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US Used
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December
2005
December 2003
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A Radical Newsletter in the Struggle for
Peace and Social Justice
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Latest Articles: December 29, 2005
When 33,000 workers
go on strike anywhere in the U.S., we should stop and take notice. The
decline of strong unions that fight for their workers is but one reason
why we are now the third most unequal industrialized nation in the world.
When the striking workers are 70% Black, Latino, or Asian American, we
have good reason to believe that their standing up for workers’ rights
will be (in the long run) good for all who are struggling to make ends
meet....(full article)
Operation Romeo: Lessons on Terror Laws
from “Injun” Country
Americans inclined
to swallow government propaganda that the Patriot Act is either effective
in fighting foreign terrorism or unlikely to cause widespread domestic
repression need to look hard at India’s experience with POTA and its
copycats and consider whether they like what they see. As in America, the
rhetoric that led to India’s terror laws was the rhetoric of the untamed
frontier. The population was warned of rebels springing up from the soil
like dragon’s teeth, of the state splintering on the reefs of secession,
of civil war tearing apart the glittering fabric of the republic. In
America, neo-conservative practitioners of this rhetoric are apparently
quite prepared to find the untamed frontier whole oceans and continents
away from the American border; in fact, anywhere they say it is. According
to Robert Kaplan, the swathe of Islam stretching from Africa through the
Middle East to South East Asia is all “Injun Country” wide open for
America’s cowboys to tame and settle....(full
article)
Iran and Syria Still in the Crosshairs Another year over, and we still haven’t seen the widely predicted U.S. (or U.S.-Israeli) attacks on Syria and Iran. But keep paying attention. The Turkish press reports that in a December trip to Turkey, CIA Director Porter Goss “asked Ankara to be ready for a possible US air operation against Iran and Syria.” Coming hot on the heels of FBI Director Robert Mueller, he brought with him a large delegation and three dossiers laying out the case against Iran. The first purportedly documents the existence of Iranian nuclear weapons, the second of Iranian ties to al-Qaeda and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), and the third depicts Iran as a mortal enemy of the secular Turkish state....(full article)
Can the president of
the United States imprison an American citizen for three and a half years
as an enemy combatant and then in a flash change his mind and charge him
as a criminal? Isn’t that double jeopardy? And, doesn’t it imply that Bush
has created a parallel justice system where he’s free to determine guilt
or innocence according to his own discretion? Two weeks ago the Bush legal
team completely reversed its position in the Jose Padilla, “dirty bomber”
case, dropping its claim that Padilla be held as an enemy combatant and,
instead, charging him with three counts of conspiracy to murder US
nationals, conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and
providing material support to terrorists in an 11-count indictment. The
case was just days away from going to the Supreme Court when Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales announced that it would abandon its nearly
four-year struggle to establish the president’s “inherent right” to
declare an American citizen an enemy combatant, thereby stripping him of
all his constitutional rights. Why?
It is amazing the
power of mythology over logic -- mythology which people can accept and
believe regardless of all facts and evidence to the contrary, mythology
about who they are, where they live, what their history is. It seems to me
that no industrial nation suffers more under the weight of its own myths
than the United States. I remember as a child how in school each morning
we would have to repeat a pledge to the American flag, and we heard again
and again how great, wealthy, and democratic the United States is. These
things were told as eternal truths, and never questioned, while we
simultaneously learned about the scientific method and the importance of
factual assessment and logical analysis. I would like to expose some of
these myths in simple terms. It seems to me that the general consensus, at
least from Americans themselves, is false. Most Americans I know are of
the opinion that the United States is the greatest country in the world,
the richest, the most democratic, a great force of good in the world. It
is the world’s leading country in progressive thinking. It is a generous
country that gives so much to poor countries. All of these statements are
false....(full article)
“The Face of Sacrifice”: Another Example
of the
Here's a little new
wrinkle in the story of the corporate-liberal New York Times'
servility to imperial power. Last Monday's Times contained an
outwardly progressive item: a two-page photo essay on civilian casualties
(what the paper calls “The Face of Sacrifice”) in Iraq (“The Face and
Voice of Civilian Sacrifice in Iraq: Photographs by Adam Nadel,” NYT,
26 December 2005, pp. A16-A17). “In Iraq,” the Times says, “nobody
knows, and few in authority seemed concerned to count, just how many
civilians have been killed and injured. Soon it will be three years since
the American-led invasion. The estimates of those killed run into the tens
of thousands, the numbers wounded two or three times the number who lost
their lives. Even President Bush, estimating recently that 30,000
civilians may have been killed, acknowledged that was no more than an
abstraction from unofficial calculation, not a Pentagon count.” Of course,
people on the left have been talking about -- and trying to put a human
face on -- Iraqi civilian casualties since even before the murderous and
illegal occupation was launched. Maybe the Times’ willingness to
see and show some of that that Iraqi civilian face is better late than
never.... But there's a curious and revealing problem with the Times'
photo essay....(full article)
Bolivia: A New Weave for ALBA
The decisive numbers
of Evo Morales' election victory in South America's poorest country give
him the legitimacy he needs to redistribute Bolivia's wealth in favor of
the impoverished and excluded majority. But he faces enormous pressure
from foreign corporations and international financial institutions to
continue promoting superficial economic growth for the benefit of a small
elite. Of all the progressive leaders elected in Latin America in recent
years only Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has successfully managed that
challenge, defeating savage resistance from the Venezuelan oligarchy and
their US and European backers. The issues of poverty reduction and natural
resources management dominate regional arguments about political and
economic policy. Local elites parrot corporate propaganda promoting "free
markets" and globalization. "Free markets" mean terms of trade dominated
by powerful foreign corporations and financial institutions to the
detriment of local people. Corporate globalization denies national
governments the least vestige of sovereignty necessary to redistribute
wealth. But Bolivia's election result confirms that a large majority of
people in the region expects widespread benefits from exploitation of
their countries' energy and other resources....(full
article)
There is an Alternative:
Bolivia, Venezuela, The reign of TINA, There Is No Alternative, is beginning to come to an end. In Bolivia, Evo Morales has swept into the presidency after years of popular mobilization; the long-suffering indigenous and poor majority is demanding an alternative economic and social order. In Venezuela, seven years after Hugo Chavez first won power, the Bolivarian Revolution is demonstrating an alternative path, powered by a people awakened to political action and in the process of transforming their society....(full article)
In the recent War on Christmas hullabaloo, the question was asked, “Is there nothing sacred anymore?” My answer: Yes, there is something sacred. Most sacred is our innate curiosity, our ability to reason, and a determination to know truth. Any attempt to hinder human thought processes is great sacrilege. Last century, Lord Raglan, a student of mythology, studied all the myths and legends that influenced Western civilization in his 1936 book entitled The Hero. His basic premise is that the mythical hero’s life is a remnant of ancient ritual drama enacted at the coronation of priest-kings. According to Raglan, rituals involved specific acts performed for magical purposes. Ritual dramas required participants play specific roles. A quasi-boilerplate plot always determined the character’s role. Eventually, myths of priest-kings outlived the ritual and became the many myths and folktales from which we derive many legendary heroes such as Hercules, or Moses, or Robin Hood....(full article)
The New York City transit strike is over and millions of residents and tourists in the five boroughs are relieved that they will no longer have to suffer what the governor and the mayor characterized as an act of blatant lawlessness. Soon the discussion will shift from who was right and wrong to which side lost and won. The great shame is that the debate that should have happened, the debate the people of this nation so desperately need to hear, never occurred. Every major media outlet gave only cursory coverage of the transit workers’ case. They uniformly preferred to give free reign to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki, buying prologue to epilogue their condemnation of the strikers as thuggish, law-breaking, ungrateful laborers turning their backs on the hard-working citizens of New York....(full article)
I am sending this
letter to you in hope of finding a source to hear my concerns. It is
something that has bothered me since the occurrence, and I know it is not
something that should have happened, and I worry for my family's safety as
I step out to speak about this. During my son's deployment to Iraq,
February 2004 - February 2005, I created a small group website on MSN, for
families and friends of our soldiers’ deployed unit. It was a membership
only site, and we were a tight group of mostly "Moms" from all over the
United States just trying to make it through each day. The support and
help we gave one another is a singular experience of grace I will never
forget. During the first few months of our site, the Army decided to call
every single family on the site, informing them that the site was not to
be used by any of the families. The Department of Defense called families
in the middle of the night to notify them to not use the web site. Most of
the families were near tears, thinking they were getting "THE" call
telling them their child or loved one had been killed or injured....(full
letter)
After more than two
fabulous weeks at the box office, Philip Anschutz, the conservative
Christian billionaire whose company co-produced the first major film
adaptation of C.S. Lewis' popular children's book, The Chronicles of
Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is sitting in the
catbird seat. With so many Americans weary of both the long hard slog in
Iraq and President Bush's scandal-plagued administration, some would have
thought that Christian conservative leaders would have turned the premiere
of The Chronicles into another culture war battle. However, with
the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Channel consumed with a phony
battle with those out to "destroy" Christmas, little airtime has been
given over to The Chronicles and its religious and political
implications....(full article)
The WTO Hong Kong Ministerial: Much Ado
About Nothing
We were made to believe that everyone cannot be fooled all the time. Ten years after the World Trade Organization (WTO) came into existence, and looking at the outcome of the sixth Ministerial Conference at Hong Kong, it is time to bury that adage under the heaps of trade drafts. For the sixth time in a row, the trade ministers of the developing world -- representing issue-based coalitions like G-20, G-33 and G-90 -- have been duped to believe that trade is for development. Despite making loud noises, threatening and fuming over the injustice done to the poor and developing countries, the trade ministers of the G-110 countries, comprising the entire developing world, finally bowed before the rich and mighty....(full article)
Five months ago I wrote an article, “Doomsday: the Final Months of the Housing Bubble,” that predicted a dramatic fall in housing prices that would have a catastrophic effect on the American economy. In truth, I’m a lousy forecaster and simply collected the relevant data from a number of sources that convinced me that the end was quickly approaching. Now, it seems that dismal day is upon us and the Grim Reaper has begun churning out the disappointing statistics that we’ve dreaded from the very beginning....(full article)
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $685 million loan for Iraq on December 24. Now the country’s war torn economy will be fully integrated into the global economy -- indefinitely. The reconstruction of Iraq will soon be open to even more industrialized nations and interests. Iraq will not be sovereign or independent in the near future, even if President Bush says so. The country’s financial future will instead be dictated by a new colossal economic occupation, complete with ground forces, tanks, foreign military bases and the like -- all thanks to the United States, Britain and the IMF....(full article)
Aside from the obvious personal challenges arising from the manifestations of my bipolar disorder, it has become quite apparent to me that my spiritual crisis (and subsequent epiphany) was also rooted in the collective cry of a metaphorical flock of thrushes which flew into my subconscious and decimated the hologram of the Simulacrum Republic (click on this link for a "must read" article by Joe Bageant which explains the metaphor of the thrushes and the hologram). As is often the case in the human psyche, my unconscious mind was several steps ahead of my conscious mind as my inner being vigorously rejected the American Nightmare of violence, militarism, instant gratification, over-consumption, bigotry, insularity from other cultures, short-sightedness, xenophobia, hubris, and avarice force fed to us as the highly palatable "American Dream" by our government, text-book manufacturers, corporate-controlled media, Madison Avenue, and corporate America. In short, I take responsibility for my choices and their consequences, but understand that I made them in the context of having a disorder with which I had few tools to cope effectively, and that my self-destructive, irresponsible acts were in part an unconscious rebellion against the perverse psychological and economic oppression of America's corporatocracy. I am not letting myself off the hook for what harm I caused, but I understand my motivations, have made amends, and have forgiven myself....(full article)
Despite all the news accounts and punditry since the New York Times published its Dec. 16 bombshell about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, the media coverage has made virtually no mention of the fact that the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on U.N. diplomats in New York before the invasion of Iraq. That spying had nothing to do with protecting the United States from a terrorist attack. The entire purpose of the NSA surveillance was to help the White House gain leverage, by whatever means possible, for a resolution in the U.N. Security Council to green light an invasion. When that surveillance was exposed nearly three years ago, the mainstream U.S. media winked at Bush’s illegal use of the NSA for his Iraq invasion agenda....(full article)
The
New Testament provides no specific date for the birth of Jesus. If it
occurred as the Gospel of Luke tells us, as shepherds were watching over
their fields by night, it probably wouldn’t have taken place in December.
Too cold. So why do most Christians observe December 25 as Jesus’
birthday? The most plausible answer is that in ancient Rome, as
Christianity was emerging as a new faith, its calendar was influenced by
other up-and-coming belief systems bunched together by adherents of
traditional Roman religion as “mystery religions.”
One of these was the worship
of Mithras, an Indo-Aryan deity (the Mitra of Vedic religion, the Mithra
of the Persian Avesta) associated with the heavens and light. His
cult entered the Roman Empire in the first century BCE and during the
formative decades of the Christian movement was a formidable rival to the
latter, with temples from Syria to Britain. Given his solar associations,
it made sense to believe that he had been born on the darkest day of the
year, the winter solstice. That falls this year on December 21 but the
Romans celebrated the birth feast of Mithras on December 25, ordered to do
so by Emperor Aurelian in 274 CE. Christian texts from 325 note that the
birthday of Jesus had come to be observed on that same day, and the Roman
Catholic Church has in modern times acknowledged that the December 25
Christmas quite likely derived from Mithraic practice.....(full
article)
Desperately Seeking Victory in a War
Already Lost
Where is the victory in Afghanistan? The Taliban have been driven from power and Osama bin Laden and his warriors are in hiding. But Afghanistan remains in turmoil. Has the major US objective been met? The major objective in Afghanistan was to draw Afghanistan into the US orbit for geostrategic military and commercial purposes; among the latter is the laying of pipelines through Afghanistan to the Arabian Gulf. There is no way that under the present circumstances pipelines will be laid down anytime soon. The main objective in Iraq is controlling the abundant oil reserves. This has obviously not been attained. So the US has progressed from Korea Syndrome to Vietnam Syndrome to the current Iraq Syndrome....(full article)
There
was a 14-year time span in my life when I was a fervent bible-believing
preacher. Saying “Merry Christmas” would have been my only greeting
because Christmas was Jesus’ birthday. It never occurred to me to respect
people of other faiths or no faith. . . . Today, I am often asked, “How
did you escape from fundamentalism?” That question really reveals the fear
mentality inherent within fundamentalism that enslaves its adherents. In
retrospect, I do wonder what could be more debilitating than a mindset
that claims to know the absolute truth about things for which there is
virtually no verifiable evidence, no unbiased credible historical
confirmation, and is so contrary to the natural order of everyday life....
Merry Christmas and
a happy new year
David Horowitz frequently, I should say incessantly, corresponds with me. Why, I don’t know. I am quite sure he doesn’t either. But someone on his payroll sends missives out to me regularly, informing me of one or other of Mr. Horowitz’s perennial campaigns against anti-Americans and terrorist sympathizers. This time he seems to be raising money for a website to monitor and attack what he calls “campus radicals.” I offer readers the letter with my annotations, in brackets [], interspersed....(full letter)
On December 16, Congresswoman Maxine Waters and 41 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote President Bush calling for the release of Haitian political prisoner Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste. The nonviolent activist priest, who has been held on trumped-up charges by the current coup regime for five months, is in urgent need of medical care unavailable to Haitian prisoners. Five days later, Jean-Juste's two sisters sent an open letter to Bush and "interim" Haitian Prime Minister of Haiti Gerard Latortue calling for his release on medical grounds. Jean-Juste's sisters wrote, "We believe that as good and righteous Christians during this holiday season you will open your hearts and minds to ask for and demand his release so that he will not die in prison."....(full article)
In Bush's Kafkaesque oil-fuelled fantasy, his dictator's role in the murderous on-going slaughter in Iraq is a god sent mission to "spread peace, freedom and democracy in the world." But his twisted totalitarian tyranny requires unfettered access to oil, and he'll go to ungodly lengths to get it. Bush dictates that his Gestapo-type NSA operatives must have free license to conduct unwarranted eavesdropping and infiltrations into such domestic terrorist organizations as the Raging Grannies, the Catholic Workers Group, Code Pink, the Vegan Community Project, Greenpeace, PETA, readers of The Little Red Book and The Monkeywrench Gang, and myriad other environmental, peace and human rights groups and individual activists. Although John Lewis, an FBI deputy assistant director and top official in charge of domestic terrorism says "the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat is the eco-terrorism, animal-rights movement," apparently all citizen action efforts are now under police-state scrutiny. In a statement before the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2004, Lewis noted the "upswing in violent rhetoric and tactics" among eco-terrorists and said that in recent years the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) "have become the most active criminal extremist elements in the United States."....(full article)
It was a cold and very windy afternoon, exceptional even for December 20th in Central Florida. Three of us arrived at exactly 4 pm, the starting time of our weekly anti war demonstration. Our fourth member, Frances, stayed in her car to "sit this one out." In reality, with her condition, she should have been at home, sipping a nice warm cup of tea and sympathy. Usually, we would have eight or ten stalwarts standing with us by now. I guess the bitter cold (for our Sunshine state) summoned many away this day. I suddenly began to think, to ponder how it might have been that winter day in New York City, almost 70 years ago....(full article)
Why Do We Need Torture? The State does not torture alleged terrorists in order to extract information to avert terrorist attacks. Saddam Hussein did not torture alleged terrorists in order to avert terrorist attacks. (If he could make the barest case for having done so, could we possibly excuse his actions?) The State, under Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Josef Stalin, et al, tortures its victims in order to assert the authority of the State. It is not true that the State wishes to cover-up its activities as Torturer-in-Chief. The State wants its citizens to know how far it is willing to go to assert its authority. It wants its citizens to live in fear and to cower in darkness. It wants a complaisant media and those in the “knowledge professions” -- including artists, academicians and preachers -- to understand how far it will go to suppress dissent about its policies. The State embraces the dictum of Machiavelli -- it is better that the Prince be feared than loved. The State does not oppose terror; it opposes the franchising of terror by any instrumentality other than the State. The State’s use of torture is inextricable from State terrorism -- and it is inevitably directed against its own citizens as much as “aliens”....(full article)
Of course, in that other outstanding example of Christmas spirit Governor George Pataki did come across unions. He essentially engineered a Transit strike in the week before Christmas so that he could come across as a tough guy for the impending Republican presidential primaries. I think it was Pataki I heard on the radio eulogizing the sacrifice of troops fighting for freedom in Iraq, while the Transport Workers, by implication, were backing the insurgents by demanding the same pension rights for new workers as existing staff. I gather that the freedom to strike was not one of the freedoms for which the troops are fighting. Indeed, the International Labor Organization has in the past considered the laws in American states like New York banning strikes by public workers as in violation of the conventions against forced labor....(full article)
The European Union (EU) should be ashamed of itself. It has thrown aside the principals of democracy for partisan politics and hypocrisy. In the run up to the Palestinian parliamentary elections, the EU has addressed Palestinian politics and made threats in the process. On December 19, the EU’s foreign policy chief Javier Solana stated, “All the political parties have the right to be part of the elections, but there is a certain code of conduct that has to be accepted by everybody.” He continued, “It's very difficult that parties who do not condemn violence ... can be partners for the future.” Solana later warned that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) let Hamas run in the parliamentary elections, the EU could cut tens of millions of dollars of funding to the PA. Why should this call be limited to Hamas? It is quite clear that the EU should lambaste the Israeli government’s repeated use of violence against an occupied population. Is the EU planning on slapping sanctions on Israel for its constant aerial assaults on the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Are they going to take severe action against the continued expropriation of Palestinian land and resources? The EU, in its mission to prevent violence and find “partners for the future,” should at least take issue with the policy of extrajudicial assassinations, the bulldozing of homes, the expansion of settlements, and the multitude of restrictions that bring the Palestinian society one step closer to the third intifada....(full article)
Americans, rich or poor, now live in a culture entirely perceived through simulacra-media images and illusions. We live inside a self-referential media hologram of a nation that has not existed for quite some time now, especially in America's heartland. Our national reality is held together by a pale, carbon imprint of the original. The well-off, with their upscale consumer aesthetic, live inside gated Disneyesque communities with gleaming uninhabited front porches representing some bucolic notion of the Great American home and family. The working class, true to its sports culture aesthetic, is a spectator to politics ... politics which are so entirely imagistic as to be holograms of a process, not a process. Social realism is a television commercial for America, a simulacrum republic of eagles, church spires, brave young soldiers and heroic firefighters and “freedom of choice” within the hologram. America's citizens have been reduced to Balkanized consumer units by the corporate state's culture producing machinery....(full article)
Do you really believe your answers
On his November trip to the U.S., Ahmad Chalabi, Iraqi deputy prime minister in the “interim government” arising from the invasion he helped plan, visited Richard Perle in the latter’s suburban Washington home. There the two -- who go way back, friends since 1985 -- were joined by a Syrian gentleman named Farid Ghadry. It was a triumphal homecoming for Washington insider Chalabi, who seemed to have fallen from grace last year when he was accused of passing U.S. secrets to Iran, had his Baghdad office ransacked by U.S. troops, and lost U.S. funding for his Iraqi National Congress. The INC had funneled “intelligence” to the neocon-dominated Bush administration, helping it build the bogus case for war, with stories disseminated through the establishment press to mislead the credulous and frightened American public. His credibility evaporated when U.S. forces found no WMD in Iraq, something he brushed off as easily as Wolfowitz had earlier. “As far as we’re concerned,” Chalabi told the Perle-connected Telegraph in March 2004, “we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important. The Bush administration is looking for a scapegoat. We’re ready to fall on our swords if he wants. The Telegraph reported that Chalabi dismissed accusations that he deliberately misled the administration. We are heroes in error.”....(full article)
Three days before Christmas, the Bush administration launched a new salvo of bright spinning lies about the Iraq war. “In an interview with reporters traveling with him on an Air Force cargo plane to Baghdad,” the Associated Press reported Thursday morning, Donald Rumsfeld “hinted that a preliminary decision had been made to go below the 138,000 baseline” of U.S. troops in Iraq. Throughout 2006, until Election Day in early November, this kind of story will be a frequent media refrain as the Bush regime does whatever it can to prevent a loss of Republican majorities in the House and Senate. By continuing to fortify large military bases in Iraq -- and by continuing to escalate an air war there courtesy of U.S. taxpayers but largely outside the U.S. media frame -- the White House is determined to exploit every weakness and contradiction of antiwar sentiment inside the United States...(full article)
Bigotry and extreme prejudice are repugnant to many, including the victims and those engaged in furthering progressive social values. Various attempts have been made to encompass that reaction in social mores and attitudes. A new approach among certain mental health professionals to get extreme prejudice to be declared a diagnosable mental illness included in the official list of diagnoses superficially bears promise in objectivizing that repugnance. A recent article in the Washington Post, “Psychiatry Ponders Whether Extreme Bias Can Be an Illness,” discusses this attempt to create a new diagnosis for extreme racism and other forms of extreme prejudice. It presents the argument of some that extreme prejudice is so compulsive and damaging to the prejudiced person that it should be viewed as a mental illness deserving its own diagnosis. While radicals and progressives may be tempted to jump on this bandwagon as a weapon in their battle to have racism and prejudice recognized for the personal and social harm they cause, this effort is unjustifiable intellectually and is politically likely to backfire....(full article)
Is anyone really surprised that the USA now openly advocates torture, spying on its own citizens, or equates dissent with aiding and abetting the “brutal killers” as Bush describes them. Ummm, should US homegrown serial killers be designated enemy combatants? Who could argue with a clear conscience that the US didn't have 911 coming. Civilians are innocent, the American fundamentalists say. Oh me, oh my, the victimized USA and so much innocence lost on that day. That sentimental dream went out the window long ago with the Allied bombing of Dresden in WWII and the firebombing and subsequent use of nuclear weapons against Japan. Add Rwanda and Darfur to that and, right at home, add decades of US government's approved racial segregation, plus the US government's response to Katrina and, for that matter, 911. Useless commissions, staged congressional hearings, a senseless sense of congress, a presidential press conference. All by formula, of course. What's the point? Nothing changes. The USA is no victim or innocent bystander in the world's machinations. Each and every US citizen is responsible for the actions of its leaders -- such as they are. If the American people want a militarized state, then so be it. Have some brass and go for it. If they want to torture, then they should have the guts to stick a knife in the throat of a living human being and watch 'em gurgle and die. The NO TORTURE amendment of John McCain is a joke. The US government is a government by and for loopholes. It'll go on as long as the USA exists....(full article)
“It’s just a piece of paper,”
It's clear that Bush violated the law by ordering the National Security Agency to engage in warrantless domestic spying on U.S. citizens. So, once again, I have a question for those who, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, voted for George Bush: NOW do you get it? (full article)
Activists can further expose and draw attention to the Bush administration’s illegal spying by filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and holding a press conference to announce this. This article explains the mechanics of filing a FOIA, on holding press conference and why you should do this....(full article)
A few weeks ago he was just a guy hanging out in the green yard behind my office, wearing jeans and sneakers (as he most always does), drinking chicha and shooting the breeze with friends. My three-year-old daughter Mariana asked him to dance. He laughed and squeezed her cheeks. Then on Sunday, by a whopping and historic margin, Evo Morales was elected President of Bolivia. Morales won with a 52.8% majority, the first modern Bolivian president to ever do so, or even come close. Headline writers in the foreign press have had a field day trying to pin a label on Morales’ surprise victory. The New York Times announced the victory of a “coca farmer”. The Chicago Sun-Times abbreviated Morales as a “leftist”. CNN picked up a campaign rally declaration in which Morales called himself, the US government’s “nightmare”. But what does the election of Morales to the presidency here really mean? (full article)
Every so often a sliver of truth trembles off the lips of one of our elected officials. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when it does occur it needs to be underscored and highlighted. Representative Nancy Pelosi gave the antiwar movement an honest reality check last week when she laid out quite plainly the Democrats' position -- er, non-position -- on the Iraq war. As she told the Washington Post, "There is no one Democratic voice ... and there is no one Democratic position." In other words, the Democrats will not take a stand on the war and they won’t draw up a unified exit strategy anytime soon. And perhaps worst of all, they won’t be making the war a major focal point in the upcoming 2006 congressional elections. They’ll just continue to argue amongst themselves while more civilians and soldiers perish in Iraq....(full article)
According to officials in the nation's regulatory agencies, the main obstacle to proving or disproving a link between the autism epidemic and the mercury-based preservative thimerosal that was contained in childhood vaccines until a few years ago, and is still in flu vaccines, has been the inability to find a large enough group of people who have never been vaccinated to compare with people who have. . . . However, Dan Olmsted, investigative reporter for United Press International, and author of the “Age of Autism” series of reports, appears to have solved this problem when he came up with the idea of checking out the nation's Amish population where parents do not ordinarily vaccinate children....(full article)
More than a dozen
years ago, I joined with Jeff Cohen (founder of the media watch group
FAIR) to establish the
P.U.-litzer Prizes. Ever since then, the annual awards have given
recognition to the stinkiest media performances of the year. It is
regrettable that only a few journalists can win a P.U.-litzer. In 2005, a
large volume of strong competitors made the selection process very
difficult. And now, the fourteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, for the
foulest media performances of 2005....(drum
roll and full article)
High Expectations and Comfortable Prisons
The image to the left shows California Youth Authority students in their classroom. The students are the ones inside the cages, and they are being taught to read. A friend drew my attention to this photo after I shared a story about a similar kind of prison, about kids learning to read in cages, albeit ones where the bars, while not visible, are nonetheless solidly constructed....(full article)
Just when you think it can’t get crazier, it gets crazier. Aaron Nicodemus, a journalist with the southern Massachusetts newspaper The Standard-Times, reports that in October of this year a senior at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth was visited by federal agents and questioned about a book he had ordered through inter-library loan. Apparently U Mass librarians are cooperating with the USA-PATRIOT Act. You know, the one that’s all about Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. The book was for a research paper he was doing for a course on fascism and totalitarianism taught by Professor Robert Pontbriand, a specialist in European intellectual and cultural history. The agents visited the student after he ordered a book that is, they informed him, on a “watch list.”....(full article)
So I caught a few minutes of Fox News a couple of weekends ago and one of their pretty, young, blonde anchors was doing the obligatory “liberals are trying to kill Christmas” stories and this bright, young woman informed her viewers that more than 90% of the country is Christian. Hearing that certainly put the whole debate into its proper perspective. With almost the entire population of our country made up of Christians, it really doesn’t seem fair that a small minority of us secularists are trying to restrict God from our public sphere and government entities. I guess we should all just suck it up and deal. It seems we should be okay with our children being taught intelligent design in school, taking an oath to God as well as our country and embrace the Ten Commandments as the replacement for the Constitution in the dispensing of justice in our courts. Except for the fact that Fox News lies....(full article)
Recent polling on the views of the American people about the ‘Global War on Terror’ continues to suggest increasing ambivalence, confusion and lack of reliable information. And other events over the past few days, topped by the revelation that President George W. Bush ordered secret warrantless wiretaps of phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, are unlikely to reverse this trend....(full article)
Although President George W. Bush is determined to keep and strengthen even the most odious parts of the USA PATRIOT Act and to use extralegal methods to extract information about citizens, he does have a soft spot for one American. The day before the Senate blocked one attempt to extend the PATRIOT Act and the New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency was spying upon Americans, and doing so without obtaining constitutionally-required court warrants, the President declared that Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), former House majority leader, indicted by a Texas grand jury on two felony counts, is innocent. Not “innocent” as in, “all persons are presumed innocent until proven guilty,” but outright “innocent.” Period....(full article)
Even prior to the March 20, 2003 invasion of Iraq, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) was telling us that connecting any other issues, and in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, would “dilute the anti-war message” of stopping the war and ending the Occupation. I witnessed this political position as a former member of Vets for Peace, that also encouraged and urged us to vote for Kerry. On Dec. 12, 2005 Leslie Cagan, speaking for the UFPJ Steering Committee posted to the website that they will “not coordinate work with ANSWER again on a national level.” However when she says that UFPJ wants to send a “focused message” on the Iraq war, she now states that the war is indeed part of empire building and may be related to such issues as the “occupation of Palestinian land, racism, repression and injustice at home.” So now UFPJ embraces the politics that ANSWER had from the very beginning....(full article)
The statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have a penchant for attracting the opprobrium of the western world. On 14 December, Ahmadinejad, whose comments were carried live on Iranian state television’s Arabic-language satellite channel Al-Alam, spoke to thousands of people in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan. Controversially, he declared, “Today, they have created a myth in the name of Holocaust and consider it to be above God, religion and the prophets.” He then asked Europeans, “If you committed this big crime, then why should the oppressed Palestinian nation pay the price?” Ahmadinejad has a proposal though: “If you committed the crime, then give a part of your own land in Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska to them so that the Jews can establish their country.” . . . . In an assault on freedom of speech, the EU leaders warned that Iran might face sanctions because of President Ahmadinejad’s remarks....(full article)
The Facts: Created in 1952, the National Security Agency (NSA) was charged with eavesdropping and surveillance of foreign adversaries. In 1978, confronted with the excesses of the Nixon administration, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, establishing a secret court for legal review and authorization of surveillance on citizens within the United States. The Admission: The president personally authorized by executive order domestic spying by the NSA without a warrant or judicial review. The Claim: All targets were Al Qaeda related. The Crime: Bypassing legal review and, thereby, circumventing congressional mandate. The Excuse: In the wake of 9-11, intelligence agencies cannot be delayed by procedural red tape. We have heard the opening salvos in a scandal that proceeds directly from the Oval Office and every thinking person must ask: Has there ever been a clearer example of executive arrogance, abuse and mendacity? Reminiscent of the Iran-Contra affair, the president has employed the imperial power of the White House to overrule the law of the land....(full article)
Several events that occurred in the final weeks of 2005 represent a microcosm of the hypocrisies evident in the security and economic policies being implemented by the Bush and Uribe administrations. The recent demobilization of the Central Bolivar Bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) shed more light on the Colombian military ’s collusion with the right-wing paramilitary group. Just as disturbing is President Alvaro Uribe's recent acknowledgement that the Colombian military has been implicated in a plot to overthrow the democratically-elected leader of neighboring Venezuela. Meanwhile, the inequities in Washington’s “free trade” policies were again made evident by the realization that the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of indigenous Colombians would not be afforded the same rights as those enjoyed by U.S.-based multinational corporations such as Coca-Cola....(full article)
There are some good reasons why every U.S. citizen should be thinking about reparations. Reparations to be paid to every victim of U.S. foreign and domestic policy would have a dramatic effect on the course of history; but also there are other, often overlooked, advantages that would come from just having a great national debate about reparations. The debate itself would have long lasting rewards. A national conversation about reparations would be the one thing that could awaken and inform the sleeping citizens. This is a nation in which factual information is difficult to come by. School textbooks rarely give an accurate view of history. The combination of a misguided government owned and operated educational system and an incompetent corporate owned mass media has resulted in a misinformed, sleeping populace....(full article)
In many ways a year-end review is artificial. The structures of injustice, oppression and environmental destruction continue to grind people down and seriously threaten all forms of life on this planet, and they will keep doing so next year. Conversely, progressive organizations of varying sizes and effectiveness, including some governments, will continue to resist and build alternatives, continue to strive toward a world in which the words, "peace on earth and good will to men and women," will be not empty and hypocritical words but truly the operating principles of human society. In a number of respects, 2005 has been a better year for us than might have been expected. One year ago many people on the Left were deeply apprehensive, scared of what a second Bush/Cheney term would bring....(full article)
In an ancient rural county in West Virginia on Christmas morning, a bent old man with a face like gentle twisted wildwood will raise the American flag in the frost. Then he will go back indoors, sit down quietly amid the smells of cooking, light his pipe and dream. My Uncle Nelson raises the flag every morning at the secluded nursing home in the hills of Morgan County, West Virginia. If anyone in this world should have that right, it is he. Because Uncle Nelson, whom we called Nels, never left Morgan County in his life. Not even once....(full article)
...Whatever the
case, tens of millions of American fundamentalists, despite their claims
otherwise, read and absorb the all-time best selling Left Behind
book series as prophesy and fact. How could they possibly not after being
conditioned all their lives to accept the End Times as the ultimate
reality? We are talking about a group of Americans 20% of whose children
graduate from high school identifying H2O
as a cable channel. Children who, like their parents and grandparents,
come from that roughly half of all Americans who can approximately read,
but are dysfunctionally literate to the extent they cannot grasp any
textual abstraction or overall thematic content. Most of my family and
their church friends (mainly the women) have read at least some of the
Left Behind series and if pressed they will claim they understand that
it is fiction. But anyone who has heard fundies around the kitchen table
discussing the books knows the claim is pure bullshit. “Well, they do get
an awful lot of stuff exactly right,” they admit. Beyond that, most
fundamentalists delight in seeing their beliefs as “persecuted Christians”
become best sellers “under the guise of fiction,” as the Pentecostal
assistant who used to work with me put it. “They show the triumph of the
righteous over those who persecute us for our faith in God.” Fer cryin'
out loud, Christianity is scarcely a persecuted belief system in this
country, or in need of a guise to protect itself. Year after year some 60%
of Americans surveyed say they believe the Book of Revelations will come
true and about 40% believe it will come true in their lifetimes. This from
the 50% of Americans who, according to statistics, seldom if ever buy a
book....(full article)
Resisting
Capitalist-Imperialist Assimilation
Stewart Steinhauer is a
self-taught stone carver who lives on the Saddle Lake “Indian Reserve”
northeast of Edmonton in central Alberta province. Steinhauer is active in
and inspired by the spiritual ceremonies of his people.... Possessive
individualism has been a bane for most of the Original Peoples of the
continent. Steinhauer notes, “Under capitalism, with its planned scarcity
as a cover for the ‘natural’ and ‘inevitable’ rise of privilege, enshrined
in individualistic liberal philosophy, there can never be enough to
satisfy even one man’s greed.” The following interview is from a recent
e-mail exchange between Steinhauer and Kim Petersen....
Seth Sandronsky talks with DV contributing
writer Lila Rajiva about her must-read new book, mass media corruption,
the problem with the debate on torture, and more.... ** Lila Rajiva will discuss her new book at In Other Words books in Portland, Oregon this afternoon (Sat, 12/17) at 4pm: 3734 SE Hawthorne Blvd. Tel: 503.232.6003. Not to be missed!
Attempting to define what the USDA considers
“organic” is like trying to figure out which lie George W. Bush told last
-- it is a difficult, if not impossible task. Since 2002, the USDA has
changed their definition almost every year. So, today’s products labeled
“organic” by the Agency may not have been labeled the same in 2003. This
sort of wavering has been met with much criticism from many organic food
advocates who believe the USDA should stick to the standards it agreed
upon in 1990. Others, mostly industry suit coats, still believe the USDA’s
labeling is too stringent. And why wouldn’t they? The lesser the
standards, the fatter their bottom-lines. And here is where the lobbying
efforts on the part of the agriculture giants come into play....(full
article)
Bush Fools Americans by Appearing to
Accept McCain’s Ban on Torture
With Washington
politics, things are seldom what they appear to be -- especially when
devious Machiavellians are running the White House. And we often end up
getting a fairy tale version of reality because the USA's
government-corporate-media complex prefers to ignore unpleasant-but-true
stories while it promotes pleasant-but-false stories. For instance, the
mainstream media is burying a major Bushite deception right now, so as to
leave the American people with the rosy-but-false impression that Mr. Bush
has adopted a "new position" concerning torture....
Intelligent-Design Debate Reveals Limits
of Religion and Science Despite the clashes between claims based in faith v. reason, it seems that most people -- on both sides of the debate about religion and science in the United States -- share a belief in a kind of magic. Sadly, this need for magical thinking undermines the ability of religion and science to deal with the complexity of the material world and the mystery of creation. The difference between a belief in magic and an appreciation of mystery has never been clearer than in the debate over “intelligent design” and the alleged challenge it presents to evolutionary biology. In claims that religious people make about a designer, as well as many of the typical refutations of that position, we see our species’ hubris on display....(full article)
George's face was eerily matter-of-fact as he said it. “30,000 Iraqis more or less” have been killed so far in the War on Terror. No remorse or sadness, he seemed wholly unaffected in any way by the enormity of such a loss of life, let alone that he might bear some responsibility for it happening. But it was major news that during his remarks to the World Affairs Conference in Philadelphia, the President had finally put a figure on the number of “enemy” war dead and my local newspaper duly ran the story on Page One. Asked about his linkage of Saddam Hussein to 911, Bush maintained that Saddam had been a threat and that the reports of weapons of mass destruction had been widely believed. He claimed that knowing what he does now, he would make the same decision, that Saddam had been a threat and that we are now safer. The President also talked about the challenges nations face making a transition to what he often terms a “free and democratic” society. One wonders if there were chuckles at his understated, “I think we were welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome.”....(full article)
How will the year 2005 be remembered in the mind of the public? One American view follows. 2005 was a year in which the consequences of the policies and attitudes used to maintain the Anglo-American and "Group of 8" way of life burst into plain view despite the best efforts of governments and major media to shroud the truth. The political lies of the Bush Administration exploded with increasing frequency as the Iraq War and occupation degenerated during the year. The satisfying sense of distance many Europeans felt regarding America's "dirty war" against "terrorists" was uncomfortably shattered with the revelations of European government knowledge of and cooperation with "extraordinary renditions" and the maintenance of secret CIA gulags on the Continent. The falsity of our energy-intensive Western mode of life was dramatically proclaimed by Nature itself with the cracking of polar ice. The vast inadequacies of our national and global social arrangements were pitilessly exposed in just three days, after Nature slapped us with: the Andaman Sea Tsunami of 26 December 2004, the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina on 29 August 2005, and the Kashmir Earthquake of 8 October 2005. The chickens are coming home to roost, and they are infected with Avian Flu. Let us consider the events of twenty-nine separate days to help suggest the overall contours of this year-long segment in the stream of time. Admittedly, this list is arbitrary, and the endpoints of this year "2005" are loosely defined to fall in mid-December....(full article)
It was bizarre at first; even amusing in a hideous little way. When George "Elwood" Bush and Tony "Jake" Blair scrambled up on the international stage shortly after 9-11 and broke into their frenzied Blues Brothers routine, I fully expected the US Congress, the UK Parliament and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic to snort in derision and get up and walk out of the theater. I mean, c'mon....(full article)
I was thirty when I got married. After college, I enjoyed single life for several years. Most of my married friends were always quizzing me about who I was dating, trying to set me up with one of their friends or asking me when I might settle down. I look back now and realize the old “misery loves company” cliché perfectly described their concern. It’s like they were recruiters for a weighty, tedious and sometimes perilous commitment. I’m glad it took me so long to listen. I bring this anecdote up because the United States National Guard has adopted my old married friends’ earnest, but misguided strategy. They recently initiated a test run (in Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, North Dakota and West Virginia) of the Guard Recruiter Assistance Program, which encourages current Guard members to recruit friends, family, co-workers, fellow church members, etc. to sign up for the National Guard. If the test run is successful, the Guard Recruiter Assistance Program will expand nationwide by September 2006. This means the shrinking, shallow pools that our current National Guard taps to fight our fossil fuel crusades and lofty Operation Blah-Blah-Blahs will be re-tapped for future incursions....(full article)
Dear Dr. Dean,
Don’t ask me to explain why I’m still on my
“religion” kick -- three columns in a row, all about “God.” Maybe it’s
the season -- you know, the “holidays.” (Oh, excuse me, I mean Christmas,
of course! And New Year’s. And Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and “shopping,” and
whatever else they might dream up for the solstice in the interest of
making money.) Anyway, I’m still on that kick. Probably I’ve turned to
religion because I can’t stand the thought of reading, never mind writing,
another word about George W. Bush. Not before Lent, anyway. We’ll see what
happens after that. I understand that Bush’s “approval ratings” have
bumped up slightly -- not much, but a little -- since he embarked on his
manly “Strategy for Victory” campaign in Iraq. Don’t worry: They’ll fall
back where they belong when people get their heating bills this
winter....(full article)
Stunning Silence and Belated Apologies Just about three years ago, in March 2003, the United States, a nation which likes to refer to itself as “peace-loving,” “democratic,” “civilized,” and standing for “liberty and justice,” lied to the world and attacked the sovereign nation of Iraq without provocation. We in the West are somewhat accustomed to seeing media reports of “other” countries (for example Iran) where people actually demonstrate in favor of a war, but it certainly came as a surprise to most of us in Europe to see that Americans actually took to the streets in support of a war. Most, of course, came out to protest against the war, but this tiny (and apparently brave) minority nationally was met not only with the oppression of the government (which cordoned the protesters into out of sight, fenced-in areas -- Orwellian “Free speech zones”), but the derision of active, organized counter-protests, which chanted slogans supporting a war of aggression on a nation which never in its history had attacked the U.S. In virtually every news report covering U.S. protests against the war, the presence of pro-war counter protesters is also mentioned....(full article)
Forecasting the results of an Egyptian election is not rocket science. A far more challenging occupation is to determine why Egypt bothers to stage elections in the first place. It should come as no news that the National Democratic Party won three out four seats in the new National Assembly. This “remarkable” result was achieved by stuffing ballots, buying off some voters, intimidating others and arresting hundreds of opposition activists. “Reliable” voters were targeted at jurisdictions with vulnerable NDP candidates. And NDP partisans lived up to their well-deserved reputation for voting early and often. Because the voting registries are rarely updated, it is fair to assume that many of the dead were temporarily resurrected to endorse the ruling party. When that didn’t do the trick, party thugs were dispatched to physically assault and harass independent minded voters. As a last resort, police set up barricades to obstruct opposition loyalists from entering polling stations. When the need arose, they were not averse to using their arsenal of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. A few of the more insistent voters were given a choice between taking a bullet or discarding their ballot. A dozen gave their lives for making the wrong choice. The death toll gave Egypt the dubious distinction of being a more dangerous place to vote than Iraq....(full article)
A perfect storm of opposition to California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is brewing. Take the issue of Iraq. Over 2,200 U.S. soldiers will have died in Iraq by Christmas, and that will figure will surely rise to over 3,000 by the 2006 elections. The Iraqi death toll is already over 100,000 and will continue to rise even faster. Sixty percent of the American people now oppose the occupation and want the troops brought home, a figure that is growing even higher in California. Sen. Feinstein voted to support President Bush’s invasion of Iraq and continues to support the occupation. But that’s not the only important issue where she has more in common with George Bush than with the people of California....(full article)
Bullet enters just above the
Out the back of his head blows the lies
Sometimes you've got to wonder if newspaper managers are deliberately trying to numb readers with Orwellian madness. Look, for example, at the top page of last Tuesday's USA Today, the "national newspaper" that has done so much to blur the line between print journalism and bad television. On the rightmost column of that page you can read about "a first" for the Bush administration. During a recent speech in Philadelphia, the paper reports, Bush acknowledged that a specific and specific number -- "about 30,000" in the president's words -- of Iraqi deaths have resulted from his imperial invasion and occupation (Coren Dorell, "Bush Puts Deaths of Iraqis at 30,000," USA Today, 13 December, 2005). The White House "offered no details," USA Today observed, "about how the 30,000 died, or who killed them."....(full article)
A few days ago, the
Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief said: “Stop throwing the Constitution in my
face. It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!” On 29 January 2003, at the
State of the Union speech, the same Chicken-Hawk-in-Chief addressed the
Congress: “And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan,
we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and
freedom.” [It followed one of the many standing ovations from the
Congress’ members. Good to remember when still so many think the Congress
should impeach the President. My grandma would say: If you want it done
right, you have to do it yourself.] According to “The State of
Iraq: An Update,” an article published by The New York Times:
“A sober reading of the data argues against a rapid withdrawal, which
would concede the fight to the terrorists.” One wonders how many people
must be murdered before (soberly) calling someone terrorist:
30,000? 100,000? 500,000? 1,000,000?
The long-suffering people of
Haiti suffered a catastrophic blow in February, 2004 when U.S. Marines
kidnapped and deposed democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide. The U.S., supported by Canada and France, forced him into exile,
forbade him from even returning to the hemisphere, and reestablished a
despotic interim puppet government backed and enforced by so-called UN
peacekeepers and a brutal Haitian National Police. U.S. officials also
threatened Aristide with a second abduction followed by a trial and
imprisonment in the U.S. (on totally fraudulent charges of looting the
Haitian treasury, money laundering and taking payoffs from drug
traffickers) if he dared act or speak out forcefully against his ousting,
forced exile and the deplorable situation now in Haiti. These charges are
currently included in a baseless lawsuit the so-called Interim Government
of Haiti has filed against President Aristide even as they carry out a
reign of terror against the Haitian people. As they do it, conditions in
the country continue to deteriorate as the occupying forces clamp down on
the people ahead of so-called Presidential and legislative elections in
January. With Haiti an occupied country, the freedom and democracy they
had is now lost along with a decade of impressive social, economic and
political gains they never had before....(full
article)
Prison Meeting with Pere Jean-Juste
(12.13.05) Red and white bougainvillea flowers and guards with jeep-mounted machine guns surround the high walled prison in Port au Prince. The first thing I noticed about Haitian political prisoner Pere Jean-Juste was his neck. It is very swollen on both sides. A pink rosary peeks out from the white bandana around his throat. He admits he is in pain, but shakes off questions about it. Someone from the U.S. embassy suggested the authorities could take him to another place so a doctor can do a biopsy or an operation. He refused for security reasons. "No doctor from this government is going to cut on my neck," he said....(full article)
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