Rev. Wright, the CIA and the AIDS Thing

By William Blum, Counterpunch

"After such knowledge, what forgiveness?" T.S. Eliot

Barack Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on April 28, during which he was asked about his earlier statement that the US government had invented the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, "as a means of genocide against people of color".

Wright did not offer any kind of evidence to support his claim. Even more important, the claim makes little sense. Why would the US government want to wipe out people of color? Undoubtedly, many government officials, past and present, have been racists, but the capitalist system at home and its imperialist brother abroad have no overarching ideological or realpolitik need for such a genocide.

During the seven decades of the Cold War, the American power elite was much more interested in a genocide of "communists", of whatever color, wherever they might be found. Many weapons which might further this purpose were researched, including, apparently, an HIV-like virus. Consider this: On June 9, 1969, Dr. Donald M. MacArthur, Deputy Director, Research and Engineering, Department of Defense, testified before Congress:

Within the next 5 to 10 years, it would probably be possible to make a new infective microorganism which could differ in certain important aspects from any known disease-causing organisms. Most important of these is that it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. [Hearings before the House Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, "Department of Defense Appropriations for 1970."]

Whether the United States actually developed such a microorganism and what it did with it has not been reported. AIDS was first identified by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981. It's certainly possible that the disease arose as a result of Defense Department experiments, and then spread as an unintended consequence.

If you think that our leaders, as wicked as they are, would not stoop to any kind of biological or chemical warfare against people, consider that in 1984 an anti-Castro Cuban exile, on trial in a New York court, testified that in the latter part of 1980 a ship traveled from Florida to Cuba with "a mission to carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war, which later on produced results that were not what we had expected, because we thought that it was going to be used against the Soviet forces, and it was used against our own people, and with that we did not agree." [Testimony of Eduardo Victor Arocena Perez, on trial in Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York, transcript of September 10, 1984, pp. 2187-89.]

It's not clear from the testimony whether the Cuban man thought that the germs would somehow be able to confine their actions to only Russians. This was but one of many instances where the CIA or Defense Department used biological or chemical weapons against Cuba and other countries, including in the United States against Americans, at times with fatal consequences. [See: Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, and Rogue State by William Blum.]

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. and West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political Memoir.

He can be reached at BBlum6@aol.com

Why All of Our Efforts Won't Stop an Attack on Iran

Make sure you get the gist of the 5th paragraph, and be ready for the manifold lies and half-truths parroted by the PR wing of the Pentagon - the defense contractor-owned media.--Pete

By Gary Leupp, Counterpunch

May 9. I read tonight a brief article by Philip Giraldi posted on the American Conservative website: “War with Iran Might Be Closer than You Think.”

“There is considerable speculation,” writes the former CIA officer, “and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods [Revolutionary Guards]-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran.”

Giraldi provides details. He reports that the meeting came as “the direct result” of Hizbollah advances in Lebanon in recent days. (Recall that the U.S. State Department lists the Shiite organization Hizbollah as “terrorist” and as a tool of both Iran and Baathist Syria. In fact it is probably the country’s largest and most popular political party and has built significant ties with some Christian and Sunni groups. Hizbollah’s rapid seizure of the Muslim sections of Beirut, accomplished with little resistance, may have been deliberately provoked by the U.S.-backed quasi-government of Lebanon when the latter shut down the party’s private communications network.)

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to Giraldi, was the only senior official present urging delay. That suggests that the military is not enthusiastic about a widened war in Southwest Asia, but that the other regular members of the NSC (Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley as well as President Bush and Vice President Cheney) are willing to provoke just that.

They will do what they do with the solid backing of Congress, the presidential candidates, and the mainstream press which if history is our guide will for a time shape shockingly malleable public opinion. Yes, I fear that we (most of us) will be fooled again.

The Congress has passed near-unanimous resolutions against Iran, endorsing the administration’s unprecedented designation of a component of a nation’s military as a “terrorist organization.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be on board the program. Recall how after the Democratic victory two years ago she capitulated to AIPAC by stripping from a military spending bill the requirement that Bush seek Congressional approval before attacking Iran. (That was after she’d pointedly declared that Bush-Cheney impeachment hearings were “off the table.” And after Rep. John Conyers, head of the House Judiciary Committee and sometimes maverick, bitterly disappointed those pinning their hopes on him by going along with the Democratic leadership’s line. And after the Democrats had made it clear they weren’t serious about ending the war they’d been elected to end---showing us how very well the democratic system works in this country.)

John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton (all of whom agree that an attack on Iran is “on the table”) will publicly approve. The media will call upon the same “military analysts”/military industry consultants who have been disseminating Pentagon propaganda for pay since 2002 to explain why the attack is justified and necessary. The main talking-point has been decided: “Iran is killing American soldiers in Iraq.” Public opinion polls will show the public divided, but a majority in support of the action because, regardless of their feelings about the war in Iraq, they want to “support our troops” and after all, Iran was asking for it by interfering in Iraq and attacking us.

All the “exposure” that so many journalists and academics have tried to provide for years will have failed to prevent another illegal attack on a sovereign nation based on lies and bound to produce more outrage against the U.S. throughout the world. A cruise missile strike on an alleged training camp site won’t end there. It will be designed to provoke an Iranian response and legitimate further U.S. attacks, not only on Iran but Syria and Lebanon, probably in coordination with Israel. Some in Israel badly want the U.S. to behead all their main enemies in the region before their good friend George Bush leaves the White House. If that means regional chaos---clashes between Iranian and U.S. forces, the fall of the Maliki puppet regime in Baghdad (which actually is friendly with Tehran and says it’s playing a positive role in Iraq), the collapse of Shiite cooperation with the U.S. occupation, Iran-Iraq border clashes, U.S. forays into Iranian territory, the closing of ranks in fractious Iran against the imperialist assault on their country---so be it!

If it means renewed war in Lebanon including Israeli invasion, an Iranian shift from supporting U.S. puppet Karzai to Iran’s longtime enemy the Taliban in Afghanistan, active Syrian support for Sunni forces in Iraq, the disintegration of the fragile Sunni-“Coalition” alliance against al-Qaeda in western Iraq as the region descends into a Shiite-Sunni war---so be it! If it means the use of nuclear weapons against Iran to try to cow its leaders and people into accepting a U.S.-Israeli blueprint for the region---so be it! If it means the unthinkable in the U.S.—a return to the draft---so be it! All of this will at least have prevented the “nuclear holocaust” that the neocons, Cheney and Bush have been insisting the Iranians plan to inflict on the Jewish state unless they are stopped now. (No matter that all the U.S. intelligence agencies in their National Intelligence Estimate on Iran published late last year agreed that Iran does not now have a nuclear weapons program. And no matter that the Ahmadinejad quote about “wiping Israel off the map” has been exposed as a lie by Juan Cole and others.)

If Benjamin Netanyahu is Israeli prime minister at the time of the planned attack on Iran, a time of apocalyptic confusion might be the perfect opportunity to empty the West Bank of its Palestinians. This NSC agreement “in principle” to attack Iran is an agreement to risk all these ramifications, confident that the press and politicians will cooperate.

* * * * *

So often in recent months I’ve started to write a column exposing some recent lie (or at least some report pertaining to Iran or Syria that strikes me as obvious neocon-generated disinformation) only to give up midway through. Not because of writer’s block, fatigue, or even the thought that “Someone else has already written this, or someone like Alex Cockburn or Justin Raimondo or Scott Ritter or Gordon Prather will in the next day or so.” It’s more a matter of despairing at how much exposure can accomplish.

A friend of mine was saying last month, “People are ‘exposured’ out. They’re “Chomskyed” out.” He was speaking about young antiwar activists mainly, but his point was that people who know what’s going on are eager to act on the knowledge. To paraphrase Marx, the point is not to expose the world, or have it further exposed to you, but to change it.

The readership of sites like Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Antiwar.com know the main points. They know that Dick Cheney, the most powerful vice president in history (and the most secrecy-obsessed among powerful figures in U.S. history), has made his office the hub of a cabal of neocons hell-bent of effecting “regime change” throughout Southwest Asia by the end of Bush’s second term. They know that the Office of Special Plans fabricated “intelligence” to terrify the masses and gain support for the invasion of Iraq. They know that U.S. intelligence has actually concluded that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, and that the UN’s IAEA scientists have found no evidence for one. But they also know that Cheney insists that he knows there’s one, just as the neocons such as Norman Podhoretz and Michael Ledeen know there’s one. Just as top Israeli officials know there’s one as they demand U.S. action against Iran. They know there’s a huge anti-Iran propaganda campaign underway very similar to the one that preceded the lie campaign leading up to the Iraq War now in its disastrous sixth year. They know that the U.S. is funding terrorist groups to carry out attacks in Iran. They know that the administration’s allegations about a Syrian nuclear program are highly dubious.

They know that there are conflicts between the traditional intelligence community and the neocons, and that the latter draw upon a coherent (Straussian) philosophy that justifies the “noble lie” in order to induce the foolish masses to support what the “wise”---who must conceal their real objectives---want them to support. They distrust anything the administration says about Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan…

Yes, they’re “Chomskyed out.”


Maybe we need to shift the focus of exposure a bit. From the particular to the general. From nasty individuals to nasty institutions. From the symptoms to the system.

What’s worse? Cheney and his attorney David Addington crafting a document in November 2001, bypassing routine staff review before receiving Bush’s signature, which denied “foreign terrorist” suspects in the U.S. access to any courts and allowing for their indefinite detention? (This was exposed by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker in the Washington Post last summer.) Or the failure of the elected officials in Congress to even start impeachment proceedings against Cheney and Bush?

What’s worse? John Yoo writing up his torture memos in 2002 as a Justice Department employee, as eventually exposed in the mainstream press? Or the decision of the trustees of the University of California, Berkeley to hire him as a law professor in 2003?

What’s worse? Judith Miller’s willingness to funnel disinformation to the American people through her NYT articles before and after the Iraq invasion? Or the Time’s willingness to publish them, and now those of her sometimes co-author Michael Gordon, cheerleading the coming Iran attack?

The Congress, the Justice Department, academia, and the press are all complicit in imperialist war and attacks on the Constitution. Does this mean the system isn’t working, or that it’s working all too well?

Is the system supposed to expose itself, through congressional hearings, investigative reporting, war crimes trials? Or is it, serving the small minority it’s designed to serve, supposed to simply tolerate exposure (in the name of freedom of the press) while saturating citizens with propaganda? (If the exposure ever gets widely enough disseminated, and threatens to undermine its objectives, it can always “kill the messenger”---or at least accuse the writer of undermining national security, abetting terrorism, etc.)

Voting for “antiwar” Democrats two years ago didn’t end the war. Even millions in the streets, peacefully demonstrating as the system encourages, didn’t prevent the assault on Iraq over five years ago. Now there’s no feasible political recourse to stop an attack on Iran. And little time to mobilize mass demonstrations against it. It will come as a thief in the night, presented to the American people as a fait accompli. As the Bush-Cheney cowboys ride off into the sunset, smirkin’ and grinnin’ and slapping each other’s backs, the people will start to pay.

A character in Bertolt Brecht’s The Beggar’s Opera asks what’s worse---robbing a bank, or owning a bank? The system itself, that is to say, is the criminal product of wrongly acquired wealth, much of it obtained through imperialist war. Exposure alone, no matter how voluminous, eloquent and persuasive, will not change it.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

The Self-Righteous Rich

A Counterpunch lens to correct for the insular world view of the corporate-controlled press.--Pete

Rockefeller Family Fables
By Sharon Smith, Counterpunch

On April 30th, reporters flocked to the penthouse suite of a Midtown Manhattan hotel where fifteen representatives of the Rockefeller dynasty were holding court. There, the Rockefellers chastised oil giant Exxon-Mobil for failing to invest in “alternative energy” sources, invoking their own moral authority as Exxon-Mobil’s longest standing shareholders.

Family spokesperson Neva Rockefeller Goodwin sanctimoniously recalled the memory of her great-grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil and originator of the family fortune. “Kerosene was the alternative energy of its day when he realized it could replace whale oil,” she argued. “Part of John D. Rockefeller’s genius was in recognizing early the need and opportunity for a transition to a better, cheaper and cleaner fuel.”

But the indignation of today’s generation of Rockefellers—who inherited their own exorbitant wealth from Standard Oil, Exxon-Mobil’s parent corporation—is aimed more at ensuring the continued financial health of the family’s trust funds than concern for the future of the world’s population. As Peter O'Neill, great-great-grandson of John D. Rockefeller, commented at the press conference, “I have a world of respect for what the company has done well. In fact, if the next 20 years of the energy business were just going to be about oil and gas, we probably wouldn't be here today.”

Nevertheless, the corporate media obediently described the Rockefellers as concerned environmentalists. The New York Times ran the headline, “Can Rockefeller Heirs Turn Exxon Greener?” News outlets quoted freely from the Rockefellers’ press release, which described John D. Rockefeller as “one of the first major philanthropists in the U.S. and the World” and the family’s Rockefeller Foundation’s mission as "promot[ing] the well-being of mankind throughout the world.”

The family fable concocted above warrants a rebuttal. Standard Oil was the world’s first oil monopoly, and Rockefeller’s greed was insatiable. Indeed, the Rockefeller family legacy is deeply entangled with the U.S.’ current reliance on oil—and automobiles. Moreover, the family’s “philanthropic” pursuits include a peculiar preoccupation with lowering the birth rates of the world’s black and brown populations throughout the twentieth century—highlighting the absurdity of their claim to be promoting the well being of humankind. Mainstream journalists could easily uncover these unsavory aspects of the family history but instead report the Rockefellers’ self-sanitized version, with all its glaring omissions.

* * *

Indeed, the family’s selective memory of its patriarch, John D. Rockefeller, as a saintly philanthropist stands in sharp contrast to his role as a nineteenth-century robber baron. “God gave me my money,” he said. “Having been endowed with the gift I possess, I believe it is my duty to make money and still more money and to use the money I make for the good of my fellow man according to the dictates of my conscience.”

Rockefeller’s conscience apparently did not dictate paying his employees more than a starvation wage. His admirers praise him for making gasoline affordable to average Americans, and he did indeed aim to produce large amounts of "cheap and good" gasoline for mass consumption, successfully lowering the price of gas from 58 cents to 8 cents a gallon. But he achieved this goal through ruthless union busting, hiring his own private militias to crush workers who dared to go on strike to demand higher wages.

The private armies of the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Rockefeller was a cutthroat capitalist who built his oil monopoly in the decades after the Civil War using methods more in keeping with the bribery, blackmail and back stabbing of a mafia family than an honest entrepreneur. As he once proclaimed, "I would rather earn 1 percent off a [sic] 100 people's efforts than 100 percent of my own efforts.” This credo made him the richest man in the world.

As he quietly bought up his smaller oil competitors with these methods, Rockefeller entered into secret—and illegal—agreements with railroad magnates that gave discounts as off-the books rebates to his growing oil monopoly, easily driving smaller refiners out of business. By 1879, Standard Oil controlled 90 percent of the oil refining business in the U.S. When the Supreme Court finally forced Rockefeller to formally disband Standard Oil as a monopoly trust in 1911, the damage was done. Indeed, the breakup doubled the value of his stock and gave birth to oil conglomerates Esso and Mobil (now Exxon-Mobil), Arco and Amoco (now BP), Pennzoil (now Shell), Chevron and Conoco. Rockefeller spent his remaining decades playing golf.
* * *

John D. Rockefeller’s descendents have happily carried on in the robber baron’s tradition, alongside a public relations machine that routinely airbrushes the family history. These heirs have never needed to work a day in their lives to afford the best of everything money could buy. The Rockefeller name ensures each generation a ten-figure trust fund and a guaranteed spot at an elite university, enabled by the Rockefeller family’s generous donations. The many chapels, libraries, museums and other buildings bearing the Rockefeller name on private campuses across the U.S. bear testament to the family’s self-serving approach to gift giving. Most recently, David M. Rockefeller, Sr., former chairman, president and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, and former chairman of the board of the Rockefeller Group, donated a record $100 million to Harvard University, citing his fond memories as part of the class of ’36.

By design, the Rockefellers have received no blame for their pivotal role in destroying the vast trolley car system that dominated U.S. cities before the 1940s, thereby increasing city dwellers’ dependency on automobiles and gas-fueled bus lines. Yet the Rockefellers’ Standard Oil of California joined General Motors, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California and Phillips Petroleum to form the National City Lines holding company, which bought out and dismantled more than 100 trolley systems in 45 cities (including New York, Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, Tulsa, Minneapolis and Los Angeles) between 1936 and 1950.

In 1949, these corporate defendants were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize transportation services. Indeed, the corporations behind National City Lines were each fined just $5,000—while each of their directors paid a mere $1 fine—a small price to pay for the windfall in profits they all enjoyed in the decades that followed. Congress offered up tax dollars to build the enormous highway infrastructure that encouraged automobile travel in the 1950s, while federal investment in mass transit and train systems languished. As Noam Chomsky noted, “By the mid-1960s, one out of six business enterprises was directly dependent on the motor vehicle industry.”

* * *

No Rockefeller family history would be complete without highlighting their central role in shaping twentieth century population control policy, aimed explicitly at curbing birth rates among the non-Caucasian poor. Beginning in 1910, Rockefeller money flowed into organizations such as the Race Betterment Foundation and the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Association, which spearheaded the eugenics movement—the “science” of “improving heredity.” These organizations, also funded by the upstanding Carnegie, Harriman and Kellogg families, sponsored academics claiming that those at the top of the social ladder had proven their racial superiority, while those at the bottom were biologically incapable of success. The eugenics movement encouraged the “superior” races to marry each other and have lots of children, while promoting forced sterilization, racial segregation and deportation of immigrants of those deemed “unfit” to reproduce.
The “superior” races so admired by the eugenics movement were “Nordic,” with blond hair and blue eyes, and the movement soon gained an admirer in Adolph Hitler. In 1924’s "Mein Kampf," Hitler noted, "There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States." By the 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation was already providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund eugenics research in Germany; in 1929 alone, $317,000 of Rockefeller money went to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, according to Edwin Black, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. Although the Rockefellers had withdrawn all funding to German research by the onset of the Second World War in 1939, Black argued, “[B]y that time, the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the great institutions they helped found, and the science they helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.”

By the 1930s, the wheels for forced sterilization were also in motion inside the U.S. Laws were enacted in 27 states in 1932, calling for compulsory sterilization of the “feeble-minded, insane, criminal, and physically defective.” In 1939, the Birth Control Federation of America, as historian Dorothy E. Roberts described, “planned a ‘Negro Project’ designed to limit reproduction by blacks ‘who still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear children properly.’” In 1974, an Alabama court found that between 100,000 and 150,000 poor black teenagers had been sterilized in that state alone.

After World War Two, population control agencies set their sights overseas. In the 1960s, the International Planned Parenthood Foundation, heavily funded by the Rockefellers alongside the U.S. government, played a key role in a coercive sterilization programs targeting Third World populations. By 1968, one-third of women of childbearing age in Puerto Rico—still a U.S. colony—had been permanently sterilized, often without their knowledge or consent. Rockefeller-funded programs sterilized 40,000 women in Colombia between 1963 and 1965, according to feminist author Bonnie Mass. These are just two examples among many.

The self-righteous claims of the current generation of Rockefellers must be viewed in this context. They have kept silent since the 1989 Exxon-Valdez Alaskan oil spill, even as Exxon-Mobil has refused to pay court-ordered compensation to the nearly 33,000 Alaskans who won a lawsuit against Exxon in 1994 for the company’s “reckless” behavior. Nor have they uttered a word of protest following news that growing numbers of employed workers across the U.S. are lining up at food pantries due to the skyrocketing price of food and gasoline. As Bill Bolling, founder of the Atlanta Community Food Bank, told CNN, "People are giving up buying groceries so that they can pay rent and put gas in the car."

Today’s Rockefellers praise Exxon-Mobil for its current status as the most profitable corporation in U.S. history, having raked in a record $40.6 billion in profits in 2007. They are merely watching out for their own parasitical futures.

Sharon Smith is the author of Women and Socialism and Subterranean Fire: a History of Working-Class Radicalism in the United States. She can be reached at: sharon@internationalsocialist.org

The Mysterious Stranger

Incredible vision of Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger"! Why Haven't I seen this before?--Pete

Prison Power Play

http://current.com/items/87979641_prison_power_play

I just watched this piece by Laura Ling on Current.com regarding the control of prison populations by organized prison syndicates such as Nuestra Familia and the Aryan Brotherhood. The organization is always along racial lines and transgression by their members is always punishable by physical harm or death. The piece is somewhat short, but captures a general feel for what life must be like for these societal outcasts. I commend Ms. Ling on her courage and hope that she will go on to produce a more in-depth work regarding our overly punitive, incarceration nation and how our American socio/economic macro-structure correlates to prison organization micro-structures as well as how the two intersect.

Here is the video, with more commentary to follow.--Pete

America's Gulag Just Keeps Growing

By Ethan Nadelmann, AlterNet
Posted on April 25, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/83434/

We're No. 1! We're No. 1! The New York Times' Adam Liptak wrote a disturbing front-page story on Wednesday about how the United States dwarfs the rest of the world when it comes to locking up its citizens. The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population, but a quarter of the world's prisoners. There are now 2.3 million people behind bars in the United States. According to the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics' most recent report, the number of people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails jumped by more than 60,000 in the year ending June 30, 2006. That jump represents the largest increase since 2000.

The United States continues to rank first among all nations in both total prison/jail population and per capita incarceration rates. The United States has held first place for decades, followed by China (with more than four times our population) at 1.6 million and Russia at 885,670, according to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London.

America's prison population explosion is fed in good part by the failed drug war policies of the past 30-plus years. Back in 1980, around 50,000 people were incarcerated for drug law violations. The total is now roughly 500,000. And this number does not even include hundreds of thousands of parolees and probationers who are incarcerated for technical violations, such as a drug relapse, nor does it include nondrug offenses committed under the influence of drugs, or to support a drug habit, or crimes of violence committed by drug sellers.

The Liptak piece describes criminologists and legal scholars in other industrialized countries as being mystified and appalled by the number of Americans incarcerated and length of the prison sentences. "The U.S. pursues the war on drugs with an ignorant fanaticism," said Vivian Stern, a research fellow at the Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London. In the past Europeans came to America to study the prison system, but now they look at U.S. policies to see what not to do.

Two powerful forces are at play today. On the one hand, public opinion strongly supports alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent and especially low-level drug law violators -- and state legislatures around the country are beginning to follow suit. The paramount example to date is Prop. 36, the Californian "treatment instead of incarceration" ballot initiative in 2000 that won with 61 percent of the vote notwithstanding the opposition of political and law enforcement officials. On the other hand, the prison-industrial complex has become a powerful force in American society, able to make the most of the political inertia that sustains knee-jerk, lock-'em-up policies. There are some prosecutors quoted in the Times story who try to spin the draconian sentences as the byproduct of democracy: that elected officials are just responding to their constituents' desire to lock up the bad guys and throw away the keys. There's no doubt some truth in this, but far more insidious is how many politicians exploit fears about drugs to make themselves look "tough on crime."

Voters should be outraged that their tax money continues to be wasted on failed drug war policies. It's time for a change.

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars spent and millions of Americans incarcerated, illegal drugs remain cheap, potent and widely available in every community; and the harms associated with them -- addiction, overdose, and the spread of HIV/AIDS and hepatitis -- continue to mount. Meanwhile, the war on drugs has created new problems of its own, including rampant racial disparities in the criminal justice system, broken families, increased poverty, unchecked federal power and eroded civil liberties. Our elected officials need new metrics to determine whether progress is being made.

It's time for a new bottom line for U.S. drug policy -- one that focuses on reducing the cumulative death, disease, crime and suffering associated with both drug misuse and drug prohibition. A good start would be enacting short- and long-term national goals for reducing the problems associated with both drugs and the war on drugs. Such goals should include reducing social problems like drug addiction, overdose deaths, the spread of HIV/AIDS from injection drug use, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and the enormous number of nonviolent offenders behind bars. Federal drug agencies should be judged -- and funded -- according to their ability to meet these goals.

Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/83434/

Democrats Okay Funds for Covert Ops

So much for the anti-war Demos. They have all but admitted that they are "convinced" that nothing will be done until next year. So fucking do something, then!--Pete

Secret Bush "Finding" Widens War On Iran

By ANDREW COCKBURN
http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew05022008.html

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a "taunting" manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was "absolutely furious" with Fallon for defusing the incident.

Fallon has since departed. His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush's favorite general, David Petraeus.

Though Petraeus is not due to take formal command at Centcom until late summer, there are abundant signs that something may happen before then. A Marine amphibious force, originally due to leave San Diego for the Persian Gulf in mid June, has had its sailing date abruptly moved up to May 4. A scheduled meeting in Europe between French diplomats acting as intermediaries for the U.S. and Iranian representatives has been abruptly cancelled in the last two weeks. Petraeus is said to be at work on a master briefing for congress to demonstrate conclusively that the Iranians are the source of our current troubles in Iraq, thanks to their support for the Shia militia currently under attack by U.S. forces in Baghdad.

Interestingly, despite the bellicose complaints, Petraeus has made little effort to seal the Iran-Iraq border, and in any case two thirds of U.S. casualties still come from Sunni insurgents. "The Shia account for less than one third," a recently returned member of the command staff in Baghdad familiar with the relevant intelligence told me, "but if you want a war you have to sell it."

Even without the covert initiatives described above, the huge and growing armada currently on station in the Gulf is an impressive symbol of American power.

Armed Might of US Married By Begging Bowl to Arabs

Sometime in the next two weeks, fleet radar operator may notice a blip on their screens that represents something rather more profound: America's growing financial weakness. The blip will be former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's plane commencing its descent into Abu Dhabi. Rubin's responsibility these days is to help keep Citigroup afloat despite a balance sheet still waterlogged, despite frantic bail out efforts by the Federal Reserve and others, by staggering losses in mortgage bonds. The Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund injected $7.5 billion last November (albeit at a sub-prime interest rate of eleven percent,) but the bank's urgent need for fresh capital persists, and Abu Dhabi is where the money is.

Even if those radar operators pay no attention to Mr. Rubin's flight, and the ironic contrast it illustrates between American military power and financial weakness, others will, and not just in Tehran. There's not much a finding can do about that.

Andrew Cockburn is a regular CounterPunch contributor. He lives in Washington DC. His most recent book is Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy.

Mental Barriers in Palestine

By Mats Svensson, Counterpunch

It is dry, it is hot. Black string bikinis descend the small steps meeting black flapping swimming trunks. They look naked thanks to the black mud. Both bodies entirely black, only the feet remain white. Salt easily penetrates the skin, making it soft and filled with wellbeing.

The water is salty. I protect my eyes, protect myself. I feel that I am constantly protecting myself. Protecting myself from inner conflicts. Protecting myself from myself, from my own anxiety, my prejudices, stories, childhood, education, manipulation, songs, sermons…

I’m filled with strong emotions when I look towards that powerful mountain, the mountain near the Holy City. Protecting myself from what I see, from what I feel, from what I hear.

Eat a salad by the Dead Sea.

I’m near, but far from, the conflict, the war. Carry a barrier, a mental barrier. Over there, there is war; here, there is peace. Peace behind a mud mask.

We float around like corks in this Shangri-la on the shores of the Dead Sea. A sea that is disappearing and which will soon really be a dead sea, a sea without water, only salt.

Take a shower; leave Shangri-la, the string bikinis, the flapping black swimming trunks, all the water pipes, lifeguards and happy children.

Quickly transported from East to West over the mountain. Pass through a checkpoint without stopping (driving a diplomatic car) and within two hours I am sitting on the Mediterranean drinking chilled white wine.

Sitting by the Mediterranean Shangri-la among fortunate children, fortunate couples newly in love, looking out over the sea that slowly goes to sleep.

The sun ebbs to the horizon and the children build sandcastles.

I made a quick trip through Palestinian lands. Two hours from East to West.

I exist in the same way as all Israelis, tourists, and most diplomats. Don’t need to see, hear, taste or feel. Palestine is felt for only a few minutes. No soldier stopped me, no wall, no struggle, no dead, no hospital, no Palestinian families, no discussions, no rifles pointed at me.

Lunch at the Dead Sea, a chilled glass of white wine by the Mediterranean.

In between were Palestinian lands I never saw.

Are they really there? Or have they disappeared like a shadow under an olive tree?

Just something we read about but never have to confront. We read about them in the daily news to understand, to be able to take part in discussions. But I never need to see them, be part of them, or taste them.

Tonight, I’m going through the latest political reports. Reading about Rafah, about the wall, about new settlements, about Jimmy Carter, about the economy, about the killings, about suicide bombers, about the children, about Gaza. I have to read the latest reports. It’s important, important to be able to take part in the discussions, to show that I am aware, that I understand.

To be balanced, I must know.

Mats Svensson, a former Swedish diplomat working on the staff of SIDA, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, is presently following the ongoing occupation of Palestine. He can be reached at isbjorn2001@hotmail.com

Police in America Can Kill Some People With Impunity

By Cynthia McKinney, Counterpunch

"[T]he legislation and histories of the time, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument. . . . [A]ltogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

And with that, the United States Supreme Court ensured that the 20th Century would be defined, as W.E.B. DuBois wrote, by the color line. So, while we might be outraged at the Sean Bell decision itself, it comes directly from the flawed jurisprudence that gave us the Dred Scott Decision in 1857, Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Bakke in 1978, Croson in 1989, Adarand in 1995, Gratz in 2003, and all of the Ward Connerly-inspired attacks on the very same affirmative action hard won by students facing water hoses and dogs; men and women facing jail, lynch mobs, and death.

Interestingly, according to Attorney Roger Wareham of the December 12th Movement's International Secretariat, the criminal justice system in this country "always finds a rationale for letting off cops who kill black and brown people." Indeed, police officers seem to know that they can kill certain people with impunity.

Just in New York City alone, Wareham rattles off the murders that have defined police-"communities of color" relations over two generations:

Clifford Glover, 1972

Louis Baez, 1978 shot (22 times)

Randolph Evans, 1979

Eleanor Bumpers, 1985 (a grandmother)

Amadou Diallo, 1999

Patrick Dorismond, 2003

Sean Bell, 2006

Sadly, New York City isn't the only city, with this plague. In 2001, the Dayton Daily News reported that Cincinnati topped the list of police killings of Blacks, having had 22 people shot, 13 fatally. All black men. Three unarmed. Plus two additional deaths due to police use of chemical irritants.

The 2001 "Cincinnati Intifada" lasted for three nights after a white police officer murdered an unarmed black teenager. Timothy Thomas was the fifteenth black male killed by Cincinnati police over a six-year period. I traveled with Ron Daniels and others to Cincinnati to support the call by black residents, including Reverend Damon Lynch III and 36 other ministers, for a boycott of that city. Still reeling from the effects of the boycott, Cincinnati made headlines again in 2003 when the world watched as one black and five white police officers repeatedly beat Nathaniel Jones with batons and then left him in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, only to be pronounced dead later at the hospital.

The "Benton Harbor, Michigan Intifada of 2003" lasted two nights after the murder of an unarmed black motorcyclist by white police officers. Adding insult to injury, the residents of majority-black Benton Harbor are reeling under an attempted takeover of the last "undeveloped" beachfront property on Lake Michigan. The residents are under attack by the Whirlpool Corporation, that wants to develop "Benton Shores" and move all of the residents completely out of the town. The purported goal of the development is to turn Benton Harbor into one of the "hottest vacation destinations in the country," to include a members-only indoor water park, and a Jack Nicklaus golf course. According to Reverend Edward Pinkney, the valiant leader who is trying to save Benton Harbor for the people, Harbor Shores will result in a complete takeover of Benton Harbor, a city that is 96% Black. Reverend Pinkney has been in jail since December 14, 2007 on trumped- up charges including violation of probation, for writing an article calling the chief judge racist. Mrs. Pinkney called the Office of Michigan Congressman John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee to ask for justice for the residents of Benton Harbor and for her husband. Shockingly, Chairman Conyers refused Mrs. Pinkney's plea to get involved in this heroic struggle of a 96% Black community in his own state. When I visited Benton Harbor, it was clear to me that Reverend Pinkney has the full support of the area's residents, black and white, as they struggle to maintain the character of their community. Reverend Pinkney is recognized by the people as true hero and occupies a jail cell because of it.

Finally, however, someone broke the silence and admitted it. Former Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper wrote in his book, "Breaking Rank," that white police officers are afraid of Black men. He develops this theory in a chapter of the book entitled, "Why White Cops Kill Black Men." Finally: a hint of truth coming from the other side. In a June 16, 2005 interview with the Looking Glass News, Stamper says that he personally believes "that white cops are scared of black men. The bigger or darker the man, the more frightened the white cop. I can't shake that; it's a belief I will take to the grave."

So while the corporate press would have us believe that reporting on what a former Vice Presidential nominee says about a Presidential candidate is a discussion of race, the prospects are that black and brown men and women will continue to be murdered by police officers who, fundamentally, seem scared of black people. That fear apparently extends to the larger community because juries construct ways to let murderous police officers escape just punishment.

Roger Wareham, and the December 12th Movement International Secretariat raise, inside the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, the details of the type of police abuse in which a 92-year old grandmother, Kathryn Johnston, is murdered by police in Atlanta, Georgia and her family still has not seen justice or been made whole. Or where a young black male, also in Atlanta, can be sitting in his mother's car and is murdered because the police presume that the car is stolen.

The December 12th Movement has asked for United Nations Rapporteurs to come to the U.S. on fact-finding missions so that the U.S. can finally be listed as a major human rights abuser and a Rapporteur assigned to this country.

Already, the Special Rapporteur on Racism and Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance is coming to the U.S. from May 18 - June 6 and will be in New York City on May 21st and 22nd. The December 12th Movement is scheduled to have a hearing for him at the Schomberg Center where the issue of police killings will be raised. The Rapporteur is also scheduled to visit DC, Chicago, Omaha, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, and San Juan.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Summary and Arbitrary Executions, Mr. Phillip Alston, is conducting a Mission to the U.S. in June. The Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is also interested in reports of police abuse. If a consistent and systemic pattern of abuse exists (which it clearly does in the United States), the United Nations General Assembly can pass a resolution which helps creates international public opinion and perhaps the political will to stop it.

Certainly, doing the same thing--a cycle of protest without punishment--will net the same results. Something different must be done. That's why I authored legislation to deny federal funds and the use of federal equipment to any law enforcement unit found to have violated the civil rights of the people it is organized to protect and serve. Imagine if we had the laws on the books and the apparatus of enforcement. Imagine if juries wouldn't grant impunity to killer cops.

Some of you have written to me suggesting that we do something different: perhaps a full-scale boycott. Perhaps a full-scale, all-out political response--something many in this generation have never done before.

Bobby Kennedy always said, "Some men dream of things that are and say why. I dream of things that never were and say why not."

It is not impossible for us to have justice. We don't have to lose any more people to police abuse, brutality, or murder. But, in order to change things, we're going to have to do some things we've never done before in order to have some things we've never had before.

Are you willing to entertain that idea? Today? Right now? If we demand more of our elected representatives, I'm convinced we will get it. And it should be clear exactly what is needed if we don't get what we demand.

Cynthia McKinney is seeking the Green Party's nomination for president. She can be reached through her website.

The Wages Of Left Capitulation

By Peter Camejo, Counterpunch

I was stunned to see Medea Benjamin complaining to the Nader/Gonzalez campaign because the campaign had used the word "shameful" in referring to "progressive" Democrats who had supported the pro-war, pro-Patriot Act, anti-labor, and anti-environmental candidate John Kerry in 2004.

I have great personal admiration for Medea Benjamin for many of the stands and actions she has taken through the years. But her capitulation to the Democratic Party has been truly disappointing.
Medea Benjamin eventually joined the "progressive" Democrats and has become an active supporter of the Democratic Party.

Without the Democratic Party's support, Bush's war policies could never have been implemented. The Democrats voted in Congress a resolution that included the phrase, "unequivocal support for George Bush's conduct of the war in Iraq."

They have voted for all the funding requests for the war in Iraq. In 2005 at the State of Union address, the entire Congress, with few if any exceptions, gave George Bush 39 standing ovations in one hour. They rose to their feet and applauded every time Bush used the word Iraq even before he finished his sentence.

Of course this is nothing new for the Democratic Party. This is the Party of human slavery, of the Jim Crow of 5,000 lynchings, of fighting the right of women to vote, and of imprisoning Japanese Americans in camps.

This is the Party that launched a war of mass murder killing two million Vietnamese as the "peace" party in the 1960s. It is the party that has supported the destruction of the trade unions, lowered taxes for the rich -- while raising them for the poor. The Democrats voted 98% in favor of the Patriot Act in the Senate without reading it.

Earlier, 100 percent of Senate Democrats voted to confirm the right-winger Antonin Scalia for the Supreme Court.

In 2004 the Democrats ran John Kerry for President -- the same John Kerry who said he could implement Bush's war policies better than Bush especially in increasing militarization in America and promoting the war in Iraq.

What confuses so many progressively inclined people is they do not really understand that our society is controlled by the corporate power of concentrated money.

The corporations and the super rich -- through their domination of the government, the media, and educational institutions and of course the two parties -- run our society.

The totalitarian rule of money is a self correcting mechanism. It has flexibility which is part of why it is so powerful.

The two-party system allows the appearance of differences and adjustments to public sentiment. It has become the single most successful political form for the rule of a minority over a majority in the history of the world. How this system of control developed, consolidated, and has survived through the years will be studied for years to come.

The front line in this denial of democracy is the Democratic Party because it is the instrument that controls, channels and co-opts the forces that otherwise could challenge the rule of concentrated money.

It is precisely the "differences" between the two major parties that makes the system effective.

And the front line in the battle for the control of money over people are the so-called "progressive" Democrats who talk the talk. They confuse people, prevent free elections, and fight hardest to undermine a Nader/Camejo candidacy or a Nader/Gonzalez candidacy or any other candidacy whose voice for democracy begins to be heard.

They may think they are helping move the country toward a more progressive agenda. But in fact, they are deepening the illusion that answers can be found through the Democratic Party. In turn, this reinforces the two-party domination over the United States, making possible the horrendous policies we have seen over the last eight years.

You -- Medea Benjamin -- are now one of those on the front lines defending the two-party domination, and as a direct result, defending the rule of concentrated money and other illegalities and injustices of our present system.

You can't have it both ways.

In 2004, the Democrats went further than just supporting Bush's policies.

They led a massive campaign to silence the only well known candidacy that opposed Bush's policies. They did this by manipulation.

They sent representatives into the Nader/Camejo campaign to disrupt it, to seek to prevent his supporters from getting Nader/Camejo on the ballot. They actively sought to prevent those who disagreed -- and favored peace, social justice and democracy -- to have a voice.

They harassed people trying to petition for Nader/Camejo. They brought at one time over twenty lawsuits to try to block Nader/Camejo's campaign from state ballots. They spent tens of millions of dollars in their battle against free elections and against voter choice.

Even today they are trying to "fine" Nader/Camejo tens of thousands of dollars for merely seeking ballot access in the State of Pennsylvania.

I personally had to pay them $20,000 not to have a lien put on my home for having been Ralph Nader's Vice Presidential candidate.

The Democrats, especially the people you, Media Benjamin, call "progressives," were the most vicious in their endless diatribes against Nader calling him "crazy," "ego maniacal," "stupid," and "agent of Bush."

Media Benjamin you are now shocked that the Nader/Gonzalez campaign used the term "shameful."

Where was Medea Benjamin during the Democrats hate campaign against democracy in 2004? You were campaigning for a pro-war candidate and supporting the vicious anti-Nader/Camejo campaign.

Medea Benjamin in her effort to support John Kerry helped successfully to manipulate within the Green Party support for David Cobb, the anti-Nader pro-voting Democrat candidate who favored US occupation of Iraq in two public debates with me.

She worked to get the Green Party convention to prevent Nader/Camejo from being endorsed after Nader/Camejo representatives won a number of Green Party primaries and state conventions, including California.

During the 2004 campaign, there was a letter on David Cobb's web site titled "Vote Kerry and Cobb." And it was signed by Medea Benjamin, among others.

If you are going to seek fairness and oppose "trashing," why don't you start with all your friends whose extreme public attacks on Nader/Camejo you never protested?

Why not promote among your Democratic friends the publishing of ads apologizing to Nader and the American people for the twenty-four harassing lawsuits in twelve weeks filed by Republican corporate law firms like Reed Smith and Kirkland & Ellis and abuses they committed in 2004 against the rights of the American people to have free elections and voter choice?

Yes Medea Benjamin you have the right -- like so many before you -- to seek to reform the Democratic Party. The truth is, however, that what you actually achieve is to give cover for this pro-war anti-labor political organization. Millions upon millions have tried to reform the Democratic Party for decades.

The AFL-CIO went in to reform the Democrats with millions upon millions of supporters only to be reduced from 33% of the work force to 12% -- a submissively controlled force ineffective in defending even their own existence -- unable to even get the Democratic Party to repeal the notorious anti-labor Taft Hartley law of 1947.

The generation of progressive "leaders" that capitulate in 2004 will have to be replaced by a new generation that will stand by principles like the early abolitionists of the Liberty Party, the Populists who led the uprising of 1890s, the Debsian socialists and Women's Party activists of the early twentieth century -- and yes like Ralph Nader who refuses to capitulate to a Democratic Party that has and is selling out the American people.

Making personal attacks on Ralph Nader is starting to get a little old. Maybe it's time for your Democratic Party friends to end their political bigotry against Nader/Gonzalez.

Yes we should all work together on issues we agree on. Yes we should try to get people regardless of what party they are registered with to support specific objectives.

That is how the most massive peace demonstrations ever were organized in the 1960s and 1970s or the millions who marched together for immigrant rights just a couple of years ago. Of course none of those actions were ever supported by your Party, the Democrats.

The ranks of the Democratic Party are desperately seeking change.

In time they will see that the Democratic Party cannot be and will not be the agency through which peace, social justice and saving our environment will come. On this issue you and I remain divided. On the debate about this issue Nader and those supporting him have been saints in their language in comparison to your friends in the Democratic Party.

The Nader/Gonzalez campaign has nothing to apologize for. Nader has been one of the most beautiful examples of showing respect for all including those who disagree with him.

It is time for you and your Democratic Party associates to show respect and apologize to Ralph Nader.

Peter Camejo was Ralph Nader's running mate in 2004. He lives in California.

Bush vs. Carter: Let History Judge

By Robert Fantina, Counterpunch

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week admonished former president Jimmy Carter for meeting with representatives of Hamas, the Palestinian organization that currently maintains a strong presence in the Gaza Strip. Regarding advancing the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians, Ms. Rice said: “We had certainly told President Carter that we did not think meeting with Hamas was going to help.” She further stated that “the United States is not going to deal with Hamas.”

The irony of all this is almost more than one can bear. Mr. Rice serves President George Bush, the self-proclaimed ‘war president,’ the man who has started two wars under false pretenses, and now awaits forced retirement in nine months so that his successor can deal with the double quagmires he has created. She is criticizing a man who, in 2002, won the Nobel Peace Prize. One wonders why she feels that Mr. Carter’s meeting with Hamas will not be helpful, but that refusing to talk to a principle player in ongoing tensions will be. Better to invade Afghanistan, whose government was alleged to be harboring Osama bin Laden (unconfirmed), the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2002 attacks on the U.S. (unconfirmed), and then invade Iraq, alleged to be hiding weapons of mass destruction (false), and alleged to have some tie to the September 11 attacks (false). This would be too many ‘allegeds’ for most people, but not for Mr. Bush.

However, in giving this some thought, one cannot be surprised that Ms. Rice sees merit in Mr. Bush’s methods over Mr. Carter’s. It should be noted that Union Oil sought to lay a pipeline through Afghanistan, but the Taliban would not allow it. Union Oil was purchased in 2005 by Chevron, the company on whose public policy board Ms. Rice served. Her contribution was so significant that the company named an oil tanker the Condoleezza Rice (it was later renamed). With the Taliban out of the way, there was no longer any official impediment to the pipeline.

And while the Bush Administration is busy disdaining Mr. Carter’s peaceful overtures, it might as well continue to make menacing sounds about Iran. In March Mr. Bush made the bizarre statement that Iran “declared they want a nuclear weapon to destroy people,” suggesting at the same time that Iran could be involved secretly in a program to develop nuclear weapons.

How Mr. Bush arrived at this conclusion remains a mystery; certainly Iran has never stated it wants to obtain nuclear weapons. Leaders of that nation have consistently stated that its nuclear program is for power plants, not weapons. It is Mr. Bush, of course, who has access to the largest nuclear weapons stockpile on the planet: one can think of few more frightening thoughts.

While Iran more or less minds its own business, perhaps assisting its neighbor Iraq in attempting to repel foreign occupiers, Mr. Bush carries on his wars, bringing untold suffering to millions of people. Yet he can say with a straight face that Iran is “the world’s leading supporter of terrorism.” The man who ordered the bombing of population centers in Iraq; who is commander-in-chief of the military that has cruelly abused prisoners and that terrorizes Iraqi citizens; who denies prisoners in foreign-based, U.S. prisons basic dignity and rights, points his accusing finger at Iran as a terrorist state.

For Mr. Bush & Co., this is business as usual. The bi-partisan Iraq Study Group released its findings in December of 2006. Stating clearly that the president’s Iraq policy “is not working,” and that the situation is “grave and deteriorating,” they also made suggestions for improvement. One of them was to involve both Syria and Iran in negotiations regarding Iraq’s future. Yet Mr. Bush dismissed any such negotiations, stating through Ms. Rice that the ‘compensation’ required by either Syria or Iran might be too high. Notice that there was no thought of checking with those nations to determine if that ‘compensation’ (whatever that refers to) would in fact be too high. Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice made that assumption, so there is no need for any clarification. One could note here Mr. Bush’s total disregard for facts, but one hesitates to point out the obvious.

In further discussing the suggestion, absurd to Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice, of negotiations with Iraq’s nearest neighbors, she said the following: “If they have an interest in a stable Iraq, they will do it anyway,” ‘it’ obviously referring to ignoring the blood-fueled inferno so close to them and allowing the U.S. free reign to continue terrorizing Iraqi citizens.

But one might ask: “Does not the U.S. have an interest in a stable Iraq?” In the war’s sixth year, mightn’t it appear that continued aggression simply isn’t working, and that an increasing death toll of both Iraqi and U.S. citizens is doing nothing to endear the U.S. to the hearts of anyone anywhere in the world? Might it not be reasonable to suggest that wars based on oil lust that decimate the U.S. economy while doing nothing to satisfy that lust require a close, second look? And shouldn’t wars be based on something loftier, perhaps national defense, than oil lust anyway? And if one answers affirmatively to those questions, might there then be some merit in conferring with Syria and Iran to seek a peaceful solution?

But wait! We have looked at facts, asked intelligent questions, logically pieced together a series of actions and arrived at a conclusion in a rational, thoughtful manner. How foolish of us! Let us go back and ask those same questions, but this time with different answers perhaps more typical of Mr. Bush:

Q. Does the U.S. have an interest in a stable Iraq?

A. It doesn’t matter as long as we can get the oil to flow to the U.S.

Q. Doesn’t continued aggression against Iraq damage the U.S.’s international reputation?

A. Who cares?

Q. As the war goes badly for everyone involved, and money needed within the U.S. is spent on the war, shouldn’t a new strategy be explored?

A. We have already initiated a ‘new way forward.’ We did more of the same, only more so.

Q. Is oil lust a valid reason to invade, overthrow and occupy a sovereign nation, and kill its citizens?

A. Yes.

Q. Isn’t it long past time to negotiate with Syria and Iran?

A. Jimmy Carter is no longer president.

So there; the world according to Bush. And if Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has his way, such a philosophy will continue for at least another four years.

Mr. Carter said he tried his best in his meeting with Hamas’s Khaled Mashaal, but to no avail. Perhaps that justifies Ms. Rice’s statement that a meeting with Hamas wouldn’t help. However, by meeting with Mr. Mashaal, Mr. Carter increased his own stature as a man of peace, a man who will make any effort, and go to any length, to try to achieve a peaceful solution to some of the world’s most perplexing problems. Compare that image to the Crawford Cowboy, whose ‘shoot-em-up’ mentality has brought untold suffering to the world. Which image is more favorable? One need not ask Mr. Bush his opinion.

How much more of this mentality the world can tolerate remains to be seen. Should the U.S. voters (or possibly the Supreme Court justices) insist on another four years of it by installing Mr. McCain as president, this mentality will manifest itself in more neglect of the U.S. and widespread international war. With an election already bitterly contested before the key players are even determined, one cannot predict the outcome with any degree of confidence. That in itself is a sad commentary on the state of the U.S. voter.

Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006.

Greenwash Guerrillas Pie Thomas Friedman on Earth Day

It's about time that New York Times columnist, corporate shill, Israeli government booster and greenwasher extraordinaire Thomas Friedman got pied for his "Career Without a Clue". Did my heart proud that our two pie brigadiers were able to give Tommy his just desserts (get it? desserts! Ha!). Yeah, buddy. Just wish their aim had been better.--Pete
If Google censors the video again, go to www.GreenwashGuerrillas.org
Press release follows:

April 28th, 2008
For Immediate Release:
Contact: Colonel Custard (aka the corporate criminal creamer)
Greenwash Guerillas: contact@GreenwashGuerrillas.org
Footage available: www.GreenwashGuerrillas.org

Greenwash Guerrillas Pie Thomas Friedman at Brown University
YouTube Censors Video; Pie Thrower Faces University Disciplinary Procedures

Providence, RI - New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman was pied by the Greenwash Guerillas while giving an Earth Day Lecture at Brown University. The Greenwash Guerillas targeted Thomas Friedman because of his support for U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, neo-liberal economic policies that harm the world’s poor, and especially for promoting bogus solutions to the global climate crisis.

“We sought to expose the hypocrisy of allowing Friedman, who is known for his influential support of U.S. wars for oil in the Middle East, to call himself an environmentalist,” explained Greenwash Guerrilla Margaree Little. “He has blood on his hands that no amount of ‘green’ can wash away.”

Little, a Brown University student identified as one of the pie throwers, faces University disciplinary hearings, potentially including expulsion. Colonel Custard, the second pie thrower, remains at large.

Little and Custard jumped on stage as Friedman began his talk, entitled “Green is the new Red, White & Blue.” The talk focused on how green technology and corporate environmentalism can restore the United States to its “natural place in the global order.”

They tossed two green-colored cream pies at Friedman and dashed off as leaflets denouncing Friedman were thrown to the crowd. According to the pamphlets, “On behalf of the earth and all true environmentalists - we, the Greenwash Guerillas, declare Thomas Friedman’s ‘Green’ as fake . . . as the cool-whip covering his face.”

The Greenwash Guerillas object to Friedman’s support for nuclear power, coal power, industrial biofuels, and carbon trading markets. “These false solutions are smokescreens, intended to generate massive corporate profits while creating global humanitarian and environmental disasters,” said Colonel Custard.

Video of the pie throwing incident was posted on YouTube, and received close to 70,000 views in 36 hours, making it one of the most popular videos on the site. Without notice, YouTube abruptly censored the video, removing it from the website. Hundreds of news outlets, blogs, and websites had linked to the video. The Greenwash Guerillas have reposted the clip at: www.GreenwashGuerrillas.org

“Given the many other pieings on YouTube(1), the removal of the video can only be understood as an act of political censorship,” said Little. “It’s a sad commentary on how free we are to speak when confronting power.”

“The Greenwash Guerillas chose the harmless and humorous tactic of pie-throwing because our goal was to take this perpetual charlatan off his new green pedestal,” said Colonel Custard. “Friedman’s support for coal and nuclear power is as misguided as his counsel on Iraq.”

This is the second time Friedman has been hit by a pie. In October 2002, he received a banana pie to his face while promoting his writings on free-market globalization in Boston.

Did the Supreme Court Just Elect John McCain?

By BOB FITRAKIS and HARVEY WASSERMAN
http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman04302008.html

The US Supreme Court has just dealt a serious blow to voters' rights that could help put John McCain in the White House by eliminating tens of thousands of voters who generally vote Democratic.

By 6-3 the Court has upheld an Indiana law that requires citizens to present a photo identification card in order to vote. Florida, Michigan, Louisiana, Georgia, Hawaii and South Dakota have similar laws. Though it's unlikely, as many as two dozen other states could add them by election day. Other states, like Ohio, have less stringent ID requirements than Indiana's, but still have certain restrictions that are strongly opposed by voter rights advocates.

The decision turns back two centuries of jurisprudence that has accepted a registered voter's signature as sufficient identification for casting a ballot. By matching that signature against one given at registration, and with harsh penalties for ballot stuffing, the Justices confirmed in their lead opinion that there is "no evidence" for the kind of widespread voter fraud Republican partisans have used to justify the demand for photo ID.

Voting rights activists have long argued that since photo ID can cost money, or may demand expensive trips to government agencies, the requirement constitutes a "poll tax." Taxes on the right to vote were used for a century to prevent blacks and others from voting in the south and elsewhere. They were specifically banned by the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1964.

But the Court's lead opinion, written by Justice Stevens, normally a liberal, said that though rare, the "risk of voter fraud" was nonetheless "real" and that there was "no question about the legitimacy or importance of the state's interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters." The burden of obtaining a voter ID, said the court, was not so difficult as to be deemed unconstitutional. Ohio election protection attorney Cliff Arnebeck believes Stevens joined the decision to divide the Court's conservative majority, and to leave the door open for further litigation.

But there is no indication the corporate media or Democratic Party will be pursuing significant action on this issue any time soon. Though the Kerry Campaign solicited millions of dollars to "protect the vote" in 2004, it has not supported independent research into that election's irregularities. In the King-Lincoln Civil Rights lawsuit, in which we are attorney and plaintiff, 56 of Ohio's 88 counties destroyed ballot materials, in direct violation of federal law. There has been no official legal follow-up on this case, no major media investigation, and no support from the Democratic Party either to investigate what happened in Ohio 2004, or to make sure it doesn't happen again in 2008. The issue has yet to be seriously raised by the major Democratic candidates despite the fact that it could render their campaigns moot.

This latest Supreme Court decision is yet another blow to voting rights advocates -- and probably to the Democratic nominees for President and other offices. It will clearly make it far more difficult for poor, minority, elderly and young citizens to vote. Tens of thousands of normally Democratic voters in key states -- especially Florida, Michigan, Georgia and Louisiana---will simply be prevented from getting a ballot.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law in its "Friend of the Court" brief noted that between 10 per cent and 13 per cent of eligible voters lack the identification now required in Indiana. People without an official photo ID tend to be disproportionately minorities and poor, ushering a new Jim Crow era based on race and class apartheid. One Indiana study, according to Inter Press Service reporter Jim Lobe, found that 13.3 per cent of registered Indiana voters lacked the now-required ID, but the numbers were significantly higher for black voters at 18 per cent and young voters age 18-34 at more than 20 per cent.

Kathryn Kolbert, President of People for the American Way, put the number at "millions of eligible voters who don't have the ID these laws require."

Photo ID has long been a lynchpin of a concerted GOP strategy to eliminate Democratic voters. In the wake of the theft of the 2004 election in Ohio, Republican activists produced heavily publicized allegations of massive voter fraud, virtually all of which proved to be false.

Nonetheless, the drumbeat for restrictive ID requirements has been steadily rising from GOP strongholds. Other such laws are now virtually certain to follow in states with Republican-controlled legislatures, though it's unclear how many more can be put into law by November.

Nor has the GOP let up in its other campaigns to restrict access to the polls. Extremely harsh limitations on voter registration campaigns in Florida have severely restricted attempts by the League of Women Voters and others to sign up new voters. GOP election officials also have made it clear they will severely restrict the franchise of those who have minor irregularities in the registration forms, such as an errant middle initial or changed address.

It is also unclear how many electronic voting machines will still be in place, come November. Despite a wide range of high-level studies showing them easily hackable, the elimination of touch screen voting machines has proceeded at a glacial pace. No significant federal legislation has been passed to eliminate electronic voting machines or even to make them more secure. With a few exceptions, most notably Florida, progress at the state level has been minimal.

Thus the GOP hope that millions of Americans will be voting on hackable computers this November, and that millions more may be eliminated from the rolls altogether, seems very close to fruition. Whether this will swing the election to John McCain remains to be seen. But this Supreme Court decision allowing the demand for photo ID makes it much more likely.

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of How the GOP stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008 (www.freepress.org) and, with Steve Rosenfeld, of What Happened in Ohio? (the New Press). Bob is publisher of www.freepress.org, where Harvey is senior editor.

McCain Gets 80% Discount; Free Inmate Labor for Fundraiser

By Kathy, Pam's House Blend
Posted on April 26, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/83612/

(Oh my, free inmate labor! They really know how to show hospitality down there, Kathy. - promoted by pam)

Homewood AL Mayor Barry McCulley (R-obviously) has stepped in it with this one. He's supposed to bring requests for discounts to the City Council, but for some reason he decided to rent the McCain people a room at Rosewood Hall for $250, substantially less than the going rate of $1,200 for a weeknight event. He also provided free inmate labor to set up the tables and chairs, waiving the usual $100 set-up fee.

Homewood Mayor Barry McCulley said the rental rate was discounted because the event was on Monday, a slow day for business. City Council members say they always vote on such discounts but didn't get a say in this deal. They're upset, as are local Democrats.

"I think it's outrageous," said Robert Yarbrough, chairman of the Jefferson County Democratic Party and a Homewood resident.

"I was charged full book rate. I was never offered any free inmate services to set up for my event. Mayor McCulley owes an apology to every citizen in Homewood as to why he arbitrarily changed the fee for this out-of-state senator from Arizona."

Yarbrough rented the entire hall, three rooms, on Thursday nights in September 2006 and September 2007 for the Democratic Blue Dot Ball fundraiser. The weekday fee is $1,700 for all three rooms, according to the official rates. Yarbrough said the Democrats paid more than $2,500 for all charges each year.

McCulley claims Council President Ginger Busby agreed to the discount, but she says different.

"The mayor asked me if the hall could be free for the McCain event, and I said absolutely not," Busby said. "He then asked if it was appropriate to charge a lesser fee for Mondays. I said as long as it didn't cost the city money, it could be considered."

That's right. The Mayor had no problem charging one of his own tax-paying citizens full freight, but he wanted to give away the store for John McCain. Does anyone else think party affiliation might have played a tiny part in his decision?

City Council member David Hooks is also concerned about the legal ramifications of the city making what amounts to an in-kind donation to a political campaign. Perhaps the Mayor just assumed that every taxpayer in Homewood is a McCain supporter. Robbie Yarbrough won't be the only person telling him he's wrong.

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