The Rag Blog

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

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Congress, Corporate Power, Educational Reform, Health Care Reform, Obama Administration | 1 Comment

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

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Austin, Books, Criticism | Leave a comment

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

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Health Care Reform, Right Wing Extremists | 1 Comment

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

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Peace Movement, VVAW, Winter Soldiers | 14 Comments

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

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Evangelical Christians, George W. Bush, Iraq War, Religious Fanaticism | Leave a comment

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.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Barack Obama, Canada, Mexico | 4 Comments

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.

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Alice Embree, Austin, Coups d'etat, Honduras, Latin America, Political Protest | Leave a comment

Greg Moses : The Dylan Show Plays Corpus Christi

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

The Geometries of the Bob Dylan Show in South Texas

Instantly the night is dark. Orchestra music plays from hanging speakers. Time to cheer and squint into the black box that has become the stage. There is a man in white hat moving into center position.

By Greg Moses / The Rag Blog / August 17, 2009

CORPUS CHRISTI — The Bob Dylan Show this summer reaches its south-most destination at 27 degrees 48 minutes north latitude, half past four degrees into the Tropic of Cancer where fat velocities of rotation spin hysterical contradictions between centrifugal ups and centripetal downs.

Or if it’s not about cosmic number tonight why does this latitude trace eastward to Qalandul where southbound priests of Egypt would disembark from lotus-flower boats for a three mile walk to the moon temple of Khmounoun named for the number eight? If mathematics is beside the point why does the latitude of Corpus Christi — named after the body of Christ — line up with that place in Egypt identified by the Catholic Encyclopedia as the residence of the boy Jesus when his family carried him into exile?

Nor is any of this geometry too heavy for tonight’s three stars: Dylan, Willie Nelson, or John Cougar Mellencamp, whose converging chords have capacities to re-curve time and space for our drought and debt saturated landscapes. If ticket-holders hadn’t already calculated the likelihood of some momentary resurrection in cosmic geometries why would any of us have put up dollars to broil under this August sun?

Of course, for the most part, the dollars in question will be advanced courtesy of MasterCard – Visa and reallocated as a leveraged put toward one last long play on the possibilities of a harmonic salvation against the dissonance and entropy of all things coming undone. De-leverage and stay home? That would be like losing faith in daily bread.

Why these three stars chose the first week of August to play five Texas concerts outdoors says something about their heroic confidence, their leather skins, and their complete indifference to the pain of making a living. July Fourth is hard enough down here — that day in mid-summer when Willie Nelson and his good man Poodie (God rest his soul) gathered head-popping tribes of rednecks and hippies at open-sky picnics across Texas, year after year — where you might have exhaled on David Carradine floating by in a long white cloak or kicked over a cow patty passing David Allen Coe in an oasis of grinning mesquite, a blonde on one arm and a brunette on the other.

But August Fifth! Jesus, what a date to pick for playing Corpus Christi outdoors. To the west of Whataburger Field there will be nothing very tall to stand up against the sun as it takes its ever loving time going down. These are the Dog Days for Christ’s sake, named since the beginning of time by those very priests who studied the high heavens at 8-Town until they figured out that when Sirius, the Dog star, came out from behind the sun, it was a visible promise that the river was fixin’ to rise again, thank God.

And so the boys have chosen a dog day to put down for the evening in Corpus Christi harbor, up against the south bank of Tule Lake Channel, a mainline canal for barges of the planetary chemical coast, toting eastward past Whataburger Field and then northward past Dagger Island and Ransom Island as they cut eastward again thru Aransas Pass into the Gulf of Mexico all kinds of fluids drawn up from the arteries of Mother Earth and alchemized into kerosene or feed stocks for Naugahyde, depending. Along this third coast, clear up to Texas City, is where better living thru chemistry begins.

Sales by the chemical giants are down twenty to thirty percent or more and, like other industries these days, chemical profits are being sustained through layoffs. Investors were kind in July to chemco stock prices, but the cost of that form of prosperity means that the labor market around here is a bear, with unemployment on the rise.

Likewise with the other four stops on this tour, whether you’re looking at the energy companies who built the Woodlands, the tech sector that built Dell Diamond, the bankers who anchored Dallas as a regional center for the Federal Reserve just 13 miles from Quick Trip Park in Grand Prairie, or the cotton and cattle enterprises that undergird the stadium facilities at Texas Tech’s Jones AT&T stadium.

Interestingly enough, if you look at some of the breakout hits for tonight’s three stars, such as Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” Mellencamp’s “Hurts so Good,” or Nelson’s “Shotgun Willie” album — they all soared into our hearts at well-defined market lows. Riding a three-wave bounce thru Texas, therefore, is a trio of bear-market bards. When the chips are down, these are the fellas we want to hear most.

5pm August 5 at the crossroads of federal highway 37 and state highway 59 — there is no way to be at Whataburger Field on time to catch the warm-up act by the Wiyo’s who say they are from Brooklyn but look like they should be from Kentucky or some Hollywood movie show. Up there on stage with their washboard and dusty clothes you wouldn’t be surprised if they started pitching you some all-purpose elixir to fix everything from charley horse to heartache. They have the perfect attitude for a band that’s prepping for today’s top billers, pitching nothing too heavy to weigh down a grin.

Maybe some day the Wiyo’s will return triumphant as top bills and contribute a poster to the wall of fame that’s collected here at the crossroads Burger King – signed posters from Linda Escobar, D.J. Kane, Kevin Fowler, Ruben Ramos, and other troubadours who have crossed here going in one of four directions, maybe even Southbound on federal 37 toward Whataburger Field.

But since this is mostly an arithmetic excursion so far, the fifth at five thing reminds me that the classic Mayans named the daystar God-5 in honor perhaps of the fifth direction you could always hope to go at any crossroads. In first people rituals on this very continent 5-God is dressed in pants with yellow stripes, the emblematic color of the sun and the third age back when grandmothers — not their grandsons — were in charge.

Yes we are driving toward the beach as they say, but on this coastline your playtime scenery has an industrial backdrop. Signs say Seafood and Scrap Metal. Redbird Lane turns into Railroad Ave. And right over the tracks, Five Points Road turns into Leopard, a Mayan math trick for sure. By the time I get to Whataburger Field the clock over the entrance is a perfect straight-up six, but I’m too busy to do the math right now. There is no music coming out of the place, which means Willie’s roadies are setting up. I do not want to miss those first chords of Whiskey River.

Bottled water first. The layout of this stadium is very similar to last night’s venue at the Dell Diamond, probably because the same designer landed both jobs. So it’s not difficult to find a well-staffed concession stand upon the mezzanine before turning toward the stage. From about first base over to the left field bleachers there is shade thrown down by the stadium. And just like yesterday afternoon, all the shaded seats have been filled up first. The sunny seats over along right field are nearly completely empty.

The infield has been blocked off with some temporary barriers made of plastics that didn’t fall too far from the chemical towers that rise up all around these parts. Just outside second base is a white pyramid-topped canopy for equipment and cameras. Between the canopy and the stage they have laid down some heavy white rubber mats that protect the outfield Astroturf and hide some hefty electrical wires underfoot.

Upon the white mats in center field is the temple of the sun, where worshippers are dedicated and few. It would be easy to get very close to the stage, but like most folks this afternoon I hang back in the shade. What does 98 degrees in the full sun feel like when you’re standing on a rubber mat? At yesterday’s concert I ran into an old, old friend who had a twenty-something son, and we followed the kid right down there onto a quilt in the midst of the sun worshipping crowd, which was larger last night. It turned out not to be as fatal as it sounds although the official temperature was 101.

This evening at short-stop position I take my stand just about the time the sun worshippers start cheering to let everyone know that Willie has stepped into view. Then those chords. Of course the last thing you think about is how Willie’s spotlight right now is the third coast sun. Just like last night he takes the sun shift full in the face and it seems to bother him not a bit.

Something is different tonight about Willie. Usually he plays with a guitar backup. Last night the honor was done by the legendary Ray Benson. Tonight Willie has other familiar members of the family on stage, and a bass player, but there is only one guitar. You’ve probably seen it. It sounds great. My ears are telling me the ticket price has already been returned with interest.

As Willie switches tunes to “Still is Still Moving” we can see the high backs of trucks flying over his head as they move up and down the steel trussed harbor bridge along the east side of Whataburger Field. “La la la,” sings the singer. When Mickey Raphael steps up to blow the harmonica, Willie lifts his right hand to point toward the sky. Cheers fly up from a commotion of ballcaps and shorts.

At a peace concert a few years back, Willie introduced “Beer for my Horses” as the homeland security song, so that’s the way I’ve thought about it ever since. He stops his own singing to let the audience fill in the title lyric, as they did last night. Mothers in cowboy hats walk to and fro. A snuff dipper wearing a bud cap raises a plastic bottle to his lips. An extra large man walks out of the sun crowd wearing an extra large red t-shirt that reads “Big Frank.”

“Well Hello There,” is the way Willie opens the fourth song to immediate cheers. With Paul English hitting the backbeat and Willie pointing to folks here and there, everyone is enjoying the chance to get reacquainted. We’re thinking about last time and next time. T-shirts walk by texting Dynamo or smiling in the image of Jackson Browne.

“Crazy!” is a song that Willie always seems to begin abruptly, and it always produces an abrupt reply. As Willie hits the four notes down, here comes a mother in pale pink boots. Holding mom’s hand is her waist-tall daughter whose boots are pale green. Here are your green shoots people. Before you have time to figure out what to say about the teen boy in the BIMBO shirt, an image of Hendrix reminds your mind to take a deep breath.

Literally, it’s a little too early for that “Night Life” song, because the sun is still pretty much all up in his face, but Willie is in the mood to give Trigger a good workout. “Listen what the blues are playing.” A Motown insider once assured me that when Willie comes to town, the Motown session musicians get front row seats. That’s the first thing he told me after asking me where I was from.

Coming off the field now is a young tall buck in a big black hat, hefty silver buckle, brand new jeans draping down over calf-brown boots holding hands with a wide-eyed doe in boots, cutoff jeans, and purple top. Are my sunglasses dark enough for this? “Thank y’all very much. I love y’all. How y’all doing out there?” is what Willie says next.

As Little Sister Bobbie hits her “Down Yonder” piano solo, Willie tosses his black hat into the crowd, puts the red bandana over his forehead, and tops it with a wide and flat straw hat that someone has tossed up. After asking Sister Bobbie to give the crowd a wave over top of the grand piano, Willie introduces drummer Paul and plays the song about “Me and Paul.” The lyric about almost getting busted in Laredo draws a response from this South Texas crowd, probably because Laredo is a name they hear all the time.

Buck and doe are easing back toward the sun worshippers now. A silver fuel truck flies down the Harbor Bridge followed by a gleaming red pickup riding high on the back of a tow. Willie introduces Paul’s little brother Bobby and Mickey Raphael. I don’t recall seeing Mickey this tan before. He’s been playing the sun shift beside Willie for a few weeks. Coming out of the crowd now is a serious looking fellow in sunglasses and camo pants. He is followed by a couple with a vast age difference. I take the older man to be a grandfather and the younger woman in the Hooks shirt to be his daughter, but I wonder. The main thing is their smiles.

Willie hits stride with “Money Honey” then slows it down for “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” A young mom has stepped out of the sun into the shaded area where she waltzes with the boy she carries. The boy climbs down to the turf and starts running a diamond of bases, preparing his imagination for the big leagues. A daddy steps into the shade carrying his daughter dressed in a yellow shirt. The sea breeze kicks up the smell of salt. And I’ll be darned if it’s not buck and doe coming this way again.

Tom T. Hall wrote “Shoeshine Man” declares Willie introducing the novelty tune which seems to have replaced “Kiss Big Booty Goodbye” in this year’s lineup. Willie does the video for the shoeshine song by playing with his web cam and, according to the definitive stillisstillmoving blog, Jackass Johnny Knoxville sez it’s the best video of all time (lower case letters inserted). Little Sister Bobbie kicks up a storm on the pinanny as Mickey and Willie hop onto her musical dust devil. Cheers and whistles swirl all around.

As Willie kicks it up one more notch with “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys,” the little base runner is swept up by mom for more dancing. But there is only so much will a momma can have over the boy who pushes himself back down to run some more diamonds. Walking through this little drama is a high-contrast image of young Dylan’s face carried forward on a purple t-shirt by a proud teen grrrl walking beside her proud gramps. “Thank you very much,” says Willie, because the applause is getting pretty loud.

Tenderness returns to the fading day with “Angel Flying too Close to the Ground.” A big brother and little sister come off the field side-by-side with some serious responsibilities showing in their faces. Probably they have been given a time limit, maybe even some cash. High above the stage, gulls dive after each other, energized by an updraft. A young momma steps confidently under black hat, platoon leader to passing images of Kid Rock, pink sunglasses, and Bob Marley.

At “On the Road Again” a beverage salesman comes striding out of the crowd, slinging an empty blue bucket. As he turns North along the left field foul line his back draws my eyes toward Willie’s bus parked behind the stage with its painted horse always ready to ride. Time to reload that bucket. On a blanket thrown down near second base, a young family claps in unison. Mommy and baby girl dress in matching outfits.

With Sister Bobbie’s piano striking a melancholy mood, Willie eases into an apology song. “Maybe I didn’t love you quite as.” A young Dad with trimmed beard, gator boots, and beaded belt dances. A youngster’s t-shirt advises us to save water. Arms go up in applause.

“I had a carpal tunnel operation and my doctor told me to go home and shut up,” explains Willie as he sets the stage for the next ditty about being Superman Not. “Too many pain pills, too much pot.” Willie has lost his big straw hat. The bandana he wears now looks more like a head wrap for a wounded man. And Sister Bobbie helps to strike the appropriate musical pose. In the lengthening shadows, a personage in chrome boots and white hat is busy talking up something they’ll probably get from someone they probably know.

“How about a little Hank Williams?” asks Willie, which is not really a question so much as a cue to start hoo-ing and whistling and shouting things like hell yeah as he hops right onto the bayou song. Self, sez I to me, I told you this was going to be a mathematical event. There will be three (count ‘em three) Hank songs. “Hey Good Lookin” might be dedicated to more than half the crowd tonight and Willie is still pointing them out. A woman prettier than gold passes by, talking on her cell phone. The kid runs a diamond around her knees. Time for a little riff from Trigger and before you know it the cosmos has been segued into Hank’s “Big Dog” song.

Okay, dear reader, you are thinking how long is this going to go on? Are you going to report on each and every one of these songs and fashions and dramas as if you were responsible for something like memory itself? Yes ma’am, and without commercial interruption.

So while we were finishing up the triangulation of Hank there was this ACDC t-shirt that I forgot to mention just before all hands went up in applause, which is good a time as any to start “City of New Orleans” while an independent woman in plaid top, shorts, and boots keeps her attention split between the ground, the stairs ahead, and the text message she is sending: IYKWIMAITYD. “I Just Want My Noodles” is what it says on the next t-shirt immediately followed by a grrrl in dayglo sunglass frames and a hint of leopard-skin fabric worked in to the waist line.

The beverage salesman who we lost in the direction of Willie’s bus has returned now walking with a bit of a strain against the weight of the filled bucket that he has strapped across a broad shoulder. He’s handling his job with sweat and good cheer as Willie kicks up the melody for “Pipeliner” and sings about a man who’d walk from Corpus to Wichita Falls.

A double-dating foursome probably with fresh memories of the prom is enjoying a stroll around left field as Willie begins to ease his way off stage. “Thank y’all very much. We love y’all. I hope you’ll stay for John and Bob.” But no Willie show is over until the Gospel tune sings, so he and Sister Bobbie and the family treat us all to “I Saw the Light.” Talk about your understatement. More thanks, more love. The man in the black hat blows kisses. The bleacher folks stand up to clap and cheer. Mickey gives a hearty wave. And cut.

Up on the mezzanine a Skol can hits the concrete floor and a big man reaches down to retrieve it. Big red plastic carts on big plastic wheels are rolled into place as drink stations for the surge between acts. Over by the Whataburger counter the plastic coated picnic tables are keeping themselves occupied as diners wait for their numbers, grab their bags, sit and eat, and make room for the next shift. A woman with a long braid holds out her walkie-talkie with one hand as she pushes down trash with the other. It’s beginning to look like evening. The breeze is strong enough that I set my full water bottle on the floor instead of the railing.

By now the empty seats in right field have some shade moving onto them. I sit down behind folks who have traveled some distance to see Mellencamp mostly. A walkway at ground level is guarded gently by a young woman dressed in the lightly printed pattern of the Whataburger Field staff. She either nods to let you pass or shakes her head to stop you. Near the entrance to the walkway a few women stand on the field wearing USO t-shirts. Here comes a couple holding hands. Dad wears a Grand Funk Railroad t-shirt.

A guy big enough and about the right age to be the real thing wears a t-shirt that says Notre Dame Football. On the field a littler kid kneels, tucks his head down and rolls completely over into a sitting position, rolls again, and again, and again. He comes up smiling each time. When he’s finished, he gets up to pull a cell phone from mom’s back pocket. Mom is having a live conversation with friends. Cheers. Spring-loaded fans jump up and walk quickly onto the field. It’s Mellencamp time and here he comes.

“You guys ready?” asks Mellencamp. “Then someone’s going to have to count to four. One. Two.” His band hits the opening chords for “Little Pink Houses.” Right field is dancing. Hands are high up and clapping. We’re feeling that electric violin. Down on the field grandpa in his yellow shirt tosses grandson two feet to the kid’s father. Catch! The three of them are laughing loud. Dad puts the boy down next to little sister. Dad picks up little sister. And the whole family rocks. All hips are in motion. A surfer cowboy grabs his date for a closer dance. A blonde grrrl and brunette grrrl come strolling hand in hand. “Home of the Free!” Binoculars turn to John.

The violin is smoking hot tonight as it plays the riff for “Paper and Fire.” A young man with light brown dreds strolls out to meet the music. As the violin saws into “Check It Out” hands go up to clap the beat. Mellencamp pitches back pictures of our lives. On the highway of this song we’re all making very similar trips. Check out that Harley Davidson t-shirt passing by. There’s a long message on it that we can’t quite make out at walking speed in fading daylight. Bet it sums something up about living.

Mellencamp’s band leaves him solo with an acoustic guitar explaining how he’s “sicker than a mf*r up here” and how he’d seriously considered canceling tonight’s performance. “But I can’t do it to these people!” Applause and good cheers for that. “Glad you all showed up!” Then he polls the audience for their mood in terms of “old song” or “new.” For the “old song” landslide majority he presents a chorus of “Club Cherry Bomb” a capella – to which they all sing along in remembrance of when “groovin’ was groovin’.”

Having done his best to prepare his fans for something completely new, Mellencamp introduces a dream song that he very recently recorded in a Savannah Georgia Baptist Church. Here come the dredlocks back out. A tall daddy carries his baby girl high up on his shoulders. A pair of toddlers walk unsteadily together, still finding their legs.

Mellencamp begins “Small Town” as an acoustic solo, but the song ends with the band in full electric swing. A man with freshly trimmed gray hair nods and smiles as the Cougar sings about being born and raised in a small town. But when the singer sings about probably dying in a small town, the man emphatically shakes his head not me.

Now it’s the band’s turn to give Mellencamp a little break as they play a violin powered song that haunts the spirit of something Irish, Dixified, and Gospel. A double date of teens walks in formation, smiling and chatting about all kinds of possibilities for this life. A mom strolls hand in hand with her daughter. A big guy with big hands stuffs three empty bottle necks between the fingers of one hand and walks confidently upstairs.

“Scarecrow” pulses through the crowd in the form of chest-thumping full-frontal rock. A woman in pink dress and high heels bounces out along the right foul line, veers into fair play, returns toward first base with a friend. Mellencamp turns around to the drummer and raises his arms. Five cases of beer go rolling toward an ice-cold oasis. From every face a glow of something like I’m proud to be who I am. Nobody who’s not somebody far as you can see.

Power chords for “Troubled Land” introduce Mellencamp’s prayer for peace. Palm trees pose in silhouette against the last horizontal light of the day. Police lead a woman upstairs with a couple of thick deposit bags. In this mood right now, they could probably just ask the audience to pass the cash. A tall thin man with arms outstretched comes floating across the foul line toward the right field steps, lifted up and carried by event staff who sit down with him in the bleachers. Grins and grumbles ripple out.

“If I Die Suddenly” is a resurrection song about leaving it all behind. Even the preacher would be too late to do anything useful. All the necessary arrangements have been taken care of through family and prayer. Stage lights glow purple as twilight darkens the sky into various shades of charcoal blue. Backlit advertisements for K Triple Eye TV and the Gulf Coast Federal Credit Union contribute softening glows. Corpus Christi cops stroll relaxed as five cases of empties get pushed westward for disposal. A fat supply plane passes southbound overhead.

It’s 1-2-3 and all hips are swinging for the crumblin’ wall song. The bass player takes center stage, and he’s just spanking that thing. Then the drummer rolls in with a solo. Lights strobe. There’s hollering all around. Blackberries get lifted up to capture the ecstasy. Whistles. Applause. “This is good!” shouts a Mellencamp fan from the right field bleachers. This is exactly what he came for.

“When I put this band together in the early 70’s it was a garage band,” says Mellencamp after introducing the players. “We went from the garage to the bar and back to the garage. After years of doing that I was surprised to see that you could play on stages where your feet didn’t stick to the floor.” Mellencamp explains how his breakout hit “Hurts So Good” was written as a way to catch the spirit of bars at 5 a.m. But with a voice busted by the August weather in Texas, Mellencamp says that he’d like to throw the vocal part to a fan who has been up front singing along with every note.

“So come on up here. What’s your name?” As Tom Cruise is to Bob Seeger, Mike is to Mellencamp. He grabs the microphone and hits the song like a punching bag, scoring every word. Of course the audience sings the chorus, too, as Mellencamp swoops in for the closing lines. Before Mike leaves the stage, he grabs Mellencamp and lifts him high off his feet! No sticking to the floor tonight.

“Thanks a lot you guys,” says Mellencamp, “good bye,” leaving us Mellen-heads with wide grins. Up on the mezzanine food and drinks are still selling fast. In a kitchen on the south side of Whataburger Field a woman scrubs a pile of steel pans. Nearby a couple of guys open an exhaling cooler and roll out a frosted keg. I grab a fresh bottle of water and get back down to the outfield.

As I take up position in center-left field, the party is in full swing. Under bright ballpark lights, friends gather into a hundred small circles chattering and laughing. Oops, down goes a full cup of beer. Oops, down goes a bottle. Behind the stage three candy red semi trucks rest side by side as their long steel trailers are emptied and refilled by more than a dozen roadies in sportive uniforms who roll cases of equipment one way or the other over a steel plank. After a while the stage empties of workers. A senior operator comes out to check a few final details at the keyboard station.

Instantly the night is dark. Orchestra music plays from hanging speakers. Time to cheer and squint into the black box that has become the stage. There is a man in white hat moving into center position. Time to cheer again. No way to keep up with the rapid intro, a biograph of Dylan that takes us from rock legend, through drug haze, then into Jesus and beyond. But as it (not absolutely) always was, he remains the Columbia recording artist. Cue lights and trilling notes of “Watching the River Flow.”

Dylan holds the fat neck of his guitar up like in the promo pics. Makes me think of the way you hold a shotgun and what Woodie Guthrie wrote on his own guitar. And if you read the reports after every ballpark show you can tell it begins to work pretty quickly. Also, in the context of today’s show, Dylan’s opening guitar work feels like a kind of tribute to Willie Nelson’s guitar style with alternating riffs and hard-scrubbed chords.

“Don’t Think Twice” was the song that pulled me into Dylan way back when I was skinny and lovesick. It’s a nice surprise to hear it as song number two. Magically the electric bass has been replaced with a full-sized acoustic. Down here among the ticketholders a woman with a sweet smile and twinkling eyes holds up two cups of foaming beer, pauses, looks around. Maybe she’s really lost? So many two’s all at once. Time for this party to double down.

With a shot from the drums that startles you into thinking explosion, the band hits the wailing chords of “Till I Fell in Love with You.” Dylan begins at the keyboards downstage right, facing three axemen stage left in black suits and hats. The fifth black-suited player sits upstage right behind a pedal slide. Dylan seems to be getting the feel of the stage, making eye contact with players. Then he turns to grab a well-placed harmonica and walks to center stage for a solo. On his pants, the outseam is covered by a broad yellow stripe that matches his yellow shirt. Could be a ritual Mayan dressing for a ceremony at high noon.

When the song feels done Dylan nods to the bass player and leader of the band — a familiar face to old fans of Saturday Night Live. The bass player cues the drummer, and the boys bring the thing to a stop. In the song the singer was “Dixie Bound.” Now the song is over, and look who’s here.

It’s a soft-pitch melody up next, with the yellow-breasted poet’s jacket unbuttoned for “a whoppin’ good time.” Last night The Vocalist stressed the lyrics a little more at that “over the hill” allegation. Tonight the emphasis shifts to the keyboard and the tall, acoustic bass. Cellphones are up and streaming rows of tiny screens over ballcaps and beer. Jupiter is chasing the moon up over the harbor bridge leaving plenty of clearance for more chemical trucks to go barreling down westward toward Laguna Madre.

Whistles come flying into the stage from various points. Someone tosses off a light scream. Dylan and the boys reply with a rollickin Muddy Waters takeoff, “and I tumbled, I cried the whole night long.” The gulf breeze offers a gusty supercharge. A southbound airplane blinks high overhead. Drum and bass beat CPR into each and every heart.

For me, Dylan’s “Workingman’s Blues #2” is a reminder of Jody Payne who for years sang the Merle Haggard original during Willie Nelson concerts. The Dylan reply has a sing-song rhythm that the crowd enjoys, hands up, clapping. For his part, The Vocalist is tossing the notes back and forth from guttural to nasal, playing with the range of possibilities. A few popcorn clouds wave at the Sturgeon Moon. A couple giggles together as they hold up a Willie Doll that can’t help but sway to the happy feel of things. I hear Payne is in retirement today enjoying time with his son, Waylon. Still, we missed him this evening at 6:15 or thereabouts.

Before Dylan pitches “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” he steps back in the dark, gives his arms a good stretch, and grabs a drink. Another tanker truck comes wheeling down the harbor bridge, shining its stainless steel body back at the moon. At the keyboard, Dylan turns and kicks to one side and then to the other. But don’t let that song and dance act fool you too much, because the serious side of Dylan’s art is just now kickin’ in.

“Ballad of a Thin Man” is a song you can lay back and enjoy a little more if it doesn’t catch you live taking notes. People can’t help but grin at you. They even start walking a little closer to you in the moonlight just so you can be sure to see they’re on the side that’s grinning. “With great lawyers and scholars,” sings the man with the thin mustache, pouring a little pepper onto your paranoia. Indeed you miss plenty and most of the time. But you’re no quitter, are you — dum, dum, dum, dum — Mr. Jones? When the song is finally over, I give it a four-finger whistle. Sportsmanship.

At last night’s show in Round Rock, “Highway 61” was the apex of the arc as it is tonight, even without the amazing center-stage guitar work of Charlie Sexton or the amusing lyrical antics of the vocalist. There’s just a way the song comes together. Dylan enjoys jamming the song on the keyboard, and the guitars enjoy answering him. Then the guitars start answering each other. Before you know it there is a full blown conversation going on between the drummer and the bass player, too. Everybody has something to say. The lighting crew starts mixing in a few tricks and pretty soon the Bob Dylan Show is taking us all down for a ride.

In the darkness before “Nettie Moore,” Dylan steps back to take a sip. The song is such a sweet and sad thing. The violin sounds perfect for it, and Dylan seems to place special emphasis on the lines, “I loved you then, and ever shall.” Meanwhile, the audience has divided itself in half between those who have inched ever forward and those who have stepped back. In the gap between them a 12-foot ring of rubber mat.

“Thunder on the Mountain” is a wide-ranging plaint. You’ve got the man, the woman, and the world all on the verge of some critical swerve. The beat is ferocious as a freight train. The crew up on stage is stoking the engine hotter than an August night with all the seriousness and concentration they can sustain. It’s like one little cotter pin could spring out of joint and the whole 46-box-car operation would come crushing down upon us all. The front rail audience is completely transfixed. It’s like they are just holding on for dear life. Then the grand conductor gives a quick nod to the leader of the band and the whole damn weight of things is braked to a smooth but quick stop.

When the band goes off-stage I wonder if they’ll come back for an encore. There is a hearty group of folks who are into the show, and they are trying to put up a ruckus, but they’ve been beered and beaten by the heat for about five hours, so it’s not clear they have much left inside to wring out. By rock concert standards, their cries for more would be deniable. But after a polite interlude the band does come back. Dylan’s return gait is loose and lanky. He seems to gesture something merciful with his body before returning to work.

The encore begins with Dylan’s signature song, the one that branded a glorious generation of rolling stones. At the keyboard, Dylan reminds us of Al Kooper’s licks. On the line — “How does it feel?” — the stage lights cast a flashing fishnet pattern over the near crowd. On the black backdrop is a lighted image of the new Dylan logo, an eye of Horus crowned as feathered serpent. Mayan math connected to Egyptian is what I say. And the all seeing stagemaster himself seems to signal something significant as his hand flies up from the keyboard to touch cheek, back of neck, and then quickly back down.

The seven-note riff for “Jolene” sashays through the sky. “Baby I’m the King,” declares the triumphant showman, “and you’re the Queen.” Dylan twists sideways for one more flash of that yellow stripe. A final, faint, and seedy whiff of freedom passes through the crowd. “Okay, git,” says a short man to a short woman as they turn toward the parking lot. Wednesday night is coming to a close.

“Thank you, friends,” says Dylan before introducing the four boys in the band. “There must be some kind of way out of here,” is not exactly what we hear next, but we can tell that’s what the song is supposed to be. A moth catches the spotlight, zigs toward Dylan’s white hat, then zooms up offstage. As the band hammers out the notes of this last song, Dylan pulls a hand up, wipes some of that (officially) 82 percent humidity from the back of his neck, pulls the other hand up, wipes the other side. Toward the Green Corn Moon a wispy cloud approaches in sickle form, making a perfect harvest. Cut.

“None of them along the line know what any,” Dylan stops, catches the word “any,” repeats it, punctuates the delivery of the next three words – “of . . . it . . . is” — and then grinds out a deep growl for all it is “wo-oo-rr-rr-th!” Music slams shut, lights go down. In the dark, Dylan assembles the band into two rows, then takes the front and center position. Lights up, Dylan raises his hands out above his elbows in a gesture that looks like a kind of blessing.

A dedicated pack of stage huggers want to go for one more encore, but it is no use. As the true few cheer and whistle (what good would it do to stomp?) the mostly many turn toward home. Before you know it, the band has disappeared, the crowd is up and out of Whataburger Field, and two dozen yellow-shirted event staffers swarm the brightly-lit outfield, picking up trash, breaking down settings, getting the ballpark ready for Friday night’s game against the Midland RockHounds.

“Bye Bye Bob,” says a mom sadly to no one in particular as she hauls an over-stuffed bag of supplies for her gaggle of grrrls that she leads to the steps.

“I love him!” rejoins one of the grrrls, barely teenaged, as security discreetly herds us out.

Past the blinking ATM machine and a pile of empty beer cartons we step off the field and up to the mezzanine where it’s nothing now but stragglers and cleanup crew.

“Last call for Willie Nelson t-shirts,” hollers a weary hawker. Next door over at the Dylan-Mellencamp booth the last sales of the evening are being resized. A pony-tailed blonde grandmother points to the next size in the Dylan ’63 t-shirt as a mom next to her negotiates with two daughters over which size purple Dylan T the girls are going to get.

Down the front steps, ticket takers stand their posts, retooled now into exit greeters. Three cops joke around in the street until the long black bus is ready to roll outbound with a smooth left turn.

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Bob Dylan, Corpus Christi, Country Music, Rock 'n Roll, Texas, Willie Nelson | Leave a comment

Alice Embree : The Court Martial of Travis Bishop

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Travis Bishop (right), before his sentencing. With (left) journalist Dahr Jamail and attorney James Branum. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.
Anti-war GI Travis Bishop found guilty;
joins Victor Agosto in Bell County jail

I can not say that a year in prison doesn’t scare me. I am terrified… (But) it would be scarier still to know that my fellow soldiers who feel as we feel would never find out what we are trying to accomplish. — Travis Bishop

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / August 16, 2009

See ‘Protesters support Bishop and Agosto’ by Alice Embree, Below.

In the second court martial in two weeks, another Fort Hood soldier was sentenced on August 14th for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan.

Sgt. Travis Bishop was brought before special court martial proceedings, found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison. His rank and pay were reduced. He is expected to be held in the Bell County Correctional Unit before serving his sentence in a military jail. His discharge status will be determined later. Because Sgt. Bishop has a prior honorable discharge, his GI benefits may not be reduced.

Sgt. Bishop faced four charges: willful disobedience of a Non-Commissioned Officer, absence without leave and two counts of missing movement. The charges were more serious than those faced by Spc. Victor Agosto on August 5th. Agosto’s case was resolved in a summary court martial and he is serving a one month sentence in the Bell County Correctional Unit.

The courtroom resembled a civil courtroom with the judge in black robes. An Army defense attorney was seated with Bishop and his civilian defense attorney, James Branum. The panel, however, was hardly a peer panel. The jury seats were filled by eight Colonels, Lieutenant Colonels and Majors who had to be warned once not to fall asleep while the Judge read instructions.

A Fort Hood Public Affairs representative told Bishop supporters during a recess that Bishop was being tried in the same courtroom where Army Staff Sgt. Shane Werst had faced a court martial for shooting an unarmed Iraqi citizen. “Five privates turned a dime on him,” he said. Despite testimony that soldiers were ordered to plant a gun on the Iraqi citizen to make the death appear to be self defense, Werst was acquitted May 26, 2005. Bishop’s sentence for not deploying is a sobering contrast.

Bishop’s court martial began on Thursday and Bishop’s defense attorney and supporters had expected the arraignment, designation of a jury panel and testimony of one witness to be brief. Instead, the trial began in earnest and lasted five hours. At one point on Thursday, supporter Cynthia Thomas was asked by a Killeen police officer and an Army MP to leave the courtroom and explain her relationship with the defendant. Thomas asked if she were being detained and to speak to her attorney. She was not stopped from returning to the courtroom.

The prosecution brought Captain Chrisopher Hall in to testify that the absence of Travis Bishop from his unit had caused hardship to his unit. The defense presented four witnesses who testified to Travis Bishop’s sincerity of beliefs. Bishop filed a request for Conscientious Objector status in late May and the request is still pending.

Charles Luther, a defense witness with a background as a lay Baptist minister, spoke of Bishop’s religious beliefs. The defense attorney established that psychiatrist, Lt. Col. Adams, to whom Bishop had been referred, approved Bishop’s Conscientious Objector claim and that it was one of only two claims in his ten years that Adams had approved.

In a surprise moment at the end of testimony, the Prosecution decided to call Lt. Colonel Ronald Leininger to the stand. Leininger was the Brigade Chaplain to whom Bishop was referred for pastoral counseling. Bishop has described his deep disappointment in speaking to someone he thought would be attentive to his religious beliefs. Bishop said the Chaplain reduced his interview time and interrupted the interview repeatedly by receiving phone calls.

In the statement issued by the Chaplain after his visit with Bishop, he focused almost no attention on Bishop’s religious beliefs. Instead, he wrote that Bishop had been coached by Iraq Veterans Against the War and other antiwar activists. He went further to say that the affiliation that best described Bishop’s religious heritage was “Conservative Evangelicals” who the Captain said are “generally pro-military service with no pacifist tendencies in doctrine or practice. In fact, they make good soldiers.”

Bishop has received letters of support from a number of pastors who cite their church’s doctrine and practice supporting conscientious objection to war.

The court was recessed as the panel considered the verdict for about one hour. They found Sgt. Bishop guilty. In the sentencing phase, the civilian defense attorney, James Branum, asked for a three months sentence in light of Sgt. Bishop’s sincerity and previous good conduct, including a fourteen month deployment in Iraq. In particular, Branum focused on the fact that soldiers are never given information about their rights to Conscientious Objection. Branum said that a soldier who changes his or her belief about war doesn’t understand that there are options.

Maj. Matthew McDonald, who served as the judge, discounted the relevancy of whether Bishop was notified about his right to file for CO status. McDonald was quoted in the Killeen Daily Herald (8/14/09) as saying: “If every soldier in the Army who disobeyed an order could claim it was because they weren’t notified of conscientious objector status, we probably wouldn’t have a military any more.”

Prior to sentencing, Bishop’s testimony was forceful and moving. He cited several articles that protect a soldiers rights and noted that soldiers often are not informed of their rights, but that doesn’t relieve the Army of its responsibility to honor those rights. Bishop said that the right to pursue a claim of Conscientious Objection requires protection. He said that he was unaware that he could pursue a claim of Conscientious Objection until right before his deployment.

“The truth is, as soon as I discovered this process [C.O.] existed, I acted upon it. I left because I did not feel that I would have a sympathetic, understanding command structure to fully take my problems to, and also to give myself time to prepare for my C.O. application process, and the legal battle I’m currently fighting. These are not excuses. These are explanations. My hope is that you truly treat them as such during your sentencing deliberations.”

After being sentenced to the maximum jail term allowable under a Special Court Martial, Bishop had time to handwrite a note:

“To everyone who still cares: I can not say that a year in prison doesn’t scare me. I am terrified… But still, though I am terrified, it would be scarier still to know that my fellow soldiers who feel as we feel would never find out what we are trying to accomplish… Everyone who hears or reads this should know that I love you all, and my life is forever changed because of you. Victor and myself are starting something and it is now up to all of you to continue on. With all my heart. Travis.”

As Bishop was escorted from the Justice Center to a waiting van, supporters who were active duty soldiers or veterans stood at attention and saluted. Hands cuffed together, Bishop flashed a peace sign in return.

Demonstrators outside the Bell County Correctional Unit where Victor Agosto and Travis Bishop are being held. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Protesters support Bishop and Agosto

Protesters gathered Saturday, August 15th, in support of two Afghanistan war resisters held in the Bell County Correctional Unit. Under a blazing Texas sun, protesters held signs and chanted.

Victor Agosto is incarcerated at the Bell County facility after being court martialed August 5th for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. Agosto was sentenced to one month. Travis Bishop will be held in Bell County for about two weeks before his transfer to a military prison. Bishop was court martialed August 14th and received a sentence of one year.

Supporters plan to be present every Saturday while the resisters are in jail at this facility. For more information, go to the Under the Hood Cafe website.

—Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / August 16,2009

Also see Afghanistan War Resister Sentenced by Dahr Jamail / truthout / August 16, 2009

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Afghanistan, Alice Embree, Anti-War GIs, Fort Hood, Peace Movement, Travis Bishop, U.S. Military, Victor Agosto | 9 Comments

‘Socialized’ Medicine : It Works all Over the World

Posted on August 16, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

British Conservative leader David Cameron, certainly no “socialist,” calls the National Health Service (NHS), “one of the wonderful things about living in (England).”

[The Republicans have] told so many lies about the government health care in other countries, that some of those countries are starting to get angry.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / August 16, 2009

As the health care reform debate heats up, we’ve heard all sorts of ridiculous things from the Republicans and right-wingers about “socialized medicine” — the name they give to the government-run health care systems adopted by almost all industrialized countries. They call it “evil” and tell all kind of horror stories about how bad it is.

In fact, they’ve told so many lies about the government health care in other countries, that some of those countries are starting to get angry. When the right-wing put Canadian Shana Holmes on American TV to lie about the Canadian system, tens of thousands of Canadians were incensed, and let it be known they don’t appreciate Americans lying and spreading falsehoods about their system.

The English are starting to react also. They have started a Twitter group expressing pride in their National Health System (NHS), and tens of thousands of people have expressed their support for the NHS. Prime Minister Gordon Brown even joined the fray, twittering, “PM: NHS often makes the difference between pain and comfort, despair and hope, life and death. Thanks for always being there.” His wife then added, “#welovetheNHS — more than words can say.”

An American business magazine recently said under the British system, scientist Stephen Hawking would be dead. Evidently they didn’t know he was born and lived all his life in Great Britain. Hawking himself says, “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

You might say those are the liberal views, but what do the conservatives think? Well, here’s what Conservative Party leader David Cameron has to say, “Millions of people are grateful for the care they have received from the NHS — including my own family. One of the wonderful things about living in this country is that the moment you’re injured or fall ill — no matter who you are, where you are from, or how much money you’ve got — you know that the NHS will look after you.”

In Canada, Great Britain, France, Sweden and most other industrialized nations, the people like their “socialist” health care that gives all citizens decent health care. Some politicians might like to tweak the system to make it even better, but none would dare suggest doing away with it and going to a system like ours. If they did, they’d be voted out of power in a heartbeat (and they know it).

That poses a question. Since all of these countries love their government-run systems that covers all their citizens, and most Americans agree that our own system is badly broken, why is health care reform so difficult in America? Why are we so sure none of the systems used by other nations would not work here? And why are we so terrified of the word “socialism” — especially since most Americans don’t even know what it is?

MediCare is socialist, and it has done a pretty good job of providing health care for our elderly. The fact is that there are some things government can do better than private industry (regardless of what Republicans may tell you).

Would you want the police or military to be private and only work for those who can pay? How about the fire department — should they let your house burn because you can’t meet their profit expectations? The same is true of health care. The government can eliminate the profit and the overhead and provide cheaper and better health insurance. That’s a fact even the private companies recognize (which is why they’re fighting it so hard).

Government-run health insurance is not evil. It’s just the fairest and least expensive way to give all citizens decent health care. And that’s what we should be trying to do.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger, an excellent Texas political blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Canada, Europe, Great Britain, Health Care Reform, Socialized Medicine | 10 Comments

Thomas McKelvey Cleaver : Why We Need Obama’s ‘Death Panels’

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Death with dignity:
Why we need those ‘death panels’

…my father had gone into a coma that afternoon, and it was time for the family to fly to Denver and gather ’round for his final time on earth.

By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver / The Rag Blog / August 14, 2009

The Right claims that “Obamacare” will provide “death panels” that will decide who lives and who gets euthanized.

True to form, the most spineless political party on the planet — the Democratic Party of the United States — has decided they can’t stand up to outrage manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industy, and their far right Republican allies who seek any issue they can find to oppose the Democrats. They know that health care reform, once passed, will mean that once the very people now screaming at Congresspeople experience the ehhanced quality of care, that they will have no political future. Thus, they have to strangle the baby in its crib.

Here’s the kind of scenario they’re fighting to defend:

In late March, 1988, I got a call from my mother that I had been expecting and dreading for a week. After getting sick while out to dinner a week earlier and being hospitalized for it, my father had gone into a coma that afternoon, and it was time for the family to fly to Denver and gather ’round for his final time on earth.

My father was dying of colon cancer, which he was pretty fairly certain was the result of his having walked around for six weeks in his work pants at the government lab he worked in 50 years earlier, with a piece of unranium as big as my fist in the front pocket.

Mom and Dad had been out to visit me in Los Angeles the summer before, and he’d told me he figured from what the doctors were saying that he had maybe a year left. He’d also talked to me about what he would want done if he was unable to tell people how he wanted to be cared for when the end came. I asked him to write that down somewhere, tell mom where it was, go visit a lawyer, do something to be sure more people than I knew this. He said he would.

As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. When I got to Denver the next day, the first thing I did was ask my mother if she knew where Dad’s letter was. He’d never written it.

Things were hard enough. “Dysfunctional” described my family going back at least two generations, before anyone knew what the word meant. For me, it was a case of “the wrong one’s dying.” My mother and I had never had a functional relationship, and I was pretty certain everything bad that could happen was about to cut loose. I wasn’t wrong.

My sister, the recently-converted Mormon, came hoping to convince dear old Father Dearest — who detested her religious choice — that it was time for him to join the community of Heavenly Father and let her copy down all the family names in a bible going back to the 18th Century, to offer them “life everlasting.” She and her husband had no interest in dealing with me, my brother or my mother. My brother was his mother’s son, and unlikely to ever oppose any decision she would make.

Things simmered thus for four days, with Sister Dearest demanding a schedule with a two-hour block of time in the afternoon when she would know she and her husband could visit the hospital without having to deal with the rest of the family.

My brother and I got the late evening “watch” that day; I was alone with my father while my brother went to get coffee. Wouldn’t you know it. that was when he chose to “come to” for a few minutes. He couldn’t talk, but I was able to determine he did know what was going on, and where he was, and who I was. I needed to know if he had changed his mind. I told him I would ask some questions with yes and no answers, that one squeeze of his hand would be “no” and two would be “yes”; I wanted to be as certain of any yes answers as I could be.

Yes, he knew he was dying. No, he hadn’t changed his mind. Yes, he wanted no more heroic measures. Yes, he wanted to be taken off medicines. Yes, he wanted to leave this world now.

And then, just as my brother walked back into the room with the two cups of coffee, Dad went back into his coma.

I told my brother what had happened. Amazingly, he believed me, and said he had hoped this would be the case. He also said he knew Mormons never allowed such a decision by the dying to stop the attempt to “save” them, which would mean my sister would have a religious reason to do what she would have done anyway, which was to oppose anything I said.

Convincing Mom was going to be the only way. When we got back home that night, she was still up. I was the one chosen to make the presentation. She didn’t like it at first and asked my brother what he thought. His good intentions went out the door.

It took several hours and everything I had in me not to scream back at her when she screamed at me how I had always hated my family, but in the end her love for her husband of 45 years and her own desire not to end up in a coma unable to communicate led her to agree.

World War III came when my sister was informed of the decision. Unfortunately, it came after we had told the hospital to remove everything but the saline drip, with a nurse whose religious convictions wouldn’t allow for such actions telling my sister we had decided to “kill” her father.

Fortunately, Mom stayed strong during the final two days of my father’s time on earth, and he was able to die in peace, or at least as much peace as someone in my family will ever get.

To this day, 20 years later, my sister would tell you — if you asked — that I killed my father because an atheist like me had never loved my family.

Had Dad written that letter, even better had he given it to the family lawyer, none of the drama described above would have happened. I wish I had kept on him about taking care of it, but who wants to be the one to be constantly telling someone you love that they’re going to die and have to do something about it — particularly when you don’t want to think of them going any more than they do?

And that is why it is so necessary that people be provided the option of deciding for themselves, while they are in control of their lives, how they will be allowed to leave. There is too much drama in the best family for anyone other than that person to make such a decision without suffering some sort of adverse consequences.

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Health Care Reform, Obama Administration | 8 Comments

Town Hall Crazies : Too Nuts for Jerry Springer?

Posted on August 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic by Larry Ray with apologies to Jerry Springer.
Out of Control Town Hall mobs:
Probably even be too much for Jerry Springer!

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / August 14, 2009

It would not surprise me if former politician and TV show host, Jerry Springer, would even ban some raving and ranting health care town hall meeting audience members from his show. Springer, known for the raucous and outrageous behavior of his show’s guests is a former Mayor of Cincinnati and knows the politics of stage-managed dissent. Many recent summer break town hall meetings televised on cable TV and the evening news look very much like the Jerry Springer show . . . complete with beefy security guards hauling off screaming, threatening audience members.

News and opinion columns are full of reasons why rude sign-toting mobs are shouting down their U.S. Senators and Congressmen at town hall meetings across the nation. Common findings about this rage and nastiness show much of it has to do with more than constructive health care debate. Almost all the red-faced, loud, finger-pointing folks are up in arms over totally incorrect or out of context information they believe to be true. Many also erupt over things to do with immigration and topics other than health care. And the meetings may also be serving as a pop-off valve for racial hatred in some instances.

Senator Arlen Specter was assailed by 59 year old Craig Anthony Miller who did not like the seating plan for the meeting. He bellowed at Specter, “”One day, God is going to stand before you and he’s going to judge you!” Then he walked out of the meeting. Later Specter noted, “There is more anger in America today than any time I can remember.”

Much of this disinformation is fed by mindlessness opportunists like Sarah Palin and her Twittered warning of Obama “Death Panels,” and from endless talking-point emails loaded with falsehoods and half-truths.

I was recently emailed “20 Questions for your Congressman . . . what to ask at a Town Hall Meeting.” The list is the work of Robert Tracinski, and distributed by the right-wing “TIA Daily.” I looked up Tracinski and remembered his ultra-conservative ravings from the presidential campaign. He was opposed to McCain for president for not being a true conservative and was a Rudy Guliani champion. In January 2008 he wrote:

So how is he (McCain) supposed to stand up to the Democrats on any part of their socialized medicine agenda? In addition to fighting the Democrats on socialized medicine, a Republican president would also have to fight in Congress for the extension of President Bush’s tax cuts, which are set to begin expiring in 2009 and 2010.

Tracinski’s talking-point list is full of total fiction and fear mongering. Here’s an example:

When the government starting(sic) portraying people in the financial industry as villains and started limiting their pay and subjecting them to more regulations, banks reported a “brain drain” as smart and well-educated people left the industry or went overseas looking for better pay and less stress. But the term “brain drain” was originally coined in the 1960s when doctors and medical researchers left Britain to escape socialized medicine. Aren’t you afraid we might see the same kind of brain drain from the medical profession here in America?

That simply is not true at all, but is typical of chauvinistic claims ignorant Americans love to make about “foreign countries” they know nothing about. Tired of hearing their National Health Service, England’s cheap, efficient and universal health-care system, smeared in the American debate, the Brits have started responding to them with a lively Twitter forum, “welovetheNHS.”

A serious example of chauvinistic ignorance is the conservative Los Angeles, California based, “Investor’s Business Daily” which asserted in an editorial, “People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”

This prompted a quick counter response from London’s “Guardian,” by Hugh Muir an editorial columnist for the paper. Muir, contacted the internationally famous, wheelchair-bound Prof. Hawking for comment which was easy to do since Muir and Hawking are both UK citizens, a fact the LA IBD clearly did not know. Muir reported on his contact with Professor Hawking:

We say his life is far from worthless, as they do at Addenbrooke’s hospital, Cambridge, where Professor Hawking, who has motor neurone disease, was treated for chest problems in April. As indeed does he. “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS,” he told us. “I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.” Something here is worthless. And it’s not him. Investor’s Business Daily, incidentally, has now deleted the offending line from their editorial and published a correction. “This version corrects the original editorial which implied that physicist Stephen Hawking, a professor at the University of Cambridge, did not live in the UK,” reads the addendum.

But that’s not a correction at all. IBD never claimed that Hawking didn’t live in the UK. It claimed that the NHS would judge him worthless and leave him to die. That was what was wrong. And that has not been corrected by the IBD — which says a lot about how much trust readers should place in their work. Instead, it has been corrected by Hawking himself.

This kind of calculated misinformation easily leads to anger and violence. Fortunately this unforgivable US editorial garbage was called to task. All too many Americans still repeat the old saw that America has “the best health care in the world,” which of course has not been true for decades when looked at in detail. America, indeed, has some of the very best physicians and surgeons in the world and amazing medical technology. But when you look at the overall health care provided to our citizens, we are failing miserably. The statistics are nothing to be proud of:

US expenditure for health care (2008) was $2.4 trillion, and estimated to be $4.3 trillion by 2017. 46 million uninsured and another 25 million underinsured. 18% of US citizens can’t pay for medicines or health care their family needed in last 12 months (April, 2009).

A telling and truly sad confirmation of this lack of health care for all Americans was published in The New York Times last night, August 12th. The story’s headline is “Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care.”

Hundreds of volunteer doctors, dentists, optometrists, nurses and others have set up a huge M*A*S*H unit in an arena just outside Los Angeles. For eight days they hope to help more than 8,000 people. “Remote Area Medical” is offering basic medical exams, mammograms, eye exams and glasses as well as dental services, all offered for free from medical professionals who understand the huge problem too many Americans face.

Of the thousands standing in lines for hours, many have some sort of insurance but it does not cover all their needs. Most still cannot afford a dentist, preventive medical tests or the cost of an eye exam and glasses.

It is extremely generous for individual physicians, nurses and others to make this all possible a few times a year. But this Tennessee based group is now spending more time helping the under served in America than in rural India where they have helped for years.

You would never see such a pitiful band-aid approach to health care anywhere in Europe, Japan, and other modern societies where all citizens are guaranteed quality universal health coverage. The USA is a singular holdout, not placing a high value on guaranteed quality health care for all its citizens.

Shouts of “socialized medicine” by conservatives clearly mean that they feel many Americans actually do not deserve quality health care. Shouting down this obvious need for universal health care, especially if the rich and powerful are urging frightened people to do the shouting, may appeal to Jerry Springer fans but for most reasonable Americans it is a disgusting show.

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

After Larry sent us the article above we ran across the following:

Michael Smerconish: Jerry explains town-hall madness by Michael Smerconish / Philly.com / August 13, 2009

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