Ed Harriman follows the auditors into Iraq
On 12 April 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN’s Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people. The CPA didn’t properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA’s inspector general, ‘there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash.’ Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
The ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq is the largest American-led occupation programme since the Marshall Plan. But there is a difference: the US government funded the Marshall Plan whereas Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer have made sure that the reconstruction of Iraq is paid for by the ‘liberated’ country, by the Iraqis themselves. There was $6 billion left over from the UN Oil for Food Programme, as well as sequestered and frozen assets, and revenue from resumed oil exports (at least $10 billion in the year following the invasion). Under Security Council Resolution 1483, passed on 22 May 2003, all of these funds were transferred into a new account held at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, called the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), so that they might be spent by the CPA ‘in a transparent manner . . . for the benefit of the Iraqi people’. Congress, it’s true, voted to spend $18.4 billion of US taxpayers’ money on the redevelopment of Iraq. But by 28 June last year, when Bremer left Baghdad two days early to avoid possible attack on the way to the airport, his CPA had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money, compared to $300 million of US funds.
The ‘financial irregularities’ described in audit reports carried out by agencies of the American government and auditors working for the international community collectively give a detailed insight into the mentality of the American occupation authorities and the way they operated, handing out truckloads of dollars for which neither they nor the recipients felt any need to be accountable. The auditors have so far referred more than a hundred contracts, involving billions of dollars paid to American personnel and corporations, for investigation and possible criminal prosecution. They have also discovered that $8.8 billion that passed through the new Iraqi government ministries in Baghdad while Bremer was in charge is unaccounted for, with little prospect of finding out where it went. A further $3.4 billion earmarked by Congress for Iraqi development has since been siphoned off to finance ‘security’.
That audit reports were commissioned at all owes a lot to Henry Waxman, a Democrat and ranking minority member of the House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Waxman voted in favour of the invasion of Iraq. But since the war he’s been demanding that the Bush administration account for its cost. Within six months of the invasion, Waxman’s committee had evidence that the Texas-based Halliburton corporation was being grossly overpaid by the American occupation authorities for the petrol it was importing into Iraq from Kuwait, at a profit of more than $150 million. Waxman and his assistants found that Halliburton was charging $2.64 a gallon for petrol for Iraqi civilians, while American forces were importing the same fuel for $1.57 a gallon.
Halliburton’s chairman, David Lesar, who took over from Dick Cheney in July 2000, robustly defended his firm. But Waxman raised another question: if Halliburton was being allowed to rip off the Iraqi people, was the Bush administration allowing it to milk the US government as well? Waxman’s committee instructed Congress’s General Accountability Office to look into Halliburton’s biggest contract in Iraq: providing virtually all back-up facilities – from meals to laundry soap – to American forces. LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Programme) contracts like this one are a product of the new ‘slimmed down’ American military, the quartermaster’s equivalent of Rumsfeld’s ‘invasion lite’. Rather than have uniformed troops peel potatoes and scrub floors, base support services have been privatised and contracted out so that, the idea goes, soldiers can get on with the fighting. The contracts are paid on a cost-plus basis, which allows the contractor to charge for what it has spent, then add on a profit. LOGCAP contracts have not been put out to tender, but rather awarded to a few US firms, the largest being Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root. Article...
Monday, July 11, 2005
Quote of the Day
"Today, however, it seems as though our government and the military have slipped into Joseph Conrad's ‘Heart of Darkness.' The widespread reports of torture and ill-treatment -- frequently based on military and government documents -- defy the claim that this abusive behavior is limited to a few noncommissioned officers at Abu Ghraib or isolated incidents at Guantanamo Bay. When it comes to torture, the military's traditional leadership and discipline have been severely compromised up and down the chain of command. Why? I fear it is because the military has bowed to errant civilian leadership."
~~Burton J. Lee III, Presidential physician to G.H.W. Bush, former Army Medical Corps
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Saudis Say They Won't Be Able To Meet Oil Demand
FINANCIAL TIMES - Private warnings point to a worsening long-term outlook, with Saudi officials saying that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will be unable to meet projected western demand in 10 to 15 years.
At today's prices, the world will need the cartel to boost its production from 30m to 50m barrels a day to 50m by 2020 to meet rapidly rising demand, according to the International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog for consuming countries. But senior Saudi energy officials have privately warned US and European counterparts that OPEC would have an "extremely difficult time" meeting that demand. Saudi Arabia calculates there is a 4.5m b/d gap between what the world needs and what the kingdom can provide.
At today's prices, the world will need the cartel to boost its production from 30m to 50m barrels a day to 50m by 2020 to meet rapidly rising demand, according to the International Energy Agency, the energy watchdog for consuming countries. But senior Saudi energy officials have privately warned US and European counterparts that OPEC would have an "extremely difficult time" meeting that demand. Saudi Arabia calculates there is a 4.5m b/d gap between what the world needs and what the kingdom can provide.
THE WAR WE CAN'T WIN
[The following was written shortly after September 11]
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2001 - The media and politicians call what happened terrorism. This is a propagandistic rather than a descriptive term and replaces the more useful traditional phrases, guerilla action or guerilla warfare. The former places a mythical shroud around the event while the latter depicts its true nature. Guerillas do not play by the rules of state organization or military tactics. This does not make them cowardly, as some have suggested, but can make them fiendishly clever. The essence of guerilla warfare is to attack at times and places unsuspected and return to places unknown. You can not invade the land of guerillas, you can not bomb them out of existence, you can not overwhelm them with your technological wonders.
This was a lesson we were supposed to have learned in Vietnam but appear to have forgotten. The journalist Bernard Fall early noted that the French, after Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave Southeast Asia. America, with its vast military, financial, and technological resources, was able to stay because it had the capacity to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Our war against "terrorism" has been in many ways a domestic version of our Vietnam strategy. We keep making the same mistakes over and over because, until now, we could afford to. One of these has been to define the problem by its manifestations rather than its causes. This turns a resolvable political problem into a irresolvable technical problem, because while, for example, there are clearly solutions to the Middle East crisis, there are no other solutions to the guerilla violence that grows from the failure to end it.
In other words, if you define the problem as "a struggle against terrorism" you have already admitted defeat because the guerilla will always have the upper hand against a centralized, technology-dependent society such as ours.
There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the complaints of the most rational. As we have demonstrated in the Middle East, one need not even reach a final solution as long as incremental progress is being made. But once that ceases, as has happened, the case for freelance violence is quickly strengthened and people simply forget that peace is possible.
In the present instance, we may have met our own Dien Bien Phu in our long, senseless, and self-defeating effort to subdue and control those of the Muslim states. The answer - humiliating as it may seem over the short run but courageous as it really would be - is not to commence yet another war of empire against the Muslim world, but to end the one we have conducted for far too long.
This is what France did. By 1961, with Kennedy contemplating involvement in Vietnam, General de Gaulle strongly urged him not to get involved in that "rotten country." Said de Gaulle, "I predict to you, that you will, step by step, be sucked into a bottomless military and political quagmire." The French had lost 55,000 troops there, almost as many as the Americans would.
This was not the advice of a pacifist or a warrior gone soft, but of a hard-nosed general who understood the importance of reality in military and political strategy. A few years earlier he had become prime minister and begun not only France's extrication from but from its other colonies. In 1958 he had proposed the "peace of the brave" but within one year was supporting full Algerian self-determination. He held to this position despite an attempted coup by members of the Foreign Legion and a secret army organization determined to keep Algeria French.
Among those supporting the liberation of Algeria was the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. As Danielle Costa has written, he "argued that the violence in Algeria was the French people's collective responsibility. He felt that the initial and fundamental violence in the Algerian situation was colonialism itself. He argued that the colonial system was based on violence - first conquest, then different forms of exploitation and oppression, and then pacification. By its own violence, colonialism had taught the natives to understand only violence. By colonialism's intransigence, it forced the native to resort to violence."
We have built our own colonialism using corporations rather than cavalry and with foreign trade rather than with the Foreign Legion. But the effects have been much the same.
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 2001 - The media and politicians call what happened terrorism. This is a propagandistic rather than a descriptive term and replaces the more useful traditional phrases, guerilla action or guerilla warfare. The former places a mythical shroud around the event while the latter depicts its true nature. Guerillas do not play by the rules of state organization or military tactics. This does not make them cowardly, as some have suggested, but can make them fiendishly clever. The essence of guerilla warfare is to attack at times and places unsuspected and return to places unknown. You can not invade the land of guerillas, you can not bomb them out of existence, you can not overwhelm them with your technological wonders.
This was a lesson we were supposed to have learned in Vietnam but appear to have forgotten. The journalist Bernard Fall early noted that the French, after Dien Bien Phu, had no choice but to leave Southeast Asia. America, with its vast military, financial, and technological resources, was able to stay because it had the capacity to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Our war against "terrorism" has been in many ways a domestic version of our Vietnam strategy. We keep making the same mistakes over and over because, until now, we could afford to. One of these has been to define the problem by its manifestations rather than its causes. This turns a resolvable political problem into a irresolvable technical problem, because while, for example, there are clearly solutions to the Middle East crisis, there are no other solutions to the guerilla violence that grows from the failure to end it.
In other words, if you define the problem as "a struggle against terrorism" you have already admitted defeat because the guerilla will always have the upper hand against a centralized, technology-dependent society such as ours.
There is one way to deal with guerilla warfare and that is to resolve the problems that allow it to thrive. The trick is to undermine the violence of the most bitter by dealing honestly with the complaints of the most rational. As we have demonstrated in the Middle East, one need not even reach a final solution as long as incremental progress is being made. But once that ceases, as has happened, the case for freelance violence is quickly strengthened and people simply forget that peace is possible.
In the present instance, we may have met our own Dien Bien Phu in our long, senseless, and self-defeating effort to subdue and control those of the Muslim states. The answer - humiliating as it may seem over the short run but courageous as it really would be - is not to commence yet another war of empire against the Muslim world, but to end the one we have conducted for far too long.
This is what France did. By 1961, with Kennedy contemplating involvement in Vietnam, General de Gaulle strongly urged him not to get involved in that "rotten country." Said de Gaulle, "I predict to you, that you will, step by step, be sucked into a bottomless military and political quagmire." The French had lost 55,000 troops there, almost as many as the Americans would.
This was not the advice of a pacifist or a warrior gone soft, but of a hard-nosed general who understood the importance of reality in military and political strategy. A few years earlier he had become prime minister and begun not only France's extrication from but from its other colonies. In 1958 he had proposed the "peace of the brave" but within one year was supporting full Algerian self-determination. He held to this position despite an attempted coup by members of the Foreign Legion and a secret army organization determined to keep Algeria French.
Among those supporting the liberation of Algeria was the existentialist Jean Paul Sartre. As Danielle Costa has written, he "argued that the violence in Algeria was the French people's collective responsibility. He felt that the initial and fundamental violence in the Algerian situation was colonialism itself. He argued that the colonial system was based on violence - first conquest, then different forms of exploitation and oppression, and then pacification. By its own violence, colonialism had taught the natives to understand only violence. By colonialism's intransigence, it forced the native to resort to violence."
We have built our own colonialism using corporations rather than cavalry and with foreign trade rather than with the Foreign Legion. But the effects have been much the same.
Quotes of the Day
"Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war. We’re not going to win the war on terrorism. And it does whip up fear.
Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies.
Acts of parliament have closed a few."
~~William Odom, retired US Army general, November 2002
"Corpses in wartime often deliver messages. The death squads in El Salvador dumped three bodies in the parking lot of the Camino Real Hotel in San Salvador, where the journalists were based, early one morning. Death threats against us were stuffed in the mouths of the bodies."
"And, on a larger scale, Washington uses murder and corpses to transmit its wrath. We delivered such incendiary messages in Vietnam, Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden has learned to speak the language of modern industrial warfare."
~~Chris Hedges, former war correspondent and author of "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning"
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Family Medical Leave Act Under Attack
by Kari Lydersen
Jul 8 - Despite protests from labor and women's organizations, the Bush administration is considering changes to the federal law that guarantees unpaid time off for employees attending to personal and family medical problems.
Under pressure from business groups critical of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the US Department of Labor may soon impose restrictions on workers seeking time off under the hard-fought 1993 law. Currently, for employees of companies with at least 50 employees, the FMLA grants up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for health and personal reasons, including birth or adoption, death or illness of family members, sickness or treatment for chronic health problems.
Among other things, the law means not as many employees need to choose between their job and taking care of or starting a family. "It was a ten-year fight to pass it," said Taylor Hatcher, an analyst with the National Partnership for Women. "It's really important to us."
The law currently protects about 40 percent of the private sector workforce, according to Hatcher, though advocates have long been pressing to expand its coverage.
Lower-income workers who are less likely to have access to paid sick days, maternity leave and other benefits through their company's policies especially value the law. "It's an incredibly popular statute," AFL-CIO legislative representative Kelly Ross told The NewStandard. "Everyone should be entitled to this leave. The ability to deal with a crisis in your life without getting fired is pretty important to people, and it's a matter of basic decency."
About 50 million workers have taken advantage of the act since its inception, according to a working group including the National Partnership for Women, who used 2000 Department of Labor data to extrapolate the rate of use.
Manufacturing and business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers claim that employees abuse the law by invoking it whenever they are late to work or want to skip out early. A recent study by the pro-business Employment Policy Foundation said the productivity lost to FMLA leave cost employers $4.8 billion in potential profit during 2004.
Over the past few years, members of Congress have unsuccessfully brought legislation restricting the FMLA. Advocates say the legislation failed to pass since the act is so popular with voters and labor and women's groups nationwide.
Today, the changes are likely to be made by the Labor Department through bureaucratic rule changes to the FMLA statute instead.
Although there are no concrete proposals on the table, three major areas have been discussed during June Senate hearings and meetings between Department of Labor officials and business groups.
One possible change would limit the amount of "intermittent" leave that can be taken in small blocks. Discussed alterations would mandate leave must be taken in blocks of at least four hours. Currently, someone could take an hour of leave for weekly physical therapy appointments, or even half an hour to deal with a child's illness or to recover from a migraine.
Another change would modify the definition of a "serious illness" and require more proof of health conditions justifying leave or ongoing treatment.
A third change would require employees to provide their bosses more notice before taking leave. Currently, employees are supposed to give 30 days notice for foreseeable conditions and reasonable notice for emergencies. In an emergency, employees do not need to appeal for FMLA leave until they return from an absence.
The Employment Policy Foundation report said that not giving timely notice was one of the most harmful ways workers use the FMLA. The report, "The Cost and Characteristics of Family and Medical Leave," found that in over 30 percent of cases, employees notified employers after the leave had already started and only 35 percent gave more than a week's notice.
The report also said employers are hit with costs for replacement labor and continuing health insurance payments for employees during unpaid leave. And it claimed employers have observed morale problems among other employees who see coworkers abusing the FMLA.
Proponents of keeping the FMLA as it stands argue that abuses of the Act's provision are localized problems that should be dealt with in individual workplaces, not grounds for changing the FMLA. The Institute for Women's Policy Research released a paper rebutting the Employment Policy Foundation's work, noting that the survey represented only 110 employers not selected at random, employing less than half a percent of all US workers. They note that employers with complaints were probably more likely to answer the survey, leading to an over-estimation of the difficulties caused by the FMLA.
In fact, a study by the Department of Labor in 2000 found that, "for most employers, the Act had no noticeable effect on their overall productivity, profitability or growth."
It said that for "more than 80 percent of covered employers, the act had a positive effect, or no noticeable effect, on business productivity, profitability and growth. Two-thirds of covered employers reported that, overall, complying with the Act was very or somewhat easy."
Meanwhile, workers and women's rights groups want to not only maintain the FMLA as it currently exists, but to broaden its protections and guarantee paid family leave at the federal level. They note that the United States is the only industrialized country without national paid maternity leave. A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that mothers make significantly higher wages later in their careers if they have access to paid maternity leave.
"If women have paid leave they are much more likely to go back to their jobs, and much less likely to quit or switch jobs," economist Heather Boushey, the author of the study, told TNS.
In February 2005, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) introduced the Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act, which would provide at least six weeks paid leave to workers for care-giving needs arising from birth, adoption or family illness; expand FMLA coverage to workers in businesses with at least 25 employees – instead of 50; expand the reasons for leave to include domestic violence and its effects; and allow 24 hours a year for school activities like parent-teacher conferences.
"It is still a real burden for people to take leave because they don't get paid and they get criticism from employers," said Misha Werschkul, a research associate at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "And they are still being fired if they don't quite meet the requirements of the FMLA. We need to go in the direction of expanding [the FMLA] and getting more information about it out there, rather than weakening it."
© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.
Jul 8 - Despite protests from labor and women's organizations, the Bush administration is considering changes to the federal law that guarantees unpaid time off for employees attending to personal and family medical problems.
Under pressure from business groups critical of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the US Department of Labor may soon impose restrictions on workers seeking time off under the hard-fought 1993 law. Currently, for employees of companies with at least 50 employees, the FMLA grants up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave for health and personal reasons, including birth or adoption, death or illness of family members, sickness or treatment for chronic health problems.
Among other things, the law means not as many employees need to choose between their job and taking care of or starting a family. "It was a ten-year fight to pass it," said Taylor Hatcher, an analyst with the National Partnership for Women. "It's really important to us."
The law currently protects about 40 percent of the private sector workforce, according to Hatcher, though advocates have long been pressing to expand its coverage.
Lower-income workers who are less likely to have access to paid sick days, maternity leave and other benefits through their company's policies especially value the law. "It's an incredibly popular statute," AFL-CIO legislative representative Kelly Ross told The NewStandard. "Everyone should be entitled to this leave. The ability to deal with a crisis in your life without getting fired is pretty important to people, and it's a matter of basic decency."
About 50 million workers have taken advantage of the act since its inception, according to a working group including the National Partnership for Women, who used 2000 Department of Labor data to extrapolate the rate of use.
Manufacturing and business groups like the US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers claim that employees abuse the law by invoking it whenever they are late to work or want to skip out early. A recent study by the pro-business Employment Policy Foundation said the productivity lost to FMLA leave cost employers $4.8 billion in potential profit during 2004.
Over the past few years, members of Congress have unsuccessfully brought legislation restricting the FMLA. Advocates say the legislation failed to pass since the act is so popular with voters and labor and women's groups nationwide.
Today, the changes are likely to be made by the Labor Department through bureaucratic rule changes to the FMLA statute instead.
Although there are no concrete proposals on the table, three major areas have been discussed during June Senate hearings and meetings between Department of Labor officials and business groups.
One possible change would limit the amount of "intermittent" leave that can be taken in small blocks. Discussed alterations would mandate leave must be taken in blocks of at least four hours. Currently, someone could take an hour of leave for weekly physical therapy appointments, or even half an hour to deal with a child's illness or to recover from a migraine.
Another change would modify the definition of a "serious illness" and require more proof of health conditions justifying leave or ongoing treatment.
A third change would require employees to provide their bosses more notice before taking leave. Currently, employees are supposed to give 30 days notice for foreseeable conditions and reasonable notice for emergencies. In an emergency, employees do not need to appeal for FMLA leave until they return from an absence.
The Employment Policy Foundation report said that not giving timely notice was one of the most harmful ways workers use the FMLA. The report, "The Cost and Characteristics of Family and Medical Leave," found that in over 30 percent of cases, employees notified employers after the leave had already started and only 35 percent gave more than a week's notice.
The report also said employers are hit with costs for replacement labor and continuing health insurance payments for employees during unpaid leave. And it claimed employers have observed morale problems among other employees who see coworkers abusing the FMLA.
Proponents of keeping the FMLA as it stands argue that abuses of the Act's provision are localized problems that should be dealt with in individual workplaces, not grounds for changing the FMLA. The Institute for Women's Policy Research released a paper rebutting the Employment Policy Foundation's work, noting that the survey represented only 110 employers not selected at random, employing less than half a percent of all US workers. They note that employers with complaints were probably more likely to answer the survey, leading to an over-estimation of the difficulties caused by the FMLA.
In fact, a study by the Department of Labor in 2000 found that, "for most employers, the Act had no noticeable effect on their overall productivity, profitability or growth."
It said that for "more than 80 percent of covered employers, the act had a positive effect, or no noticeable effect, on business productivity, profitability and growth. Two-thirds of covered employers reported that, overall, complying with the Act was very or somewhat easy."
Meanwhile, workers and women's rights groups want to not only maintain the FMLA as it currently exists, but to broaden its protections and guarantee paid family leave at the federal level. They note that the United States is the only industrialized country without national paid maternity leave. A recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research found that mothers make significantly higher wages later in their careers if they have access to paid maternity leave.
"If women have paid leave they are much more likely to go back to their jobs, and much less likely to quit or switch jobs," economist Heather Boushey, the author of the study, told TNS.
In February 2005, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) introduced the Family and Medical Leave Expansion Act, which would provide at least six weeks paid leave to workers for care-giving needs arising from birth, adoption or family illness; expand FMLA coverage to workers in businesses with at least 25 employees – instead of 50; expand the reasons for leave to include domestic violence and its effects; and allow 24 hours a year for school activities like parent-teacher conferences.
"It is still a real burden for people to take leave because they don't get paid and they get criticism from employers," said Misha Werschkul, a research associate at the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "And they are still being fired if they don't quite meet the requirements of the FMLA. We need to go in the direction of expanding [the FMLA] and getting more information about it out there, rather than weakening it."
© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Over There
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 07 July 2005
A British associate penned a quick response to the bombing attacks that took place in London this morning. "The message from those claiming responsibility says, in part, 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters,'" he wrote. "Well it isn't, so fuck them."
Indeed.
My first response was a wrenching horror, a kick to the gut when I checked my email and saw two hundred messages with the words 'London attack' in the subject line. Suddenly, the television was on and I was reading every news report I could get my eyes on. At least thirty-three people were killed and hundreds more wounded in four coordinated bombing attacks aimed at the mass transit system.
All of a sudden I was back in my classroom, back in the middle of a bright September morning, surrounded by wall-eyed students asking me if this was World War III as we watched two buildings burn, and then fall, and then unannounced I had Ani DiFranco in my head and she was singing, "And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast, and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything I've seen so far..."
That was my first response, but I'm a little wiser nowadays. My second thought, bluntly, was that of all the Western cities in the world, London can handle this. From 1973 until roundabout the year 2000, bombings in that city took place with dreary regularity. In November of 1974, two IRA bombs in Birmingham killed 19 and wounded 180. A 1989 bombing at the Royal Marines School of Music killed 10 and wounded more than 30. There were more than a dozen different major incidents like these, and many smaller ones besides.
London handled the Nazi blitz. 'Handled' is perhaps the wrong word. Londoners watched as their city was battered to rubble day after day, and squared their shoulders, and sent out the RAF, and prevailed. A fire chief named Deasy summed up the British response: "The idea of England folding up, that's a joke. That outfit will never fold up. They've got just as much guts as anybody in this man's world has and they'll carry right on. Anybody thinks they're gonna fold up, they're crazy."
In other words, the British associate who wrote that note this morning hit the nail on the head.
Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W. Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He called it a "leftist summit" aimed at achieving leftist goals like saving Africa ("Again," he said) and stopping global warming, and so this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.
The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me. I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened. Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a means of beating on people they don't agree with.
I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this. My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings, more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must be immediately avenged.
In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday."
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.
The world was warned about this, warned and warned and warned again. An invasion based on lies and disinformation, an occupation that grinds a civilian populace, becomes the perfect machine to manufacture terrorists who will happily die in order to see others die. The CIA calls what happened in London today "blowback." It is wrong, it is heinous, it is murder plain and simple, and it was as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
The rhetoric about Iraq has been that we are "fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Today, "over here" became the streets of London. Where will it be tomorrow?
One thing is certain. The perpetrators of this bombing bear the responsibility for this wretched act, and bear the responsibility for the gross miscalculation that many have made in the past: A democratic society is weak and decadent, and can be easily pushed. Ask Hitler if that is true. A democratic society, once enraged, is the strongest force on Earth, and those responsible for this are going to find that out to their woe.
The other certainty: Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair bear the responsibility for this wretched act, as well. They decided in April of 2002 to start a war based on false pretenses, to fix the intelligence and facts around the policy, and now the whirlwind has come to be reaped. The blood that runs in the streets of London, and in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, is on their hands.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Thursday 07 July 2005
A British associate penned a quick response to the bombing attacks that took place in London this morning. "The message from those claiming responsibility says, in part, 'Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters,'" he wrote. "Well it isn't, so fuck them."
Indeed.
My first response was a wrenching horror, a kick to the gut when I checked my email and saw two hundred messages with the words 'London attack' in the subject line. Suddenly, the television was on and I was reading every news report I could get my eyes on. At least thirty-three people were killed and hundreds more wounded in four coordinated bombing attacks aimed at the mass transit system.
All of a sudden I was back in my classroom, back in the middle of a bright September morning, surrounded by wall-eyed students asking me if this was World War III as we watched two buildings burn, and then fall, and then unannounced I had Ani DiFranco in my head and she was singing, "And every borough looked up when it heard the first blast, and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed, and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar looked more like war than anything I've seen so far..."
That was my first response, but I'm a little wiser nowadays. My second thought, bluntly, was that of all the Western cities in the world, London can handle this. From 1973 until roundabout the year 2000, bombings in that city took place with dreary regularity. In November of 1974, two IRA bombs in Birmingham killed 19 and wounded 180. A 1989 bombing at the Royal Marines School of Music killed 10 and wounded more than 30. There were more than a dozen different major incidents like these, and many smaller ones besides.
London handled the Nazi blitz. 'Handled' is perhaps the wrong word. Londoners watched as their city was battered to rubble day after day, and squared their shoulders, and sent out the RAF, and prevailed. A fire chief named Deasy summed up the British response: "The idea of England folding up, that's a joke. That outfit will never fold up. They've got just as much guts as anybody in this man's world has and they'll carry right on. Anybody thinks they're gonna fold up, they're crazy."
In other words, the British associate who wrote that note this morning hit the nail on the head.
Now comes the so-called official response. Predictably, George W. Bush proclaimed that the War on Terror goes on. Conservative frother Rush Limbaugh got on the radio and made a few remarkable rhetorical contortions. To wit: The G8 summit, which was apparently the target of these attacks, is a liberal summit. Yes, you read that right. He called it a "leftist summit" aimed at achieving leftist goals like saving Africa ("Again," he said) and stopping global warming, and so this was an attack on leftists who will now attack Bush.
The idea that the G8 is a leftist organization is a new one to me. I must have missed a memo somewhere. Apparently, the three billion people who went out last weekend to ask the G8 to do the right thing likewise missed the memo. Other conservative commentators rushed to microphones to proclaim that if we had all been standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr. Bush, this London attack would never have happened. Never underestimate the ability of the right-wing to use tragedy as a means of beating on people they don't agree with.
I am a little wiser nowadays, and perhaps a little more callous because of that wisdom. My first response was horror, and my second was a sense that the British people have the strength to endure this. My third response was to marvel at the news coverage. Four bombings, more than thirty dead, hundreds more wounded? In London, it is a terrifying, enraging, appalling act of despicable violence that must be immediately avenged.
In Iraq, they call events like this "Tuesday."
Tens of thousands of people have been killed and wounded in Iraq by way of deadly bombings that have been taking place every single day. These Iraqi people are no different from the Londoners who perished today. Their skin is darker perhaps, and they pray to a different God, but they have families and children and dreams and they die just as horribly as their British counterparts. Yet they earn perhaps a few sentences on the back page of the paper, and virtually no comment from the members of the international community which ginned up the invasion of Iraq in the first place.
The world was warned about this, warned and warned and warned again. An invasion based on lies and disinformation, an occupation that grinds a civilian populace, becomes the perfect machine to manufacture terrorists who will happily die in order to see others die. The CIA calls what happened in London today "blowback." It is wrong, it is heinous, it is murder plain and simple, and it was as predictable as the sun rising in the East.
The rhetoric about Iraq has been that we are "fighting the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight them over here." Today, "over here" became the streets of London. Where will it be tomorrow?
One thing is certain. The perpetrators of this bombing bear the responsibility for this wretched act, and bear the responsibility for the gross miscalculation that many have made in the past: A democratic society is weak and decadent, and can be easily pushed. Ask Hitler if that is true. A democratic society, once enraged, is the strongest force on Earth, and those responsible for this are going to find that out to their woe.
The other certainty: Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair bear the responsibility for this wretched act, as well. They decided in April of 2002 to start a war based on false pretenses, to fix the intelligence and facts around the policy, and now the whirlwind has come to be reaped. The blood that runs in the streets of London, and in the streets of Baghdad, Fallujah, Tikrit and Mosul, is on their hands.
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.
Counterpoint: Forget Confidentiality, Out Rove
By Bill Israel, Editor & Publisher
Posted on July 6, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I've testified in court to that end, and would do so again.
But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president's chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.
To understand why this case is exceptional, one must grasp the extent of Rove's political mastery, which became clearer to me by working with him. When we taught "Politics and the Press" together at The University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, Rove showed an amazing disdain for Texas political reporters. At the same time, he actively cultivated national reporters who could help him promote a Bush presidency.
In teaching with him, I learned Rove assumes command over any political enterprise he engages. He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction. In Texas, though he was called "the prime minister" to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been "Lord," as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away.
Little has changed since the Bush presidency; all roads still lead to Rove.
Consequently, when former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson challenged President Bush's embrace of the British notion that Saddam Hussein sought to import uranium from Niger to produce nuclear weapons, retaliation by Rove was never in doubt. While it is reporters Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times who now face jail time, the retaliation came through Rove-uber-outlet Robert Novak, who blew the cover of Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.
The problem, as always, in dealing with Rove, is establishing a clear chain of culpability. Rove once described himself as a die-hard Nixonite; he is, like the former president, both student and master of plausible deniability. (This past weekend, in confirming that Rove was indeed a source for Matthew Cooper, Rove's lawyer said his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information.") That is precisely why prosecutor Fitzgerald in this case must document the pattern of Rove's behavior, whether journalists published, or not.
For in this case, Rove, improving on Macchiavelli, has bet that reporters won't rat their relationship with the administration's most important political source. How better for him to operate without constraint, or to camouflage breaking the law, than under the cover of journalists and journalism, protected by the First Amendment?
Karl Rove is in my experience with him the brightest and most affable of companions; perhaps I have been coopted, for I genuinely treasure his friendship. But neither charm nor political power should be permitted to subvert the First Amendment, which is intended to insure that reporters and citizens burrow fully and publicly into government, not insulate its players from felony, or reality.
Reporters with a gut fear of breaching confidential sources must fight like tigers to protect them. But neither reporters Cooper nor Miller, nor their publications, nor anyone in journalism should protect the behavior of Rove (or anyone else) through an undiscerning, blanket use of the First Amendment that weakens its protections by its gross misuse.
Bill Israel (letters@editorandpublisher.com) teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He has worked for several leading newpapers.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
Posted on July 6, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
In 99.9 percent of cases I know, journalists must not break the bonds of appropriate confidentiality, to protect their ability to report, and to defend the First Amendment. I've testified in court to that end, and would do so again.
But the Valerie Plame-CIA case that threatens jail time for reporters from Time and The New York Times this week is the exception that shatters the rule. In this case, journalists as a community have been played for patsies by the president's chief strategist, Karl Rove, and are enabling him to abuse the First Amendment, by their invoking it.
To understand why this case is exceptional, one must grasp the extent of Rove's political mastery, which became clearer to me by working with him. When we taught "Politics and the Press" together at The University of Texas at Austin seven years ago, Rove showed an amazing disdain for Texas political reporters. At the same time, he actively cultivated national reporters who could help him promote a Bush presidency.
In teaching with him, I learned Rove assumes command over any political enterprise he engages. He insists on absolute discipline from staff: nothing escapes him; no one who works with him moves without his direction. In Texas, though he was called "the prime minister" to Gov. George W. Bush, it might have been "Lord," as in the divine, for when it came to politics and policy, it was Rove who gave, and Rove who took away.
Little has changed since the Bush presidency; all roads still lead to Rove.
Consequently, when former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson challenged President Bush's embrace of the British notion that Saddam Hussein sought to import uranium from Niger to produce nuclear weapons, retaliation by Rove was never in doubt. While it is reporters Matthew Cooper of Time and Judith Miller of The New York Times who now face jail time, the retaliation came through Rove-uber-outlet Robert Novak, who blew the cover of Wilson's wife, CIA operative Valerie Plame.
The problem, as always, in dealing with Rove, is establishing a clear chain of culpability. Rove once described himself as a die-hard Nixonite; he is, like the former president, both student and master of plausible deniability. (This past weekend, in confirming that Rove was indeed a source for Matthew Cooper, Rove's lawyer said his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information.") That is precisely why prosecutor Fitzgerald in this case must document the pattern of Rove's behavior, whether journalists published, or not.
For in this case, Rove, improving on Macchiavelli, has bet that reporters won't rat their relationship with the administration's most important political source. How better for him to operate without constraint, or to camouflage breaking the law, than under the cover of journalists and journalism, protected by the First Amendment?
Karl Rove is in my experience with him the brightest and most affable of companions; perhaps I have been coopted, for I genuinely treasure his friendship. But neither charm nor political power should be permitted to subvert the First Amendment, which is intended to insure that reporters and citizens burrow fully and publicly into government, not insulate its players from felony, or reality.
Reporters with a gut fear of breaching confidential sources must fight like tigers to protect them. But neither reporters Cooper nor Miller, nor their publications, nor anyone in journalism should protect the behavior of Rove (or anyone else) through an undiscerning, blanket use of the First Amendment that weakens its protections by its gross misuse.
Bill Israel (letters@editorandpublisher.com) teaches journalism at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). He has worked for several leading newpapers.
© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/23385/
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
A Nation Rocked To Sleep
by Carly Sheehan
Sister of Casey KIA 04/04/04
Sadr City Baghdad
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
May 30, 2005
Posted by Gary Boatwright at July 6, 2005 05:12 AM to Seeing The Forest
Sister of Casey KIA 04/04/04
Sadr City Baghdad
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
The torrential rains of a mother's weeping will never be done
They call him a hero, you should be glad that he's one, but
Have you ever heard the sound of a mother screaming for her son?
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
He must be brave because his boy died for another man's lies
The only grief he allows himself are long, deep sighs
Have you ever heard the sound of a father holding back his cries?
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
They say that he died so that the flag will continue to wave
But I believe he died because they had oil to save
Have you ever heard the sound of taps played at your brother's grave?
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
The leaders want to keep you numb so the pain won't be so deep
But if we the people let them continue another mother will weep
Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?
May 30, 2005
Posted by Gary Boatwright at July 6, 2005 05:12 AM to Seeing The Forest
It's Time to Build a Mass Movement
by Bruce Dixon; The Black Commentator; July 06, 2005, Via Znet
"Democracy... does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice."
- Howard Zinn, Spelman College commencement address, Atlanta, 2005.
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn't come from the pen of FDR. The end of "separate but equal" didn't come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It's time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.
Mass movements are against the law
Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don't exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience.
Not all mass movements are progressive. The legal strategy of "massive resistance" to desegregation on the part of southern whites, in which local governments across the south threw up thickets of lawsuits, evasions and new statutes, closing whole school systems in some areas rather than integrate, was implemented in response to and backed up by the historically credible and ever-present threat of armed, lawless white mobs long accustomed to dishing out violence to their black neighbors and any white allies with impunity. They operated in a context of popular belief in white superiority and black inferiority that was widespread among whites of that region and time. Undeniable proof of the existence of a violent, white supremacist mass movement was broadcast around the world when thousands of local white citizens showed up to trade blows, insults, and gunfire with federal marshals in places like Little Rock, Arkansas in '57 and Oxford, Mississippi in '62.
Likewise, courts and public officials who enforced desegregation orders were under relentless pressure from a civilly disobedient mass movement for equality and justice. 89 leaders of the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott could not have been surprised when they earned conspiracy indictments for their trouble. Tens of thousands of mostly southern, mostly black citizens defied unjust laws and were jailed in the waves of mostly illegal sit-ins, marches, freedom rides and other mostly illegal actions that swept the South for more than a decade. This movement in turn relied on the deep convictions of all African Americans and growing numbers of whites that segregation and white supremacy were evils that had to be fought, regardless of personal costs. For many, those costs were very high. Some are still paying.
Mass movements are politically aggressive
Mass movements are kindled into existence by unique combinations of outraged public opinion in the movement's core constituency, political opportunity, and aggressive leadership. The absence of any of these can prevent a mass movement from materializing. In a January 20, 2005 BC article occasioned by the death of visionary James Foreman, one of the masterminds of the mid-century movement for civil and human rights, which contains many useful insights on the characteristics of mass movements, David Swanson recalled a recent lost opportunity in the wake of the 2000 presidential election: "Various small groups did act, and Rev. Jesse Jackson became a leading spokesman for those objecting to a stolen election. The coalition cobbled together was surprisingly successful in moving Congress Members and Senators to at least give lip service to the matter. The seeds of something may have been sown. But a mass movement was not organized. Civil disobedience was not used."
Read On...
"Democracy... does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice."
- Howard Zinn, Spelman College commencement address, Atlanta, 2005.
Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn't come from the pen of FDR. The end of "separate but equal" didn't come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It's time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.
Mass movements are against the law
Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don't exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience.
Not all mass movements are progressive. The legal strategy of "massive resistance" to desegregation on the part of southern whites, in which local governments across the south threw up thickets of lawsuits, evasions and new statutes, closing whole school systems in some areas rather than integrate, was implemented in response to and backed up by the historically credible and ever-present threat of armed, lawless white mobs long accustomed to dishing out violence to their black neighbors and any white allies with impunity. They operated in a context of popular belief in white superiority and black inferiority that was widespread among whites of that region and time. Undeniable proof of the existence of a violent, white supremacist mass movement was broadcast around the world when thousands of local white citizens showed up to trade blows, insults, and gunfire with federal marshals in places like Little Rock, Arkansas in '57 and Oxford, Mississippi in '62.
Likewise, courts and public officials who enforced desegregation orders were under relentless pressure from a civilly disobedient mass movement for equality and justice. 89 leaders of the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott could not have been surprised when they earned conspiracy indictments for their trouble. Tens of thousands of mostly southern, mostly black citizens defied unjust laws and were jailed in the waves of mostly illegal sit-ins, marches, freedom rides and other mostly illegal actions that swept the South for more than a decade. This movement in turn relied on the deep convictions of all African Americans and growing numbers of whites that segregation and white supremacy were evils that had to be fought, regardless of personal costs. For many, those costs were very high. Some are still paying.
Mass movements are politically aggressive
Mass movements are kindled into existence by unique combinations of outraged public opinion in the movement's core constituency, political opportunity, and aggressive leadership. The absence of any of these can prevent a mass movement from materializing. In a January 20, 2005 BC article occasioned by the death of visionary James Foreman, one of the masterminds of the mid-century movement for civil and human rights, which contains many useful insights on the characteristics of mass movements, David Swanson recalled a recent lost opportunity in the wake of the 2000 presidential election: "Various small groups did act, and Rev. Jesse Jackson became a leading spokesman for those objecting to a stolen election. The coalition cobbled together was surprisingly successful in moving Congress Members and Senators to at least give lip service to the matter. The seeds of something may have been sown. But a mass movement was not organized. Civil disobedience was not used."
Read On...
Scalia Grandstands On The High Bench
Via The Light Of Reason
I may have more to say about the Supreme Court’s religious display cases at a later date although, at a first glance, the decisions announced today don’t appear to break any new ground. In general, the Court’s religion decisions tend to be even more opaque, inconsistent and mind-numbingly tortuous than its decisions with regard to other subjects. Or, as Souter wrote, they are “fact-intensive” cases —which is a polite way of saying that the Court declines to identify any clearcut principles which it will deign to explain to the rest of us, and upon which we can rely in the future. In one important sense, every case is “fact-intensive,” and there is no case so simple that a lawyer or judge cannot make it appear to be “fact-intensive” to a degree which makes it defy all attempts at basic comprehension, if he or she wishes to do so. Moreover, the Court’s religion decisions often convey the impression that no graspable principles can possibly be discerned from the Constitution in any manner at all. That is a position I strongly disagree with, but that is a complicated subject for another time.
In that very limited sense—and although I come to a conclusion which is the direct opposite of his—Scalia is correct to note the mishmash the Court has made of its jurisprudence in this area in his dissent in the McCreary case.
At the moment, I want only to note one enormously regrettable aspect of Scalia’s opinion—a tactic which is the equivalent of a very low blow delivered in the guise of judicial argument. Here is the opening of Scalia’s dissent:
I would uphold McCreary County and Pulaski County, Kentucky’s (hereinafter Counties) displays of the Ten Commandments. I shall discuss first, why the Court’s oft repeated assertion that the government cannot favor religious practice is false; second, why today’s opinion extends the scope of that falsehood even beyond prior cases; and third, why even on the basis of the Court’s false assumptions the judgment here is wrong.
On September 11, 2001 I was attending in Rome, Italy an international conference of judges and lawyers, principally from Europe and the United States. That night and the next morning virtually all of the participants watched, in their hotel rooms, the address to the Nation by the President of the United States concerning the murderous attacks upon the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in which thousands of Americans had been killed. The address ended, as Presidential addresses often do, with the prayer “God bless America.” The next afternoon I was approached by one of the judges from a European country, who, after extending his profound condolences for my country’s loss, sadly observed “How I wish that the Head of State of my country, at a similar time of national tragedy and distress, could conclude his address ‘God bless______.’ It is of course absolutely forbidden.”
That is one model of the relationship between church and state—a model spread across Europe by the armies of Napoleon, and reflected in the Constitution of France, which begins “France is [a] . . . secular . . . Republic.” France Const., Art. 1, in 7 Constitutions of the Countries of the World, p. 1 (G. Flanz ed. 2000). Religion is to be strictly excluded from the public forum. This is not, and never was, the model adopted by America. George Washington added to the form of Presidential oath prescribed by Art. II, §1, cl. 8, of the Constitution, the concluding words “so help me God.” See Blomquist, The Presidential Oath, the American National Interest and a Call for Presiprudence, 73 UMKC L. Rev. 1, 34 (2004). The Supreme Court under John Marshall opened its sessions with the prayer, “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” 1 C. Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History 469 (rev. ed. 1926). The First Congress instituted the practice of beginning its legislative sessions with a prayer. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783, 787 (1983). The same week that Congress submitted the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for ratification by the States, it enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate. Id., at 788.
And with that, Scalia is off and running. On that last specific point—that the first Congress “enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate”—Scalia does not think it worthy of mention that at least one of the Founders thought that such legislation unquestionably violated the new Constitution, as he wrote some years later.
In one of his most famous Detached Memoranda, James Madison wrote on the great dangers of state-sanctioned religion to the new republic at considerable length (from 1817):
...
Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?
In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.
Whatever one’s view of Scalia’s jurisprudence, he is unquestionably a brilliant man. Surely he is familiar with Madison’s writing on this question. Yet somehow these views of Madison’s are omitted from Scalia’s historical recitation (unless I missed the reference in my first overview, which I strongly doubt).
But leave that aside for now. Return to Scalia’s invocation of 9/11—in the opening of an opinion which he knows was eagerly awaited and will be reviewed by many with great care and attention. We have all witnessed many opportunistic and nakedly political purposes for which the profound tragedy of 9/11 has been appropriated. But I consider this to be by far the worst.
Even though its performance in recent years could legitimately have led many observers to expect no more at this point, to soil decisions which are supposed to represent the most deliberate, careful, respectful, intellectually serious and—dare one say it—judicious thought at the very apex of the United States’ system of justice with this kind of cheap grandstanding is beneath contempt. Whatever Bush or anyone else said in the wake of events on that terrible day, such remarks are of no legal consequence whatsoever, and they are utterly irrelevant—which renders Scalia’s mention of Bush’s comments gratuitous in the extreme.
You may have thought that individuals wearing black robes did not deliver low blows and were incapable of cheap shots, at least in their published opinions. Scalia proved you terribly wrong today.
What a disgrace.
I may have more to say about the Supreme Court’s religious display cases at a later date although, at a first glance, the decisions announced today don’t appear to break any new ground. In general, the Court’s religion decisions tend to be even more opaque, inconsistent and mind-numbingly tortuous than its decisions with regard to other subjects. Or, as Souter wrote, they are “fact-intensive” cases —which is a polite way of saying that the Court declines to identify any clearcut principles which it will deign to explain to the rest of us, and upon which we can rely in the future. In one important sense, every case is “fact-intensive,” and there is no case so simple that a lawyer or judge cannot make it appear to be “fact-intensive” to a degree which makes it defy all attempts at basic comprehension, if he or she wishes to do so. Moreover, the Court’s religion decisions often convey the impression that no graspable principles can possibly be discerned from the Constitution in any manner at all. That is a position I strongly disagree with, but that is a complicated subject for another time.
In that very limited sense—and although I come to a conclusion which is the direct opposite of his—Scalia is correct to note the mishmash the Court has made of its jurisprudence in this area in his dissent in the McCreary case.
At the moment, I want only to note one enormously regrettable aspect of Scalia’s opinion—a tactic which is the equivalent of a very low blow delivered in the guise of judicial argument. Here is the opening of Scalia’s dissent:
I would uphold McCreary County and Pulaski County, Kentucky’s (hereinafter Counties) displays of the Ten Commandments. I shall discuss first, why the Court’s oft repeated assertion that the government cannot favor religious practice is false; second, why today’s opinion extends the scope of that falsehood even beyond prior cases; and third, why even on the basis of the Court’s false assumptions the judgment here is wrong.
On September 11, 2001 I was attending in Rome, Italy an international conference of judges and lawyers, principally from Europe and the United States. That night and the next morning virtually all of the participants watched, in their hotel rooms, the address to the Nation by the President of the United States concerning the murderous attacks upon the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, in which thousands of Americans had been killed. The address ended, as Presidential addresses often do, with the prayer “God bless America.” The next afternoon I was approached by one of the judges from a European country, who, after extending his profound condolences for my country’s loss, sadly observed “How I wish that the Head of State of my country, at a similar time of national tragedy and distress, could conclude his address ‘God bless______.’ It is of course absolutely forbidden.”
That is one model of the relationship between church and state—a model spread across Europe by the armies of Napoleon, and reflected in the Constitution of France, which begins “France is [a] . . . secular . . . Republic.” France Const., Art. 1, in 7 Constitutions of the Countries of the World, p. 1 (G. Flanz ed. 2000). Religion is to be strictly excluded from the public forum. This is not, and never was, the model adopted by America. George Washington added to the form of Presidential oath prescribed by Art. II, §1, cl. 8, of the Constitution, the concluding words “so help me God.” See Blomquist, The Presidential Oath, the American National Interest and a Call for Presiprudence, 73 UMKC L. Rev. 1, 34 (2004). The Supreme Court under John Marshall opened its sessions with the prayer, “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” 1 C. Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History 469 (rev. ed. 1926). The First Congress instituted the practice of beginning its legislative sessions with a prayer. Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U. S. 783, 787 (1983). The same week that Congress submitted the Establishment Clause as part of the Bill of Rights for ratification by the States, it enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate. Id., at 788.
And with that, Scalia is off and running. On that last specific point—that the first Congress “enacted legislation providing for paid chaplains in the House and Senate”—Scalia does not think it worthy of mention that at least one of the Founders thought that such legislation unquestionably violated the new Constitution, as he wrote some years later.
In one of his most famous Detached Memoranda, James Madison wrote on the great dangers of state-sanctioned religion to the new republic at considerable length (from 1817):
The danger of silent accumulations & encroachments by Ecclesiastical Bodies have not sufficiently engaged attention in the U. S. They have the noble merit of first unshackling the conscience from persecuting laws, and of establishing among religious Sects a legal equality. If some of the States have not embraced this just and this truly Xn principle in its proper latitude, all of them present examples by which the most enlightened States of the old world may be instructed; and there is one State at least, Virginia, where religious liberty is placed on its true foundation and is defined in its full latitude. The general principle is contained in her declaration of rights, prefixed to her Constitution: but it is unfolded and defined, in its precise extent, in the act of the Legislature, usually named the Religious Bill, which passed into a law in the year 1786. Here the separation between the authority of human laws, and the natural rights of Man excepted from the grant on which all political authority is founded, is traced as distinctly as words can admit, and the limits to this authority established with as much solemnity as the forms of legislation can express. The law has the further advantage of having been the result of a formal appeal to the sense of the Community and a deliberate sanction of a vast majority, comprizing every sect of Christians in the State. This act is a true standard of Religious liberty: its principle the great barrier agst usurpations on the rights of conscience. As long as it is respected & no longer, these will be safe. Every provision for them short of this principle, will be found to leave crevices at least thro’ which bigotry may introduce persecution; a monster, that feeding & thriving on its own venom, gradually swells to a size and strength overwhelming all laws divine & human.
...
Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?
In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them; and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does not this involve the principle of a national establishment, applicable to a provision for a religious worship for the Constituent as well as of the representative Body, approved by the majority, and conducted by Ministers of religion paid by the entire nation.
The establishment of the chaplainship to Congs is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles: The tenets of the chaplains elected [by the majority] shut the door of worship agst the members whose creeds & consciences forbid a participation in that of the majority. To say nothing of other sects, this is the case with that of Roman Catholics & Quakers who have always had members in one or both of the Legislative branches. Could a Catholic clergyman ever hope to be appointed a Chaplain? To say that his religious principles are obnoxious or that his sect is small, is to lift the evil at once and exhibit in its naked deformity the doctrine that religious truth is to be tested by numbers. or that the major sects have a right to govern the minor.
If Religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals, singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their Constituents shd discharge their religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own expence. How small a contribution from each member of Congs wd suffice for the purpose? How just wd it be in its principle? How noble in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution; and the divine right of conscience? Why should the expence of a religious worship be allowed for the Legislature, be paid by the public, more than that for the Ex. or Judiciary branch of the Govt.
Whatever one’s view of Scalia’s jurisprudence, he is unquestionably a brilliant man. Surely he is familiar with Madison’s writing on this question. Yet somehow these views of Madison’s are omitted from Scalia’s historical recitation (unless I missed the reference in my first overview, which I strongly doubt).
But leave that aside for now. Return to Scalia’s invocation of 9/11—in the opening of an opinion which he knows was eagerly awaited and will be reviewed by many with great care and attention. We have all witnessed many opportunistic and nakedly political purposes for which the profound tragedy of 9/11 has been appropriated. But I consider this to be by far the worst.
Even though its performance in recent years could legitimately have led many observers to expect no more at this point, to soil decisions which are supposed to represent the most deliberate, careful, respectful, intellectually serious and—dare one say it—judicious thought at the very apex of the United States’ system of justice with this kind of cheap grandstanding is beneath contempt. Whatever Bush or anyone else said in the wake of events on that terrible day, such remarks are of no legal consequence whatsoever, and they are utterly irrelevant—which renders Scalia’s mention of Bush’s comments gratuitous in the extreme.
You may have thought that individuals wearing black robes did not deliver low blows and were incapable of cheap shots, at least in their published opinions. Scalia proved you terribly wrong today.
What a disgrace.
Rove Outed As Traitor!
Via The Huffington Post
Down here in Texas, many of us have almost given up on obscure concepts like justice and the ephemeral notion of karma. Since the late 1970s, we have watched Karl Rove push so hard on ethical boundaries that he has turned lying into a conventional political tactic. Instead of being prosecuted or humiliated, he has risen in the Republican Party. And there are already signs he is a few steps ahead of the federal investigators trying to resolve the mysteries of the Valerie Plame affair.
He always starts his evasions by parsing language and law. Rove's attorney has quickly conceded that his client spoke to Matt Cooper of Time, and other reporters. This is the presidential advisor sending forth his minions to frame the ensuing discussion.
"Of course, I talked to the reporters," the reasoning goes, "I've got the same First Amendment rights in the White House as every other citizen."
Positioning is Rove's favorite political sport and that's the purpose of this admission. It's a metaphorical "so what" shrug of the shoulders. But the sub text of Rove's words shows another strategy. The presidential advisor undoubtedly knows he is guilty of a federal crime but, for obvious political reasons, he needs it to be something less than treason. Perjury will be his default position. The political harm to be done to his president and his party for a conviction of treason is incalcuable.
And the federal investigators appear to be making a case for perjury. The American Prospect has already reported that, in his 2003 appearances before the federal grand jury, Rove said he had not spoken to reporters about Valerie Plame's identity until after her name was published in Robert Novak's column. Unfortunately for Rove, early reports indicate that the e-mails being turned over to the federal prosecutor by Time magazine apparently show Rove was in communication with reporter Matt Cooper well in advance of Novak's piece. Sending such e-mails directly from his West Wing computer is not the kind of mistake Rove can be expected to make but Cooper's identification of his source through Time communications ought to facilitate a simple case of perjury against Rove, particularly if Judith Miller of the New York Times can be compelled to stop protecting a source who appears to have betrayed the entire country.
If, in fact, Karl Rove did testify before a federal grand jury it is possibly an indication he was not originally a target of the investigation; or that he had bad legal advice. If investigators notified him that he was a target, he ought not to have appeared to answer their questions. His counsel should have told him to stay away and let them make their case on whatever evidence they might gather. Rove, though, ever the practitioner of a dark craft, knows that his appearance would eventually leak out and that reporters would analyze its meaning.
The legal points of the case against Rove and the other White House Plame leakers almost seem irrelevant. Justice is a kind of bonus if it ever comes to this case. There has never been any real denial by the Bush administration that people working closely with the president made a concerted effort to contact reporters and promote the idea of writing stories about an undercover CIA agent. And yet nobody on the right seems to have any outrage. The confessed unethical behavior, regardless of whether it is legally treason or not, ought to be enough to prompt the "accountability" president to send Rove and his consorts home.
The simple, unavoidable truth is that Karl Rove orchestrated the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. No one who knows this man and has watched him work has any doubt that Rove came up with the idea of the leak and then set the plan in motion. Having watched him as he leaked, lied, obfuscated, and denied for political goals over the past 25 years, my own conviction of Rove's involvement is unwavering. He has a history of seeking revenge and the Texas landscape is cluttered with political cadavers he left behind before departing for the big show. In every campaign Rove has managed, there have been questionable tactics and unethical attacks. None of them has happened by accident because nothing that happens in Rove's world is accidental. And neither was the eposure of Ms. Plame. It was no more spontaneous, independent, or random than the campaign run by the Swift Boat Veterans.
In Texas, progressives are hoping Rove's trail of tears has led him to his own inevitable sadness. And there is the slight chance that the awful weight of all of his wrongs has finally begun to crush Karl Rove. There is a moment of hubris in most great achievements. But I am skeptical that this is Karl's moment. His justice may be long overdue. Unfortunately, however, in Rove's case, the law has been about as reliable as karma.
Down here in Texas, many of us have almost given up on obscure concepts like justice and the ephemeral notion of karma. Since the late 1970s, we have watched Karl Rove push so hard on ethical boundaries that he has turned lying into a conventional political tactic. Instead of being prosecuted or humiliated, he has risen in the Republican Party. And there are already signs he is a few steps ahead of the federal investigators trying to resolve the mysteries of the Valerie Plame affair.
He always starts his evasions by parsing language and law. Rove's attorney has quickly conceded that his client spoke to Matt Cooper of Time, and other reporters. This is the presidential advisor sending forth his minions to frame the ensuing discussion.
"Of course, I talked to the reporters," the reasoning goes, "I've got the same First Amendment rights in the White House as every other citizen."
Positioning is Rove's favorite political sport and that's the purpose of this admission. It's a metaphorical "so what" shrug of the shoulders. But the sub text of Rove's words shows another strategy. The presidential advisor undoubtedly knows he is guilty of a federal crime but, for obvious political reasons, he needs it to be something less than treason. Perjury will be his default position. The political harm to be done to his president and his party for a conviction of treason is incalcuable.
And the federal investigators appear to be making a case for perjury. The American Prospect has already reported that, in his 2003 appearances before the federal grand jury, Rove said he had not spoken to reporters about Valerie Plame's identity until after her name was published in Robert Novak's column. Unfortunately for Rove, early reports indicate that the e-mails being turned over to the federal prosecutor by Time magazine apparently show Rove was in communication with reporter Matt Cooper well in advance of Novak's piece. Sending such e-mails directly from his West Wing computer is not the kind of mistake Rove can be expected to make but Cooper's identification of his source through Time communications ought to facilitate a simple case of perjury against Rove, particularly if Judith Miller of the New York Times can be compelled to stop protecting a source who appears to have betrayed the entire country.
If, in fact, Karl Rove did testify before a federal grand jury it is possibly an indication he was not originally a target of the investigation; or that he had bad legal advice. If investigators notified him that he was a target, he ought not to have appeared to answer their questions. His counsel should have told him to stay away and let them make their case on whatever evidence they might gather. Rove, though, ever the practitioner of a dark craft, knows that his appearance would eventually leak out and that reporters would analyze its meaning.
The legal points of the case against Rove and the other White House Plame leakers almost seem irrelevant. Justice is a kind of bonus if it ever comes to this case. There has never been any real denial by the Bush administration that people working closely with the president made a concerted effort to contact reporters and promote the idea of writing stories about an undercover CIA agent. And yet nobody on the right seems to have any outrage. The confessed unethical behavior, regardless of whether it is legally treason or not, ought to be enough to prompt the "accountability" president to send Rove and his consorts home.
The simple, unavoidable truth is that Karl Rove orchestrated the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. No one who knows this man and has watched him work has any doubt that Rove came up with the idea of the leak and then set the plan in motion. Having watched him as he leaked, lied, obfuscated, and denied for political goals over the past 25 years, my own conviction of Rove's involvement is unwavering. He has a history of seeking revenge and the Texas landscape is cluttered with political cadavers he left behind before departing for the big show. In every campaign Rove has managed, there have been questionable tactics and unethical attacks. None of them has happened by accident because nothing that happens in Rove's world is accidental. And neither was the eposure of Ms. Plame. It was no more spontaneous, independent, or random than the campaign run by the Swift Boat Veterans.
In Texas, progressives are hoping Rove's trail of tears has led him to his own inevitable sadness. And there is the slight chance that the awful weight of all of his wrongs has finally begun to crush Karl Rove. There is a moment of hubris in most great achievements. But I am skeptical that this is Karl's moment. His justice may be long overdue. Unfortunately, however, in Rove's case, the law has been about as reliable as karma.
Friday, June 24, 2005
A Quick Review of the Durbin Flap...
Just so we're clear:
Torture as official policy: A source of national pride; no apology necessary.
Condemning torture: A "heinous slander" against America; you must apologize or resign.
The apologists for torture need never apologize. But those who reject it -- reject it on the basis that it is fundamentally un-American -- are condemned.
Torture as official policy: A source of national pride; no apology necessary.
Condemning torture: A "heinous slander" against America; you must apologize or resign.
The apologists for torture need never apologize. But those who reject it -- reject it on the basis that it is fundamentally un-American -- are condemned.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
"Nuff Said..."
"Cuz if we in Congress see a hole, we fill it with a problem, then fix it with an amendment. It's just what we do.
WHAT ABE FOXMAN DOESN'T SAY ABOUT FASCISM
[From a piece that ran during the last Giuliani mayoral campaign]
SAM SMITH - Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has accused artist Hans Haacke of "trivializing the Holocaust" by creating analogies between Mayor Giuliani and Adolph Hitler. Said Foxman, the work "denigrates the memory of six million Jews and others who were killed by the Nazis."
Foxman's contribution to the Giuliani campaign illustrates the growing confusion over the nature of fascism, spurred in no small part by a form of historical revisionism that essentially reduces the Second World War to a matter of anti-Semitism. In some ways this revisionism is more dangerous than the claim that the Holocaust never happened, since the denials are safely on the fringe while the myth that fascism is
inexorably linked to anti-Semitism is widely held.
One of the reasons we have such difficulty perceiving our current conditions is our aversion to this single word: fascism. While there is no hesitation by politicians to draw parallels with the Holocaust to justify whatever foreign adventure appeals to them, or for the media to make similar analogies at the drop of swastika on a wall, we seem only able to understand -- or even mention -- the climax of fascism rather
than its genesis. Why this reluctance? Perhaps it is because we are much closer to the latter than to the former.
In any case, it is one of the most dangerous forms of political myopia in which to indulge. Italians, who invented the term fascism, also called it the estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Orwell rightly described fascism as being an extension of capitalism. It is an economy in which the government serves the interests of oligopolies, a state in which large corporations have the powers that in a democracy devolve to the citizen. Today, it is no exaggeration to call our economy
corporatist, which has been described by British academics R.E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler as a system in which the government guides privately owned businesses towards order, unity, nationalism and success."
"Let us not mince words, they said. "Corporatism is fascism with a human face." The Nazis had their own word for it: wehrwirtschaft, semantically linking wehr (for defense, bulwark, weapon) with wirtshaft (for housekeeping, domestic economy, husbandry) to describe an economy based on the assumption of warfare. The concept was not new, however. William Shirer points out in The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich that 18th and 19th century Prussia devoted 70% of its revenue to the army and
"that nation's whole economy was always regarded as primarily an instrument not of the people's welfare but of military policy." In Hitler's Germany even the pogroms were part of national economic planning, seizing Jewish shops and companies and replacing Jewish workers with the Ayrian unemployed.
Hitler argued that "private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy," and denounced "the freedom to starve," in a country which had known as many as six million without jobs. Wrote William Shirer, "In taking away that last freedom, Hitler assured himself of the support of the working class."
The link between business and fascism was clear to German corporatists. Auschwitz was not just a way to get rid of Jews, it was also a major source of cheap labor. As Richard Rubenstein points out in The Cunning of History, "I.G. Farben's decision to locate at Auschwitz was based upon the very same criteria by which contemporary multinational corporations relocate their plants in utter indifference to the social
consequences of such moves." I.G. Farben invested over a billion dollars in today's money at Auschwitz and, thanks to the endless supply of labor, adopted a policy of deliberately working the Jewish slaves to death. In such ways do economics and freedom become intertwined.
Those who think it can't happen here should consider that four days before Mussolini became premier, he met with a group of industrialists and assured them that his aim "was to reestablish discipline within the factories and that no outlandish experiments .... would be carried out." In Friendly Fascism, Bertram Gross notes that Mussolini also won "the friendship, support or qualified approval" of the American ambassador, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Lamont, many newspapers and magazine
publishers, the majority of business journals, and quite a sprinkling of liberals, including some associated with both the Nation and The New Republic. "
Orwell understood fascism. One of the characteristics of his inner party, the ten percent who controlled the rest, was that there was no sexual or racial discrimination. He understood that ethnic eradication, while characteristic of Nazism, was not required for fascism. Even earlier, Aldous Huxley set up a similar non-discriminatory dystopia in Brave New World.
In fact, one of the characteristics of the modern propaganda state is the use of ethnic and sexual iconography to cover its tracks. Thus Richard Nixon was slurring Jews in Oval Office conversations even as he set a new record in their high-level appointments. And W.J. Clinton was called our first black president by Toni Morrison even as the government was sending young black males to prison in unprecedented numbers.
There is something else about fascism that we miss: it requires a modern, technocratic society. John Ralston Saul has written:
Marshall Rosenberg, who teaches non-violent communication, says that in reading psychological interviews with Nazi war criminals what struck him was not their abnormality, but that they used a language that denied choice: "should," "one must," "have to." For example, Adolph Eichmann was asked, "Was it difficult for you to send these tens of thousands of people their death?" Eichmann replied, "To tell you the truth, it was easy. Our language made it easy."
Asked to explain, Eichmann said, "My fellow officers and I coined our own name for our language. We called it amtssprache -- 'office talk.'" In office talk "you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?' 'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's the law.'"
Yet for all the words we have devoted to the Holocaust, go into almost any bookstore and you'll find far more works on how to manage, manipulate and control others - and how to use "office talk" -- than you will on how to practice the skills of a free citizen.
The most important lessons of the Holocaust are simply missed. Among these, as Richard Rubenstein has pointed out, is that it could only have been carried out by "an advanced political community with a highly trained, tightly disciplined police and civil service bureaucracy." In The Cunning of History, Rubenstein also finds uncomfortable parallels between the Nazis and their opponents, of which we are being now reminded with recent questions about the role of the Vatican and the Swiss during WWII. For example, a Hungarian Jewish emissary meets with Lord Moyne, the British High Commissioner in Egypt in 1944 and suggests that the Nazis might be willing to save one million Hungarian Jews in return for military supplies. Lord Moyne's reply: "What shall I do with those million Jews? Where shall I put them?"
Writes Rubenstein: "The British government was by no means adverse to the 'final solution' as long as the Germans did most of the work." For both countries, it had become a bureaucratic problem, one that Rubenstein suggests we understand "as the expression of some of the most profound tendencies of Western civilization in the 20th century."How many school children are taught that, worldwide, wars in the past
century killed somewhere between 100 and 150 million people? In World War I alone the death toll was around ten million. All this, including the Holocaust, was driven by a culture of modernity that so changed the power of institutions over the individual that the latter would become what Erich Fromm called homo mechanicus, "attracted to all that is mechanical and inclined against all that is alive." Becoming, in fact, a
part of the machinery -- willing to kill or to die just to keep it running.
Thus, with Auschwitz-like efficiency, over 6,000 people perished every day during World War I for 1,500 days. Rubenstein recounts that on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British lost 60,000 men and half of the officers assigned to them. But the bureaucratic internal logic of the war did not falter at all; over the next six months, more than a million British, French and German soldiers would lose their
lives. The total British advance: six miles. No one in that war was a person anymore.
Milton Mayer, a Jewish journalist, who wrote a book about ordinary
Nazis, They Thought They Were Free, concluded:
SAM SMITH - Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League has accused artist Hans Haacke of "trivializing the Holocaust" by creating analogies between Mayor Giuliani and Adolph Hitler. Said Foxman, the work "denigrates the memory of six million Jews and others who were killed by the Nazis."
Foxman's contribution to the Giuliani campaign illustrates the growing confusion over the nature of fascism, spurred in no small part by a form of historical revisionism that essentially reduces the Second World War to a matter of anti-Semitism. In some ways this revisionism is more dangerous than the claim that the Holocaust never happened, since the denials are safely on the fringe while the myth that fascism is
inexorably linked to anti-Semitism is widely held.
One of the reasons we have such difficulty perceiving our current conditions is our aversion to this single word: fascism. While there is no hesitation by politicians to draw parallels with the Holocaust to justify whatever foreign adventure appeals to them, or for the media to make similar analogies at the drop of swastika on a wall, we seem only able to understand -- or even mention -- the climax of fascism rather
than its genesis. Why this reluctance? Perhaps it is because we are much closer to the latter than to the former.
In any case, it is one of the most dangerous forms of political myopia in which to indulge. Italians, who invented the term fascism, also called it the estato corporativo: the corporatist state. Orwell rightly described fascism as being an extension of capitalism. It is an economy in which the government serves the interests of oligopolies, a state in which large corporations have the powers that in a democracy devolve to the citizen. Today, it is no exaggeration to call our economy
corporatist, which has been described by British academics R.E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler as a system in which the government guides privately owned businesses towards order, unity, nationalism and success."
"Let us not mince words, they said. "Corporatism is fascism with a human face." The Nazis had their own word for it: wehrwirtschaft, semantically linking wehr (for defense, bulwark, weapon) with wirtshaft (for housekeeping, domestic economy, husbandry) to describe an economy based on the assumption of warfare. The concept was not new, however. William Shirer points out in The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich that 18th and 19th century Prussia devoted 70% of its revenue to the army and
"that nation's whole economy was always regarded as primarily an instrument not of the people's welfare but of military policy." In Hitler's Germany even the pogroms were part of national economic planning, seizing Jewish shops and companies and replacing Jewish workers with the Ayrian unemployed.
Hitler argued that "private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy," and denounced "the freedom to starve," in a country which had known as many as six million without jobs. Wrote William Shirer, "In taking away that last freedom, Hitler assured himself of the support of the working class."
The link between business and fascism was clear to German corporatists. Auschwitz was not just a way to get rid of Jews, it was also a major source of cheap labor. As Richard Rubenstein points out in The Cunning of History, "I.G. Farben's decision to locate at Auschwitz was based upon the very same criteria by which contemporary multinational corporations relocate their plants in utter indifference to the social
consequences of such moves." I.G. Farben invested over a billion dollars in today's money at Auschwitz and, thanks to the endless supply of labor, adopted a policy of deliberately working the Jewish slaves to death. In such ways do economics and freedom become intertwined.
Those who think it can't happen here should consider that four days before Mussolini became premier, he met with a group of industrialists and assured them that his aim "was to reestablish discipline within the factories and that no outlandish experiments .... would be carried out." In Friendly Fascism, Bertram Gross notes that Mussolini also won "the friendship, support or qualified approval" of the American ambassador, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Thomas Lamont, many newspapers and magazine
publishers, the majority of business journals, and quite a sprinkling of liberals, including some associated with both the Nation and The New Republic. "
Orwell understood fascism. One of the characteristics of his inner party, the ten percent who controlled the rest, was that there was no sexual or racial discrimination. He understood that ethnic eradication, while characteristic of Nazism, was not required for fascism. Even earlier, Aldous Huxley set up a similar non-discriminatory dystopia in Brave New World.
In fact, one of the characteristics of the modern propaganda state is the use of ethnic and sexual iconography to cover its tracks. Thus Richard Nixon was slurring Jews in Oval Office conversations even as he set a new record in their high-level appointments. And W.J. Clinton was called our first black president by Toni Morrison even as the government was sending young black males to prison in unprecedented numbers.
There is something else about fascism that we miss: it requires a modern, technocratic society. John Ralston Saul has written:
::: The Holocaust was the result of a perfectly rational argument -- given what reason had become -- that was self-justifying and hermetically sealed. There is, therefore, nothing surprising about the fact that the meeting called to decide on "the final solution" was a gathering mainly of senior ministerial representatives. Technocrats. Nor is it surprising that [the] Wansee Conference lasted only an hour -- one meeting among many for those present -- and turned entirely on the modalities for administering the solutions .... The massacre was indeed 'managed,' even 'well managed.' It had the clean efficiency of a Harvard case study :::
Marshall Rosenberg, who teaches non-violent communication, says that in reading psychological interviews with Nazi war criminals what struck him was not their abnormality, but that they used a language that denied choice: "should," "one must," "have to." For example, Adolph Eichmann was asked, "Was it difficult for you to send these tens of thousands of people their death?" Eichmann replied, "To tell you the truth, it was easy. Our language made it easy."
Asked to explain, Eichmann said, "My fellow officers and I coined our own name for our language. We called it amtssprache -- 'office talk.'" In office talk "you deny responsibility for your actions. So if anybody says, 'Why did you do it?' you say, 'I had to.' 'Why did you have to?' 'Superiors' orders. Company policy. It's the law.'"
Yet for all the words we have devoted to the Holocaust, go into almost any bookstore and you'll find far more works on how to manage, manipulate and control others - and how to use "office talk" -- than you will on how to practice the skills of a free citizen.
The most important lessons of the Holocaust are simply missed. Among these, as Richard Rubenstein has pointed out, is that it could only have been carried out by "an advanced political community with a highly trained, tightly disciplined police and civil service bureaucracy." In The Cunning of History, Rubenstein also finds uncomfortable parallels between the Nazis and their opponents, of which we are being now reminded with recent questions about the role of the Vatican and the Swiss during WWII. For example, a Hungarian Jewish emissary meets with Lord Moyne, the British High Commissioner in Egypt in 1944 and suggests that the Nazis might be willing to save one million Hungarian Jews in return for military supplies. Lord Moyne's reply: "What shall I do with those million Jews? Where shall I put them?"
Writes Rubenstein: "The British government was by no means adverse to the 'final solution' as long as the Germans did most of the work." For both countries, it had become a bureaucratic problem, one that Rubenstein suggests we understand "as the expression of some of the most profound tendencies of Western civilization in the 20th century."How many school children are taught that, worldwide, wars in the past
century killed somewhere between 100 and 150 million people? In World War I alone the death toll was around ten million. All this, including the Holocaust, was driven by a culture of modernity that so changed the power of institutions over the individual that the latter would become what Erich Fromm called homo mechanicus, "attracted to all that is mechanical and inclined against all that is alive." Becoming, in fact, a
part of the machinery -- willing to kill or to die just to keep it running.
Thus, with Auschwitz-like efficiency, over 6,000 people perished every day during World War I for 1,500 days. Rubenstein recounts that on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British lost 60,000 men and half of the officers assigned to them. But the bureaucratic internal logic of the war did not falter at all; over the next six months, more than a million British, French and German soldiers would lose their
lives. The total British advance: six miles. No one in that war was a person anymore.
Milton Mayer, a Jewish journalist, who wrote a book about ordinary
Nazis, They Thought They Were Free, concluded:
::: Now I see a little better how Nazism overcame Germany ~ It was what most Germans wanted -- or, under pressure of combined reality and illusion, came to want. They wanted it; they got it; and they liked it. I came back home a little afraid for my country, afraid of what it might want, and get, and like, under pressure of combined reality and illusions. I felt -- and feel -- that it was not German Man that I had
met, but Man. He happened to be in Germany under certain conditions. He might be here, under certain conditions. He might, under certain conditions, be I. :::
OPEN LETTER TO KANSAS SCHOOL BOARD
I am writing you with much concern after I read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design to be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design..
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
It is for this reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I'm sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don't understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease. . .
We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.
Sincerely Yours,
Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.
http://www.venganza.org/
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
It is for this reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I'm sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don't understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10,000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5,730 years. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease. . .
We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.
Sincerely Yours,
Bobby Henderson, concerned citizen.
http://www.venganza.org/
Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press Writer
Cities may bulldoze people's homes to make way for shopping malls or other private development, a divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday, giving local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.
In a scathing dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the decision bowed to the rich and powerful at the expense of middle-class Americans.
The 5-4 decision means that homeowners will have more limited rights. Still, legal experts said they didn't expect a rush to claim homes.
"The message of the case to cities is yes, you can use eminent domain, but you better be careful and conduct hearings," said Thomas Merrill, a Columbia law professor specializing in property rights.
The closely watched case involving New London, Conn., homeowners was one of six decisions issued Thursday as the court neared the end of its term. The justices are scheduled to release their final six rulings, including one on the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on public property, on Monday.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, said New London could pursue private development under the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property if the land is for public use, since the project the city has in mind promises to bring more jobs and revenue.
"Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government," Stevens wrote, adding that local officials are better positioned than federal judges to decide what's best for a community.
He was joined in his opinion by other members of the court's liberal wing — David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, as well as Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy, in noting that states are free to pass additional protections if they see fit.
The four-member liberal bloc typically has favored greater deference to cities, which historically have used the takings power for urban renewal projects.
At least eight states — Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington — forbid the use of eminent domain for economic development unless it is to eliminate blight. Other states either expressly allow a taking for private economic purposes or have not spoken clearly to the question.
In dissent, O'Connor criticized the majority for abandoning the conservative principle of individual property rights and handing "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled.
"The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," O'Connor wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."
Connecticut resident Susette Kelo and others in the lawsuit pledged to continue their fight. Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.
"It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would keep fighting the bulldozers in his working-class neighborhood. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."
But Connecticut state Rep. Ernest Hewett, who as a city council member approved the development, said, "I am charged with doing what's best for the 26,000 people that live in New London. That to me was enacting the eminent domain process designed to revitalize a city ... with nowhere to go."
New London once was a center for the whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.
City officials envision a commercial development including a riverfront hotel, health club and offices that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.
New London was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.
Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move at any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.
The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo in New London, Conn. and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn. contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
The ruling in Kelo v. New London is available at:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/050623kelo.pdf
Cities may bulldoze people's homes to make way for shopping malls or other private development, a divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday, giving local governments broad power to seize private property to generate tax revenue.
In a scathing dissent, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said the decision bowed to the rich and powerful at the expense of middle-class Americans.
The 5-4 decision means that homeowners will have more limited rights. Still, legal experts said they didn't expect a rush to claim homes.
"The message of the case to cities is yes, you can use eminent domain, but you better be careful and conduct hearings," said Thomas Merrill, a Columbia law professor specializing in property rights.
The closely watched case involving New London, Conn., homeowners was one of six decisions issued Thursday as the court neared the end of its term. The justices are scheduled to release their final six rulings, including one on the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays on public property, on Monday.
Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, said New London could pursue private development under the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property if the land is for public use, since the project the city has in mind promises to bring more jobs and revenue.
"Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government," Stevens wrote, adding that local officials are better positioned than federal judges to decide what's best for a community.
He was joined in his opinion by other members of the court's liberal wing — David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, as well as Reagan appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy, in noting that states are free to pass additional protections if they see fit.
The four-member liberal bloc typically has favored greater deference to cities, which historically have used the takings power for urban renewal projects.
At least eight states — Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, South Carolina and Washington — forbid the use of eminent domain for economic development unless it is to eliminate blight. Other states either expressly allow a taking for private economic purposes or have not spoken clearly to the question.
In dissent, O'Connor criticized the majority for abandoning the conservative principle of individual property rights and handing "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled.
"The specter of condemnation hangs over all property," O'Connor wrote. "Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."
Connecticut resident Susette Kelo and others in the lawsuit pledged to continue their fight. Nationwide, more than 10,000 properties were threatened or condemned in recent years, according to the Institute for Justice, a Washington public interest law firm representing the New London homeowners.
"It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would keep fighting the bulldozers in his working-class neighborhood. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."
But Connecticut state Rep. Ernest Hewett, who as a city council member approved the development, said, "I am charged with doing what's best for the 26,000 people that live in New London. That to me was enacting the eminent domain process designed to revitalize a city ... with nowhere to go."
New London once was a center for the whaling industry and later became a manufacturing hub. More recently the city has suffered the kind of economic woes afflicting urban areas across the country, with losses of residents and jobs.
City officials envision a commercial development including a riverfront hotel, health club and offices that would attract tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp. research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.
New London was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, which argued that a city's eminent domain power was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects such Baltimore's Inner Harbor and Kansas City's Kansas Speedway.
Under the ruling, residents still will be entitled to "just compensation" for their homes as provided under the Fifth Amendment. However, Kelo and the other homeowners had refused to move at any price, calling it an unjustified taking of their property.
The case is Kelo et al v. City of New London, 04-108.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo in New London, Conn. and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn. contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
The ruling in Kelo v. New London is available at:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/scotus/050623kelo.pdf
The World Can't Wait
Thoughts on Driving Out the Bush Regime
by Sunsara Taylor
Revolution #007, June 26, 2005, posted at revcom.us
Every day I think of Dilawar. I picture his 22-year-old body chained to the ceiling of a U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan as the seconds stretched on into days until finally he couldn't wait any longer. Neither can we.
As men are blindfolded and dragged from their homes in Iraq, as Arabs and Muslims are rounded up and detained in the U.S. without charges, and as youth from South Central to the South Bronx are imprisoned in record numbers, brutalized by police, and targetted for correction by Laura Bush: the world can't wait.
As villages are emptied of people by AIDS in Africa and China, as families in the ghettos and farmlands of the U.S. lose children in a war based on lies, and as immigrants are hunted by racist vigilantes on the Mexican border: the world can't wait.
As religious fundamentalism threatens to enslave women, treating them like incubators and denying them the right to make the most intimate and profound decisions about whether or not to have a child, as gay couples are denied marriage and their children are harassed, as the rule of law is replaced by religious dogma and the rule of the Bush regime, and as science itself is suppressed at great risk to the planet: the world can't wait.
The world can't wait. The people need to drive out the Bush Regime
Now I know a lot of readers are thinking 'if only we could.' and I can just see some people shaking their heads and saying 'that communist girl has really gone over the edge this time.' But being a reality-based girl— who is coming from a scientific place in terms of how we are going to emancipate all of humanity—I have some reality-based ideas on how this could be possible.
And one of the most important things people need to do in order to even imagine the possibility of accomplishing such a monumental task is to break out of the confines of the political-process-as-usual.
Everyone who does not want to live in the "world according to Bush" needs to break out of the dynamic where the terms and the issues and the leaders are defined and limited by various representatives and defenders of this bloodsucking system. And progressive people and oppressed people really need to break out of the confines of the institutions, organizations, and political thinking dominated by the Democratic
Party.
Frankly, too many people are suffering from the disease of looking-for-leadership-in-all-the-wrong-places. And as a result, too many people who want to change the world remain locked in a dynamic that stifles their ability to really see a whole different world, squanders their energies, and channels imagination into dead-end paths of conciliation with intolerable injustices.
(Article here...)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is posted in English and Spanish on
Revolution Online
http://revcom.us
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497
by Sunsara Taylor
Revolution #007, June 26, 2005, posted at revcom.us
Every day I think of Dilawar. I picture his 22-year-old body chained to the ceiling of a U.S. military prison in Bagram, Afghanistan as the seconds stretched on into days until finally he couldn't wait any longer. Neither can we.
As men are blindfolded and dragged from their homes in Iraq, as Arabs and Muslims are rounded up and detained in the U.S. without charges, and as youth from South Central to the South Bronx are imprisoned in record numbers, brutalized by police, and targetted for correction by Laura Bush: the world can't wait.
As villages are emptied of people by AIDS in Africa and China, as families in the ghettos and farmlands of the U.S. lose children in a war based on lies, and as immigrants are hunted by racist vigilantes on the Mexican border: the world can't wait.
As religious fundamentalism threatens to enslave women, treating them like incubators and denying them the right to make the most intimate and profound decisions about whether or not to have a child, as gay couples are denied marriage and their children are harassed, as the rule of law is replaced by religious dogma and the rule of the Bush regime, and as science itself is suppressed at great risk to the planet: the world can't wait.
The world can't wait. The people need to drive out the Bush Regime
Now I know a lot of readers are thinking 'if only we could.' and I can just see some people shaking their heads and saying 'that communist girl has really gone over the edge this time.' But being a reality-based girl— who is coming from a scientific place in terms of how we are going to emancipate all of humanity—I have some reality-based ideas on how this could be possible.
And one of the most important things people need to do in order to even imagine the possibility of accomplishing such a monumental task is to break out of the confines of the political-process-as-usual.
Everyone who does not want to live in the "world according to Bush" needs to break out of the dynamic where the terms and the issues and the leaders are defined and limited by various representatives and defenders of this bloodsucking system. And progressive people and oppressed people really need to break out of the confines of the institutions, organizations, and political thinking dominated by the Democratic
Party.
Frankly, too many people are suffering from the disease of looking-for-leadership-in-all-the-wrong-places. And as a result, too many people who want to change the world remain locked in a dynamic that stifles their ability to really see a whole different world, squanders their energies, and channels imagination into dead-end paths of conciliation with intolerable injustices.
(Article here...)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is posted in English and Spanish on
Revolution Online
http://revcom.us
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497
Final Session of the WTI
The Istanbul session of the WTI will summarize and present further
testimony on the illegality and criminal violations in the U.S. pretexts
for and conduct of this war.
Expert opinion, witness testimony, video and image evidence will address:
- The torture of prisoners
- The unlawful imprisonment of Iraqi civilians without charges or
legal defense;
- The use and health risks of depleted uranium weapons;
- The effects of the war on Iraq's infrastructure, including U.S.
mandated privatization and sale of Iraq's industries.
- The destruction of Iraqi cultural institutions and the liability of
the invaders in international law for failing to protect these
treasures of humanity.
Historical Broadcasts
----------------------
Four hour-long programs from the final WTI session will broadcast on Free Speech TV via a satellite uplink provided by longtime partner Deep Dish TV. Don't miss this unique programming.
Program One:
Friday June 24, 8 PM - 9 PM (ET)
Saturday June 25, Midnight - 1 AM (ET)
Program Two:
Saturday June 25, 8 PM - 9 PM (ET)
Sunday June 26, Midnight - 1 AM (ET)
Program Three:
Sunday June 26, 10 PM - 11 PM (ET)
Monday June 27, Midnight - 1 AM (ET)
Program Four:
Monday June 27, 8 PM - 9 PM (ET)
Tuesday June 28, 2 AM - 3 AM (ET)
** Programs will also stream on the Internet @
http://www.worldtribunal.org and http://www.deepdishtv.org
testimony on the illegality and criminal violations in the U.S. pretexts
for and conduct of this war.
"The World Tribunal on Iraq is collecting a definitive body of evidence on the illegality of the invasion and occupation that will be indispensable to the global anti-war movement, to conscientious objectors, and to students of history for years to come. Americans who oppose the war have a duty to support and participate in this crucial international effort to stand up to U.S. government lawlessness and impunity."
-- Naomi Klein
Expert opinion, witness testimony, video and image evidence will address:
- The torture of prisoners
- The unlawful imprisonment of Iraqi civilians without charges or
legal defense;
- The use and health risks of depleted uranium weapons;
- The effects of the war on Iraq's infrastructure, including U.S.
mandated privatization and sale of Iraq's industries.
- The destruction of Iraqi cultural institutions and the liability of
the invaders in international law for failing to protect these
treasures of humanity.
Historical Broadcasts
----------------------
Four hour-long programs from the final WTI session will broadcast on Free Speech TV via a satellite uplink provided by longtime partner Deep Dish TV. Don't miss this unique programming.
Program One:
Friday June 24, 8 PM - 9 PM (ET)
Saturday June 25, Midnight - 1 AM (ET)
Program Two:
Saturday June 25, 8 PM - 9 PM (ET)
Sunday June 26, Midnight - 1 AM (ET)
Program Three:
Sunday June 26, 10 PM - 11 PM (ET)
Monday June 27, Midnight - 1 AM (ET)
Program Four:
Monday June 27, 8 PM - 9 PM (ET)
Tuesday June 28, 2 AM - 3 AM (ET)
** Programs will also stream on the Internet @
http://www.worldtribunal.org and http://www.deepdishtv.org
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Deoxy Is Back!
Dmitri has finally gotten the Deoxy.org servers back up and running! Link at the right.
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