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By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / March 4, 2010
After a recent talk about the struggle for social justice and the threats to the ecosystem, a student lingered, waiting to talk to me alone, as if he had something to confess.
“I feel so overwhelmed,” he finally said, wondering aloud if political organizing could really make a difference. The young man said he often felt depressed, not about the circumstances of his own life but about the possibilities for change. Finally, he looked at me and asked, “Once you see what’s happening — I mean really see it — how are you supposed to act like everything is going to be OK?”
I hear such concerns often, from young and older people alike. Perhaps the questions are rationalizations for political inaction for some people, attempts to persuade themselves that there’s no reason to join left/progressive movements. But most of the people I meet who struggle with this question are activists, engaged in all kinds of worthy projects. They aren’t looking for a reason to drop out but are trying to face honestly the state of the world. They want to stay engaged but recognize the depth of multiple crises — economic, political, cultural, and ecological.
Some organizers respond to such concerns with upbeat assurances that if we just get more people on board and work a little bit harder, the problems will be solved — if not tomorrow, certainly within some reasonable period of time. I used to say things like that, but now I think it’s more honest, and potentially effective, to acknowledge how massive the obstacles that need to be overcome really are.
We must not only recognize that the world’s resources are distributed in a profoundly unjust way and the systems in which we live are fundamentally unsustainable ecologically, but also understand there’s no guarantee that this state of affairs can be reversed or even substantially slowed down. There are, in fact, lots of reasons to suspect that many of our fundamental problems have no solutions, at least no solutions in any framework we currently understand.
Some have challenged me: Why give in to such despair? My response: If honest emotional responses based on rational assessments lead committed activists to feel despair, why try to bury that? It’s better to grapple with those emotions and assessments than to respond with empty platitudes.
The damage to the ecosystem may mean that a large-scale human presence on the planet cannot continue much longer. The obsession with self-interest cultivated by capitalism may be so deeply woven into the fabric of contemporary identity that real solidarity in affluent societies is no longer possible. The deskilling and dependency that comes with a high-energy/high-technology society has eroded crucial traditional skills. Mass-media corporations have eroticized violence and commodified intimacy at an unprecedented level, globally.
None of this is crazy apocalypticism, but rather a sober assessment of the reality around us. Rather than deny the despair that flows from that assessment, we need to find a way to deal with it.
When I got home from that speaking engagement, I re-read an interview I conducted with lifelong radical activist Abe Osheroff, who was the subject of a documentary film I produced. His reflections on these subjects, excerpted below, have helped me struggle with my own despair. In my conversations with Osheroff, he never looked away from these difficult subjects, and he also never abandoned his commitment to politics, right up to this death at the age of 92.
Robert Jensen: I’ve heard you use the term “long-distance runner” before. Is that the key — the notion that we have to be in it for the long haul and not expect things to change dramatically all at once?
Abe Osheroff: Not the long haul — the endless haul.
RJ: What’s the difference between long and endless?
AO: Oh yeah, there’s a difference. We will never win the fight. We will influence the players. We may be able to make life better in many ways. We will blunt the shit that the government and the corporations throw at us. But we’ll always be coping with things.
My view is that there’s no destination for the train I’m on. No destination, just a direction. No final station on that train. There’s no final destination, no socialist society where we will all be able to sit back and have a wonderful life. Bullshit!
RJ: No utopias.
AO: Nowhere near utopia. In fact, we’ll never get completely out of hell. But we can make some progress. In my lifetime, with all of its limitations, the movement has achieved some incredible things.
Forty-some years ago it was still possible to hang a black person in Holmes County, Mississippi, and not get arrested. Right where I worked, the year previous, they hung a black person in public, with half of the fucking county eating box lunches and watching it. We’ve come a long way, in many ways.
Women? Whatever the limitations they face, women have made a lot of progress in this country. Gay people? They have had their defeats, their ups and downs, but with successes, too. On all these things, at times the train breaks down, somebody fucks up the tracks, but it’ll get back on the track and go on. There’s no way in the world you can stop it.
In this country, one of the biggest problems we have as leftists is that there are so many strong reasons for not being an activist, in the sense that it’s possible for people — even if they’re mediocre, but if they’re aggressive enough — to make a good life in this country. It’s the easiest country in the world to become a millionaire.
On the plus side, it’s also the easiest country to be a radical. The potential penalties are very small. I have put in less than six months jail time in a whole lifetime of radical activism in this country. I would have been dead 30 times over in 20 countries I can think of.
RJ: So, we have this affluent country in which it’s easy to avoid political engagement and obligation and most people are afraid of any risk. It’s also a country in which people — whatever their politics — are used to instant gratification. Then you come along and talk about a direction, not a destination, and the endless haul. Do you find it hard to ask people to be hopeful?
AO: I talk to people about getting rid of hope and faith. And the strange effect of it is that it makes them more hopeful. I don’t deprive them of that if that’s what they need at that stage of their development. But personally, I’m not hopeful because I think hope is a kind of religion, and religions don’t work.
If you’re hopeful you’re going to suffer disappointments, whether it’s politics or your personal life. You can care about things, you can want things to happen, you can work to make things happen without being hopeful. The way I guarantee not being too disappointed is to not put too much hope onto things.
Take this conversation between you and me, for example. Sure, I hope that we’ll get something out of it. I want something to come out of it because I don’t have a lot of energy these days and I’m careful about how I spend it. But if this interaction were a total waste, I wouldn’t be upset very much. All that said, sometimes I wish I could be more hopeful. Sometimes I miss that.
RJ: Why is that?
AO: Because hope is comfortable. Because sometimes the way I think makes me very lonely, a kind of intellectual loneliness.
RJ: I use these terms differently. I make a distinction, as have others over the years, between optimism and hope. I’m not optimistic. If you ask me whether I think that U.S. economy is going to be fundamentally fairer in a year, I would say no. I’m not optimistic about that, because it’s a question of rational assessment, and things seem to be going the other way in the short term.
But I think there’s a way to use the term “hope” that taps into our belief that — in that endless haul you talk about — humans have the capacity to be decent. I suppose it’s about having reasonable expectations, which is what you are talking about. I’m just using different words, perhaps.
AO: Yea, it may be a difference in how we use the same terms. Sometimes people I deal with describe me as cynical. I tell them, “Where do you come up with that shit? Cynicism normally leads to inactivity. I’m 14 times more active than you are. You don’t do shit, and you’re labeling me cynical? If anybody’s fucking cynical, it’s you.”
Those people have yielded to society’s bullshit, and I think I’ve refused to yield. I’m not optimistic, and I’m not pessimistic. I’m none of those things. I’m me — learning, exploring, and, fortunately, along the way I discovered a way of living that is very gratifying. Let’s start with that. I live a gratifying life. I ask people if they want to live one. If they do, I’ll tell them some ideas on how it can be done.
[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can also be found here.]
The transcript of the complete interview with Osheroff is online at Third Coast Activist. The documentary “Abe Osheroff: One foot in the grave, the other still dancing,” has just been released by the Media Education Foundation at a special price of $19.95. To order, go here. For more information on Osheroff, visit abeosheroff.org.
Also see:
By Tom Hayden / The Rag Blog / March 3, 2010
Was it too good to be true? In February at Camp Lejeune, our new President Barack Obama surprised all observers by pledging to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012, in accord with a pact secretly negotiated at the end of the Bush era. Previously, Obama was promising to withdraw all combat troops, leaving a “residual force” dominating Iraq for years.
Obama has restated his commitment to the full withdrawal on several occasions. But heavy pressure is building to make the president drop his commitment.
The most ominous sign of the gathering campaign to make Obama cave in came in a February 24 op-ed piece in the New York Times by Thomas Ricks, the pre-eminent mainstream historian of the war. Given the political gridlock and growing turbulence in Iraq, Ricks says that breaking his campaign promise is the “best course” for Obama to pursue.
Ricks says “it would be best to let [read: pressure] Iraqi leaders to make the first public move to re-open the status of forces agreement” under which U.S. combat troops will soon be departing.
“As a longtime critic of the American invasion of Iraq, I am not happy about advocating a continued military presence there,” Ricks writes. Perhaps he is forgetting his 2009 book celebrating Gen. David Petraeus, The Gamble, in which Ricks predicted that Obama would have to break his vow to remove all combat troops to avoid “abandoning Iraq.” Or his prediction in the same book that the U.S. is only “halfway through” the Iraq War.
Ricks’ epilogue was titled “The Long War,” making him one of the earliest warrior-journalists to embrace the notion of a 50-80 year war projected by top counterinsurgency advisers to Petraeus and the Pentagon.
Everyone including Ricks agrees that the American public is completely soured on the Iraq War. Just this week a federal agency noted that the $53 billion spent on Iraq reconstruction, the largest aid effort since the Marshall Plan, has been squandered. [NYT, Feb. 22, 2010]
That doesn’t phase our ideological fanatics who believe in permanent war until all their ideological fanatics are dead.
No matter that both Iraq and Afghanistan are trillion-dollar wars and, according to the latest federal budget analysis, there is “virtually no room for domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors.” The neo-conservative stealth strategy of destroying government programs by “strangling the baby in the bathtub” (the phrase of Grover Norquist) is working.
The reason U.S. military combat may continue in Iraq is that the Pentagon has not won the war. On the one hand, the U.S. has installed a brutal authoritarian Shiite-dominated coalition in power in Baghdad, one closely aligned with the Pentagon’s strategic enemies in Iran. That’s not a victory. That same Shiite coalition has used its power to purge the minority Sunni candidates from running in the elections scheduled for next month. Gen. Ray Odierno recently stated the obvious, that the key Iraqi politicians purging the Sunni candidates “clearly are influenced by Iran.” [NYT, Feb. 17, 2010]
Not surprisingly, the top Iraqi blocking Sunni participation, according to Gen. Odiorno, is the same Ahmed Chalabi who conspired with the neocons to pass along false information leading to the 2003 invasion.
These events may drive the Sunni community to revive its insurgency, which was contained by U.S. funding of the “Awakening” movement and promises of protection. The return of insurgency would mean civil war. The alternative may be more likely, a demand from the Sunnis that their former enemies, the Americans, stay in Iraq to protect them from the Shiites. This scenario would be in accord with the doctrine advocated by Petraeus advisor Stephen Biddle [see Foreign Affairs, March-April 2006]. Divide and conquer may succeed.
What are the chances Obama will keep to his commitment? At this point, the most likely withdrawal we can expect from the President is not from Iraq but from his previous commitment. How can he politically succeed in withdrawing against warnings from all sides that chaos and bloodshed will be the result? The Long War advocates have him where they want him.
The peace movement may protest, and public opinion may be unenthusiastic, but cannot be counted on to stop this Long War plan for Iraq if Obama caves. Last month there were only five American deaths in Iraq; for 2009, the count was 149 [compared to 822 in 2006].
If renewed American intervention cannot be stopped, neither can a reckoning down the road, however. The cost of occupation is more than a fiscal one. A permanent American occupation of Iraq will be like a giant breeder reactor generating deadly and unpredictable opposition from Iraqi nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism for years to come.
[A political activist for more than four decades, Tom Hayden is director of the Peace and Justice Resource Center . A founder of SDS and a former California State Senator, Hayden is the author of The Long Sixties (Paradigm, 2009).]
Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog
By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / March 3, 2010
With considerable concentration I endured the ennui and was able to watch much of the recent TV “debate” on health care. I must admit that save for the President and a few Democratic Congress-folks, the Republicans were much better choreographed and were able to impart their “message” with more vigor and zest. A message directed largely at the “independent” or swing voters who are generally the least informed and most detached part of the electorate,
These are the folks that our TV commentators would have us believe live with a civics textbook in one hand and a copy of the Constitution in the other. When I hear the likes of Wolf Blitzer work under this assumption I am reminded of the “good Germans” of 1932-1944 who were not imbued with Nazi doctrine or anti-Semitism but periodically read Dr. Goebbels’ newspapers, watched Leni Reifstahl’s propaganda films, thumped their beer mugs and sang the Horst Wessel Song at Octoberfest — and lived in fear, terrified that the Poles would attack them from the east.
These people, moved by unemployment and uncertainty, were only too glad to go to war in 1939 when, according to Dr. Goebbels, the Poles had attacked German border posts and killed several small garrisons manning these posts.
At a recent upscale cocktail party full of professional and executive types, I was chatting with a local business leader, but unfortunately allowed the conversation to devolve into a discussion of Social Darwinism. He became visibly angry when I mentioned the U.S.A.’s 700-plus military bases around the world. He took great umbrage, asking me where I had gotten such an unpatriotic and absurd idea.
I referenced Chalmers Johnson’s book The Sorrows of Empire, and also suggested he research the question on Google. He responded by muttering something about “darned liberals” and removed himself to more cordial surroundings. It is people like this gentleman, along with the tea-baggers, who proudly carry absurd signs and write anonymous angry letters, lacking in facts, to various publications. The inclination is to become upset with such persons, but perhaps pity would be more appropriate.
Returning to The Blair House seance, and the Republican response, I was reminded of a pocket-sized volume, by Dr. Harry G. Frankfurt, a retired moral philosopher at Princeton University. It’s title: On Bullshit. The opening paragraph:
One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit, Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomena has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.
The remaining 67 pages have to do with the difference between bullshit and out and out lying, or the purposeful spreading of deceptive misinformation. All who are students of the Republican spin machine should avail themselves of Dr. Frankfurt’s publication.
One of my first observations, as a retired physician, was that three of the Republican attendees were physicians. All three of these elected representatives were from the high-paid surgical specialties. They generally defended the status quo.
One of the great concerns that face this country, and I have alluded to this in prior Rag Blog articles, is the fact that the United States is greatly lacking in primary care physicians — internists, pediatricians, and general practitioners. Doctors in these fields are not only in short supply, but are also underpaid, probably making 10% net of what our physician Congresspersons took home before becoming politicians.
Not once did the Republican doctors suggest the need for government subsidy to train more primary care physicians, nor did they rise to the defense of these doctors who are headed for a 12% reduction of their income under the current Medicare provisions, something that the American College of Physicians has repeatedly warned us about. If we do not train more primary care doctors and pay them adequately, those on Medicare will soon have great trouble finding a physician. This is a legitimate fear. (Forget the ridiculous Republican contention that the Democrats intend to cut funding for Medicare benefits.)
Decent health care legislation will decrease the excessive profits made by private insurance companies for underwriting Medicare Advantage programs, will phase out the terrible drain on the Medicare Trust Fund produced by the Medicare Part D program, and will provide adequate policing of fraud and deception in the administration of the program, thus helping to fund the present Medicare program.
I would suggest that holders of Medicare Advantage polices ask their providers this question: “If I am seriously ill, and want to make an appointment at the Mayo Clinic, will you pay for it?” My regular Medicare will not interfere with my choices, but when my late wife had a far advanced cancer, when we were under Medicare Advantage, and wished to go to the Sloan-Kettering Clinic, we were informed that it was “out of area”; hence, we paid Sloan-Kettering ourselves.
Unfortunately, neither the President nor any of the Senators chose to promote the need for a “public option,” an omission that should greatly concern all of us, since single payer, or Medicare for All, has been ruled out. There was some impetus given to including the Health Insurance Cartel under anti-trust law — a must if we are to control prices (and without price control the entire exercise is futile). It should be noted that the House has now passed this legislation with Republican support.
There appeared to be unanimity of opinion, even with some Republican assent, that there should be insurance available for those with pre-existing conditions, and that the insurance companies should be banned from the capricious policy of dropping of an insured individual when he/she becomes ill. The cost differential to those with pre-existing conditions was not addressed. The matter of “mandates” the purchase of insurance was left open. I was initially opposed to the idea of mandates; however, I now realize the need it for spreading the pool of the insured — if it is administered with foresight.
The matter of taxes to finance the program was addressed, but far from settled. I personally favor the House plan to increases taxes on the upper 1% of the wealthy, rather than taxing the insurance benefits of the middle class. (A year ago I learned about a vault in a Swiss bank that collapsed under the weight of gold bullion stored there by the American well-to-do during the financial crash of 2008.)
Nothing was even mentioned regarding the excessive salaries and bonuses of the insurance and pharmaceutical CEOs or the billion dollars a year added to our prescription drug prices by the money spent on TV advertising for prescription drugs. The Republicans still blabber about “tax-deductible health care savings accounts,” which would be great for those with six figure salaries.
There was some discussion about those forced to buy cheaper insurance having a $3,000-5,000 deductible and thus, though insured, being unable to afford routine medical care. There was passing mention of the fact that under many insurance policies the insurer, rather than the physician, determines how long a seriously ill person can stay in a hospital. Little concern was expressed about the fact that much of the Senate Bill would really not become active for 3-4 years.
The malpractice bogeyman was repeatedly raised by the Republicans, though costs stemming from malpractice suits affect less than one third of one per cent of current medical care. Granted this may be a minor factor in overall costs; however, I believe that it is an issue that should be legislated separately — taking into account the absurd contingency system of payment of lawyers in the United States, the fact that the malpractice insurance companies are not covered under antitrust laws, and that there should be much better surveillance of physician disregard for conscientious practice patterns. Perhaps we should take a look at the uncontroversial Canadian system of malpractice insurance.
At the end of the debate I was reminded of a paragraph in Steven Hill’s great book Europe’s Promise. He tells us that
Russell Shorto, an American writer living in Amsterdam, reporting that when he lived in the U.S. with his family of four, he paid about $1400 a month for a policy that didn’t include dental care and was rife with co-pays, deductibles, and exemptions of coverage. A similar Dutch policy, by contrast, has cost him about $390 per month with no co-pays, and included dental coverage; about 90% of the costs of his daughter’s dental braces was covered.”
The Netherlands does not have “socialized medicine”; all citizens, who are required to participate, are covered by private, nonprofit insurance. Obviously, if a nation has a will, a realistic program can be worked out — a program that does not require 2,000 pages of legislation. HR 676 — which has been largely ignored by Congress even though is is backed by the majority of physicians, nurses, health care professionals, and union members — is included in only 30 pages of legislation.
Asclepois, from the Medicare Rights Center, is now available on Twitter, and you can sign up for the newsletter here. Current articles report that health reform will improve Medicare drug coverage, and that health reform will strengthen Medicare’s financial outlook as well as making Medicare more affordable and improving the quality of Medicare. This non-profit, Medicare consumer advocacy update is available weekly.
Finally, Jim Hightower reports that “Big Pharma Divorces Billy Tauzin,” the ex-congressman from Louisiana who guided the Bush Administration Medicare give-away to the insurance cartel and PhARMA via the Medicare Part D drug plan. Immediately after Tauzin did that for the Bush administration he was hired as a lobbyist for the Pharmaceutical Industry at $2 million per year.
But poor Billy cut a deal with the Obama White House that cost him his job.
[Dr. Stephen R. Keister, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, lives in Erie, PA. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform.]
By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / March 3, 2010
Part two: The AUC
CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — In my last posting, I examined the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia — Ejército del Pueblo, (FARC or FARC-EP; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — Peoples Army)/former Pastrana government’s three year attempt to find a road to peace in Colombia (1999-2002). Due to intransigence on both sides, no road was found and the peace process as far as the FARC was concerned ended on February 20, 2002.
On that day another “peace process” was already secretly in the works; this one very different from the FARC experience. The new process, between the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC, United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) and the government of Alvaro Uribe Velez, began even as the previous one with the FARC failed.
AUC was created as an umbrella organization of regional far-right paramilitary groups, each intended to protect different local economic, social, and political interests by fighting insurgents in their areas. The hallmark of right-wingers, no matter where they appear, is that they consider themselves patriots, and their deeds to be in the service of their country, however dastardly or illegal. Such was the position of the AUC.
Carlos Castaño was one such “patriot.” He was 16 years old when, in 1982, he and his older brother Fidel joined an army-sponsored “self-defense” group, Muerte a Secuestradores, (MAS, Death to Kidnappers). He received his military training from the Bombona Battalion of the Colombian Army (COLAR)’s 14th Brigade. (See my Rag Blog article on “false positives” about licensed murder in Colombia, for more about the 14th.)
MAS provided the model for many regional “self-defense” groups that proliferated around the country in the ’80s and ’90s, and that were transformed into a united national force, under Castaño’s command, in l997: AUC.
Carlos has been quoted as saying Uribe was the presidential candidate of AUC’s social support base. “Deep down, he’s the closest man to our philosophy,” Castaño said, adding that it was Uribe’s support, when a senator, for the right to self-defense from “guerrillas” that gave rise to paramilitarism in Colombia.
After 2000, the direction of the AUC began to change. Its leadership splintered, and the group reconstructed itself in an effort to eliminate, or at least control, smaller factions more involved in narco-trafficking than in ideology.
Fabio Ochoa Vasco, an extradited drug trafficking paramilitary member, testified that he witnessed a conversation between AUC’s leaders and supposed representatives of Uribe’s campaign before Uribe’s first Presidential election. “They talked about the peace process; they said anyone with problems with the U.S. could get involved. In another meeting, there were businessmen, landowners, and drug traffickers who [the AUC] thought could also be included, so they told them to get ready for the peace process.”
The demobilization process
In December 2002, four months after Uribe took office, the AUC accepted a cease-fire and entered into peace negotiations with Colombian authorities.
Since then, many militants have surrendered their weapons in exchange for amnesty from extradition on drug charges to the U.S. Official pardons or other specific solutions were provided, such as reduced prison sentences or meager economic assistance to families of AUC victims (demobilizing militias were supposed to make some “restitution” to victims), in exchange for testimony.
The government promised legal identity documents, a two-year subsidy, and educational and employment opportunities to anyone participating in the process who did not face pending legal charges. This lenient attitude, coupled with short sentences and minimal fines, demonstrated the “sweetheart” elements of the program.
Cacique Nutibara bloc
The first bloc to “demobilize” was the Cacique Nutivara Bloc (BCN), founded by Diego Murillo Bejarano, aka “Don Berna.”
In what many reporters described as a made-for-TV production, 855 fighters of the BCN piled weapons and ammunition on the floor of the Medellin convention center. The government touted the November 25, 2003, disarmament ceremony as a first step toward ending four decades of war. Many national and international human rights organizations, however, saw it as a confirmation that President Alvaro Uribe was, at best, guaranteeing the impunity of paramilitary groups, and at worst merely recycling them.
For example, before the BCN demobilization, the paramilitary force recruited young men for the sole purpose of participating in the demobilization ceremony, enticing them with promises of generous allowances and other benefits. Allegations of fraud were so widespread that then-High Commissioner for Peace in Colombia, Luis Carlos Restrepo, said that “they [BCN] stirred up street criminals 48 hours before [demobilization] and put them in the package of the demobilized.”
Officials from the Permanent Unit for Human Rights of the Medellin Personería (a government bureau) estimated, from surveys conducted in Medellin neighborhoods, that approximately 75% of those demobilized with the BCN were not really fighters. If this is accurate, then for all the hoopla, only 214 paracos were actually demobilized that day in Medellin.
Similarly, in Norte de Santander, in the Catatumbo Bloc demobilization, although most party members joined the process, people who had never belonged to the group also “demobilized,” seeking economic benefit. They approached the bloc’s chief, who said, “If you want to go, you can go.” In other regions, such as Nariño, paramilitary leaders mounted a supposed demobilization, but without key members who continued to exercise territorial control.
In mid-May 2004, the peace talks appeared to move forward as the government agreed to grant the AUC leaders and 400 of their bodyguards a 142 square mile (368 sq. km) safe haven in Santa Fe de Ralito, Córdoba, where, under Organization of American States (OAS) verification, further discussions would be held, for a (renewable) trial period of six months. As long the AUC leaders remained in this area, they would not be subject to arrest warrants or extradition to the U.S., where a few faced indictments for money and drug trafficking.
That condition, and most of the legal framework for the AUC’s safe haven, had been previously implemented for the much larger San Vicente del Caguán safe haven that former President Andrés Pastrana had granted FARC guerrillas during the 1998-2002 peace process, but there were differences:
Uribe double-cross
Back in Washington, G.W. Bush, himself a torturer and war criminal, thought the process being played out was too lenient to the AUC narco traffickers and, pressed by his right-wing drug warriors, told Uribe that extraditions would be necessary.
Many AUC leaders had already made “confessions” to avoid extradition and receive sweetheart jail terms. They saw this as the double-cross it was.
The court ruled that the extradition requests, all on charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, respected current Colombian law and therefore could proceed, once Uribe gave his approval. He did as his U.S. masters of war told him and signed off on the deal. In the meantime, the “demobilizations” continued.
Bloque Norte (Northern Bloc)
The most obvious case of fraud was with the demobilization of the Bloque Norte, which had a strong presence in the coastal departments of Cesar, Magdalena, Atlantico, and La Guajira.
Between March 8 and 10, 2006, 4,759 suspected members of the Northern Bloc demobilized along with their leader, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, a.k.a. “Jorge 40.” However, the next day, investigators from the Human Rights Unit of the Attorney General’s Office captured Edgar Ignacio Fierro Florez, also known as “Don Antonio,” a member of the Northern Bloc who had participated in the demobilization ceremonies, but continued directing the group’s operations. In the raid, investigators found computers and a huge number of electronic and print files on the Northern Bloc.
Computer files showed that the demobilization of the Bloque Norte was a massive fraud. According to reports, the files contained emails and conversations that allegedly involved Jorge 40. Those messages directed his lieutenants to recruit, from among the peasants and unemployed, as many people as possible to participate in the demobilization.
The messages included instructions on how to prepare these civilians for the demobilization ceremony, so they would know how to march and sing the anthem of the paramilitaries. Details such as where to get uniforms and instructions to guide the “demobilized” about questions prosecutors would ask, and how they should respond, were included.
For example, messages stress that these people should say that the bloc had no members in urban areas, although it was actually still operating in Barranquilla. One message says that Northern Bloc leaders had given a list of those to be demobilized to the Administrative Security Department (DAS) to determine whether any had criminal records and that DAS had confirmed none did. Other messages discussed which group members should demobilize in order to continue exerting control in key regions.
The Interamerican Human Rights section of the OAS, present at the demobilization of the Bloque Norte, expressed concern about the situation of fraud:
A number of people seeking to demobilize as combatants did not show the features of paracos. We were concerned about the small number of fighters (‘patrol’) compared to the number… claiming to be radio operators (‘radio sparks’), responsible for distributing food, or women responsible for domestic chores (‘washers’)… Repeatedly they said that they obey direct orders from the ‘maximum leader’ of the Bloque Norte, Jorge 40, keeping silent about… the… middle of the… structure, and that subtracted credibility from their statements.
The human rights organization’s fears became a reality when the BCN was implicated in a massacre on January 29, 2005, in San Carlos, Antioquia, in which seven persons, including two children, were killed, some 14 months after that bloc “demobilized.”
The massacre caused a rethinking of the demobilization process and sparked the initiation of the Justice and Peace Law of 2005. With the amendments of the Court, this law requires full and truthful confessions, states that reductions in sentences can be revoked if demobilized paramilitaries lie or violate various requirements, and does not set deadlines for investigations. The Court removed sections that would have allowed paramilitaries to serve their sentences outside prison and to count the time during which they were negotiating with the government as time served.
The vast majority of people who were then “demobilized” did so under this legislation, with special rulings for reductions in penalties for serious crimes. But most were simply seeking economic benefits and pardons for their participation in the group, in accordance with Act 782 of 2002 and Decree 128 of 2003. (See sidebar below.)
Until July 2007 the Colombian government interpreted Act 782 and Decree 128 as allowing it to grant pardons or halt prosecutions for the crime of conspiracy (the charge brought against most paramilitaries) and other related crimes, such as illegal arms possession.
Thus, the thousands of people involved in demobilization ceremonies only had to answer a series of questions from prosecutors; then they got pardons or the halting of criminal proceedings against them. They then joined rehabilitation programs that offered them stipends and other economic and social benefits, without their being subject to any more scrutiny by authorities.
The AUC included several groups not primarily focused on counter-insurgency, such as Don Berna’s outfit in Medellin that focused largely on controlling crime. The same is true of AUC’s Central Bolívar Bloc, led by Carlos Mario Jimenez Naranjo (“Macaco“); the South Libre Bloc, led by Rodrigo Perez Alzate (“Pablo Sevillano“); and the Pacific Bloc, run by Francisco Javier Zuluaga (“Gordolindo“).
After a cease fire was declared (now publicly admitted by the AUC and the government to be partial, resulting in a reduction but not cessation of killings), the Uribe government began talks with the AUC with the aim of eventually dismantling the organization and reintegrating its members into society.
The stated deadline for completing the demobilization process was originally December 2005, but was later extended to February 2006, then again to August 15, 2006, to be sure to include all the murderers. Between 2003 and February 2, 2006, about 17,000 of the AUC’s 20,000 fighters surrendered their weapons. After the last extension, the number climbed to 31,671 according to Human Rights Watch. This is more than triple the number estimated by the government to be involved before negotiations began.
And so ends the saga of a second peace process, and according to the Colombian government, the beginning of the end of AUC and paramilitarism there.
The extraditions, however, continue. In the early morning of May 13, 2008, 13 high-profile paramilitary leaders were taken from their jail cells in a surprise action by the Colombian government. According to Interior Minister Carlos Holguin, they had refused to comply with the Peace and Justice Law and were therefore extradited to the United States. Among them were Salvatore Mancuso, Don Berna, Jorge 40, Cuco Vanoy, and Diego Ruiz Arroyave (cousin of assassinated paramilitary leader Miguel Arroyave).
President Uribe said immediately afterwards that the U.S. had agreed to compensate the victims of the extradited paramilitary warlords with any international assets they might forfeit. The U.S. State Department said the U.S. courts can also help victims by sharing information on atrocities with Colombian authorities.
Can this really be true? Watch for the next posting: “The Resurgence.”
Legal framework of demobilization
Colombia’s Act 418 of 1997, as amended by Act 782 of 2002, stipulates that “the National Government may give the benefit of a pardon to citizens who have been convicted for acts constituting a political offense, when the armed group is outside the law, with which a peace process has gone forward and has demonstrated its willingness to rejoin civilian life.” (Art.50)
The same article stipulates that it is “not to apply the provisions of this title to those engaged in conduct involving atrocious acts of ferocity or barbarism, terrorism, kidnapping, genocide, murder committed outside combat, or placing the victim in a defenseless state.”
In addition, National Decree 128 of 2003, regulating Act 782 regarding the collective demobilization of paramilitaries, states that authorities “have the right to pardon, conditionally suspended execution of sentence, the termination of proceedings, preclusion of the instruction or inhibitory orders, depending on the state of the process, the demobilized who have been part of armed groups outside the law, for which the Operative Committee for the Surrender of Weapons, CODA, issued the certificate… ” (Art. 13)
From 1997 until 2007 the government thus operated on the theory that paraco crimes were political in nature and granted pardons under Act 418. Without these acts, under Act 782, political crimes were the only “unpardonable” crimes in Colombia. However, in July, 2007, the Supreme Court of Colombia ruled that the crimes of the paramilitaries were not “political crimes.”
The Court’s decision, while not specifically referring to Act 782, was contradictory to the government’s interpretation, which said that the paramilitary pardons were political offense pardons.
Instead of seizing this opportunity to restructure the process of demobilization and conduct more serious interviews and investigations of paraco crimes, President Uribe reacted to the ruling by accusing the Court of exercising an “ideological bias,” arguing that the Court’s independence of the was only “relative,” and that “all state institutions must cooperate for the good of the Nation.”
Administration officials said the ruling could derail the demobilization process, as approximately 19,000 people who had participated in demobilization ceremonies had not yet received pardons, and not allowing them this benefit would have a negative impact.
To avoid having to investigate demobilized people, in July 2009 the Colombian Congress amended the Criminal Code so that the Attorney General could use what is known as the “principle of opportunity” to halt investigations, or simply refuse to prosecute.
To achieve genuine and lasting demobilization of paramilitary groups, the government must focus on the sources of the paramilitaries’ power: drug trafficking and the property, persons, and entities that support them among the political and military elites.
However, due to the nominal retribution aspects of the demobilization process — the easy terms, the pitifully small amount of compensation paid to survivors of those murdered by the AUC, and the guarantees that if they confessed they would not be extradited to the U.S. — the integrity of the program was drawn into question.
Though its control over various geographic regions and its share of the narcotics industry appeared to dwindle, in actuality, the AUC still maintained significant control over the economic and political structures of Colombia. For example, AUC members were affiliated with various mayoral, gubernatorial, and council positions in important areas, thus leading to their well-documented claim to influence 30% of the Colombian Congress.
—md
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE
In the map above, the countries with universal health care are in blue. Those trying to get it are in green. Note that the United States proudly takes its place among the third-world countries of Central Asia, Africa, and parts of South America. We should be ashamed.
Private insurance:
Bound for extinction
By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / March 3, 2010
One of the things the Democrats were elected to do was to fix our badly broken health care system. It looks like they are going to fail to do that. They might wind up passing the anemic and pitiful Senate health care reform plan, but that falls far short of really reforming the health care system. It does little but continue the broken system we currently have with a few modest and mainly cosmetic changes.
One of the worst failures is to leave Americans with no choice except to purchase private health insurance. While this will guarantee huge profits for the large private insurance companies for some more years into the future, it is ultimately doomed to an ignoble failure. We are already beginning to see that these private companies just can’t do the job indefinitely. Consider the current situation with Wellpoint (whose subsidiary is Anthem Blue Cross of California).
Anthem Blue Cross is the company that recently announced it is raising most of its premiums by a whopping 39%. The Wellpoint CEO recently went before Congress and said they have to raise the premiums that much because, “One, people are getting older. Two, people are becoming unemployed, and if they’re healthy they’re dropping out of the insurance pool. Three, the cost of diagnostic testing is soaring.” She asked for government help.
But frankly, there is little the government can do for these problems (and the terrible Senate bill does nothing to solve them). The fact is that the jobless situation is going to be around for quite a while, because it was not only caused by the recession, but by outsourcing jobs which continues unabated. And of course, people are going to keep getting older and medical costs and testing will continue to get more expensive.
That means the private insurance companies will continue to raise the price of their premiums and cut the number of things those premiums will cover. I can remember that years ago a private insurance policy would cover virtually all medical costs. These days a person is lucky if their private insurance covers a significant part of the costs (and there are many medical procedures not covered at all because private insurance considers them too expensive).
With each rise in premium cost, more people are squeezed off the insurance rolls — thus making it necessary for the companies to again raise premium costs and further cut coverage. Soon we will be left with expensive private insurance policies that cover virtually nothing.
I believe the CEOs of the insurance companies know they can’t keep their spinning plates in the air indefinitely. They know that at sometime down the road their policies will become so expensive and cover so little that the health care system will implode. They just don’t care as long as they can continue getting windfall profits for as long as they can stretch this farce out.
Consider the following: Anthem Blue Cross brags that a woman can still get a private insurance policy for only $156 a month. That may sound good to some until they consider this policy has a $1500 deductible, and then only pays for 30% of most medical procedures and tests, makes the woman pay up to $500 a day for a hospital room, and doesn’t cover pregnancy or delivery costs at all. How good a policy is that?
Whether the Republicans and the private insurance companies want to admit it or not, the days are numbered for private insurance health care policies. In an effort to continue their profits, they will keep raising premiums and cutting coverage until they price themselves out of the marketplace. Then they will be replaced by a single-payer government health care system like other developed nations have.
It is not a question of whether we want it to happen — it has to happen. There is no other option. The Congress could have saved a lot of time, money, and heartache by passing a public insurance plan this year, but they’re going to blow it. So we’re going to get more years of insurance companies raising rates and denying coverage, of many more Americans going bankrupt, and millions more Americans dying because their insurance (if they have any) won’t pay for their treatment.
Teddy Roosevelt failed, Bill Clinton failed, and now Barack Obama has failed, but single-payer public insurance will come. If for no other reason, the economics of the situation demands it. The right-wingers and blue dogs need to get used to the idea. There is literally no alternative.
[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]
By Jonah Raskin / The Rag Blog / March 3, 2010
Google often seems to be all-powerful, and as omniscient as God himself — or the Goddess herself, as the case may be. But recently a court in Italy sentenced three Google executives to six months in prison for a video on Google that depicted students taunting and harassing an autistic kid. The Italian Judge, Oscar Magi, ruled that the video was an invasion of the privacy of the kid who did not want his image transmitted around the globe.
Google officials have been irate — even though the sentences were suspended; not surprisingly they see the ruling as a threat to Google’s aim to operate freely, globally, without adhering to particular customs, cultures, and laws. In short, like the British Empire of old, Google doesn’t want the sun ever to set on its dominions, or for colonial territories to rebel against its world-wide hegemony. Not surprisingly, Google lawyers, and some American law professors in the United States, have viewed the decision by the Italian court as a victory of European ideas of privacy against American ideas of privacy and freedom of speech.
But wait a minute! What American ideas about privacy? And what about the actual respect for the right of privacy in the USA and not simply the ideals? Yes, two Harvard Law Professors wrote in 1890 a famous article entitled “The Right to Privacy” in which they complained that photographers were taking pictures of rich and famous people, and that the servants of the ruling classes were going to the media with tales of their debauched bosses. They demanded the “right to privacy” — and incidentally it was the privacy of prosperous Bostonians they had in mind, not the poor Irish immigrants arriving in the harbor.
Now, 110 years later, there’s probably less actual privacy in the United States than when Samuel Warren and Louis D. Brandeis wrote “The Right to Privacy.” There is also probably less privacy now in the United States than in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was written, and, while the word privacy is not in the Bill of Rights, it is inherent in the First, the Fourth, and the Fifth Amendments.
Freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of expression are connected inherently to the right to privacy — to have and to enjoy one’s own free thoughts. During the investigations into communism and communists in the 1950s, subpoenaed witnesses often invoked the First Amendment when they declined to answer questions about their political beliefs and affiliations.Tthe First Amendment and the Right to Privacy might be thought of as two sides of the same coin — both aimed at protecting the citizens against arbitrary power whatever its source.
So, one might ask, why is there less privacy today than in 1890 or 1790. First, because of expanded government power, recently augmented in the Patriot Act that gives the government the right to monitor phone calls, and emails, and maintain surveillance of citizens –- all in the name of the war on terrorists and terrorism. There are more “unreasonable searches and seizures” today than there were in 1890. Police power to search and seize is almost though not entirely unlimited.
Second, there is less privacy now because of the power of corporations –- linked to computers and the Internet –- that monitor what consumers buy and sell, where they shop, and how much they spend –- with the aim of branding them and persuading them to spend more money. Marketplace privacy is largely a thing of the past.
Third, there is less privacy today than 100 or so years ago, because Americans are tattling on their friends, their neighbors, their lovers, and their spouses. They’re tattling on Facebook and they’re twittering, too, and for the moment there does not seem any way to curtain those invasions of privacy. As a culture we are outing ourselves. We are outing our own brothers, as in the case of Mark McGuire’s brother who recently wrote a book about steroid use by the home run king.
Even in what might be called the heyday of privacy in the 1960s and 1970s, when citizens and consumers rose up to protest and to protect themselves against big government and big corporations, privacy was rarely if ever absolute. In court, when a newspaper could persuade a judge that the information it published was “newsworthy,” the newspaper was almost always ruled not guilty of invasion of privacy.
Judges – especially male judges –- had an odd way of thinking about and defining privacy. So, naked women’s bodies made their way into newspapers and magazines –- as “newsworthy” — even when women cried “invasion of privacy.” Some mothers, like Brooke Shields’s mother, sold nude photos of their own daughters when the price was right.
The right to privacy has been superseded by the power of the mass media, including Google, to spotlight and publicize the fortunes and misfortunes of ordinary as well as extraordinary citizens –- the poorest of the poor, as well as the richest of the rich. There is, of course, also a long history of this kind of journalism in the United States. The penny press of the mid 19th-century –- so-called because the newspapers sold for one cent –- capitalized on the tragedies of the urban poor: poverty, suicide, domestic violence, and alcoholism.
It was all entertainment –- all part of the spectacle of American culture. Reporters and photographers zoomed into private spaces, caught people in marital affairs, or stuffing their faces with food, and snorting cocaine.
We no longer have the “stocks” in which colonial Americans were locked down in public and for the purpose of humiliation. But we have the mass media to ridicule citizens, mock them, and dehumanize them. The judgments made by the mass media can be as harsh as the rulings of judges, or the acts of executioners. Invasions of privacy are sometimes as effective in enforcing conformity as hell-and-brimstone sermons from the pulpit, or arrests for indecency and profanity.
Google, it seems to me, has no right to invade the privacy of citizens anywhere in the world. Google has an obligation to be responsible. As a giant corporation, it is not the little man or the little woman battling against tyrannical power. It has all the potential to be tyrannical itself, and it is refreshing to know that a judge in Italy kept an eye on Google and stood up to Google’s imperial power and its imperious executives.
[Jonah Raskin is the author of The Mythology of Imperialism and Field Days. He teaches media law at Sonoma State University.]
By Gregg Barrios / The Rag Blog / March 2, 2010
“Rid the streets of the poet / to whom the doors are locked.”
There is a wise dicho in Spanish: Cada cabeza es un mundo. Every individual is unique in this world.
When Gemini Ink’s Writers in Communities asked me to facilitate and teach a poetry writing class last fall, I was humbled to be part of this innovative program that sends professional writers into diverse settings to work with teens to develop their own unique voices through oral traditions, reading, and creative writing.
The workshop was open to incarcerated youth at the Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center, a residential program for adjudicated Bexar County offenders known to generations of San Antonio youth as Southton. In the 1950s its residents included a teenage Fred Gomez Carrasco; today, most of its young offenders, ages 12-17, face charges ranging from possession and assault to robbery and truancy. The average length of stay is nine months to a year.
“Yo Soy — I Am” was a four-month poetry workshop. The dozen residents selected to participate in the workshop, mostly young men, came from Mexican-American and African-American backgrounds, from San Antonio and a few from post-Katrina New Orleans.
They tested me as I did them, asking about my previous work and listening to my own poetry. And while the presence of a state-mandated security officer might have stifled an open flow of ideas and the building of trust, by the third session, it was a non-issue.
My goal was to use identity as a springboard to find individual voice: What’s your name? What does an ID say about your background? Is your given name the one you prefer? Would you change any of these?
The first evening I used Shirley Ellis’s classic pop ditty, “The Name Game,” with its interactive entreaty to rhyme one’s name to the lyrics of the song: “I betcha I can make a rhyme out of anybody’s name.” The old-school hit proved daunting until they realized its rhyme and reason shares roots with the more familiar world of rap and hip-hop.
They later wrote prose about their definition of success. To get them to read it aloud, I used the instrumental track from hip-hop artist Drake’s “Successful.” By validating their music with poetry, their definition of poetry began to change and offer new possibilities. Their prose converted itself into vibrant poetry, and the floodgates opened.
The group’s dedication to succeed was more than evident. Our class was held in the early evening after a full day of regular classes, counseling, and other requirements. We held double sessions on school holidays — even during the Thanksgiving weekend
Doing time is harder for teens, yet some of our greatest literature has come out of prisons. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, the first modern novel, in jail. In recent times, other dissidents and outsiders have written poetry, memoirs, and essays while imprisoned, from George Jackson and Angela Davis in the 1960s to raulrsalinas and Jimmy Santiago Baca in the ’70s.
Each generation picks its literary heroes, and certainly the late Tupac Shakur would be high on that list today; however, it wasn’t until my students read his book of poetry, The Rose That Grew From Concrete, that they encountered the sensitive and tender side of the gangster rapper. They considered the romantic poet John Keats “a playah,” and judged the rhyming quips of the young Cassius Clay as “clowning.”
They also found two unlikely poetic heroes: Maya Angelou and Bob Dylan. Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings brought a shock of recognition, and her description of how she changed her name from Marguerite Johnson to Maya elicited smiles. Watching the young Bob Dylan singing “Subterranean Homesick Blues” in D.A. Pennebaker’s Dont Look Back [sic] took on special significance once we discussed its rebellious intent.
They were mesmerized as “the old hippie” beat poet Alan Ginsberg passes the torch to a new generation in the film’s opening. Later, they aped Dylan as they recited their own poems while flipping flashcards that often contained words within words: one card labeled “REVOLUTION” contained the italicized word LOVE.
They chose to learn sonnets instead of “kid stuff” haiku. They wrote 14-line poems in the style of Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Each measured the iambic and labeled the rhyme scheme. One evening was spent in deep discussion about why a line like “and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death” was so dark, beautiful, and inspirational.
Each class began with a reading from a poet’s work. After hearing poems by Cynthia Harper and José Montalvo and learning both poets were from San Antonio and deceased, they felt an immediate bond, asking how old they were and how they died. And then I realized that this experience was the first time they had heard a brown or black voice express itself in poetry and verse. Whether it was Billie Holiday singing “Strange Fruit” or Jimmy Santiago Baca lamenting the loss of 10 years of poems in a fire, these young people were deeply moved. They understood what it means to be young, gifted, and a poet.
Each session ended with a recitation of the students’ work. I was amazed by the energy and pride with which they tested new material, hoping for approval and constructive feedback. One young woman sang a cappella — lyric poetry if you will. Homer would have been proud.
When the time came to cull and edit their best work, most of the students were responsive to making their poetry leaner and stronger; others vigorously defended a certain word, a phrase, or a title: “I’d rather it be untitled, that way the reader can give it their own title,” or “That’s the word, the expression and the spelling we use” in our barrio, in the Ninth Ward.
Were we successful? The answer lies in the creative harvest from the workshop: a chapbook and a public reading. You may recognize the voice of your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, your homies, your brave young poets.
When they return to their home schools, they may find that arts education programs have fallen to budget cuts and an emphasis on achieving higher test scores. Is it any wonder that dropout rates in San Antonio are at an all-time high? For some of these writers, their poetry and prose will grow and mature, for others this may be the first and only time they commit their minds and souls to verse. I pray not. But most important is the realization that they have the option to use their passions and experiences in nonviolent and creative ways and to give rise to a new voice filled with power and beauty.
[San Antonio poet, playwright, and journalist Gregg Barrios is on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. Gregg wrote for The Rag in Sixties Austin. This article was also published in the San Antonio Current.]
Yo soy — I am
A few of the poems that will be published by Gemini Ink in March in the chapbook Push and Pull: Poetry by Residents of the Cyndi Taylor Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center. Copies can be purchased at Gemini Ink, or online at geminiink.org, for $10. Proceeds support Gemini’s Writers in Communities program.
Mother Courage by Taylor S.
It takes sacrifice, fear for your life
And love to do what you did
Something I would not
Have been able to do.
You were fading in front of me
Why didn’t you let go?
Dying each night and day
Brought me to tears.
Damned nurses and doctors heedless
They knew you were very ill
You were quivering deathlike
To the point of no return.
Sacrificing your life for my sister Asia
Just to see her grow up and smile
You are phenomenally courageous
It could have taken you the deathbed.
It takes sacrifice, fear for your life
And love to do what you did
Something I would not
Have been able to do.
Mom, I love you.Brown Threat 2 Society by Alejandro V.
A menace to society and a vago from the hood
And porque my skin is brown
People assume I’m up to no good
They don’t feel safe when I’m around
They look down on me cuando hablo Espanglish
A bloodthirsty descendant of the Aztecs
Porque I don’t speak the “proper” language
I speak what’s known as Tex-Mex
Because I come from the Deep South
And have aggressive attitude towards people
But in my life, there’s been nothing to smile about
It’s full of sin, struggles, and evil
All they show is resentment and fear
But if you look closely into my eyes
You’ll see the pain from all those troubled years
I disguise it with black shades in daylight
And at night wash it away with a case of beers
But still at times in the still of the night
Alone in the dark I fight away tears
Pero no me entiendes, you can’t understand
When the odds are against you, how can you prosper?
When during childhood you become a man
And after that deranged into a monster
This is for all my misunderstood brothers
Who won’t settle for minimum wages
Who are a danger to themselves and others
For all the carnales confined up in cages.Untitled by Erick M.
Dreams deserted burnt the surface
Yet find that silence is
Picture perfect sinner’s torment
A mind divine as this.
I try with rhyme defining life
A criminal unraveling
The twine of mind confined in time
Living with insanity
Damnation by humanity
Cold conviction of my spirit
Society denying my plea
Bold nonfiction though, why hear it?
Is how they think and so they chose
I guess to simply not then
Rid the streets of the poet
To whom the doors are locked
Many times I’ve been incarcerated
Awoke in straight jacket hospitals
But kept determination and inspiration
Despite of all these obstacles
Do you know what it’s like
To pray until you fall asleep?
Handcuffs tearing your flesh
And shackles on your feet?
I’m a son; I’m a brother;
I’m a lover; and future father too
But to the law and the judges
I’m nothing — but a fucking monster!Pursuit by Trevon M.
Pursuit is just the act of pursuing
Pursuing is just the verb of pursue
Pursue is just the noun of capture
And capture is what I do
My pursuit is becoming a rapper
Pursuit on gaining knowledge
Pursuit on also gaining intellect
Pursuit on getting my prey
My prey is knowledge and paper
I put those two together to express
Through writing utensils and paper
Pursue the thing I do best
Pursue my dream through all the pain
All the confusion and the sorrow
I strive to succeed I strive to be better
I persist on pursuing while I pursueHuman Mother Beasts by Bryan S.
Elegant beasts impregnated against their will
For purebred babies made to kill Monstrous
Moms distorted souls locked in battle
Overused like a horse and saddle
Owners watch and get their kicks
As these fierce moms get nicked and bit
If their necks are reached they may lose their litter
May lose their lives as they struggle to survive
Their souls begin to lock like push and pull
Give and take their legs start to shake
Some of these beasts’ mate is their brother
So to the litter its aunt and its mother
A mother’s love is like no other
Can you feel it as you get smothered?
Never doubt the pain of your mother
To give more than they have
And show you their love
So take these absurd words
As we live with the women we love
We as people are nothing more
Than the beasts we domesticateFALLING by Savannah F.
It’s just so hard to make any sense and less easy to conceive
What I have to do with these questions still living in mystery
Every word you said wasn’t worth it there will be no fighting
When shall it be exciting again?
I’m stuck not knowing what is the matter
It is indifference through circumstances
This rage is starting once again
And fate still isn’t finished with me
Or does it want to escape the truth again?
I am reaching in all my conflictions
My thoughts are polluted now
Why can’t I stop and fade away
And remove this weight of sorrow
Love, I’m not falling face down again.To my Dark Side by Michael P.
Why do you hold me back?
Is it cuz I’m Mexican and a little black?
But I don’t care what the reason
Mexican blood is what I’m bleeding
You can call what you believe
I know I can achieve anything
As long as you stay away
I believe I’m going to pay
For my sins that I’ve done
There’s no place to run or hide
Because deep down inside
I know I can become something
I’m a human being
That’s the opposite of what I feel
Because I feel like a caged animal
Waiting to be killed is no thrill
It gives me a creepy chill
I’m not who you think I am
I’m not Mexican but I’m a Mexi-can
And I’m a super powerful android
That refuses and cannot be destroyed
The darkness is just a decoy
For me to deploy
My good side
Not the hood side
But the real person
The one that’s really hurting
I’m working for the right side
You know that light side
Not the dark night side
To my dark side,
I’m on the wrong side
You know I’m going to ride
When my good and evil collide
So watch as I ignite
The words that I recite
By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / March 2, 2010
Since last Friday, Senator Jim Bunning has singlehandedly halted a measure to extend emergency unemployment benefits and health coverage for hundreds of thousands of Americans. This is nothing new for Bunning. He made Time magazine’s list of the worst senators, and refused to return to Kentucky to debate his opponent, instead doing it from Washington, where it was later learned he had used a teleprompter for the debate.
We had an article about him last March when he ranted, raved and berated Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner during Senate hearings [“Republican Buffoon Bunning: Another Shameful Show].
His ego-driven, unreasonable grandstanding stunt has already caused more than 2,000 DOT workers to be laid off, with countless other layoffs and losses spiraling upward because of highway and other transportation projects being halted.
After eight years of George W. Bush taking America from a $280 billion surplus to a $13 trillion national debt with no GOP opposition, Bunning, like the crazy old uncle, popped up from the back benches of the Senate and righteously proclaimed, “We cannot keep adding to the debt. It’s over $14 trillion and going up fast.” And exercising a rarely used Senate procedure he stopped the bill in its tracks, demanding: “If we can’t find $10 billion to pay for it, we’re not going to pay for anything.”
It is clear Bunning is totally out of touch with Americans facing today’s tough times because he has dug in his heels, oblivious to continuing calls for him to reconsider. Even moderate Republican Senator, Susan Collins has tried to no avail to get her fellow Senator to relent. Bunning pouts and stubbornly revels in his ability to take one last power stand as a U.S. Senator. Crazy and inappropriate as it may be.
Ultra conservative and equally obtuse South Carolina GOP Senator, Jim DeMint, has jumped in praising Bunning’s irrational stand, telling the world that those opposing Bunning’s damaging and ill conceived stunt are “hypocritical.”
You might remember DeMint as part of the Washington D.C. “C Street Family” conservative prayer group who prayed along with disgraced So. Carolina Governor Sanford, and for his extreme conservative reactions to most everything including nixing transportation funds for bicycle, walking, or wilderness trails.
We are getting a fine midyear election preview of Republican leadership, or lack thereof. More disturbing than the senile rants of outgoing Senator Jim Bunning is that GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who forced Bunning to step down at the end of this year and not run again, will not now step in again and make Bunning just sit down and shut up. . . for the good of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
As I observed one year ago, “Bunning is clearly old, cranky and may be exhibiting early senile dementia. He also may still be living in some reverie from his days as a major league baseball pitcher dating back to the 1950’s. But even back then the only good thing many Cardinals fans remember that Jim Bunning ever did was blowing the 1964 pennant for the Phillies, so the Cardinals could come from six games back and win.”
Halting essential emergency assistance to America’s jobless and stopping vital work across America in these tough times is no game. Senator Bunning’s time at bat again shows him swinging wildly and striking out.
The only good thing about Jim Bunning is, like the old horses from his state of Kentucky, he will soon be put out to pasture. He finally relented this evening allowing the emergency bill to go to a vote and to President Obama for his signature. Now his party’s leaders need to take him to the barn and leave him there till the end of his term.
[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]
The picture
By David Cox / Mar 2, 2010
I want you to look very closely at this picture and try and keep it in your minds eye. This was a perfectly healthy 22-year-old young man who in the service of his country got half of his head blown off. I think that’s important, I think that’s newsworthy. Let me tell you how newsworthy I think it is. I think that it’s more important than chocolate cake recipes and far more important than comic book reviews. It is more important than who fell and who’s swell at the winter Olympic games.
It is far more important than any self-serving load of crap banged out by pseudo doctor Amy. It is more important than American Idol or Lost or any other mindless goat droppings the public chooses to chew on. This is some American mother’s son, her little boy, he may be gay or straight or transgender but his life is screwed forever.
How did this come to happen to this poor mother’s son? It came to happen because the people in the media who are supposed to foster a public debate on such public issues as war instead used their franchise to promote articles about chocolate cake and comic book reviews. They see their free press as free to choose not to look when bad things happen. They feel no need to explain to his parents or to anyone that the war that blew off half of this poor boy’s head was based on out and out lies.
It was a war perpetrated by people who hoped to gain from it — be it in oil or pipelines or service contracts — and like the media they don’t care that this mother’s son is mangled and mutilated. Do you care? I’ve been married twice for a combined 25 years and in that time I doubt my wives ever baked a chocolate cake. I don’t read comic books or watch goat crap TV but you see I’ve got a son about this boy’s age. My heart aches and my mind fills with rage because the people that have the power and authority to show this picture would rather talk about American Idol and from where I sit that makes them an accomplice to a war crime.
Because not content to ignore the current victims they support more crimes and call for more wars. Several years ago in Iraq parents waited for their children at a bus stop. An errant coalition missile struck the bus stop and blew the elementary school age children to pieces. Needless to say this wasn’t widely reported but the parents in a frenzy began fighting over the body parts of their children. Little arms and legs, little headless torsos identifiable only by the shirt or dress they were wearing. Imagine the horror, imagine the type of people who could do such a thing. How do they live with themselves? How do they sleep at night?
They do it by watching Lost and American Idol and by eating chocolate cake. They read comic books and watch sports. It makes life easy because the media will not intrude on their fantasy world but instead will promote the fantasy. Oh, but who won the gold metal in curling and who was eliminated on American Idol.
Iraq war Coalition Deaths 4,696
Injured 30,000
Iraqi civilian deaths and injured, 1,366,650
Afghanistan coalition Deaths 1,659
American taxpayers bill as of today $964,044,305,874
Source / Signs of the Times
Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog
By Francis Shor / March 2, 2010
$2000 per dead child! That’s the amount of compensation offered by the Pentagon for the “collateral damage” which it has caused in Afghanistan. As the war escalates and more innocent victims of Washington’s aggressive actions accumulate in number, the U.S. military calculates what it will take to placate grieving Afghan parents.
Eight years into a war deemed “necessary” by both Republican and Democratic Administrations, the death and destruction visited upon Afghan civilians seems reducible to neat and cheap compensation packages. And, yet, the real physical and psychological damage inflicted by the war-makers remains strangely abstract and without comprehension of the very real unintended consequences.
The anger of Afghan families in the earliest days of U.S. military intervention undoubtedly persists and may even fuel the continuing insurgency. According to a June 28, 2002, Los Angeles Times story about one Afghan who had lost his wife, mother and seven children to a US air attack, he bitterly lamented: “I put a curse on the Americans who did this. I pray that they will have the tragedy in their lives that I have had in mine.”
While not suffering this kind of tragic loss in just one family, U.S. families have paid a price with increasing numbers of dead and wounded in Afghanistan. More generous with their compensation packages to families who have lost a loved one in military operations in Afghanistan, even the $100,000 offered cannot excuse the needless loss of life promulgated by the Pentagon and their so-called civilian bosses.
The squandering of billions of dollars, however, in prosecuting this war and the other imperial campaigns in the Middle East and Central Asia is responsible for other hidden costs to children in the United States. In 2009, the U.S. continued its falling ranking in infant mortality to 33rd in the world, behind the much poorer, but medically wiser, nation of Cuba. In addition, infant mortality among African-Americans is estimated to be twice as high as that of whites.
On the other hand, the terrible toll on Iraqi children, as a consequence of policies pursued by the United States since the first Gulf War, has been enormous. From the use of depleted uranium by the Pentagon under Bush Sr. and Jr. to sanctions preventing medical supplies from entering Iraq under Clinton, the death and disease suffered by Iraqi babies is directly attributable to the United States.
Even in the absence of war and aggressive policies pursued by Washington, the imbalance between the United States and the developing world, made worse by the recent financial crisis, is deplorable. It is estimated that the average inhabitant of the United States uses 250 times the resources of the average Nigerian. That average U.S. citizen, if a baby born in the 1990s who reaches 75 years of age, will have generated 52 tons of garbage while utilizing close to 4,000 barrels of oil. The amount of energy consumed by the average U.S. resident would be equivalent to 531 Ethiopians.
When UNICEF reported, as it did in 2002, that 10 million children under the age of five died each year from preventable causes, such as malnutrition, unsafe water, and the lack of the most basic health care, we should, in the words of ethics philosopher Peter Singer “know that others are in much greater need… and learn to think critically about the forces that lead to high levels of consumption and to be aware of the environmental costs of this way of living.”
Yet, to attain that level of consciousness would require confronting the legacy of being part of an empire and benefiting from its ostensibly unequal privileges. Trying to come to terms with all of the human and planetary consequences of empire as a way of life may be especially difficult now that the empire is dying. Let’s just hope that we can help to diminish the further destruction produced by an empire in its death throes.
[Francis Shor is author of the recently published, Dying Empire: US Imperialism and Global Resistance. Excerpts from the book can be found at dyingempire.org.]
Source / Common Dreams
Thank you to Deva Wood / The Rag Blog
Thorne Webb Dreyer, Editor
