Algae: A New Source of Alternative Energy

Posted on August 19, 2009 by RagBlog

The Solix Biofuels plant on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in southwest Colorado. The area averages 300 sunny days a year. Photo: Eric Draper/New York Times.

A New Test for Business and Biofuel
By Kirk Johnson / August 16, 2009

IGNACIO, Colo. — An unusual experiment featuring equal parts science, environmental optimism and Native American capitalist ambition is unfolding here on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation in southwest Colorado.

With the twin goals of making fuel from algae and reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases, a start-up company co-founded by a Colorado State University professor recently introduced a strain of algae that loves carbon dioxide into a water tank next to a natural gas processing plant. The water is already green-tinged with life.

The Southern Utes, one of the nation’s wealthiest American Indian communities thanks to its energy and real-estate investments, is a major investor in the professor’s company. It hopes to gain a toehold in what tribal leaders believe could be the next billion-dollar energy boom.

But from the tribe’s perspective, the business model here is about more than business. “It’s a marriage of an older way of thinking into a modern time,” said the tribe’s chairman, Matthew J. Box, referring to the interplay of environmental consciousness and investment opportunity around algae.

The tribe, whose reservation sits atop one of the world’s richest fields of natural gas from coal-bed methane, had to surmount many hurdles to find an alternative energy idea it considered suitable.

For example, any project that would displace land used for growing food was tossed out for philosophical reasons: the Southern Utes’ belief that energy and food should not compete in a world where people still starve. That eliminated discussion of corn-based ethanol.

Algae produced at the Solix Biofuels plant, a start-up with unusual business partners. Photo: Eric Draper/New York Times.

And whatever was chosen had to be at least technically feasible, if not immediately profitable.

The 1,400-member tribe also has a long history of herbal medicine use that made growing algae for fuel appealing, Mr. Box said. “It reminded people of herbs that are helpful here, like bear root, which is harvested in the mountains,” he said.

The Colorado State professor, Bryan Willson, who teaches mechanical engineering and is a co-founder of the three-year-old company Solix Biofuels, said working with the Southern Utes on their land afforded his company advantages that would have been impossible in mainstream corporate America. The tribe contributed almost one-third of the $20 million in capital raised by Solix, free use of land and more than $1 million in equipment.

“If you’re going with strict venture capital, they’re looking for a blistering return on capital in three to five years,” Dr. Willson said. “The Utes have a very long economic view. They’re making decisions now for future generations as opposed to the next quarter, and that is just fundamentally different.”

But the tale of any start-up is written between the margins of inspiration and hard-edged reality.

More than 200 other companies are also trying to find a cost-effective, scalable way to achieve the same end — turning algae into vegetable oil fuel, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federal research center in Golden, Colo. Just last month, Exxon said it planned to throw $600 million into its own algae project, dwarfing Solix’s financial base about fiftyfold. Like most oil-to-fuel efforts, the Solix project focuses on making biodiesel, which can be used in a regular diesel engine.

“This is still a very young industry, with a lot of claims out there that are sometimes difficult to believe,” said Al Darzins, a group manager at the lab’s National Bioenergy Center.

Mr. Darzins said Solix’s model was different from most: the algae is grown in closed bags, lined up vertically in the water tanks, with the intent of increasing yield. But for every hopeful, he said, the crux will be controlling costs.

“Solix has an interesting idea; whether it will work, I don’t know,” Mr. Darzins said. “It’s all going to come down to the economics.”

Solix’s facility project is next to the natural gas processing plant for access to the carbon dioxide waste stream, which will be used to nourish the algae — a kind of biological recycling of carbon dioxide before its discharge into the atmosphere as the vegetable fuel is burned.

The plant also produces waste heat, which could be used to warm the algae beds in winter. In addition, the high desert plateau of southwest Colorado is one of the sunniest spots in the nation, providing solar radiation that accelerates algae growth.

Central to Solix’s business model, Dr. Willson said, is the hope that power plants and other factories now venting carbon dioxide will allow the company to build an algae farm next to their carbon dioxide vent pipes. A plant could sell the oil or biodiesel, and Solix would earn its return by being a part owner-operator, or by licensing the technology.

If Solix can expand its operations to a commercial scale, the Southern Utes will have certain first ownership and operating rights in Solix plants throughout much of the Western United States.

Karl Jacob, the director of public finance in state and local government ratings at the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, tracks Native American economics and has assigned the Southern Utes’ debt a AAA rating, the agency’s highest. Mr. Jacob said the tribe had proved a canny investor by doing its homework and not moving too fast.

It operates businesses in 14 states, owns office towers and land from Denver to Oceanside, Calif., and controls a company that processes about 1 percent of the nation’s natural gas. But it has only about $69 million in debt according to S.&P. Compared with most companies, that is a tiny debt-to-asset ratio.

“They have always been very prudent,” Mr. Jacob said, “looking out into the next generation.”

Source / New York Times

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American Ignorance or American Arrogance?

Posted on August 19, 2009 by RagBlog


Anatomy of American Ignorance
By Bill Noxid / August 18, 2009

It’s a full time occupation trying to unravel the reasons Americans remain in the dark. What seems (to any intelligent outside observer) like sheer stupidity and arrogance is in reality an almost inescapable indoctrination process that begins before you are born, and ends some time after you’re dead. It is a system so complex and all encompassing that few can recognize any reality outside of it at all, and that of course is its intended purpose.

The astonishing amount of rage demonstrated during the course of this fallacious healthcare debate has exposed a great many unfortunate realities about the United States. This country’s inherent ability to avoid the truth about its own origins and behaviors has become increasingly apparent during the first six months of this presidency, and (as a result of the continued collective denial) there’s no chance of it ending any time soon.

It’s generally not hard to find examples of the totality of mind control in this country, but last week produced a couple of rare examples. Arlen Specter’s Town Hall meeting was evidently an important “test case” for the organizers of disingenuous dissent, and we got to see a variety of the false arguments. Just look at the two most obvious incidents.

First there was Craig Miller. Aside from the hypocrisy of the fact that in eight years of Bush, I don’t recall one “protester” causing that kind of disruption, wagging their finger in the face of a senator, calling down the wrath of God on him, while the police stand around and wait for him to run out of breath – but the really astonishing event was the interview the next morning. Truly, it must be seen to be believed. In eight minutes of interview, the man could not produce a single, solitary, intelligible reason for his rage. It was so embarrassing, that he eventually had to refer to his crib notes just to eek out some nonsensical fear of Czars, before Dylan had to mercifully end the non-conversation.

However the textbook example of why people in this country have no concept of reality was delivered by Specter’s other heckler, Katy Abram. Certainly you all remember her… She was the one who announced that the “sleeping giant had awakened.”

“I don’t believe this is just about healthcare, it’s not about TARP, it’s not about left and right, this is about the systematic dismantling of this country. I’m only thirty-five years old, I’ve never been interested in politics. You have awakened the sleeping giant. We are tired of this. This is why everybody in this room is so ticked off. I don’t want this country turning into Russia – turning into a socialized country. My question for you is what are you going to do to restore this country back to what our founders created according to the constitution.”

First of all, what a meaningless statement and question that has no possible rational answer – and only serves to give the people like Craig Miller something generic to cheer for. The all-encompassing, non-specific, return to the “glory days” of the founding fathers. This is the kind of reaction these “phrases” are supposed to elicit, and that is what they are designed for. Not that Katy herself came up with any of it of course… She is merely parroting whatever and whoever she is listening to.

Evidence of that reality became painfully obvious when she was interviewed the next day by Laurence O’Donnell. From the onset, she flashed her doe in the headlights look (that would be charming if this was a game show), and proceeded to demonstrate her lack of knowledge about virtually everything that has occurred (in this country and on this planet) in the last ten years.

O’Donnell: “What made you want to go”

Abram: “Umm, just sheer frustration, umm, I see all these things being pushed through very quickly, umm, TARP, this healthcare bill, umm, cash for clunkers, and the frustrating thing to me is these programs are being funded by me, my friends, my family, umm, we have a small business and the amount of taxes we pay out of that is ridiculous. And yet they want us to pay more – I, or, it sounds like they want us to pay more, so that, that is the root of my frustration. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

O’Donnell: “In the plans discussed so far, the increase in taxation would occur only on families with incomes of over $250,000. Would that include you and your family?”

Abram: “Honestly it (nervous laugh), I’d rather, I’d rather not say… I don’t even know (another nervous laugh). Umm, my husband takes care of the bills and everything, I, you know, he takes care of us, and that’s all that matters, umm.”

Are you serious? After that ridiculous rant about her, her husband, her friends, and her family having to fund these programs (like it’s the first time she’s seen a government), we find she has no idea how much her husband makes, how much they pay in taxes, or even what tax bracket they are in?!? The only thing ridiculous about the amount of taxes “she” pays is that she doesn’t know the amount of taxes “she” pays, and has the nerve to portend outrage about it. Not to mention it is quite a testament to the woman’s equality movement in this country – and particularly in her household.

O’Donnell: “Do you and your family have health insurance?”

Abram: “Yeah we do have health insurance, umm, we have a heath savings account that we pay for ourselves. We, we have a $5,000+ deductible, umm, that basically in the course of a normal year we will pay for all of our medical out, our medical needs out-of-pocket – doctors visits – and this year’s been a little more difficult cuz my son’s had surgery and it looks like we’re looking for his, at a second one, umm, we’re almost at our deductible so that’s a good thing ( chuckle ), but that was a choice that we made, and that’s what we wanted to do. Umm, and I want to be able to keep that choice, I don’t want to be forced or slowly coaxed into a single payer program… I want to have my choice.”

Truly, it’s hard to believe how stupefied the people in this country are. Certainly that’s nothing new (in fact it’s the crux of keeping these feeble minds enslaved), but look at the depth of her confusion. Here we have a woman that after explaining that (for all intents and purposes) her family has no insurance, she claims to be afraid that someone will take that “choice” away from her. Her (and her husband who obviously made this ridiculous arrangement) pay the entire cost of their healthcare every year, plus whatever they pay to the insurance company that is laughing at them, and they are afraid someone is going to forcibly take that choice away from them? Force them to what? Not pay for Non-healthcare?

I’m fairly sure they have nothing to worry about. I can’t imagine that in the good-ol’ USA, someone is going to deprive you of your right to be an idiot and get screwed out of money you never see any return from – unless you “get lucky” and your child has to undergo two major surgeries in a year. These nitwits think they are defending their “free choice as Americans,” when in reality they are defending the corporation’s right to keep them poor, sick, and stupid – and forcing the rest of the populous to have no choice either.

But even more distressing and telling about the lack of awareness in this country is this next exchange, after explaining that her and her parents “don’t talk politics” ( Who would have ever guessed ).

O’Donnell: “You said in your statement that you are thirty-five years old, and that nothing has gotten you interested in politics before, and what’s interesting to me about that is that means you – as an adult – lived through 9-11, lived through the invasion of Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan, the first chapter of what became two wars in the middle east – including the Iraq war. You lived through all of that, and were not – as you put it – “awakened” into an interest in politics. How could those things pass through your life like this and not spark any interest in politics prior to Washington saying “we think we want to help out some people who can’t afford health insurance the way you can.” Why would this be the thing that wakes you up after you were willing to just ignore politics as we went past 9-11, into Afghanistan, into Iraq?”

Abram: “Sure, I, I always seemed to have faith in the government and honestly, I didn’t really care (laugh). Umm, I had other things going on – ya know, getting married, having children – it just, it wasn’t a priority in my life, and, ya know I really didn’t start even watching the news at all I think until maybe 1991 I guess it was, when, umm, we first went to the Gulf War – I remember watching CNN with my dad and watching the infra-red missiles going across that you could see, umm, and, I think it, to me, I mean maybe I’m just not that smart, but you know, it seems like we’ve kind of been at war for, since then, I mean – or maybe even before, I don’t know – it just always seem like we’re having some kind of conflict so, that, you know, whether, about wars – umm, I don’t know, that just seems common place now… Umm, I think everybody’s just so used to it.

What an atrociously callous and ignorant statement that surely could only come from an American. Ten years of genocidal crusader conquest for corporate profit, leaving untold millions dead, dying, and diseased, and this woman has the temerity to say “everyone is just used to it.” If white phosphorous and depleted uranium weapons were raining down on her family and her healthcare needs included raising a child without any eyes, or scull, or arms, or legs as a result of the poisoned environment, I suspect she might be a little less flippant and a little less “used to it.” What this country did in the last ten years, the whole world is going to have to deal with for the next hundred, and people like this are unaware anything has happened at all. This pathetic culture and its inability and unwillingness to recognize the continuous crimes committed against the lands and peoples of the world, is why people like this woman can tra-la-la through life without a clue of the horrendous damage her ignorance allows.

In part two, I’ll examine how Americans in general (but these people in particular) develop these false realities, and where they get their “information” from.

Bill Noxid

Litany of Threats and Racist incidents – over healthcare

The Obama Problem: Black, and Unaware of it

Specter’s Heckler: Interview with the mindless

Anatomy of American Ignorance (Youtube Interview)

Source / Information Clearing House

The Rag Blog

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Closing Time : Gilley’s Sherwood Cryer, a Honky Tonk Legend

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Gilley’s owner Sherwood Cryer, right, with singer Mickey Gilley, at the Pasadena club in 1980. Photo by Joel Draut / Houston Chronicle.

Former owner of iconic honky-tonk Gilley’s dies

Sherwood Cryer, whose honky-tonk Gilley’s created a lasting image of the Houston area as a blue-collar, redneck boomtown after it was immortalized in the movie Urban Cowboy, has died. He was 81.
[….]
Cryer’s genius was most evident in the mechanical bull he invented, the bucking, spinning mechanical ride that brought lines of people into the Pasadena bar and made for Urban Cowboy’s most memorable scenes — John Travolta, Debra Winger and Scott Glenn taking turns atop it.
[….]
The bar was founded in 1971 after Cryer discovered Gilley singing at a Pasadena club where he was making so little money he could barely pay his three-member band. Cryer told Gilley, “How would you like to have a club of your own?” the singer was quoted as saying five years ago.

— Todd Ackerman / Houston Chronicle

As Sherwood made more money, he eventually put up walls on this structure and installed air-conditioning. He later met Mickey Gilley, and the rest was history.

By Carlos Calbillo / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2009

I grew up in Pasadena, Texas. in fact, I graduated (barely) from Sam Rayburn High School. High school for me was an ordeal. The school was brand new when I arrived there in 1965, and I did not know who this school was named for and never learned anything about Sam Rayburn until much later. I read Robert Caro’s incredible books on Lyndon Johnson and finally learned the real deal about Sam Rayburn, one of the greatest sons of Texas, a populist and fighter in his time, for the farmers and the common man.

Sherwood Cryer, as the story goes, opened a club out on Spencer Highway named “Sherwood’s” (or possibly, “Shelly’s”) in the late 1950’s or early 60’s. It was an acre of concrete slab with no walls, just a roof.

There was a great picture in Sherwood’s office at Gilley’s of a young unknown singer who played there in those days, with short, short hair, clean-shaven, wearing a coat and tie, by the name of Willie Nelson. This Nelson kid was living in Nashville, having moved there to try to make it in C/W Showbiz after being a DJ in Texas for so many years. When he played Sherwood’s place, he was not known very well as a performer but was beginning to show promise as a songwriter.

As Sherwood made more money, he eventually put up walls on this structure and installed air-conditioning. He later met Mickey Gilley, and the rest was history.

Gilley’s patron rides the mechanical bull on Dec. 17, 1980. AP photo / ABC13.com

The word “legend” in Texas is thrown around a lot (we Texans have a lot of pride, are known throughout the planet for it, and unfortunately much of it as it turns out, is false pride and/or misplaced; some of it IS right on). Sherwood had genuinely achieved this status of “legend” way before the Urban Cowboy scene hit and took off around the world. There are many many stories about Sherwood, and many of them are fantastic.

Even before the Urban Cowboy era began, I would visit Gilley’s, sometimes in the company of Roberto of Liberty Hall fame. My friend Bob Claypool, music writer at the Houston Post, would also be there a lot and we would talk about the scene, checking out the gorgeous cowgirl honeys in their tight Wranglers, swigging longnecks as we posed in our boots and ten-gallon hats, quintessential “drugstore cowboys.”

Todd Ackerman’s reference in the Houston Chronicle to Sherwood’s appearance is true; you would walk into the club and see this shabby guy emptying the garbage cans, clanking around with all of those empty longneck bottles of Gilley’s Beer, and if you weren’t acquainted with him, you would think, curiously, that he was the only non-Mexican janitor that worked in the place. This guy who appeared homeless, was to become one the richest men in Texas, owning clubs, mansions, boats, cars and a fleet of airplanes to fly people in to perform in his place.

One of the memorable shows (there were many) that I remember was the night I sat in the front to watch the great Ernest Tubb, who by then was an old man, touring because he had to make money somehow and only occasionally showing some of the magic that he would dredge up from within that had made HIM a Texas legend. There was of course the magic in the place that floated about whenever Willie took to the stage.

I was also there one night when the International Harvester Tour, fronted by a hillbilly-looking dude with a railroad gimme cap, showed up and he and his band tried their best to show the Gilley’s crowd that they were the real item and not just novices playing at being C/W. The band’s leader of course was a guy named Neil Young; now — that was weird.

John Travolta and Debra Winger on the Gilley’s dance floor. Photo is a still from Urban Cowboy.

Usually when Mickey Gilley was in town and fronting for or opening a show, he would close the night’s entertainment by going up on stage and performing “Goodnight Irene,” sometimes just on his piano, without his band, with EVERYONE singing along. Mickey Gilley of course was the cousin of both rock legend Jerry Lee Lewis and evangelist Jimmy Lee Swaggert; I always wondered if Mickey knew the provenance of this incredible song written so many years ago by the great Huddie Ledbetter, yet ANOTHER Texas music legend.

I remember when Sherwood opened a club, also on Spencer Highway, for his good friend Jose Maria DeLeon Hernandez of Temple, Texas, and named the club “Little Joe’s.” It only lasted a year or two but some great Tejano and Norteño music was presented there. Sherwood seemed always to have an instinct/gift for making money.

Sherwood was a first-class raconteur. If you were lucky, and I was on several occasions, you could sit in Sherwood’s small office at the club during one of his breaks, or perhaps after the night’s show, and he could be persuaded to tell you some stories, sometimes also offering you a beverage. I remember asking him one time about the famous Gilley’s bouncers. Sherwood employed about 20 of the roughest, biggest, mean-looking Pasadena good ol’ boys you would never want to run into in a dark alley. These bouncers, many off of the local oil rigs, were proficient with their fists, boots and blackjacks, and they kept order, especially in the early days before the tourists descended, and beer-fueled fights among the patrons were frequent.

I asked Sherwood to tell me about the BIGGEST fight or free-for-all he had ever witnessed in his place and he told me about the time that a teacher’s (!) convention had come to Houston and on a Saturday night a busload of teachers, men and women from all parts of the country, had shown up to take in the Gilley’s experience, as the club’s fame was beginning to soar. They all went to sit in one of the corners of the cavernous club and they soon began to have too much fun; these teachers got liquored up and began to fight, first with each other, and then they took on the regulars.

Sherwood sent over two, then four, then eventually every bouncer and large patron he could find in an attempt to restore order, but these drunken teachers ended up beating the crap out of every bouncer and wannabee bouncer in that melee and finally Sherwood had to call in the Pasadena Police and the EMTs and shut down and evacuate the club for the night. When the Pasadena Police arrived in force with their riot helmets on and brandishing serious-looking batons and when the schoolteachers found themselves being surrounded by these officers, they reacted by attacking the cops (!) and eventually many of these rowdy educators were hauled off to jail.

He had a great story-telling style and as you visualized this scene he was describing you also took in his glee as he recalled it.

Next time you are in Austin, go by the Texas State History Museum to see the actual, real entryway and door to Gilley’s club, preserved there for future generations.

We are losing more and more of the great characters of Texas that I, for one, was lucky enough to grow up with and be around, and we are all becoming the poorer for it.

[Carlos Calbillo is an independent filmmaker, writer, producer and director. He works with the Southwest Alternate Media Project in Houston, conducting filmmaking classes and seminars with youth from the inner city. He is currently in pre-production on a documentary film about emerging Latino political power in Houston.]

The Rag Blog

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God Thinks You’re a Loser

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

“God Thinks You’re a Loser”

The Rag Blog and South Austin Pictures present a screening of
“God Thinks You’re a Loser,”
a perverse comedy from Austin director Gary Chason
at The Independent at 501 Studios
in the 501 Studio Complex,
501 E. 5th at I-35 in Austin, Texas (entrance on Brushy Street, one block east of I-35).

8 p.m., Thursday, August 27, 2009

A donation of $10 is suggested, with proceeds benefiting The Rag Blog, a progressive internet news magazine based in Austin.
There will be a cash bar.

According to Chason, “God Thinks You’re a Loser” is “a zany comedy about strippers and oil men” with “plenty of kinky sex, drugs, and the reckless pursuit of sensual pleasure.” But in the end, those who hurt others must answer for their actions.

Much of the film takes place in Hell.

A live discussion with director Gary Chason and star Sue Rock
will follow the screening.

The Rag Blog

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Killing Yourself with Kindness : Obama’s Bipartisan Kick

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


Killing Yourself with Kindness

Despite the lies, the real insecurity that people feel, and the shameless Republican opportunism, health reform will be a loser for Obama and the Democrats unless this president can shake off his delusion that bipartisanship works.

By Robert Kuttner / August 18, 2009

Will somebody please explain to me why Barack Obama is still on his bipartisan kick?

Ever since Obama’s first efforts to reach out to Republicans, with his cabinet appointment of two Republicans, Gates at Defense and LaHood at Transportation, and his appeasement of Republican tax-cutting demands in the stimulus package, the Republican opposition has made it clear that no goodwill gesture, no effort to meet them halfway signals anything other than weakness. They are out to destroy his presidency, pure and simple. Nothing makes this clearer than the battle over health insurance reform.

Even Chuck Grassley, the rank (I mean ranking) Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and the great white hope of bipartisanship for his Democratic buddy Max Baucus, was giving aid and comfort to the Palin “death panel” nonsense. “In House bill there is counseling for end of life,” said Grassley, “And from that standpoint you have every right to fear … we should not have a government program that determines you’re going to pull the plug on grandma.” Maybe it’s time to pull the plug on Grassley.

The White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, is said to be a tough guy. And Obama’s top political adviser, David Axelrod, is supposed to be some kind of tactical genius. What do these guys think they are getting by continuing to kiss up to the Republicans?

I don’t buy the claim that making nice got them any more Republican votes for Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation. The handful of Republicans who supported her were motivated either by demographics of their state or by the fact that a few GOP senators are still willing to approve a highly qualified centrist nominee and didn’t want to alienate women voters. Had Obama been playing hardball on other issues, it would not have fatally damaged Sotomayor.
Today’s op-ed piece “by” Barack Obama in the New York Times was the same old high-minded pabulum. It read as if it had been pureed several times by the speechwriting staff:

The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

That’s great above-politics stuff if you are modeling high school civics, not so great if the other side is going for the jugular — and winning.

Clearly, the administration playbook is to stick to the high road and not take the argument to the other side. But the strategy isn’t working. The approval ratings for both the president and for his health plan are falling. He isn’t even inspiring his own strongest grass roots backers to turn out in numbers at support rallies.

Obama’s own gut instincts seem to be a little better than those of his astonishingly risk-averse advisers. At his own town hall meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire August 11, Obama was quite eloquent and detailed on the foolishness of the “death panel” lies, and he also said this:

Every time we come close to passing health insurance reform, the special interests fight back with everything they’ve got. They use their influence. They use their political allies to scare and mislead the American people. They start running ads. This is what they always do.

We can’t let them do it again. Not this time. Not now. (Applause.) Because for all the scare tactics out there, what is truly scary — what is truly risky — is if we do nothing. If we let this moment pass — if we keep the system the way it is right now — we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Your premiums will continue to skyrocket. They have gone up three times faster than your wages and they will keep on going up.

But, oddly, he didn’t name the “special interests” (like the insurance and drug industry) because they are nominally part of his reform coalition. If anyone is killing somebody with kindness, it’s the insurance industry backing Obama and slyly killing real reform.

Despite the lies, the real insecurity that people feel, and the shameless Republican opportunism, health reform will be a loser for Obama and the Democrats unless this president can shake off his delusion that bipartisanship works. So far, it works mainly to strengthen the far-right and weaken this president and what should be a reform moment.

[Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect, a senior fellow at Demos, and author of Obama’s Challenge.]

Source / The Huffington Post / Originally posted August 16, 2009

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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Congress and Health Care : ‘Ye Love Wealth Better Than Liberty’

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Sameul Adams: “Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you.”

If proposed health care legislation is to be a farce and a sham, [I hope] that the progressives… will vote it down, and deny the insurance and drug companies and their lackeys the satisfaction of knowing that they have hoodwinked the American public.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2009

“Ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom — go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms, Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams

It would appear that the hope for a decent health care system in the United States is quickly evaporating into thin air.

Members of the United States Senate have constantly exhibited their cupidity, their deviousness, their devotion to the corporations who are their paymasters. The House of Representatives, save for the Blue Dogs, has shown a bit more fortitude, a bit more idealism and desire to serve the public and raise the quality of our health care to a level commensurate with the other nations interested in the well-being of the public, rather than in avarice inherent in our money driven, materialistic society.

The general public, save for that idealistic minority who have dedicated their time and resources to achieving universal health care, has been apathetic, exhibiting a lack of sophistication and self respect, falling victim to the propaganda and fear mongering reminiscent of Germans of the 1930s.

The Germans had their Ernst Roehm and we have our Dick Armey, abetted by such shady characters as Richard Stephensen who founded Cancer Treatment Centers of America; Rick Scott, a founder of Conservatives For Patients Rights; Adam Brandon and Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks; Chris Chocola of The Club For Growth; and Jim Martin and Pat Boone of The 60 Plus Association. Much of the mainstream media has been complicit in spreading misinformation to a gullible, uneducated, uninformed public, with the notable exception of MSNBC TV, the McClatchy Newspapers, The Nation and Progressive magazines, and progressive sources on the internet such as The Rag Blog.

We now have Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reporting that the President has conceded that there may be no public option, as he long ago retreated from the much more economically sound, much more efficient single payer plan. We have now Mr. Obama espousing “insurance cooperatives,” a complete concession to the insurance companies, a plan espoused by the Republican Party, a plan that is totally untested. This is a concept that is totally acceptable to the insurance cartel and its lackeys. The AMA and AARP will be dancing with joy as they have repeatedly promoted “health reform” but have never endorsed a public option, or single payer health care.

This concession to the insurance industry follows on the heels of Mr. Obama’s surreptitious, secretive deal with the pharmaceutical industry reported initially last week by The New York Times and The Nation. This perfidy has been condemned by Robert Reich in an article distributed by CommonDreams. Greg Palast reported in the Huffington Post that President Obama had reached an agreement with the big drug companies to cut the price of medicine by $80 billion. A lot of money to most of us, but small potatoes to the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Palast calculates that the industry will make a $3.6 trillion profit over the next ten years. Thus, Obama’s deal saving $80 billion out of a total of $3.6 trillion comes to a savings to the person getting a prescription filled of 2%!

The negotiator for the pharmaceutical industry, according to Mr. Palast, was ex-Congressman, Billy Tauzin, in concert with Chip Kahn of the American Hospital Association. The deal with the AHA will reduce the $26 trillion hospital bill over the next decade by one half of 1%. It should be noted that 13 European nations, according to The New England Journal of Medicine, successfully regulate the price of drugs, reducing the average cost of name-brand prescription medicines by from 35% to 55%. Obama gave that up for his 2%.

In my near 88 years I have been disillusioned or frightened on several occasions. I experienced a mixture of dread and disgust when Neville Chamberlain made the Munich agreement with Adolph Hitler. I, as a young man, became extremely apprehensive about events of 1939 as World War II began and of the subsequent events of December 7, 1941.

I lost faith when I learned that President Johnson had lied about the events in the Tonkin Gulf. I was frightened at the loss of civil rights in our nation under the ascendancy of Sen. Joseph McCarthy. I was likewise frightened by of the manipulations of the George W. Bush administration even prior to 9/11. Now I face what well may be the last national crises I may encounter, the deceit and poor administration of a president who I actively supported and for whom I had high hopes.

Many of us were dismayed by Mr.Obama’s appointments of his financial advisors, noting his choice of folks who were complicit and party to the collapse of the U.S. economy, rather than choosing from among those economists who had anticipated and warned the nation of impending problems. We have been quite concerned about his intensifying the war in Afghanistan. Why? Why? Why? Obama is an intelligent man, but what does he really hope to accomplish in a non-nation, a collection of tribal societies, which defeated Alexander the Great, the Ottomans, the Mongols, the British, the Russians?

He has vacillated on the subjects of civil liberties and sexual rights. Now we have a total collapse of any meaningful legislation for health care in this country, which would be the final blow. Finally, the “Obama For President” bumper sticker comes off of my car! I will add this disappointment in representative government to the others I have mentioned, and finally concede what I had long suspected: that our nation is not governed by our elected representatives, but by the corporate power structure, and that even the President is a pawn in the game controlled by those who control the nation’s wealth.

My only remaining desire is that if proposed health care legislation is to be a farce and a sham, that the progressives in the House of Representatives will vote it down, and deny the insurance and drug companies and their lackeys the satisfaction of knowing that they have hoodwinked the American public, and perhaps, just perhaps, be in a position to try again in 2010 or 2012.

I felt that the opening quotation from Samuel Adams was appropriate to the cultural and intellectual deterioration in American society today. Those brave men who wrote the Declaration of Independence — and many of the signers — were executed, jailed, tortured, or destroyed financially. These dedicated souls would, I fear, be aghast at the ethical and moral decay of today’s money-dominated society.

These were men of honor, largely secularists, products of the thinking of Voltaire and The Enlightenment, who were driven by idealism and a sense of community. Their thinking and values were not based on greed, nor were they confused by mythologies and prejudices. They were not dominated by hate, envy, or dislike of those of various ethnic or philosophic backgrounds.

Where over the past two hundred years have the American people lost their sense of compassion and decency? Where have we lost our Christian teachings, of taking care of the sick, the lame, those in pain, and the poor? I noted in one poll that 60% of fundamentalist Christians had never read the Sermon on The Mount for themselves. Are we ready to accept a health care system that consists of crumbs from the rich man’s table? Are we prepared to accept the fact that our nation ranks 26th in the world in health care delivery, and affordability ?

Concurrent with the demise of the health care in this country is the decline of our educational system, and perhaps there is an interrelationship. Our children barely know how to read — perhaps because their parents spend so much time watching television instead of reading to their kids. Our schools are dominated by elected school board members whose understanding of education is marginal at best, as they attempt of infuse creationism or other mythologies into the elementary schools rather than helping children learn how to think and teaching mathematics, grammar, composition, foreign languages, or science.

In our secondary schools athletics often take precedence over learning. There are no national criteria for high school graduation. College here, unlike in Europe or Asia, is not a broadening experience, with real attention placed on history, economic or political geography, philosophy, the arts, or creative thinking. Our institutions of higher learning have become little more than business schools, preparing students for the business world –- for making money.

Many young folks are not prepared to go to college and require as many as six years to graduate — if they graduate at all. Perhaps we should create trade schools of high quality and give those with less ability to comprehend the nuances of true higher education more of a chance to succeed and gain self respect in non-academic areas. Maybe we should consider establishing universities, administered in a European manner, with control in the hands of trained educators in a ministry of education, rather than being run by boards of trustees with personal political agendas.

Perhaps we should have government subsidization for qualified students so that students are not up to their ears in debt by the time they graduate. Perhaps, we as in Europe, should subsidize medical education thus providing an adequate number of primary care doctors, i.e. general practitioners, internists and pediatricians.

One final thought. I note that only 20% of American’s have living wills. Living wills have nothing do with euthanasia as the right wingnuts would have one believe. A living will provides us with the opportunity to give specific directions about how we wish our death to be treated by the medical community. This should not be a decision for an outsider, but is something we should decide in serious discussion with our family, attorney, physician, and/or cleric.

This must be recorded as an advance directive (your attorney has forms, and frequently the neighboring hospital has them). The instructions must be meticulous, and signed, in most states, by two witnesses. In addition, the next of kin, or other relative or friend, must have written instructions concerning what care we should should we be unable to make decisions for ourselves, i.e. a “power of attorney for health care.” Copies to family members, ones doctor, and ones clergyman.

There are two problems: 1.) In the USA there is an apparent cultural prejudice against discussing the matter of dying. Hard to understand, for in most cultures it is accepted that one is born, one lives and one dies. 2.) From my experience as a physician, I think that most people want to die with dignity, in their own bed, free of pain, with loved ones at their side. Your local hospice can advise on this. Most folks do not want to die in an ICU, among strangers, with tubes in all orifices, a ventilator clicking away, IV drips running, beepers beeping.

My experience with death bed encounters is that all loving, caring relatives have decided to let father die in peace; however, at the last minute the daughter from Seattle, who has not seen father for 20 years, appears on the scene with a cry “you aren’t going to let father die without doing everything possible, are you?” Guilt does strange things…

One final thing to remember; The CEO of United Health Care makes a salary that when broken down comes out to $102,000 per HOUR. Are you happy that he will continue to do so well? I would suggest you take the opportunity to read “The Gorilla Dust of Health Care” by Michael Winship.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, PA. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform.]

The Rag Blog

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BOOKS / Sarah Bird : ‘How Perfect is That’

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


How Perfect Is That

Suffice to say, Sarah Bird has constructed a multithreaded story that has more heft than many would expect for all the ‘chick lit’ labeling she gets.

By Forrest Preece / The Rag Blog / August 18, 2009

[How Perfect is That by Sarah Bird; Paperback edition published by Pocket, July, 2009; 336 pages; $15]

OK — so if How Perfect Is That is “chick lit,” then paste some feathers on me and I’ll run around the barnyard a couple of times. I love this book and I can’t remember when I have laughed out loud so much in one reading.

The paperback edition recently graced the bookstore shelves, just in time for wallets assaulted by the “Big R” to accommodate its purchase. As you can see by the reviews on its first inside page, it’s been a huge hit nationwide — including an Elle Readers’ Prize and a spot on the New York Post’s “Required Reading” List. But for Austin readers, especially those in certain zipcodes, there will be an added fillip of interest. (“Doesn’t his last name rhyme with ____? And “she must be referring to _____. And that house must be ___’s right across from _____.”)

Imagine Dorothy Parker’s sensibility transferred to the dot-bomb era in Tarrytown and Westlake. Mix it with the intellect and sardonic language of P.J. O’Rourke and a helping of Phyllis Diller. OK, so there’s also a pinch of F. Scott Fitzgerald. (Thinking: those shirts on the bed that made Daisy Buchanan cry, not to mention the green light glowing in the distance past the dock — which in our town might have been the violet crown at some point — or at least a houseboat light upstream on Lake Austin.)

Sarah herself has a strong voice which never gets too heavy-handed at moralizing, but she does convey a message among all the mayhem. The book is something like Pilgrim’s Progress in fast forward up to the pinnacle and then in agonizingly slow rewind back down the slope. (Including some trips to feed the disadvantaged on a two-person recumbent bike.)

The protagonist and narrator is Blythe Young, owner of Wretched Xcess Event Coordination Extraordinaire — caterer to the social stars. After years of dolling up TTown and Westlake mansions with four digit thread count tablecloths, titanium chafing dishes and tidbits fit for Louis XIV (“. . .in every case, they wanted the Beluga”), all of a sudden, she is having to cut the pate with Crisco and formulate ways to mask the best morsels Sam’s has to offer with dollops of “exotic” sauce. (“So the polenta I am serving may or may not be Cream of Wheat enlivened with the magic of sunny yellow popcorn seasoning. . .the watercress sandwiches may or may not contain St. Augustine clippings. . .”)

Then imagine if you will, a social climber’s worst nightmare.

After years of struggling to the top of the Pemberton nosh pit, our caterer is suddenly slammed back down the ladder to sharing a bathroom in Seneca House — the west campus co-op on Nueces she inhabited many years ago as a student. She’s surrounded by it all. The whacked-out trust fund girls from River Oaks trying to act Rastafarian. The carpets which fifty or sixty years ago might have been a recognizable color. A huge cat named Big Lou, still there. Plus a gaggle of her unpaid waitstaffers who are ready to throttle her. Not to mention an IRS agent lurking in the shadows who wants to have a sit-down — and an old flame, now a star record producer, who has a strong distaste for downloaded music files.

At one point, Blythe falls even lower. But I’m getting into spoiler territory here.

Suffice to say, Sarah Bird has constructed a multithreaded story that has more heft than many would expect for all the “chick lit” labeling she gets. This is a tale of passion, customs and social history that ranks with Edith Wharton but is delivered in the fast pace of 21st century language.

As for other characters — Millie, Blythe’s long-time pal and foil, is one of the most genuine and good-hearted souls you’ll ever encounter in literature. And the attendant cast from Trey, the ex-hubby, to the “Old Austin” ladies and the fellow Seneca residents like Jerome and Sanjeev and Olga, each bring their own engaging twists to the plot.

Bottom line, there’s still time to grab a copy and make this the top book on your stack of summer reading material, perfect for Marfa, Aspen, or your neighbor’s above-ground pool.

(One personal note — I’ll think twice about ever drinking a Kir Royale again.)

Find How Perfect is That on Amazon.com.

The Rag Blog

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The ‘Grassroots’ Puppet Masters : A Scorecard

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Texas’ Dick Armey, former Republican House majority leader and an ultra-conservative, heads the anti-reform FreedomWorks. (The Hammer, Texan Tom Delay, hovers at the left.)

Opponents of health care reform:
Big bucks behind the ‘grassroots’

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / August 17, 2009

The Republicans and their right-wing masters are trying hard to make it look like the opposition to President Obama’s health care reform is a spontaneous grassroots movement by ordinary Americans. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Both the advertisements and the “grassroots” movement are funded by a series of right-wing organizations, created and funded by rich conservatives. McClatchy News has an excellent article that shows just who these groups are. Here are the major players:

CONSERVATIVES FOR PATIENTS’ RIGHTS — created and funded by health care entrepreneur Rick Scott, the co-founder of Solantic urgent care walk-in centers. These centers advertise themselves as the option for those without insurance (so he specializes in ripping off poor and working class folks). This is also the guy who had to resign as CEO of the Columbia/HCA hospitals when they were investigated by the federal government for fraud.

FREEDOMWORKS — This is former Rep. Dick Armey, who used to be the majority leader for Republicans in the House of Representatives. No one is farther to the right than this guy. He’s also the person who said there’s nothing wrong with our economy except Americans being cowards. This group also contains Steve Forbes, billionaire and former presidential candidate, and Richard J. Stephenson, who founded Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

PATIENTS FIRST and PATIENTS UNITED — Were both created and funded by the ultra right-wing group Americans for Prosperity (AFP). AFP was started by billionaire David Koch of Koch Industries. It’s president is Tim Phillips, who used to be in business with Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed. AFP and FreedomWorks both funded and organized the “tea parties.” They hope to organize 600 anti-health care rallies by Labor Day.

CLUB FOR GROWTH — A right-wing anti-tax organization headed by former Indiana Republican congressman Chris Chocola. This group has just announced a $1.2 million anti-health care ad campaign in in North Dakota, Colorado, Arkansas and Nevada.

60 PLUS ASSOCIATION — This group was originally started to abolish the estate tax. Its current spokesman is Pat Boone, former singer and current right-wing fundamentalist. Its current goal seems to be to scare the elderly. In just the last week, the group has spent $1.5 million in anti-health care ads.

These are the real opponents of any health care reform in America. These rich right-wingers don’t care whether all Americans get decent health care. Their only interest is in avoiding paying taxes, and if they have to kill health care reform they’ll willingly do it.

A rational person would think that as good as America has been to these rich people, they should be willing to give a little back (and it would still be less than the rich have paid in the past). But not these guys. Their greed is more important to them than the lives of their fellow citizens, and they will do anything including lying and disrupting the process.

Don’t let them succeed. Write or call your congressmen/women and demand a public option for health insurance be included in the reform package.

The Rag Blog

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David Zeiger: These Wars Aren’t Over Yet

Posted on August 18, 2009 by RagBlog

Why We Fight from Displaced Films on Vimeo.

An Open Letter to Iraq Veterans Against the War Members and Supporters
From David Zeiger, Director of This is Where We Take Our Stand and Sir! No Sir!

Dear Friends,

As I write this, we are getting ready to post the fourth episode of This is Where We Take Our Stand, our six-part web series about last year’s Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan event. You can find the series at www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com, and of course on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.

It’s been a huge struggle, but this series is finally here–and I hope we created something that will bring the truth you revealed at Winter Soldier to thousands, even millions. We strove to make each episode a revelation and a punch in the gut, featuring some of the most important and powerful testimony from Winter Soldier along with the battles so many of you fought to make it happen. Boots Riley of The Coup wrote a killer theme song, Sound Off, that can also be downloaded from the site.

Winter Soldier happened in the last year of the Bush administration, and it was the most powerful condemnation of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan that I have seen. Your testimony laid bare the insane, relentless brutality of those wars and the hypocrisy of Bush’s claims that you were there to bring “freedom and democracy” to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. You made it clear that it was the policy of the government and military that was criminal. And you brought into the open the courageous, profound opposition to the wars that exists within the military and veterans’ community.

But what about now? Millions of people expected the Obama administration to change those policies and end the occupations. Well, where is that change? In Iraq, where we have been promised there might be a withdrawal by 2011 leaving 50,000 troops there to insure an “America friendly” government? Or how about Afghanistan, where a
thoroughly corrupt, Bush-installed government is now being propped up with the
additional 20,000 troops that were withdrawn from Iraq? What has changed?

What’s most horrifying for me is seeing the slaughter continue today with hardly a peep from those who would have loudly objected when Bush was in charge. So, perhaps
ironically, Winter Soldier is today more relevant and urgent than ever. This is not about the past, as Obama has often said, but about what is happening right now.

It is your voices that must be heard in this darkness. And it’s in that spirit that we have made this series. It belongs to you, and we hope you will not only watch and show it to others, but use it to spread the impact of Winter Soldier and build your movement. We welcome your thoughts and comments, and urge you to add your own testimonials to the web site. Along with posting the final three episodes through September, we will make the whole series available on a DVD for you to use.

With love and solidarity,
David Zeiger

The Rag Blog

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Gog, Magog and the Burning Bush!

Posted on August 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

The REAL force behind the Iraq War? Gog the demon as envisioned by Marvel Comics.

A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

Now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who ‘got saved.’ He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

By James A. Hought / August 17, 2009

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.

The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

[James A. Haught is the editor of the Charleston Gazette (West Virginia) and a Free Inquiry senior editor.]

Source / Free Inquiry

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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Guadalajara : The Three Amigos Summit

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

The Three Amigos: President Barack Obama, Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon, center, and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in Guadalajara, Mexico on August 10. Photo by Alex Brandon / AP.

The Three Amigos Summit:
Sleepwalking through the minefield

By John Ross / The Rag Blog / August 17, 2009

MEXICO CITY — Last week’s “Three Amigos” Summit of North American heads of state in Guadalajara offered all the hair-raising excitement of watching Barack Obama and rightists Stephen Harper (Canada) and host Felipe Calderon sleepwalk through a minefield.

The fifth trilateral huddle of the presidents and/or prime ministers of Canada, U.S. and Mexico was held under the aegius of the North American Security & Prosperity Partnership (SPP or ASPAN in Spanish) that proposes to integrate energy and security mechanisms in the three NAFTA nations.

Appropriately, the Three Amigos Summit came at a moment when both North American prosperity and security are gravely challenged by the deepest economic slide in the region since the Great Depression and cross-border security has been undermined by Calderon’s reckless war on Mexican drug cartels that has taken 12,000 lives in the past three years and now threatens to spill over into the United States.

Indeed, the drug war was at the top of the Guadalajara pow-wow’s agenda – the “War On Terror” which had dominated these séances during the Bush regime was markedly missing from the protocols. One subtext of the drug war colloquy was Mexico’s chronic failure to stem human rights abuses by its military and police that now imperils $1.4 billion of Washington’s Merida Initiative funding to bolster security forces south of the border.

Under terms of the 2007 Initiative negotiated by George Bush and Felipe Calderon in Merida, Yucatan, the U.S. congress must certify that Mexico is taking steps to mitigate the thousands of complaints of drug war abuses filed by citizens with the National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) and verified by international human rights organizations. Failure to take corrective action would result in forfeiting 15% of the funding, a stipulation that Mexican president Calderon has been reluctant to comply with, insisting that all alleged abuses have been addressed by a military justice system that has no civilian oversight.

The certification clause was embedded in the Merida Initiative after the Calderon government failed to resolve the murder of U.S. independent journalist Brad Will during 2006 civil unrest in the southern state of Oaxaca. Despite front page photographs of five plainly identified Oaxaca police officers firing on Will, Calderon’s federal prosecutor and local officials under the thumb of Governor Ulysis Ruiz have refused to issue arrest warrants for the cops, instead accusing members of the Oaxaca Peoples Popular Assembly (APPO) of responsibility for Will’s death.

Although forensic investigations by the CNDH and the Boston-based NGO Physicians for Human Rights (which was asked by the Will family to conduct an independent probe) established that the reporter was gunned down from 35 to 50 meters away presumably by the same police shown in the newspaper photographs, Calderon’s federal prosecutor Eduardo Medina Mora and local authorities contend that Will was shot at close range by activists with whom he was standing during the October 27th 2006 confrontation.

APPO member Juan Manuel Martinez has been imprisoned for nearly a year after being fingered by two alleged eyewitnesses, both of whom concede they did not actually see Martinez fire the fatal shot — international NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Committee To Protect Journalists decry Martinez’s arrest as a frame up.

This July 29th, ten days before the Three Amigos Summit was gaveled to order in Guadalajara, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office (PGR) sought to reaffirm its case against Juan Manuel Martinez and blunt the threatened loss of Merida moneys by publishing the results of an investigation purportedly undertaken by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that corroborated the Mexican government’s disputed finding of APPO culpability in the shooting of the U.S. reporter.

But the RCMP conclusions proved to be little more than a shabby fiction — the three supposed Mounties were in fact contractors-for-hire who were no longer employed by the Canadian police. Their investigation was replete with factual errors (the ex-Dudley Do-Rights reportedly did not read or speak Spanish) and was debunked by Will’s parents. Nonetheless, the ploy met with limited success: the incarceration of Juan Manuel Martinez appears to have softened any lingering doubts the U.S. State Department may have entertained about the dubious quality of Mexican justice and Brad Will’s murder was never mentioned in Guadalajara.

Signing up fake Mounties to corroborate the Martinez frame-up comes at a low point in Mexico-Canada bilateral relations. Protests by Mexican farmers and Indians at widespread environmental damage caused by Canadian mining corporations have surged here in the past months. To further agitate the waters, Steven Harper’s conservative government, citing thousands of Mexicans who arrive in Canada each month to petition for political asylum, clamped a visa requirement on visitors from the south this summer, bollixing the vacation plans of hundreds of families whose vehement protests outside the Canadian embassy here provoked stringent policing.

Despite Calderon’s personal appeal to Harper at the Guadalajara head-to-head, the Canadian prime minister refused to back down on the visa requirements. Instead, in the spirit of the Security & Prosperity Partnership, Harper offered a $15 million Royal Canadian Mounted Police program to train Mexican police chiefs.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Barack Obama barnstormed the rust belt pledging to revise NAFTA chapters that are squeezing U.S. workers — but reopening the 15 year-old trade agreement was not on the Guadalajara agenda. (Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had previously warned Canadian officials not to take his boss’s campaign promises seriously.) Although workers and farmers in the three NAFTA nations demand revision, opening up the free trade treaty is a non-starter for the three amigos in these economically perilous times.

In fact, the U.S. congress has unilaterally reneged on a NAFTA provision that would allow Mexican long haul drivers to operate on U.S. highways. In retaliation, Mexico slapped $6.2 billion USD in potential tariffs on 89 U.S. products, including dog food and Christmas trees. No progress in resolving the trade dispute was registered at the Guadalajara summit.

With security at red alert levels, Obama flew into Guadalajara, the financial center for Mexico’s six major drug cartels, aboard Air Force One escorted by five helicopter gunships. Drug war paranoia was palpable and 5,000 police and army troops were mobilized to protect the three amigos during their brief stay in Mexico’s second city.

The drama mounted when an operator for the Pacific Cartel in Sinaloa was captured after cops got wind of an alleged plot to assassinate Calderon at the Summit. Even as the three heads of state gathered in Guadalajara, Silvia Raquenel Villanueva, a legendary lawyer who made her bones defending drug kingpins, was gunned down at a posh Monterrey mall by unknowns — Raquenel, whose life is celebrated in popular narco-corridos, had survived four previous assassination attempts.

Obama’s 20-hour visit was his second as U.S. president — last April, he traveled to Mexico City just as the swine flu epidemic detonated here although he was kept in the dark of the dangers of contagion by Calderon — an anthropologist who accompanied Obama on a tour of the National Anthropological Museum subsequently died of respiratory failure and a Secret Service agent was stricken. This time around, El Baracko came equipped with a full medical team.

The U.S. president was also accompanied by his just-designated ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual. The scion of a well-connected Cuban family who fled the island in the first years of the revolution, Pascual is the highest-ranking Gusano on the Obama payroll but his anti-Castro roots will not sooth perpetually stressed Cuban-Mexican relations. A Brookings Institute fellow, Pascual is said to be an expert on “failed states” — a recent U.S. Joint Chief of Staff analysis (JOE 2008) posits that Mexico is at risk of becoming a “failed state.”

While the drug war dominated the Guadalajara tête–à–tête, the coming swine flu season was much on the minds of the three amigos. Last spring’s outbreak in Mexico which is thought to have germinated in a U.S.-owned hog farm in Veracruz, spread north rapidly, triggering threats of quarantine and the scapegoating of Mexicans around the world.

Also troubling the Guadalajara agenda: what to do about pesky Manuel Zelaya, the constitutional president of Honduras who was dislodged by a military coup at the end of June. While the events herald unwelcome destabilization in Central America as oligarchs and their cronies in the military take heart from Zelaya’s overthrow, both Obama and Harper waffled on support for the Honduran president’s reinstatement as mandated by the Organization of American States, and the first Afro-American president of the U.S. bristled at allegations that his government was not doing its part to facilitate Mel Zelaya’s return to power, arguing that the same leftists who demand the Yanquis get out of Latin America insist that Washington increase pressure on the Honduran coup-makers.

Just days before the Guadalajara summit, the deposed Zelaya flew to Mexico to lobby Felipe Calderon and members of congress into supporting his return to Honduras. But the Honduran earned his Mexican counterpart’s scorn when he spoke favorably of leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) who continues to maintain that he beat Calderon in the fraud-marred 2006 presidential election here. In retribution, Calderon’s elite presidential guard prevented Zelaya from talking to the press when he exited the country.

The North American Security & Prosperity Partnership is the brainchild of Obama’s predecessor George Bush and was designed to assure Washington of a secure oil flow from both Canada and Mexico that together comprise nearly a third of the U.S. energy basket. Increased integration of security forces envisions the deployment of U.S. troops on Mexican soil to safeguard vital Caribbean oil fields from international terrorism — Washington and Mexico participated in war games that simulated terrorist attacks in the Gulf of Mexico at the end of July.

The U.S.’s renewed “outreach” to its southern neighbors forms one leg of a strategy to refocus Washington’s attentions on Latin America after years of marginalizing the continent during which the anti-neoliberal pendulum swung decisively to the left.

Other outcroppings of the renewed Yanqui strategy: the mobilization of the U.S. Fourth Fleet to patrol the Atlantic and Caribbean theaters and the establishment of seven U.S. air and naval bases in Colombia, one of Washington’s few allies in the region, which, not surprisingly, has stirred alarm on the Latin American Left.

Meeting in Quito on the very days that the three amigos were connudling in Guadalajara, the 12-nation UNASUR (“Union of Nations of South America”), a Bolivarian mutual defense system, exhorted Obama to support the return of Mel Zelaya to Honduras and robustly condemned the latest U.S.-Colombian adventure.

Ironically, the SPP-ASPAN with its implications of a new Pax Americana in Latin America, has become a red flag for right-wing gringo conspiracy buffs who most recently have been obsessed by Barack Obama’s birth certificate(s.) For the “birthers” and the “tea party patriots,” the SPP-ASPAN is a subversive plot to overthrow the United States, nullify U.S. laws, and coin a new currency that will displace the Yanqui dollar. Waving small American flags, an angry gaggle of “patriots” showed up in Guadalajara to denounce the conspiracy.

But the most pertinent gringo invasion of Mexico came post-Three Amigos when the U.S. soccer team stormed Mexico City to face off against Mexico’s faltering national team in a do-or-die qualification match for the 2010 World Cup. In 23 previous outings at the gargantuan (105,000) Azteca stadium, the Americanos had never won a game and the August 12th contest was no exception with the Mexicans grinding out a narrow one-goal victory — the U.S. star Landon Donovan was subsequently bedded with Swine Flu.

The win over the hated Yanquis was perhaps the only positive result of the Three Amigos Summit for this distant neighbor nation.

[John Ross is back in the maw of the Monstruo. His monstrous chronicle, “El Monstruo — Dread & Redemption in Mexico City” will be published by Nation Books this November. If you have further info write johnross@igc.org.]

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Austin Group Denounces Honduran Coup

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

A message from Honduras: “Jail for the coup-plotters!”. Photo from Indymedia/Honduras.

Demonstration is part of week of international action against Honduran coup.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / August 17, 2009

Demonstrators in Austin gathered on August 14 to denounce the coup in Honduras and urge the U.S. government to take decisive action to reinstate President Manuel Zelaya. The protest was part of a week of international action against the June 28 Honduran coup.

The protest, that drew more than two dozen people, was called by the fledgling Austin chapter of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) and brought representatives from CISPES, the Texas Fair Trade Coalition, PODER, CodePink, Texas Labor Against the War. the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and others to the corner of 6th and Lamar under the blazing Texas sun. Pedestrians and cars stopped at the busy intersection were leafleted.

Demonstrators in Austin protest coup in Honduras on August 14.

Those who support democracy in Central America were encouraged to make their voices heard, asking the Obama administration to join other nations in taking serious steps to restore democracy. Those steps include:

  • Revoking US visas and freeze bank accounts of those involved in the coup
  • Ceasing all operations and recall all personnel from the Palmerola military base
  • Recalling US Ambassador Llorens as required by law in the event of a coup
  • Joining other nations in declaring that the US will not recognize any election results in Honduras unless Zelaya is reinstated
  • Cutting off US economic assistance for “election support” to the coup regime in Honduras

CISPES urged Austin residents to call 202-224-3121 and urge their Congressional Representatives to support House Resolution 630 demanding, among other things, that President Zelaya be immediately reinstated.

Go here for more information on Honduras.

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