing in an uncompromising fashion with his opponents – Morales might be wise to continue a policy of real negotiation through these transitional times, and not view compromise merely as a necessary evil to get his constitution passed. It is hard to imagine that the opposition will accept the reality of his reforms without some form of resistance, and the president has seen enough discord during his presidency to know that the Santa Cruz-based opposition is unafraid of resisting his reforms in violent fashion and that this may be a dangerous way to go.
Strife Likely to Prevail
It currently seems doubtful that Morales has the appetite or patience for more compromise. His recent attitude towards Bolivia’s opposition members, media and church, as well as to U.S. authorities suggests as much. Moreover, some of the opposition may well be reluctant to compromise any further themselves. Indeed, analysts at the Cochabamba-based Democracy Center have suggested that Bolivia’s opposition may choose to combine forces in preparation for December’s likely presidential election, holding a primary to select a single, unifying candidate to represent the entire Bolivian right, in an offensively-minded strategy to thwart Morales. A continuation in Morales’ recent offensive campaign is, from this perspective, likely to push the opposition further in this direction. Although the prospect remains unlikely, if nothing else it will spur them away from further compromise, particularly since the opposition is not renowned for being entirely directed towards rational solutions.
Despite recent scandals – particularly claims that Morales’ Minister of the Presidency, Juan Ramón Quintana, supplied peasants with arms and paid them to confront the opposition in the lead up to September’s massacre in Pando – a comfortable referendum triumph for Morales would undoubtedly place him in an impregnable position in electoral terms. Indeed, he most likely would find himself in much better stead than fellow regional leaders like erstwhile mentor Chávez. The question is what Morales will do in his newly reinforced position, particularly whether he will remain true to his policies and not bargain them away by appearing to be either too hard or soft. Perhaps equally as importantly, how will his opposition react? The signs at the moment suggest that one should make no mistake: a new constitution does not necessarily mean that a new harmony is developing in Bolivia.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Research Associate Guy Hursthouse
Submitted by WW4 Report on Tue, 01/20/2009 - 14:58.
The administration of Barack Obama, sworn in as US president Jan. 20, will eliminate some current US sanctions against Cuba but "it is not time to lift" the 47-year-old US economic embargo, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington, DC on Jan. 13. Her appearance before the committee was part of a process that is expected to win her a quick confirmation as the new administration's secretary of state. Clinton answered a number of questions orally and in writing about US relations with Latin America. The Obama administration "will return to a policy of vigorous involvement" in the region, she said.
"President-Elect Obama believes the Cuban-Americans especially can be important ambassadors for change in Cuba," Clinton wrote in answer to a written question from Richard Lugar (R-IN). "As such, [Obama] believes that it makes both moral and strategic sense to lift the restrictions on family visits and family cash remittances to Cuba. We do not currently have a timeline for the announcement of such a new policy..." Lugar also asked about a number of other issues, including the possibility of taking Cuba off the State Department's "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list; of increasing cooperation with Cuba in fighting drug trafficking; and of developing cooperation around "energy security and environmentally sustainable resource management." Clinton didn't go beyond indicating that the new administration "anticipate[s] a review of US policy regarding Cuba." (La Jornada, Mexico, Jan. 14; Steve Clemons, Huffington Post, Jan. 16)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkALYeBtdVs"Some Palestinians have accused Israeli soldiers of destroying their homes as they pulled back towards the border in the last 24 hours of their 22-day war on Gaza.Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna saw some of the evidence of what Palestinians describe as an Israeli scorched earth policy."Palestine Video - A Palestine Vlog Posted by …壣€¥ç↙ at 5:06 AM
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In the morning on Sunday, January 18, after a heavy rain fell on La Paz, Bolivia, the sun came out, drying the umbrellas of thousands of marchers winding through the city streets. The mobilization was in support of a new constitution, which is to be voted on this January 25.
Eddie Mamani, a resident of La Paz with an indigenous wiphala flag draped around his neck, spoke loudly to be heard over the brass band playing behind him. "For too many years we have been exploited by right-wing politicians who do not govern for all Bolivians. We are marching today for our children and our grandchildren."
The march, which stretched for some five blocks, was filled with the white, blue, and black flags of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), the party of President Evo Morales. The sound of fireworks mixed with honking horns from cars and buses waiting for the march to pass. While posters of Morales bobbed up and down in the crowd, and copies of the new constitution were handed out to onlookers, marchers yelled "Sí, Sí, Sí! Vamos por el Sí," urging voters to cast a "Yes" ballot in the upcoming vote. Polls indicate that the constitution will be approved.
Along with the nationalization of Bolivia's gas reserves, rewriting the constitution was a major promise of Morales during his 2005 presidential campaign. The road to this new constitution has been a long, complicated and often violent one. One key event in this process was the July 2, 2006 election of assembly members to the constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution. Later, in December of 2007, the new constitution was passed in an assembly meeting in Oruro which was boycotted by opposition members. After months of street battles and political meetings, the Bolivian congress ratified a new draft of the constitution last October 21. In many ways, these various steps will culminate in the January 25th vote.
Among other significant changes, the new constitution allows for a broader involvement of the state in the Bolivian economy, including the state's participation in the gas and oil industry. It establishes the Bolivian state as plurinacional to reflect the diversity of indigenous and Afro-Bolivian groups in the country. It formally promotes the official use of the country's 36 indigenous languages. The new constitution also grants autonomy to indigenous groups across the nation, enabling them to govern their own communities. This autonomy for indigenous communities may undermine the power of right-wing prefects in opposition-led departments. The current constitution also expands the number of seats in the recently opposition-controlled Senate, and other seats are reserved specifically for Senators elected from indigenous communities.
Like many of the constitution's critics, Rolando, a thirty something resident of La Paz, was not enthusiastic about the extended rights granted to indigenous people. Rolando, sporting a beard and baseball cap, said he wouldn't be voting in support of the new constitution because "it was not written for all Bolivians. It just takes into account the rights of rural and indigenous communities." This is an often-heard critique of the constitution. Yet it doesn't fully take into account that 62% of the population self-identify as indigenous, and about the same percentage live under the poverty line. Many who support the new constitution are doing so because the document grants long overdue rights to the "originarios," indigenous Bolivians who have been marginalized for centuries.
Another point of contention is the way the constitution deals with religion. The current constitution says, "The State recognizes and upholds the apostolic Roman Catholic religion. [It] guarantees the exercise of every other cult." The new constitution says, "The State respects and guarantees the liberty of religion and spiritual beliefs, in accord with one's cosmovisión. The State is independent of religion." Many critics, besides fearing the separation of church and state, say this change opens the window for the government to allow gay marriage and legalize abortion. Unfortunately, nothing indicates that pushing for such much-needed policy changes is on the current government's agenda.
Under the new constitution, land deemed productive will not be broken up by the government, but unproductive land will be redistributed, and a cap on new land purchases -- set either at 5,000 or 10,000 hectares -- will be voted on separately. Land reform is an aspect of the constitution that has been highly criticized by the Bolivian left. Critics say the constitution should go further in addressing the fact that most of Bolivia's land is in the hands of just a few wealthy families. These weak land reforms are considered a major concession to the right wing; much of Bolivia's fertile land is in the eastern departments, currently controlled by opposition prefects.
In what appears to have been another concession to the opposition, the draft constitution was also changed to prevent Morales from running for two additional terms, as an earlier draft of the constitution allowed. If the new constitution is approved, Morales will run for his last consecutive term in general elections in December of 2009.
The coming days will be full of marches across the country for and against the new constitution. Sunday's mobilization was a preview of things to come. Max, a participant in the march waving a MAS flag, and who described himself as "just another Bolivian citizen," said that he is supporting the new constitution because, among the many constitutions which Bolivia has had throughout its history, "this is the best one." He also approved of the way the constitution was developed in the constituent assembly and believed it was "written for all Bolivians" and will "help keep our leaders honest."
One section of this march ended up in a park with a giant blown-up balloon figure of Evo Morales in the middle of it, and dozens of people handing out pamphlets on the new constitution and MAS calendars for the new year. While one group of people slapped "Sí" bumper stickers on cars in the area, another woman methodically peeled the same stickers off the guard rail of a nearby bridge.
Lourdes Calla, a brown-haired activist in the MAS, waved a wiphala flag and jumped to the rhythm of a nearby chant. "I am voting in support of the constitution for the equality of all Bolivians -- there should be no upper and lower economic class, we're all Bolivians," she said. "This new constitution has been created through a historically democratic process and defends the rights of indigenous and rural communities. Now is the time to put these rights into practice."
Introduction
A serious discussion of the perspectives for socialism in Latin America today requires several levels of analysis, moving from world economic conditions, to US-Latin American relations, to their specific impact on Latin America. The analysis must focus on how the economic recession/depression impacts on the changing political-economic systems and the class structures. Finally, within this framework, it becomes necessary to examine the development of the class struggle and anti-imperialist movement in specific countries and under different regimes.
While there are broad similarities to previous 'recessions' and economic cycles, there are many good reasons to think that what matters most in the present world conjuncture is the specific world historical conditions, which mark the present economic recession as very distinctive or 'unique'.
Specificities of the current recession/depression (RD)
We refer to the present crisis as 'recession-depression' because the negative growth of capitalism is a current ongoing process that is still in its opening phase: The current recession is still spreading and likely will deepen into a depression as early as mid-2009 onward for a prolonged period. Secondly, the recession/depression is spreading unevenly in terms of depth and timing, with some countries and regions in more 'advanced' states of crisis (US-EU-Japan) than others (India and China).
A serious analysis of the current RD must take account of the massive structural changes in the composition of capital which have taken place over the last 50 years, which preclude any attempt to theorize about 'long waves' of capitalist cycles, and to make comparisons with previous recessions/depressions between 1929-1939 and later.
Any attempt to theorize about the length, duration, possible collapse of capitalism and emerging anti-capitalist forces begins with recognition of the new economic configurations of capitalism and the resultant new class formations.
The Uniqueness of the 'New Capitalism' in the Contemporary World
There are several unique features that define the current RD of world capitalism. These include:
1. The entire world with minor exceptions is now incorporated into the world capitalist market under private capitalist owners who control the principal means of production and distribution and employ wage labor. There are no longer communist economies run on the basis of state ownership and planning. The USSR, China and their allies and ex-clients in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa have been converted into capitalist countries subject to the capitalist market. As a result, the entire world economy is now, for the first time in modern history, subject to the effects of world RD.
2. The level of integration between 'national' capitalist economies is deeper and more widespread than ever before in history, increasing the speed with which recessions in one major country or region are transmitted to the next.
3. The concentration and centralization of capital and their interlock, in particular the financial sector, has reached levels unprecedented in the past, thus facilitating growth of credit, financial power and wealth and the paper economy in periods of expansion and multiple crises in all economic sectors (manufacturing, agriculture, public finance) in time of collapse.
4. Today the size and extension of wage and salaried workers is qualitatively greater than any other period in world capitalist history: The working class, in all its variants (employed and unemployed, seasonal, contract or subcontracted, formal and informal) is the principle source of capitalist revenue and income (directly through profits or indirectly via interest, taxes, royalties and rents).
5. The composition of capitalism is vastly different from any previous period in history. In particular the relationship between finance and productive capital. In the United States and the United Kingdom, finance capital is the nerve center for the concentration of capital; capital is transferred from all other economic centers and invested in speculative economic activities throughout the world economy. The centrality of finance capital explains the subsequent boom in commodity speculation, the real estate and housing bubble, and the conversion of the US economy from an export-manufacturing center to 'FIRE' (finance, insurance and real estate) and consumer import economy. The rise of finance-consumer capitalism in the US and UK and to a lesser degree on the continent created a new world division of labor in which Asia, especially China, South Korea and Taiwan became the manufacturing export workshops of the world, South America agro-mineral and oil exporter, the Middle East the oil financial sub-center and Africa the target of agro-mineral colonization subject to resource exploitation by the new Asian and older Euro-American imperial powers.
6. Latin America's 'restructured' capitalist economy emerged from the recession and financial crisis of the 1990's with its axis of growth anchored in agro-mineral exports. Between 2003-2008 all Latin American economies, regardless whether they were center-left or rightist, based their strategy on the 're-primarization' of their economies. The driving force of capitalist growth was centered on agro-business and mineral exporters. Export capitalism re-defined the class structure and increased dependence on overseas markets and diversified trading partners in Asia.
7. Primarization in Latin America led to the strengthening of neo-liberalism and the reconfiguration of state policy to favor agro-mineral exporters and accommodate the poorest section through vast clientelistic 'poverty programs'. Social movements and trade union leaders were co-opted. Surplus labor was 'exported' (overseas migration) and vast sums of overseas remittances were 'imported'.
8. The centerpiece of this 'new world order' was the United States financial system with its global networks penetrating the world economy. US financial dominance led to: 1) de-capitalization of manufacturing; 2) the massive expansion of real estate speculation; 3) debt-financed consumer-based growth; 4) the stimulation of Asian manufacturing growth and exports; and 5) the boom in commodity production, exports and prices in Latin America. The link between the rise of US finance capital, the growth of Asian export industries and Latin American commodity boom was responsible for the high growth period up to 2007 and the subsequent collapse and deep recession beginning in 2008.
US Depression/Recession: The Domestic Consequences
The US economy is rapidly descending from a recession into a depression. Hundreds of thousands of workers are losing their jobs each month. One out of five workers are out of work or working part time. One out of every ten homeowners cannot meet their mortgage payments and face eviction. The GNP will be receding at a rate between minus 2% to minus 5% for 2009. Manufacturing is declining to minus 6%. Consumer spending is down 25%. Bankruptcy rates are at depression levels. Credit is drying up. Major banks survive only because of the trillion dollar government bail-outs. Unemployment, bankruptcy, credit freeze, corporate losses and debt - a general depression - has devastated the domestic US economy, severely damaged the 'real economy' and stock market. Massive state spending and subsidies have failed to stimulate the financial system and to encourage lending to the productive sectors and to finance household consumption. US Treasury bonds are now paying negative interest rates (1%), far below the rate of inflation. The multi-billion dollar Wall Street swindles have destroyed confidence between banks and investors, lenders and borrowers, government and industrial firms. The capitalist system has broken down. As an economic system it no longer performs its most basic functions, at a minimum level of efficiency: To produce, lend, employ, consume, trade and house.
The US depression/recession has a profound impact on all the world's economies. Contrary to the 'decoupling theories', which argued that countries in Asia, Latin America or Europe had achieved autonomy, the US recession has led to a precipitous decline in European, Asian and Latin American exports to the US. The US financial crash has profoundly affected banks in Europe, Asia and Latin America - leading to the drying up of credit and massive capital flight as investors and speculators withdraw capital to cover losses in the US. The US-European-Asian recession is rapidly moving toward a depression and with it massive numbers of bankruptcies, unemployment, pension loss, home foreclosures, poverty and the further concentration of capital in a few state-financed private banks. The traditional 'monetary stimulus' of Central Bank, interest rate reductions, has clearly failed. Even though US interest rates are reduced to 0.25% (almost zero), the Central Bank admits these measures have not even slowed down the descent into a deeper recession. The US capitalist state has resorted to unprecedented printing of money to finance its gaping 2 trillion dollar deficit for fiscal year 2009 and to avoid the collapse of basic federal, state and local government services. Major firings of public employees and the closure of social services have multiplied as social services have been slashed.
What is striking about the US political-economy in this deepening recession is the divergence in performance between the stock market and the real economy; the vast reduction in public spending in the civilian economy and the increase in military spending; the reduction of civilian employees and the escalation of troops sent to war. In other words, the capitalist state is allocating its scarce resources to rebuild the empire and engage in multiple wars even as it starves the civilian administration of resources at a time when it verges on bankruptcy and the productive domestic economy collapses in a deepening recession.
A similar divergence in state policy is evident with relation to the vast sums allocated to support the financial sector and the total neglect of the productive economy. As the number of big banks pulled back from the brink of collapse has relative stabilized, thousands of major manufacturing, mining, construction and transport enterprises have gone bankrupt or are on the verge of failure with virtually no state support.
This peculiar and specific character of the US capitalist crisis leads to several tentative observations:
1. Military-driven empire building is the primary priority driving state policy over and above the domestic (and even export) productive economy. While the military budget and personnel grow, private investment funds and employment in productive sectors shrink.
2. The military-imperial complex is relatively and perhaps temporarily independent or 'autonomous' from the domestic productive economy. In fact, there seems to be an inverse relation: As the domestic economic crisis deepens, the military-imperial complex expands. Those who believed that the economic recession would undermine military-driven empire building and wars and force the government to concede defeat, withdraw or 'negotiate' with adversaries, submit to multilateral coordinated decisions have been proven wrong. One might concede that a prolonged recession/depression may ultimately force the government to retrench military empire building in the face of mass unemployment and even mass hunger. However, even that is uncertain given the lack of any mass protests and the reduction of the bureaucratized private trade union sector to below 5% of the labor force. There is no protest even with the massive layoffs of unionized automobile, steel and other industrial workers.
There is no pre-determined point at which sufficient political pressure might arise to reverse the predominance of military imperial priorities over the civilian domestic economy. How many imperial wars of what duration will be counterposed to what percentage of unemployed and underemployed workers to set in motion a political shift to confronting the domestic recession/depression? Will it be 2 or 3 wars versus 20-30% unemployment and underemployment? What is certain is that there is absolutely no pressure from within the Obama Presidency or among the Democratic and Republican members of Congress to reverse the supremacy of empire building over the domestic economy. The Imperial Wars will go on; the domestic economy will continue to decline.
The State's highest priority is placed on the military-imperial and financial sectors despite the breakdown of the domestic economy and the drain from the prolonged and failing imperial wars in the Middle East. This suggest that we are dealing with deep structural relations, which cannot be changed or reversed by one or another elected political official: Deep structures cannot be uprooted in the current context; new 'economic stimuli' can only activate short term projects, whose scope and depth is limited by the voracious demands of the imperial wars and the dysfunctional financial system.
In conclusion, under present political conditions in the US, despite the deepening recession, the continued imperial military losses and the transition to an economic depression, the perspective is for the US to continue to drive toward political (and military) confrontation with nationalist, anti-Zionist, populist and socialist government and movements. They will act unilaterally when necessary or with clients and collaborator states where possible.
Impact of World Recession and US Imperial Revivalism in Latin America
Latin America's economies are feeling the full brunt of the world recession: Every country in the region, without exception, is experiencing a major decline in trade, domestic production, investment, employment, state revenues and income. Latin America's GDP projected growth for 2009 has declined from 3.6% in September 2008, to 1.4% in December 2008 (Financial Times, January 9, 2009). More recent projections estimate Latin America's GDP per capita falling to minus two percent (-2%). As a result bankruptcies will proliferate and state spending on social services will decline. State credit and subsidies to big banks and businesses will increase. Unemployment will expand, especially in the agro-mineral and transport (automobile) export sectors. Public employees will be discharged and experience a sharp decline in salaries. Latin America's external financal flows will suffer the loss of billions of dollars and euros from declining remittances from overseas workers. Foreign speculators are withdrawing tens of billions of investment dollars to cover their losses in the US and Europe. Foreign disinvestment replaces 'new foreign investment', eliminating a major source of financing for any major 'joint ventures'. The precipitous decline in commodity prices, reflecting an abrupt drop in world demand, is sharply reducing government revenues dependent on export taxes. Foreign reserves in Latin America can only 'cushion' the fall in export revenues for a limited time and extent.
The recession means the entire socio-economic class configuration, around which Latin America's 'growth model' is based, is headed for a long-term, large-scale transformation. The entire spectrum of political parties, which dominated the electoral process, linked to the primary commodity export model will be adversely affected. The trade unions and social movements oriented toward increasing wages, reforms and greater social spending within the primary commodity export model will be forced to take direct action or lose relevance.
The initial response of the 'center-left' political regimes to the deepening recession/depression has largely focused on: 1) financial support for the banking sector (Lula) and lower taxes for the agro-mineral export elite (Kirchner/Lula); 2) cheap credit for consumers to stimulate car purchases (Kirchner); and 4) temporary unemployment benefits for workers laid off from closed small and medium size mines (Morales). The main response of the Latin American regimes up to the beginning of 2009 was, at first, self-delusion, the belief that their economy would not be affected. This was followed by an attempt to minimize the crisis, claiming that the recession would not be severe and would experience a rapid recovery in 'late 2009'. They argue that the existing foreign reserves will protect their country from a more severe decline.
According to the IMF, 40% of Latin America's financial wealth ($2.200 billion dollars) was lost in 2008 because of the decline of the stock market and other asset markets and currency depreciation. This decline will reduce domestic spending by 5% in 2009. Latin America's terms of trade have deteriorated sharply as commodity prices have fallen sharply, making imports more expensive and raising the specter of growing trade deficits (Financial Times, January 9, 2009 p. 7).
The onset of the recession in Latin America is evident in the 6.2% fall in Brazil's industrial output in November 2008 and its accelerating negative momentum (Financial Times January 7, 2009 p. 5).
As a result, Latin America enters into a period of profound, prolonged recession without any serious plan or program to counteract its destructive impact.
The Recession/Depression Impact on Transforming the Class Structure
The recession is having a major impact in transforming the Latin American class structure. The size and influence of all classes, from the top to the bottom, is deeply affected.
First of all the big fall in demand and price of primary commodities results in a sharp decline in income, power and solvency of agro-mineral exporters. Much of their expansion during the 'boom years' was debt-financed, in some cases with dollar and euro-denominated loans (Financial Times, January 9, 2009 p.7). Many of the highly indebted 'export elite' face bankruptcy and are pressuring their governments to relieve them of immediate debt obligations. In the course of the recession/depression there will be a further concentration and centralization of agro-mineral capital as many medium and large miners and capitalist farmers are foreclosed or forced to sell. The relative decline of the contribution of the agro-mineral sector to the GDP and state revenues means they will have less leverage over the government and economic decision making. The collapse of their overseas markets and their dependence on the state to subsidize their debts and intervene in the market means that the so-called 'neo-liberal' free market ideology is dead - for the duration of the recession. Weakened economically, the agro-mineral elite will turn to the expanding role of the state as its instrument of survival, recovery and refinancing.
The 'new statism' has absolutely nothing 'progressive' about it let alone any claim to 'socialism'. The state under the influence of the primary sector elites assumes the task of imposing the entire burden of the recession on the backs of the workers, employees, small farmers and businesspeople. In other words the state will be charged with indebting the mass of people in order to subsidize the debts of the elite export sector and provide zero cost loans to capital. Massive cuts in social services (health, pensions and education), and salaries will be backed by state repression. In the final analysis the increased role of the state will be primarily directed to financing the debt and subsidizing loans to the ruling class.
The economic decline of the agro-export elites makes them politically vulnerable because they will no longer function as the 'engine of growth'. Under conditions of 'neo-statism' one of the axis of the class struggle shifts to a confrontation over who controls the state, its budget, its expenditures and 'intervention'. Because of the central role of the state in the economy during a recession/depression all class relations and class struggles pass directly into political confrontation with the state over whether the state will save capitalist ownership of the means of production or expropriate it.
The financial and industrial sectors, linked to overseas markets and financial sectors face serious deterioration in market shares, capital financing and credit. A serious process of 'de-capitalization' will result as the recession/depression deepens in North America, Europe, Central and South America. The worst affected sectors are those with the greatest 'integration in the world market'. The greater the globalization, the more rapid has been the spread of the financial crisis in banking, automobile manufacture and communication industries. Those financial and manufacturing sectors mostly linked to the domestic economy will partly escape the downturn in the early phases of the crisis.
The idea that somehow because Latin America went through an earlier regional crisis (1998-2002) it can escape the full effects of the current recession/depression is not credible. Latin America cannot 'build capitalism on one continent.' Latin America's delay in feeling the full blast of the 'first wave of the recession' (2008) only means that as the second wave hits in 2009, there will be major plant closures of subsidiaries of multi-nationals and bankruptcies of all the 'satellite industries'. This will be accompanied by massive lay-offs of industrial workers and wage reductions. Because of the socio-political importance of industrial workers concentrated in urban centers and the dependence of service employment on the industrial sectors, the state will be forced to intervene with some compensatory unemployment programs with public works at subsistence wages. In so far as the trade unions cannot transcend the collective bargaining framework, new forms of mass organizations of the semi-employed and unemployed workers will likely emerge, using the tactics of direct actions - paralyzing the roadways, transport networks and occupying closed plants and public buildings, similar to what occurred in Argentina between 2000-2003.
The informal sector will multiply, as millions of unemployed crowd the streets competing fiercely in a shrinking labor market. In the face of recession/depression and border controls, overseas emigration as an escape valve will no longer be available. Internal and inter-country migration will offer no relief. The lack of savings, unemployment benefits, and the decline of overseas remittances, combined with meager public works programs used for 'political patronage', will raise the 'political temperature' in the urban centers and slum settlements surrounding the capital cities.
Nevertheless, there will not be any 'automatic radicalization'. The specter of 'hunger' may just as well encourage a turn to rightwing populist demagogues or even an increase in urban gangs and the growth of the underworld economy, as well as leftist-led unemployed and informal worker organizations and anti-capitalist factory occupations. There are examples of vibrant unemployed workers organizations from the recent past, especially in Argentina. Nevertheless, the new circumstances require adapting and developing new forms of struggle, not merely repeating experience from the past, embedded in different historical contexts.
The abruptness, depth and extent of the capitalist recession make most electoral institutions and formal legislative bodies irrelevant: The massive spread of unemployment, bankruptcies and revenue losses cannot be dealt with through the lengthy negotiations and inconclusive debates of parliaments. Executive and extra-parliamentary direct action become the order of the day.
Consequences of the Recession for the Left
The capitalist recession/depression, by itself, is no guarantee that the Left will be the principle beneficiary of the ensuing popular discontent. Several contingencies will be crucial in determining the initial political character - most of all that of the incumbent regime in power as the recession unfolds. Where the self-styled 'center-left' regimes are in power, as in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile and Brazil or the nationalist left as in Venezuela, and where state-funded 'stimulus packages' fail to counteract the recession-depression, political conditions will favor the return of the right. The right will rely on state intervention to finance capitalist recovery and to harshly repress mass protest. Where the Neo-liberal right rules as in Mexico, Peru and Colombia, the mass popular movements will find political expression through leftist political organizations.
In the absence of any strong nationally organized revolutionary force, the recession/depression, by itself and even with mass protest, will not lead to a social transformation. At least in the initial phase of the crisis in 2009, most 'mass pressure and struggles' will be directed to conserve jobs, block mass layoffs and even some 'defensive' factory/enterprise occupations.1 This may be accompanied by demands for greater state involvement, either through subsidies to failed enterprises or selective nationalizations. The total demise of neo-liberal ideology is inevitable; but its initial replacement will most likely take the form of 'state capitalism'. The most radical responses and popular demands will occur in those countries most dependent on primary product exports and world demand, and in those countries most integrated to the depressed markets of the US and EU. These countries include, in particular, Mexico, Central America, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela and Bolivia. Chile, Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, with more diversified exports and a larger internal market, will also be impacted by world and regional recession but 'not as severely or abruptly'. The recession will proceed in phases, cushioned initially by large foreign reserves.
By mid 2009, the recession will accelerate as capital flight, the loss of credit, investment markets and remittances intensifies. Local producers and capital markets will be hit hard. By the beginning of 2010 Latin America will be deep in recession.
Leftwing radicalization will really take hold, once the large-scale economic stimulus and public works programs fail to stimulate the economy and as the recession deepens and becomes prolonged. The key to the growth of revolutionary movements will depend on their location in the socio-economic centers of the crisis with organized cadre and 'local opinion' leaders capable of articulating and linking local discontent with a national plan of struggle, informed by a clearly anti-imperialist, socialist program. Given present circumstances the recession/depression opens a door of opportunity for the re-emergence of mass movements, which in turn provide an active audience for the revival and renewal of socialist movements. The renewal of socialist mass movements will reflect the recent limitations of 'leftist fragmentation', 'spontaneism' and a lack of deep implantation in factories and neighborhoods. The world recession not only undermines the legitimacy of neo-liberalism but of the entire capitalist class configuration. The collapse raises the specter of 'statist nationalism' as a prelude to a publicly directed economy. In the context of capitalism, which is unable to operate through market mechanisms, bankrupt and weakened export strategies and growing protectionism, severe strains in US-Latin American relations are inevitable and promising for the success of a socialist project.
US-Latin American Relations - 1998-2008
To understand the current and immediate future of US-Latin American relations, it is necessary to identify four clearly demarcated periods: 1) The 'Golden Age of Imperial Pillage (1990-1999); 2) Crisis and Political Challenge (2000-2003), 3) the 'relative autonomy' of the commodity boom period (2004-2008) and 4) world recession/depression and declining power of imperial capital (2009 onwards).
The 'Golden Age' of Euro-US imperial pillage of Latin America was characterized by relations of intense exploitation (what Giudo DiTella, Argentine President Menem's Foreign Minister dubbed a 'carnal relation'). This period was defined by the unlimited pillage and transfer of profits, resources, rents, royalties and interest payments. Euro-US capital acquired - at below market prices - banks, mines and vast expanses of land, which, in its totality, scope and durations, was unprecedented in modern imperial history (post WWII). Over three thousand lucrative public enterprises were 'privatized' and de-nationalized at a fraction of their market value. Loans were contracted at exorbitant interest rates, most of which rarely entered the country and rarely served any productive purpose. In all the international and regional forums, Washington could count on the votes, diplomatic support and even the provision of mercenaries to back Bush and Clinton's imperial military conquests (Yugoslavia, Kosovo and Somalia) and maintain embargoes (Cuba, Iraq and Iran).
The US economic domination of Latin America exceeded even that of the preceding decade under some of the dictatorial military regimes: The neo-liberal electoral regimes proceeded to privatize military-run industrial enterprises.
The 'Golden Age' of Euro-US pillage and absolute dominance was based on close collaboration with corrupt rightwing electoral regimes. The latter were dubbed 'democratic' or 'in transition to democracy' by Euro-US and Latin American academics funded by the major imperial foundations (Adenauer, Ebert, Ford, Rockefeller, the Fulbright Scholarship, National Endowment for Democracy). US imperial rule operated through electoral collaborators, business elites and security officials at the top and an army of Euro-US funded 'NGOs' in the countryside, cities and poor communities at the bottom. With World Bank funds, the NGOs acted to undermine independent class movements by focusing on 'local' micro-projects rather than national structural transformations'.
For US officials, relations with Latin America, established in the 'Golden Age', were taken as the norm and the bases of all future relations. They were oblivious to the fact that: 1) pillage was leading to mass exploitation, unemployment, internal crisis and financial disintegrations; 2) independent extra-parliamentary movements were gaining influence and hegemony among the majority and power to overthrow not only military dictatorships but especially corrupt imperial electoral clients; and 3) that US 'hegemony' did not penetrate below the top elites. Generalized opposition to US dominance was extending to broad sectors of the downwardly mobile middle class, especially in the public sector adversely affected by neo-liberal 'privatizations'.
The Demise of US Dominance: Popular Uprisings of 2000-2003
Just as US power stood virtually unchallenged during the 'Golden Decade'. The period between 2000 and 2003 witnessed mass popular urban uprisings, massive rural movements and the emergence of Indian-based takeovers of regional and local governments. As a result, US dominance evaporated along with the demise of its hegemonized collaborator elites.
Between 2000-2003, Latin American politics took a decidedly 'left turn' as the US most prominent supporters were defeated, ousted and/or fled from office. Angry majorities took to the streets, badly hit by a combination of financial and economic crises, the pillage of resources, enterprises, bank accounts and the emptying of public treasuries. The fallen US clients (or would-be clients), included the Presidents of the several countries of the region: De la Rua in Argentina, Sanchez de Losado in Bolivia, Noboa in Ecuador, the 48-hour civil military coup-plotters in Venezuela (2002), and Cardoso in Brazil.
The driving force behind these political revolutions were powerful social movements, in particular those representing the urban poor, Indians, peasants, unemployed workers and downwardly mobile public employees. In contrast to the past, organized urban trade unions and students played a secondary role. As in all empires, US dominance depended on the capacity of the local ruling class to maintain political control either through force, fraud or corrupt electoral procedures. Once the client ruling electoral class was ousted, US influence over the countries sharply diminished.
The political result of the period of mass mobilization was the emergence of 'center-left' regimes, a hybrid reflecting some of the consequences of the mass power as well as the continuities of the clientele politics of the past. The period of mass mobilizations challenged many of the fundamental features of 'Golden Age' of US imperial rule. The movements called into question the privatizations and de-nationalization of the economy, the massive illicit foreign debt, the advance toward a highly prejudicial 'free trade - free market' agreement with the US and a banking system subordinated to and plundered by local and foreign speculators linked through overseas subsidiaries.
Even as the movements were not able to enforce any fundamental changes in property or class relations, they were able to force through a number of other important secondary changes, including banking regulations to limit pillage and foreign-dictated monetary policy, the re-nationalization of a few enterprises that were taken over by workers or were considered of national importance.
In the case of Venezuela, the Chavez government carried out large-scale nationalization of the state petroleum company, which had been run by executives who subordinated the industry to US MNCs and foreign banks.
The most important mass movements initially imposed a rough framework of national autonomy, which allowed the emerging center-left regimes to adopt a more flexible and autonomous posture in pursuing national interests independent of the US.
The Period of 'Relative Autonomy' - 2005-2008
If the US suffered a severe loss of influence in the first half decade of the early 2000s due to mass mobilization and popular movements ousting its clients, during the subsequent 4 years the US retained political influence among the most reactionary regimes in the region, especially Mexico, Peru and Colombia. Despite the decline of mass mobilizations after 2004, the after-effects continued to ripple through regional relations and blocked efforts by Washington to return to relations that had existed during the Golden Decade of pillage (1990-1999).
While internal political dynamics put the brakes on any return to the 1990's, several other factors undermined Washington's assertion of full scale dominance:
1) The US turned all of its attention, resources and military efforts toward multiple wars in South Asia (Afghanistan), Iraq and Somalia and to war preparations against Iran while backing Israel's aggression against Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Because of the prolonged and losing character of these wars, Washington remained relatively immobilized as far as South America was concerned. Equally important Washington's declaration of a intensified world-wide counter-insurgency offensive (the 'War on Terror') diverted resources toward other regions. With the US empire builders occupied elsewhere, Latin America was relatively free to pursue a more autonomous political agenda, including greater regional integrations, to the point of rejecting the US proposed 'Free Trade Agreement'.
2) Washington's heavy emphasis on military-driven empire building drained state resources from bolstering its economic empire in Latin America and contributed to the relative decline of the US as the dominant market and source for Latin American exports and imports (except for Mexico). The result was that Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Russia and neighboring Latin American countries became increasingly important trading partners. With the declining importance of US markets, the US lost some of its leverage and influence, especially with regard to 'political issues'. Latin America rejected the US embargo of Cuba and its pressures to isolate Venezuela.
3) The boom in commodity prices of primary exports from Latin America increased the region's trade surplus. The size of its foreign reserves reached record levels and eliminated the influence of the US via the IMF in particular, and the international lending agencies in general. With world demand high for energy, metals and agro-exports, Latin America diversified its markets, suppliers and sources of external financing. Paradoxically, while the center-left regimes gained relative autonomy in relation to the US via their agro-mineral exports, they strengthened the position of their primary product exporting elites, which historically have been the most pro-Washington sector of the class system.
In summary, the combination of failed US geo-military commitments, favorable world market conditions and the legacy of mass mobilizations, provided the center-left regimes with a degree of political autonomy from the US - a midpoint between the crass subservience of the 1990's and the rebellious spirit of national liberation of the earlier half of the first decade of 2000.
From Economic Boom to Bust - 2008
The advance of the center-left regimes, during the first half of 2008, the continued increase in world agro-mineral prices, the abundance of world liquidity, the growing foreign reserves and the incremental social changes ended by mid-year. With the onset of the world recession/depression, Latin America's exports, growth and reserves stagnated. The decline of world trade and the collapse of commodity prices starting in September eroded the high growth expectations of the center-left regimes, particularly of Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela as well as other countries in the region.
The current world capitalist crisis has several features that require analysis in order to understand the political and economic dynamics of US-Latin American relations in 2009/2010.
Unlike in the past, the recession hit the US and Europe first and more severely before it spread to Latin America. In part this was the result of Latin America's most recent crisis (1999-2002), which 'destroyed' many of the toxic assets in the system and lessened the links to the speculative heartland. Secondly, the commodity boom reduced overseas dollar-denominated public debt, increased foreign reserves and stabilization funds, allowing Latin American regimes to 'cushion' the initial shocks of the world recession, at least from October 2008 to March 2009.
Because Latin American diversified its markets and because its new Asian markets retained their resiliency for a longer spell, the recession entered Latin America 'later' than in Europe and the US beginning around November-December 2008 and deepening in February-March 2009. Finally because Latin America's speculative sector was still weak after the crash of 2000-2001, it was not as 'integrated' into the Anglo-American housing bubble and therefore not as damaged by the bursting of the bubble in 2007-2008.
While recognizing these specificities of the Latin American economies and the differential impact of the world recession on Latin America, the fact of the matter remains that Latin America has been hit and with considerable force by the spread of the world recession throughout 2009 and beyond. The belief, stated by Brazil's President Lula da Silva in 2008, that Brazil can 'avoid' the worst effects of the recession are pure fantasy.
The recession will spread and deepen in Latin America and it will undermine precisely the 'engines' of growth - the primary export sector - and spread throughout the economy. The budget surpluses are temporary stopgaps to finance some stimulus packages - but they are totally insufficient to reverse the fall in all export sectors, the drying up of private credit and the drying up of new local/foreign investment. In fact the first sign and substance of growing recessionary tendencies is the large outflows of capital by investors anticipating the crisis. The other sign of the deepening recession is the decline of exports (both in quantitative and value terms). The decline in government revenues especially derived from export earnings is eroding public spending. The decline of the twin dynamics of trade and state investment and earnings is precipitating a sharp fall in the services (finance, real estate, commerce and transport) and local consumption and production (manufacturing, automobiles, textiles and so on).
Latin America's growth over the past 5 years was heavily dependent on public and private debt financing. Over $150 billion dollars of Brazil's $600 billion dollar public debt falls due in 2009. With the US borrowing over $1 trillion dollars this year, it will be impossible for even the most 'neo-liberal' regimes in Latin America to raise the financing in the international market. Large-scale private corporate debt in Latin America, especially dollar-denominated debt, will cause a serious liquidity problem and large-scale bankruptcies. Even countries with large foreign reserves, like Chile and Brazil, will see those reserves evaporate as the recession extends beyond 2009-2010. Latin America will need $250 billion dollars just to pay off maturing debt; these funds are just not available internally or externally.
That Latin America enters 'later' into the global recession does not mean that it will leave sooner. There are several reasons to assume the opposite: The center-left regimes did little or nothing to deepen the internal market, nor did they diversify their export products. On the contrary, they created a new emphasis on primary products for export in order to take advantage of the temporary high prices of 2003-2008. The center-left retained the privatized, foreign-owned strategic sectors inherited from the previous neo-liberal regimes, severely weakening the economic levers through which it could revitalize the economy. With the banks remaining under private foreign control, loans to the productive sector are restricted. The privately owned industrial sector is not willing to risk new investments especially in the face of the growing recession in the US. The state only intervenes via channeling state loans and investment to the private sectors and depends on their willingness to make the 'appropriate' productive employment-generating investments. At best, this is a hit or miss proposition; at worst, it leads to 'slippage' or loss of investment funds. Under these conditions the center-left has to re-nationalize in order to invest for recovery, focus on new public projects in infrastructure (with its limited effects on employment), impose capital controls, suspend debt payments and run large-scale fiscal deficits to avoid a depression.
Latin America, contrary to the illusions of some Presidents and economists, cannot sustain regional growth or even stabilize capitalism in one region - not in an ocean of depressed advanced capitalist countries.
What is to be Expected? What is to be Done?
A discussion of immediate and future prospects for revolutionary politics must start with a realistic analysis of the anti-capitalist, socio-political forces, as they exist today, and their potential for growth in the near future.
A realistic assessment of the proximate period begins by taking account of the striking contrast between the extraordinarily favorable 'objective conditions' (the prolonged and deepening world capitalist recession/depression) and the weak and uneven development of the 'subjective' conditions (organized mass anti-capitalist movements or parties). In other words we are in an unstable period where both capitalism and socialism are weak. The question becomes which side will be able to intervene, reorganize and recompose its forces to take advantage of the other.
This requires an 'inventory' of advantages (and disadvantages), reserves and resources of each side in order to evaluate the possible outcome of future conflicts and confrontations in a time of deepening world recession.
Entering the Recession: The Left
The 'Left', as it is known in broad terms, includes the Chavez government, the independent rural and urban class social organizations, peasant and Indian movements, and the guerrilla movements of Colombia, militant independent trade unions and nationalist and marxist political parties throughout the region.
Over the past 20 years the left has suffered several tactical defeats. At times it has been in retreat, and some organizations have declined or disappeared. Nevertheless the Left has not suffered any strategic historic defeats - such as the military seizure in Brazil (1964), Bolivia (1971), Uruguay (1972), Chile (1973) and Argentina (1976) - which destroyed the mass organizations, decimated the cadres and leadership and atomized the rank and file. The left has experienced over 20 years of continuity, accumulating experiences, educating its supporters and recreating its organizations, at a minimum to defend the immediate interests of its supporters.
In the case of Venezuela - the pivotal center for the advance of the Latin American Left - the Left has moved from opposition to government (1999), has overcome coups, imperialist destabilization campaigns, employers' lockouts and sabotage. The Chavez government has financed a dynamic mixed economy, advanced welfare programs and created a mass socialist party (PSUV).
The left movements have demonstrated their capacity to effectively mobilize large masses of supporters on numerous crucial occasions to overthrow pro-imperial electoral client Presidents, mobilized to defend left and center-left presidents (Venezuela and Bolivia) and engaged in street demonstrations and organized the unorganized in prolonged street warfare. The latter include the unemployed workers in Argentina (1999-2003), the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST) (1985-2002 with a decline under Lula from 2003-2008) and the Bolivian workers-peasant/Indian urban insurrections (2000, 2003 and 2005).
The trajectory of the mass movements however has not always been upward - the bulk of the most successful movement mobilizations took place between 2000-2005, followed by a relative decline in the three years predating the current world recession. The Left was weakened by the primary commodity boom. The brief, but, intense capitalist recovery of 2004-2008 (until September) gave rise to both reformist and 'center-left' regimes of Correa, Morales, Kirchner/Fernandez/ Vazquez and Lula, as well as the rightist regimes.
The 'weak side' of the Left going into the world recession is the fact of the fragmentation, dispersion and internal conflict among the Leftist parties in Latin America, limiting their capacity to compete for state power.
The mass movements and trade unions have been weakened and divided and sectors of their leadership has been co-opted by the center-left regimes. The latter used the movements to neutralize and depoliticize mass mobilizations. As the recession deepens and unemployment rises, center-left control is weakening. Lula co-opted the majority of the trade union leadership of the CUT (its General Secretary became Minister of Labor), weakened the MST through limited financial aid to its co-ops, broken promises, repression, and above all by channeling billions of Brazilian reales toward the agro-business export elite. With the recession, Lula's control will be severely 'tested'. As unemployment grows and agro-exports decline, mass discontent will intensify.
The left movements under the rightwing and center-right regimes of Uribe in Colombia, Garcia in Peru, Bachelet in Chile and those of Central America and the Caribbean, have regained social and, in some cases, political space. The electoral and extra-parliamentary struggles challenge neo-liberal hegemony. Particularly in Colombia and Peru, the entire 'interior' (provincial capitals, towns and countryside) has produced mass peasant and urban regional movements. These movements have challenged the central state over the distribution of public wealth and the destruction of local habitat and economies by multinational corporations. The collapse of commodity prices and growing unemployment may create 'dual power situations' based on regional power blocs.
In the period immediately preceding the recession (2007-2008), mass mobilizations took place in countries and among classes, which were different from the economic sectors of the earlier decade. For example, militant mass mobilizations in Colombia, Peru and Costa Rica exceeded those in Argentina or even Bolivia in the period 2005-2008. Within Colombia, while the guerrillas were regrouping and in tactical retreat, mass marches of Indians, students and trade unionists took the foreground in the struggle against the murderous Uribe regime.
The major weakness of the social movements is obvious: They have a largely 'sectoral' leadership and base and do not have national structures. Even as they embrace a more general society-wide program, their leadership lacks independent sources of financial and material resources to provide for a national cadre structure. Above all, they lack a practice and program for taking political power - state power. As they gain influence and mass support, they turn toward or ally with the 'center-left' political leaders who have demonstrated repeatedly that: 'Out of power they are with the Left, but in power with the Right'.
What is to be Done?
The end of the commodity boom means there will be a rise in unemployment among miners, petroleum workers, and the agricultural proletariat concentrated in homogeneous communities, with their traditions of class struggle, organizations and 'consciousness'. Isolated, localized protests are inevitable and, in fact, are already occurring by the end of 2008. The sharp fall in the exports and domestic consumer market will provoke an increase in unemployment among industrial workers, especially in the automobile and related manufacturing industries, opening the door for a renewal of the organization of 'unemployed workers' for direct action. The decline of state revenues, dependent on taxes from agro-mineral exports, will result in the firing of state employees and the freezing of new hires. This means that tens of thousands of young graduates of universities, teachers colleges, preparatory, technical and secretarial schools will be out of work, creating a potential vast army of young people with no future and available for organization and action.
The recession/depression (general crisis) will discourage international migration and will cause a return of migrants. There will be a huge loss of remittances from overseas relatives and workers, intensifying local hardships, tensions and the necessity to struggle 'at home'. The 'world' nature of the recession eliminates out-migration as the 'escape valve' of the past several decades. The sectors of the population, who in the past emigrated, are of the same age and ambition as those who stay and organize class organization. Blocked from overseas emigration, these young workers are likely recruits to reinforce and radicalize the movement of the under and unemployed.
There is no question that the pressures 'from below' will intensify. But in the absence of concrete organizations of struggle rooted among the young, in the neighborhoods, among the vocational students in the major
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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640_p1250118.jpg
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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On the following Saturday, November 22nd residents across the city braved the cold and demonstrated in front of the branch libraries in their neighborhoods. At the Kingsessing branch, people were “fired up despite the cold” as one blog put it. Local youth put on a performance piece, along with many speakers and a gospel group. It was amazing to see nearly a hundred people out despite the frigid conditions, and later on television, to watch as people came out all over the city to protest the cuts and defend their branch libraries.
Many residents had been putting pressure on Nutter during the ‘town hall’ meetings he’d been holding to talk about his budget cuts. These ‘town hall’ meetings were essentially ‘dog and pony’ shows where the mayor would explain his rationale for the cuts and during ‘Q & A’ would repeatedly cut people off, not answer questions directly, essentially refusing to engage in any meaningful dialogue. While people bravely spoke out during all the town meetings, Nutter was certainly in for a surprise when he came to the Kingsessing Rec Center where the people filling the facility started booing and chanting ‘Save Our Libraries” before he even got up to speak. Free Library Director Siobhan Reardon was literally booed off stage when she was introduced and looked visibly shaken throughout the meeting. One highlight of the town meetings was watching the mayor being caught off guard when he couldn’t name the schools lacking libraries in proximity to them, but most touching was the feeling of community and solidarity that pervaded the room. Whenever the mayor tried to dodge a question, a chorus of people, shouted “answer the question”. When people would bring up ending the tax abatements, or downplay children having to walk two miles to the nearest library, spontaneous chants of “Tax the Rich” or “Save Our Libraries” would break out.
The Philadelphia Firefighter Union’s (IAFF Local 22) has taken its fight and the fight of the communities it serves to the streets. Engine No. 6 rallied community members and its rank and file to take over the intersection of Aramingo Ave and Huffington Street for over an hour. At Mayor Nutter’s town hall meeting at Kensington High, firefighters and residents were out in full force. Recently, I was told by a friend in the Francisville section of North Philadelphia, that in their neighborhood, firefighters occupied a busy intersection along with residents as well.
"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities."
Activists hold an emergency
rally in support of Peltier,
San Francisco, Calif., Jan. 23.
Photo: Bill Hackwell
Afghan villagers shout slogans against the U.S. and Afghan government during a demonstration following
oscar-grant-350.jpg
Experimental setup
Ornamental clouds
compose an evening love song;
a road leaves evasively.
The new moon
begins
a new chapter of our nights,
of those frail nights
we stretch out and which mingle
with these black horizontals.
