Contempt for Humanity: Increasingly Commonplace

Posted on July 14, 2009 by RagBlog

Ad Showing West Bank Barrier Angers Palestinians
July 13, 2009

JERUSALEM — An Israeli cell phone commercial showing soldiers playing football near Israel’s West Bank separation barrier has angered Palestinians who say it is in poor taste and exploits their suffering.

The company behind the ad, Cellcom, said that in showing the soldiers kicking a stray ball back and forth across the wall with unseen Palestinians it wanted to send a positive message about communicating beyond barriers.

At least one Israeli peace group agreed, calling the ad “brave.” Some Palestinians disagreed.

The commercial, which began airing in Israel this week, shows soldiers patrolling along the barrier’s towering concrete slabs. A football hits their patrol jeep, setting off an impromptu game with people on the other side. “What do we want, after all? A bit of fun,” a narrator says.

“It is weird and despicable to use the suffering and occupation as a means of advertisement,” said Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Erekat said he found the ad “distasteful and sickening.”

The Palestinians say the barrier, which runs largely inside the West Bank and leaves about 10 percent of its territory on the Israeli side, serves to sever them from their land, disrupts their lives and cripples their economy. Israel began building the fences and walls that make up the barrier in the midst of a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings targeting Israeli cities, and maintains that it is a crucial security measure.

In a response to the criticism, Cellcom said it did not intend a political message and that its only goal was to “allow a connection between people.”

“The goal of the campaign was to get the message across that when people separated by religion, race and gender want to communicate they can, under any circumstances,” read a statement from the company. “The campaign has no cynical or hurtful intention and does not take any position.”

An Israeli Arab lawmaker called on the company to pull the ad, but the Israeli peace group Peace Now weighed in on Cellcom’s side.

“I think the message of this advertisement is that there are people, normal human beings, on the other side of the fence who simply want to play football. For a commercial advertisement it is a brave move and I believe it is welcome,” Peace Now’s director, Yariv Oppenheimer, told Channel 2 TV.

Cellcom is not the first to make creative use of the barrier. In 2004, the Israeli fashion company Comme il Faut used the cement slabs as a backdrop for a catalog in what it said was an attempt to draw attention to the hardships caused by the barrier.

In the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, which is hemmed in by the barrier, one owner of a seafood restaurant had his menu painted on the wall, saying last year that he was “making something positive out of a negative situation.”

Source / AP / New York Times

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‘Medicare Advantage?’ Advantage Big Business

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


Health care reform and the 85 percent solution

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2009

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” — Nicolo Machiavelli.

“The President has told visitors that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a [health care] bill that gives him 85% of what he wants rather than a 100% satisfactory bill that passes 52 to 48.” — David Broder, Washington Post.

The President’s statement as quoted once again points to his uncertainty in assuming the office. It would seem far more rational to seek first rate health care, administered in a professional way, rather than the 85% solution produced by the despicable salaaming to the corporations now in control. This appears to be a continuation of the inept management that the administration has shown in facing the nation’s financial crises, turning to the folks who caused the disaster so that they can overcome their own misdeeds.

Is this the same administration that refuses to investigate the past administration’s use of torture, illegal detention, and spying on its own citizens? Is it the same administration that refuses to investigate the Bush administration’s perversion of the Justice Department for political advantage? One wonders if Mr. Obama is driven by naiveté in deferring to the Republicans in the interest of “bipartisanship” or whether deep within he feels that he and his family are threatened by the perverted, hate-filled right wing gun nuts who abound in our society today.

Laura Flanders addresses this issue in an article from The Huffington Post entitled “Obama Hushes Healthcare Advocates.”

But I digress… I have addressed the subject of “Medicare Advantage” in prior postings. We were aware that this was part of the Bush, “free enterprise”/neoliberal economic plan to do away with the social network that has given comfort to the American people since the administrations of FDR. Initially Mr. Bush attempted to “privatize” social security and by some fortuitous quirk of fate failed in the Congress to do so.

Step two was to gradually do away with Medicare as an entity. Initially there was the pseudo-prescription drug plan that was passed under the guise of helping the elderly, but indeed was a massive, multibillion dollar payoff to the insurance industry and Pharma. Then Bush and his advisers initiated the Medicare Advantage plans which sold much of the Medicare Trust Fund to the private insurance industry, and will in time accelerate the depletion of those funds. This clearly grew from the mentality of “screw the tax payer, screw the elderly, destroy the safety net;” however, it was not until the other day that I realized how badly this program helps destroy the physician and in doing so undermines the doctor/patient relationship.

This past Friday I had an appointment with my dermatologist, a dedicated physician, a great human being who who still practices for the well-being of the patient and has not integrated himself into the business community by becoming a cosmetologist and thus denying us all of necessary medical care. While I was waiting in an examining room I became aware of the following posted notice:

Important Message Regarding Medicare Advantage Plans… Please be advised that although we do participate in Medicare, we DO NOT participate in Medicare Advantage Plans (except for Highmark). According to the Medicare Advantage Plan rules, AS A NON-PROVIDER WE ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SEE PATIENTS switching to such plans. Although we disagree with such rules and find it disruptive to the patient-doctor relationship, we must abide by the rules until this “glitch” in the healthcare system is fixed.

To avoid misunderstandings, please carefully consider how your coverage is affected by your changing from traditional Medicare to a Medicare Advantage Plan. We have observed much confusion and misinformation given to our patients from representatives of these plans.

The resulting impact of these the Bush-created monsters is Byzantine and nefarious. There are multiple Medicare Advantage plans, each of which has its own rules and paperwork. A solo practice physician soon becomes overburdened by filling out forms and he or his secretary must also spend hours on the phone obtaining advance permission to see the patient, while his other patients are kept waiting.

But the worst is to come. If the physician inadvertently sees one of these patients, on any specific plan, he is automatically contractually bound to all patients in the plan and all of the terms and conditions unique to the given plan. The buzz word in the industry is that the doctor becomes “DEEMED” contractually bound to the plan’s rules by virtue of just seeing the one patient. In other words: a unilateral contractual agreement without signatures! Ordinarily, a patient seeking care from a non-provider would at least have the option of seeing the physician if willing to and capable of paying for the services himself. However, by the Medicare Advantage rules, the non-provider is even prohibited from SEEING the patient, let alone charging the patient.

Thus the Bush administration not only conned the public but took a giant step towards destroying the patient/physician relationship. The Republicans, the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, and the well bribed Senators would now refuse the American public access to decent, open, non-complicated health care. And the President will not stand up to this immorality and unethical behavior.

We need health care that is open and uncomplicated, with free choice of physician, or specialist, and choice of hospital; with consultation between the doctor and patient. The doctor must once again be able to admit and discharge patients from the hospital and not be guided by the dictates of the insurance. We need health care commensurate to that in other developed nations without a credulous public being misled by devious ads regarding health care in other nations, frequently passed off as “news” as CNN has recently done. Nick Baumann has written about this, as has Robert Parry (“False Health Care Scare Ad on CNN).

We might be better off should Mr. Obama abandon his attempt to pass legislation prior to the August recess; it might be wiser to await the return of our elected representatives in September with the hope that they may be pressured locally to pass a decent, unfettered health care bill such as single-payer, or a plan with an uncluttered “public option.” If the public were to show just a fraction of the zeal exhibited in response to the death of Michael Jackson perhaps, just perhaps, we could do something worthwhile.

Indeed, if the Congress can pass nothing but a monstrosity of a bill, dictated by the insurance industry, Pharma, the AMA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the AARP, we might be better advised to do nothing at all. Perhaps if nothing is done the public as a whole will awaken and demand a rational plan that benefits the people rather than the corporations.

Meanwhile, back on the cannabis front, the Webb Crime Bill is moving in the House. The Webb bill that would impact our entire outlook on crime, punishment, and especially the approach to drug policy, punishment and sentencing, is making progress. There are 30 cosponsors in the Senate and Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass) has introduced a companion bill in the House of Representatives. Sen. Webb feels that there is a good chance of passage. Mother Jones editor Monika Bauerlein provides excellent background on this issue.

Once again we ask that the administration request the Congress to revise Medicare Part D, making it a plan where the elderly can obtain pharmaceuticals at a negotiated price, as can be done in most advanced countries. Further, we must eliminate the Medicare Advantage plans which are merely a sop to the insurance cartels. Finally, we should support the Webb amendment and bring some rationality — and billions in savings — to the taxpayer, by revising the official policy concerning marijuana and its medical use, opening up the possibility of using the financial savings to underwrite universal medical care.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister, a retired physician who is active in health care reform, lives in Erie, PA. His previous articles on The Rag Blog can be found here.]

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A Revolution Books Event in New York City

Posted on July 13, 2009 by RagBlog

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NAACP Turns 100; Convention Met by Anti-War Protest

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Benjamin Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP with long-time civil rights activist Hazel Dukes. Photo by Thomas Good / NLN / The Rag Blog

Demonstrators at NAACP confab protest presence of army recruiters

As the NAACP kicked off its convention and 100th birthday bash inside the Sixth Avenue Hilton, a group of protesters from the World Can’t Wait and the Granny Peace Brigade held a protest outside the hotel.

By Thomas Good / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2009

NEW YORK — The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is celebrating its 100th birthday this year —- with a convention in the city where the association was born.

New York has been home to many civil rights and anti-war organizations. This weekend saw something unusual — an anti-war protest outside a civil rights convention. As the NAACP kicked off its convention and 100th birthday bash inside the Sixth Avenue Hilton, a group of protesters from the World Can’t Wait and the Granny Peace Brigade held a protest outside the hotel. Their issue: that NAACP president and CEO Benjamin Jealous had invited “Army Strong” recruiters to the convention.

The NYPD was also in position outside the hotel, providing security for the event. Officers told protesters they had to move into protest pens around the corner. Protesters stood their ground, arguing that they would be invisible on the side street and that they had a legal right to engage in First Amendment protected activity. Shortly after a legal observer from the National Lawyers Guild arrived on scene police relented.

As police and protesters negotiated, the NAACP held a press conference. Roslyn Brock, vice-chair of the NAACP’s board of directors introduced Leon Russell, a national board member from Clearwater, Florida. Russell gave an overview of the convention program which includes an appearance by President Barack Obama, making good on a campaign promise, and the issuing of an award to NAACP chairman and venerable civil rights activist Julian Bond.

Hazel Dukes, chair of the New York State chapter of the NAACP told the assembled journalists, “I hope that when you write this story that you tell the world that the NAACP is alive and well.” Dukes went on to say that she expected 2000 young people would be in attendance at the conference and that in some ways the convention was a passing of the torch. Dukes introduced the current president and CEO of the NAACP, saying that some of the older members of the association had decided to “take a chance” and give the reins of leadership to a “new baby, thirty-six years old, Benjamin Todd Jealous.”

Jealous spoke about the continued relevance of the association in the modern age noting that, despite an African-American president being in office, little has changed for working families.

“The distance between a child’s aspiration and family’s situation is the exact measurement of a parent’s frustration,” he said.

Referring to upcoming Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Jealous said that “We are on the eve of the first woman of color being appointed to the Supreme Court.” Jealous said that “We would like to see Senator [Jeff] Sessions tone down his rhetoric.”

“The Republican Party needs to lift up the legacy of their historical leader, of our historical inspiration, President Lincoln, and stop trying to resurrect the nonsense of Jefferson Davis,” Jealous added.

John Payton, president of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, spoke about the historic role of the association in the civil rights struggle, asking the crowd, “What would we look like as a country if we had not had the NAACP?”

Payton provided a list of Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor’s impressive achievements, saying that if he didn’t mention that the judge was a woman and Puerto Rican, people would be united in saying “who better understands the needs of our country?”

Cesar Perales of Latino Justice / Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund thanked the NAACP for all of its contributions to the Latino community. Perales echoed Payton’s positive assessment of Sotomayor and asked the NAACP faithful to stand behind her during the confirmation hearings.

In a question and answer segment following the prepared remarks an anti-war protester who had written a letter to Benjamin Jealous before the event asked the NAACP CEO why he had invited Army recruiters to the convention.

Jealous told the activist that the NAACP had worked to desegregate the military and would have the traditional dinner to honor those who served.

“While we do oppose this war we are very proud of their service,” he said.

When pressed on the issue by a second activist, Jealous denied that the Army was intending to recruit youth attending the convention, saying that “these are your words, not ours.” He declined to comment further saying that he had already answered the question.

The NAACP’s convention will run through Thursday, July 16. President Obama will address the final plenary on Thursday.

[Thomas Good is the editor of Next Left Notes.]

Photo by Thomas Good / NLN / The Rag Blog

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Coup in Honduras : Talks Reach Stalemate as Demonstrations Continue

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. Photo by AFP/Getty.

Costa Rican President Óscar Arias mediates controversial talks between Zelaya and Micheletti stand-ins while demonstrations against coup in Honduras continue.

By David Holmes Morris / The Rag Blog / July 13, 2009

After two days of closed meetings in Costa Rica, representatives of deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and de facto president Roberto Micheletti appear not to have reached any substantive agreement.

Acting as mediator, Costa Rican President Óscar Arias met with the two groups at his residence in San José last Thursday and Friday, July 9 and 10, after meeting separately with each of the two claimants to the presidency. Zelaya has asked that the next meeting be in Honduras, but Arias disagrees and so far no further meetings have been scheduled.

Since Zelaya’s term expires next January, a long delay in his reinstatement could make questions of the legality of the de facto government moot.

Arias had accepted the position of mediator at the urging of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Zelaya and Micheletti, neither of whom has expressed any willingness to compromise, agreed to send representatives but declined to attend the sessions themselves. After meeting with Arias, Micheletti returned to Honduras and Zelaya left for the Dominican Republic and later flew toWashington.

The meetings in San José and Arias’ part in them have been criticized by leaders of anti-coup forces in Honduras and by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who see them as legitimizing Micheletti’s de facto presidency. Carlos Reyes, director of the Frente Nacional de Resistencia contra el Golpe de Estado, a coalition of Honduran groups opposing the coup, has reportedly called the arranged meetings a delaying tactic meant to give more room to the imperialists who have been supporting the pro-coup forces in Honduras.

“How horrible it was to see a legitimate president receiving one who had usurped his position, giving him equal treatment,” Chávez told reporters. “This de facto president should have been arrested in Costa Rica.”

Honduran activists have claimed prominent Venezuelan and Cuban rightists, including Robert Carmona-Borjas, in exile in the United States since the failed 2002 coup in Venezuela, and members of the Miami-based Cuban exile group Alfa 66, were in Honduras at the time of the coup and may have been involved in carrying it out.

Large demonstrations against the coup government continue in Honduras, recently blocking several important highways. And reports have surfaced that as many as 800 demonstrators have been jailed since the coup, most of them immediately after the massive demonstration last Sunday at the Toncontín Airport, when authorities declared in late afternoon that the curfew would begin at 6:30 instead of the usual 10:00, giving the activists little time to find safety.

The Salvadoran website El Faro quotes Honduran Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga as saying, “Lately I have verified something that didn’t exist in Honduras before, and that is class hatred. And it is something that appears in a systematic form. Mel Zelaya had advisors from Venezuela, and class hatred was the strategy.”

In the meantime, anti-coup activists point out that Roberto Micheletti was one of a group of representatives who introduced a bill in 1985 to transform the legislature into a constituent assembly for the purpose of modifying the 1982 constitution to permit the re-election of President Roberto Suazo Córdoba, a member of Micheletti’s own Partido Liberal. The bill eventually failed. The coup government claims Zelaya’s effort to poll the citizens on writing a new constitution was intended to permit his reelection and cite it as the illegal act that justified his removal from office.

[San Antonio native David Holmes Morris is an army veteran, a language major, a retired printer, a sometime journalist, and a gay liberationist.]

For previous Rag Blog coverage of Honduras, go here.

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Bhopal: Twenty-Five Years Later, Hundreds of New Victims Born Each Year

Posted on July 13, 2009 by RagBlog

Nida, 17 months old Bhopali girl with a congenital birth defect. Photograph: Money Sharma/EPA.

Poisoned legacy
By Billy Briggs / July 12, 2009

The Hiroshima of the chemical industry is still claiming victims – babies born 25 years later with serious birth defects.

Bhopal — UNABLE TO steer safely in the mud, the driver of our rickshaw pulls into the side of the road to allow us to take shelter from torrential rain. There, under a shop’s awning, a small crowd of people are standing together waiting for the weather to break. They include Sapna Sharma and her brother-in-law, Sanjay. Sanjay is holding his 18-month-old nephew, Anshul, who has kohl-rimmed eyes and silver bracelets on his ankles. As we stand talking, some of the people start pointing to the child’s hands and feet while speaking animatedly to us in Hindi. Through our translator, Sapna then explains that her son was born with 12 toes and 12 fingers.

Shortly afterwards, about half a mile away in the Shankar Nagar area of Bhopal, we meet another Indian child with congenital defects, three-year-old, Raj, who is blind, cannot walk and whose head is oversized.

“The doctors said bad water could have been a cause of my son’s condition. Older people here are gas victims and now the younger people are victims of the water,” says his mother, Poona.
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Here, in the capital city of Madhya Pradesh in India, hundreds of children are being born with deformities and mental health problems. As we walk back to our rickshaw after the interview we come across more afflicted youngsters who have followed us along the road out of curiosity. They include Rajesh, 12, who is barefoot and bald. The other children make fun of him – his mother, Yashdabai, explains that they do so because they believe that her son is “mad”.

Rajesh’s older sister, Sonia, a pretty girl with her black hair pulled back off her face, scolds the other children and tells us that she always has to protect her brother from bullies. Sonia is barefoot, too, and as she speaks a colleague notices that the young girl has huge feet.

This is the horrendous legacy the city of Bhopal is facing 25 years on from one of the world’s worst industrial accident. The Bhopal gas disaster, as it became known, occurred shortly after midnight on December 3, 1984, when a cloud of poisonous gas escaped from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the city. It has been dubbed the “Hiroshima of the chemical industry”. The accidental release of 42 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from the factory exposed more than 500,000 people to toxic gases and up to 10,000 inhabitants are thought to have died within the first 72 hours after the leak.

At least 25,000 people exposed to the gas have since died, and today in Bhopal tens of thousands more Indians suffer from a variety of debilitating gas-related illnesses such as respiratory and psychiatric problems, joint pains, menstrual irregularities, tuberculosis and cancers. More disturbingly, the escalating number of birth defects in children include cleft palates, webbed feet and hands, twisted limbs, brain damage and heart problems.

Shankar Nagar is a slum area of the city just north of the derelict Union Carbide factory site. For years local campaigners have been demanding that Union Carbide – now owned by US multinational Dow Chemicals – clean up the abandoned pesticide plant, but so far their pleas have been ignored.

In 1999, a Greenpeace investigation found severe chemical contamination of the environment surrounding the former Union Carbide factory, including pollution with heavy metals and chemical compounds.

The Greenpeace report also said: “Analysis of water samples drawn from wells serving the local community has also confirmed the contamination of groundwater reserves with chemicals arising either from previous or ongoing activities and/or incidents.

“As a result of the ubiquitous presence of contaminants, the exposure of the communities surrounding the plants to complex mixtures of hazardous chemicals continues on a daily basis. Though less acute than the exposure which took place as a result of the 1984 MIC release, long-term chronic exposure to mixtures of toxic synthetic chemicals and heavy metals is also likely to have serious consequences for the health and survival of the local population.”

Amnesty International’s 2004 Clouds Of Injustice report said: “Toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and water supply and it is appalling that no-one has been held account for the leak and its appalling consequences.”

The abandoned factory site is now a vast wasteland of weeds and trees that is home to packs of wild dogs. The buildings and structure have been left to rot while tank 610, from where the poison gas escaped, sits like an old rusting locomotive in the sun. Piles of dangerous chemicals are lying in the open air and inside one of the abandoned labs we saw dozens of dusty brown bottles containing chemicals. Campaigners say drums of Sevin – the pesticide Union Carbide was producing at the time using MIC – have never been removed from the site and remain locked in one of the sheds under police guard.

“There are sacks of poisons, mercury drops, toxic carbaryl rocks from which toxic tars ooze into the earth, and subsoil water and tarry liquids that overflow when the monsoon comes,” explained our translator and guide, Sanjay Sharma, 24, a student who lost his three sisters, two brothers and parents in the 1984 disaster. He has one sister left after his only other brother, Sunil, committed suicide on July 26, 2006. Sunil had been 12 at the time of the disaster and was a vociferous campaigner on behalf of victims until be became severely depressed.

“My brother hanged himself. When they found him he was wearing a T-shirt that said, No More Bhopalis’.”

Survivors campaigning for clean water petitioned the Supreme Court of India, which in May 2004 ordered that clean, safe water be piped into the communities, but to date the state government has ignored this order.

In January this year, a major study was embarked upon to try to ascertain the extent of the current health problems facing the population. The year-long investigation is being carried out by the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal, an innovative medical facility built in the centre of the city most badly affected by the gas leak. Researcher Santosh Kshatria said 22 different communities near the factory site were believed to be drinking from a contaminated water supply.

“There are 10 researchers. I’m covering 20,000 people in 17 neighbourhoods. So far I have surveyed 5000 people and found more than 200 cases of children with congenital defects. Many have twisted limbs and many have mental health issues. Anecdotally, this is a very high rate of incidence,” she says.

In many cases these are the same families from the poorest slum areas who were decimated by the gas in 1984. They have no option but to drink the water and complain of aches and pains, rashes, fevers, eruptions of boils, headaches, nausea, lack of appetite, dizziness and constant exhaustion.

Lead, mercury and organochlorines have been found in the milk of nursing mothers living near the factory with the result that women are terrified to breastfeed their babies in case they are giving them poison.

Another legacy for Bhopali females is that men have reservations about marrying so-called “gas victims” so many young local women face living in dire poverty having been stigmatised and left single.

Investigations into the 1984 disaster revealed that something had gone fundamentally wrong with a tank that stored methyl isocyanate. During the early hours of December 3, 1984, large amounts of water entered tank 610, containing the highly toxic chemical. The resulting reaction increased the temperature inside the tank to more than 200C, raising the pressure to a level it was not designed to withstand and eventually releasing a large volume of toxic gases.

Union Carbide has always claimed that its Indian subsidiary – Union Carbide India Limited, which was 49%-owned by the state – was solely responsible for the management of the plant and that the accident was the result of sabotage.

Union Carbide was taken over by Dow Chemicals, one of the producers of Agent Orange, in 2001, and the latter insists that all liabilities were settled in 1989 when Union Carbide paid around £300 million to the Indian government to be allocated to survivors. Furthermore, Union Carbide says it did all it could to alleviate the human suffering following the disaster and that it paid for a hospital in Bhopal to offer free medical care to victims.

The company also denies allegations that it abandoned the plant and says UCIL removed tens of thousands of pounds of MIC from the plant and spent around £1.5m undertaking additional clean-up work. The firm also says that a 1998 study of water sources near the plant site by the Madhya Pradesh Pollution Control Board did not find any traces of chemicals linked to any substance used at the UCIL plant.

In 1991, however, Bhopal’s authorities charged Union Carbide’s chief executive, Warren Andersen, with manslaughter. To date the retired American has avoided an international arrest warrant and a US court summons. Andersen was declared a fugitive from justice by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal in 1992 for failing to appear at court. Although orders were passed to the Indian government to press for his extradition from America, Bhopal campaigners say ministers have not pushed the case, fearing a backlash from foreign investors.

A quarter of a century on the campaign for justice in Bhopal continues unabated. In June, 27 members of the US Congress appealed to Dow Chemicals to pay to clean up the derelict site and to meet survivors’ demands for medical and economic rehabilitation. The politicians also asked the company to send a representative to take part in court proceedings in India.

“Bhopal is widely regarded as the worst industrial disaster in human history, a catastrophe with widespread implications for the chemical industry, globalisation and human rights,” they said in a letter initiated by Frank Pallone, a Democrat from New Jersey.

They say the polluter, rather than taxpayers, should bear responsibility for environmental damage. Meanwhile, Bhopal’s environmental crisis continues.

Source / Scotland Sunday Herald

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The Spirit of Humanity: An Interview with Cynthia McKinney

Posted on July 12, 2009 by RagBlog


Cynthia McKinney is a former US Representative who served from 1993-2003 and from 2005-2008 . She was the 2008 Green Party presidential nominee and has been an active member of the Free Gaza Movement. In 2004, The Backbone Campaign awarded her the fifth annual Backbone Award “because she was willing to challenge the Bush administration and called for an investigation into 9/11 when few others dared to air their criticism and questions.” Here, Ishmahil Blagrove, Jr. talks to McKinney about her experience with the situation in Gaza and her views on today’s political landscape.

Last year in the midst of the Israeli onslaught against the people of Gaza, you attempted to break the Israeli siege by entering by boat. What happened?

We were rammed by the Israelis. There I got a chance to see the complicity of the media. We had CNN on board and the CNN reporter was literally arguing in the midst of a tragedy; he was arguing with headquarters because they didn’t believe what he was telling them. They would have rather run the story as the Israelis told them. I have seen how the media self-censor, twist, contort themselves to report misleading stories and then they report outright lies.

What is the situation in Gaza and explain to me why you feel so passionate about getting into Gaza and assisting?

I think we all know at least what we all saw on Al Jazeera Arabic and Press TV: the images of white phosporous and the F16’s and the helicopters. We saw all of that and those two stations in particular ran almost 24-hour coverage. People in the United States couldn’t see those images on CNN because CNN was missing in action, but through the power of and access to the internet, people in the United States were able to see the images. Never have we been able to discuss what US policy is in Israel, but we were able to see the F16’s given to Israel by the United States, the depleted Uranium munitions given to Israel by the United States, the white phosperous given to Israel by the United States. And so the United States is as complicit and even more complicit; the Israelis used it but the Americans gave them the wherewithal to use it.

Why do believe there has not been more international attention given to the plight of the Palestinians?

The media as we know it – and I can only speak mainly about US media and the media that is owned by the US media in other parts of the world – they are what I call special interest media and the special interest media have demonstrated amply that they serve the political aims and values of certain special interests inside the United States, whose goal is to affect the formulation of policy. And so we don’t get a discussion of Gaza and the Palestinian plight inside the United States as we should because it doesn’t serve the special interests in Washington, DC who lobby for a particular point of view that does not favor the Palestinians. There was an advert for Gaza that the BBC were supposed to run and they refused to run it and it was unprecedented that they would refuse to run an advert requesting help, relief for besieged people; but that shows the power of special interests operating in Britain. The Zionist lobby is powerful in the United States; it is the most powerful lobby that operates in Washington, DC and we saw it flex its muscle in Britain during Operation Cast Lead with the BBC.

What are President Obama’s policies in the region?

On the day that we were turned away from embarking upon our peace mission in Cyprus, President Obama signed over a 100 billion dollar supplemental appropriation for more war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The drones continue to kill people in Pakistan, the increase level of troops in Afghanistan, the perception of Russia and China as enemies throw back to the days of the cold war, the continued search for a home for AFRICOM: these are not things that we should be proud of coming from a President with the name Barrack Hussein Obama. But, in fact, this is what is happening under his administration. We also have seen the greatest transfer of wealth out of the hands of African Americans that we have ever seen probably since slavery, not only out of the hands of African Americans, but out of the hands of Latinos and increasingly out of the hands of middle-class white Americans as well

Many people suggest that because there is an African American president, that change has come. Are you hopeful?

What American people and the global community were subjected to was very well financed Madison Avenue propaganda. A slick media campaign to promote someone whom the United States people didn’t even know. He and I were sworn in together in 2005 in the Congress; this was when he walked into a Senate seat virtually unopposed. Now, when was the last time an African American ever was given a Senate seat? I don’t think it’s ever happened, even during the times of reconstruction when we had black Senators, black Governors; those positions of power were earned, through the blood and the toil of black people who went to the polls and voted in what, at that time, were fair elections.

Then why do you believe that President Obama was elected?

I think the American people were looking for dignity. I think the dignity of our country had been stripped from us as a result of the publication of the photos around Abu Ghraib, the information came out about the lies of Iraq and we had been through 9/11 and the Administration knowingly lied and tied 9/11 to Iraq and so there were a lot of things that the American people wanted desperately to take a blue pill for. And I’m referring to the blue pill of the Matrix, where one takes the blue pill and slips into a world of make believe and so that’s where many people are.

What do you think it will take to get that dramatic shift in American public opinion?

The American people need information. If you look at what happened in Vietnam, the policy was taken out of the hands of the joint Chiefs and put into the hands of the people. When the television images came into every living room in the United States, people understood that they needed to change policy themselves. I hope the American people only need information because once their conscience is pricked with that information then they will be compelled to do something different.

You are back in Cyprus for a second time; what is the purpose of your mission now?

The purpose of the mission is to assert our belief in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That it is our right to travel anywhere in the world that we so choose and it is the right of people in other parts of the world to receive us, if they choose to do so.

Why have you taken up the cause of the Palestinian people?

I have been asked that a lot because I am not Arab, I’m not Muslim. So, why do I care? Well, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it best: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And this is clearly a gross injustice; this is genocide, crimes against humanity. How can anyone remain silent in the face of this? During the civil rights movement, we were outraged at our treatment and we just couldn’t vote; here, Palestinians can’t live.

July 2009

This video is the last footage taken onboard the Spirit Of Humanity before its voyage to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza was prematurely halted by Isreali special forces. It shows the atmosphere inside the cabin as the crew try to negotiate with the Israeli ship via radio.

Source / Rice ‘N’ Peas

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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Singin’ on Sunday – Dick Gaughan

Posted on July 12, 2009 by RagBlog

Dick Gaughan – Handful of Earth

From a 1983 BBC Spectrum Documentary. Dedicated to all the workers out there.

Thanks to Erich Seifert / The Rag Blog

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Film / ‘The Hurt Locker’ : Kathryn Bigelow’s Explosive Iraq War Movie

Posted on July 11, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

The Hurt Locker will deepen your understanding of what our soldiers have been enduring in Iraq for twelve to fifteen months at a stretch.

By Tod Ensign / The Rag Blog / July 11, 2009

See ‘The Hurt Locker, Ticking Time Bomb of a Movie,’ by Scott Foundas, and Movie Trailer, Below.

Yesterday, I saw a powerful new Iraq War film, The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow. While it’s a theatrical film, shot mostly in Jordan, it packs all the wallop of a down and dirty documentary. It focuses on the war experiences of three soldiers who are assigned to a IED detection and detonation unit… I found some of the scenes to be so intense that they were almost unwatchable. (Warning: some Iraq and Afghan combat vets may find this film emotionally overwhelming.)

I strongly urge everyone to make a special effort to see The Hurt Locker First, because . Second, because we need to talk up and support this kind of film so that it won’t just vanish from theatres in the next few days.

At present, I believe that it’s only playing in a few large cities. (It’s currently in six NYC theatres.) As often happens, it probably won’t be available in many communities (e.g., the Salmon Mall adjacent to Fort Drum in New York) that would most benefit from seeing it. I just fantasized that somehow we could make it available to every potential recruit before he or she signed their enlistment contract!

[Tod Ensign is a veteran’s rights lawyer and director of Citizen Soldier, a non-profit GI and veteran rights advocacy group.]

The Hurt Locker, Ticking Time Bomb of a Movie

By Scott Foundas / June 24, 2009

Kathryn Bigelow’s Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker is a full-throttle body shock of a movie. It gets inside you like a virus, puts your nerves in a blender, and twists your guts into a Gordian knot.

Set during the last month in the year-long rotation of a three-man U.S. Army bomb squad stationed in Baghdad, it may be the only film made about Iraq — documentary or fiction — that gives us a true sense of what it feels like to be on the front lines of a war fought not in jungles but in cities, where bombs rise up from the ground instead of raining down from the sky, every narrow alley portends an ambush, and every onlooker is a potential insurgent.

It’s an experiential war movie — one that calls to mind the title of the 1950s docudrama series You Are There -— but also a psychologically astute one, matching its intricate sensory architecture with an equally detailed map of the modern soldier’s psyche, a diagram of what motivates the volunteers in a volunteer army.

The movie begins with a typically bracing set piece in which the soldiers of Bravo Company’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal team come upon an IED planted in the center of a busy Baghdad marketplace. When their remote-controlled bomb-detonating robot hits a snag, the team’s affable leader (Guy Pearce) dons a thick Kevlar suit and attempts to set the charge manually. He does not return. His replacement, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), is a career soldier of an entirely different breed, one who prefers to handle bombs up close and personally instead of by remote control, and whose Kevlar suit is part of his daily wardrobe—not just for special occasions.

At first glance, Sgt. James seems like the closest thing to a stock character — the gonzo alpha male living out his childhood cowboy fantasies — in a picture markedly devoid of small-town rubes, poetry-quoting intellectuals, or any other easily reducible war-movie “types.” But like most things in The Hurt Locker, there is considerably more to him than meets the eye. Beneath his blustery macho surface, he may be the movie’s most intricately wired explosive device.

Written by former Village Voice columnist Mark Boal, The Hurt Locker belongs to that subset of Bigelow’s work — including her biker-gang debut The Loveless and the bank-robbing-surfers caper Point Break — devoted to the ethos of hyper-masculine communities, the men who choose to live in them, and those who emerge as their leaders.

Sgt. James is one such character, and Bigelow, Boal, and especially Renner excel at showing us how his reckless displays of bravado are both a coping mechanism and an addiction, a battlefield genius and a form of madness. A secular god with sports hero stats (873 disarmed bombs and counting!), he inspires envy in some, contempt in others, and both in the men under his command—two comparatively by-the-book sergeants (very well played by Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) who also want to prove their mettle as men of war, as long as they go home in one piece.

But for James, who has an ex-wife and child waiting for him somewhere, the adrenaline-rush alterna-reality of Iraq is vastly preferable to the home front, with its prison of domestic responsibility. Like the jacked-in wire trippers of Bigelow’s futuristic Strange Days, he yearns for something more visceral, more cinematic than everyday life.

With her strength of revealing character through action, Bigelow comes closer to the tradition of Anthony Mann, Sam Fuller, and other bygone practitioners of the classic Hollywood war movie than to today’s dominant breed of studio A-listers, who create (mostly incoherent) action at the expense of character. Not that The Hurt Locker, which I take to be the best American film since Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, much resembles any war movie we’ve ever seen before. Here, combat is more often a solitary rather than a group endeavor — a lone man tracing a rat’s nest of wires back to its source, or exchanging long-distance fire with a single sniper across a vast desert expanse.

There is little, if any, talk about patriotism or homeland security, and there are fewer American flags on display than in any American war movie in memory. When The Hurt Locker premiered last fall at the Venice and Toronto film festivals, this prompted some observers to tag it as an “apolitical” war picture, which is really a way of saying that Bigelow’s film is mercifully free of ham-fisted polemics. Instead of setting out to prove a point, it seeks to immerse us in an environment — something Bigelow does with a conceptual rigor usually associated with those directors whose work is confined to film societies and art houses.

Time is Bigelow’s organizing principle here — the time left in Iraq for the men of Bravo company (displayed on the screen as chapter headings throughout), the time that ticks away between the discovery of a bomb and its eventual disarming or detonation, and the time that, in those unbearably tense moments, seems to stretch out indefinitely toward the horizon. War may be hell, but in The Hurt Locker, it’s also an incredibly pellucid waking dream.

Source / Village Voice

The Hurt Locker — Trailer

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Woodstock: The Memories Live On for These Two

Posted on July 11, 2009 by RagBlog

Love It: Everyone quoted in the story sounds like they’re still trippin’!

Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog


Iconic Woodstock Couple Keeps Festival Spirit Alive

By Adam Horne / July 11, 2009

Forty years after the legendary festival in Bethel, N.Y., a photo of two lovebirds taken at Woodstock has become an iconic symbol of love. Having only met three months prior, the picture captures a young couple — Nick and Bobbi Ercoline, both now 60 — embracing underneath a dirty blanket, surrounded by exhausted concertgoers. To the Ercolines’ surprise, the image became the cover of the ‘Woodstock’ album in 1970 and was featured on posters for the subsequent documentary film.

What resonates most about the photo is that it speaks to what many Woodstock veterans consider to be the true meaning of the festival — not just music but a movement of peace, love and unity. In a recent interview with Spinner, Woodstock performer Richie Havens cited a Martin Luther King Jr. speech, saying “It’s not him or him or him, it’s all of us or nothing. That was our thing, that’s what we went against the war with.”

The couple themselves acknowledge the social significance of the now legendary picture. “It’s an honest representation of a generation. When we look at that photo … I see our generation,” Nick told the NY Daily News.

Original Santana percussionist Michael Carabello witnessed firsthand how his generation came together for three days in 1969. “It was about the music and it was about everything else, but it was more about us getting along.” Noting the hectic and exhausting nature of the festival (as evidenced by the background of the photo), Carabello told Spinner, “You know, you get so absorbed in it you just don’t want to hear it anymore, you forget about it, so the only thing you can do is become a family. You just help one another out.”

Certainly Woodstock has been romanticized over the years, but for many, the image of Nick and Bobbi wrapped in a blanket represents exactly what Carabello is talking about.

What’s more, the couple has been together ever since.

Source / Spinner

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Evidence of War Crimes in Afghanistan Coming to Light

Posted on July 11, 2009 by RagBlog

Juan Cole says it as well as it can be said: “I can tell by various web metrics that you guys are not interested in the Afghanistan story. You should be and I am going to parse it today anyway. It is one of the advantages of being non-profit that I write what I want and you can read it or not as you like. But really, you should be following this war.“

I agree with Professor Cole. We should not only be following what is happening in Afghanistan, we should also be doing our utmost to end the carnage there. War has outlived its usefulness as ‘a solution.’ I say this especially to those who make remarks on this blog that “there will always be war.” Yes, there will – just as long as there are too many people who say there will always be war. When there are too many people who say “there is a better way,” wars will end.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

The forces of Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, shown on horseback at a campaign rally, were said to have killed Taliban prisoners. Photo: David Guttenfelder/Associated Press.

U.S. Inaction Seen After Taliban P.O.W.’s Died
By James Risen / July 10, 2009

WASHINGTON — After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.

American officials had been reluctant to pursue an investigation — sought by officials from the F.B.I., the State Department, the Red Cross and human rights groups — because the warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, was on the payroll of the C.I.A. and his militia worked closely with United States Special Forces in 2001, several officials said. They said the United States also worried about undermining the American-supported government of President Hamid Karzai, in which General Dostum had served as a defense official.

“At the White House, nobody said no to an investigation, but nobody ever said yes, either,” said Pierre Prosper, the former American ambassador for war crimes issues. “The first reaction of everybody there was, ‘Oh, this is a sensitive issue; this is a touchy issue politically.’ ”

It is not clear how — or if — the Obama administration will address the issue. But in recent weeks, State Department officials have quietly tried to thwart General Dostum’s reappointment as military chief of staff to the president, according to several senior officials, and suggested that the administration might not be hostile to an inquiry.

The question of culpability for the prisoner deaths — which may have been the most significant mass killing in Afghanistan after the 2001 American-led invasion — has taken on new urgency since the general, an important ally of Mr. Karzai, was reinstated to his government post last month. He had been suspended last year and living in exile in Turkey after he was accused of threatening a political rival at gunpoint.

“If you bring Dostum back, it will impact the progress of democracy and the trust people have in the government,” Mr. Prosper said. Arguing that the Obama administration should investigate the 2001 killings, he added, “There is always a time and place for justice.”

While President Obama has deepened the United States’ commitment to Afghanistan, sending 21,000 more American troops there to combat the growing Taliban insurgency, his administration has also tried to distance itself from Mr. Karzai, whose government is deeply unpopular and widely viewed as corrupt.

A senior State Department official said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative on Afghanistan and Pakistan, had told Mr. Karzai of their objections to reinstating General Dostum. The American officials have also pressed his sponsors in Turkey to delay his return to Afghanistan while talks continue with Mr. Karzai over the general’s role, said an official briefed on the matter. Asked about looking into the prisoner deaths, the official said, “We believe that anyone suspected of war crimes should be thoroughly investigated.”

The Back Story

While the deaths have been previously reported, the back story of the frustrated efforts to investigate them has not been fully told. The killings occurred in late November 2001, just days after the American-led invasion forced the ouster of the Taliban government in Kabul. Thousands of Taliban fighters surrendered to General Dostum’s forces, which were part of the American-backed Northern Alliance, in the city of Kunduz. They were then transported to a prison run by the general’s forces near the town of Shibarghan.

Some members of the Taliban were held at a prison in Shibarghan in February 2001. A mass grave of Taliban prisoners of war is thought to be in a desert stretch just outside Shibarghan. Photo: Claro Cortes IV/Reuters.

Survivors and witnesses told The New York Times and Newsweek in 2002 that over a three-day period, Taliban prisoners were stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water; many suffocated while being trucked to the prison. Other prisoners were killed when guards shot into the containers. The bodies were said to have been buried in a mass grave in Dasht-i-Leili, a stretch of desert just outside Shibarghan.

A recently declassified 2002 State Department intelligence report states that one source, whose identity is redacted, concluded that about 1,500 Taliban prisoners died. Estimates from other witnesses or human rights groups range from several hundred to several thousand. The report also says that several Afghan witnesses were later tortured or killed.

In Afghanistan, rival warlords have had a history of eliminating enemy troops by suffocating them in sealed containers. General Dostum, however, has said previously that any such deaths of the Taliban prisoners were unintentional. He has said that only 200 prisoners died and blamed combat wounds and disease for most of the fatalities. The general could not be reached for comment, and a spokesman declined to comment for this article.

While a dozen or so bodies were examined and several were autopsied, a full exhumation was never performed, and human rights groups are concerned that evidence has been destroyed. In 2008, a medical forensics team working with the United Nations discovered excavations that suggested the mass grave had been moved. Satellite photos obtained by The Times show that the site was disturbed even earlier, in 2006.

In a 2001 mass killing, bodies were said to have been buried at a mass grave in Dasht-i-Leili. Photo: Physicians for Human Rights.

“Our repeated efforts to protect witnesses, secure evidence and get a full investigation have been met by the U.S. and its allies with buck-passing, delays and obstruction,” said Nathaniel Raymond, a researcher for Physicians for Human Rights, a group based in Boston that discovered the mass grave site in 2002.

Seeking an Investigation

The first calls for an investigation came from his group and the International Committee of the Red Cross. A military commander in the United States-led coalition rejected a request by a Red Cross official for an inquiry in late 2001, according to the official, who, in keeping with his organization’s policy, would speak only on condition of anonymity and declined to identify the commander.

A few months later, Dell Spry, the F.B.I.’s senior representative at the detainee prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, heard accounts of the deaths from agents he supervised there. Separately, 10 or so prisoners brought from Afghanistan reported that they had been “stacked like cordwood” in shipping containers and had to lick the perspiration off one another to survive, Mr. Spry recalled. They told similar accounts of suffocations and shootings, he said. A declassified F.B.I. report, dated January 2003, confirms that the detainees provided such accounts.

Mr. Spry, who is now an F.B.I. consultant, said he did not believe the stories because he knew that Al Qaeda trained members to fabricate tales about mistreatment. Still, the veteran agent said he thought the agency should investigate the reports “so they could be debunked.”

But a senior official at F.B.I. headquarters, whom Mr. Spry declined to identify, told him to drop the matter, saying it was not part of his mission and it would be up to the American military to investigate.

“I was disappointed because I believed that, true or untrue, we had to be in front of this story, because someday it may turn out to be a problem,” Mr. Spry said.

The Pentagon, however, showed little interest in the matter. In 2002, Physicians for Human Rights asked Defense Department officials to open an investigation and provide security for its forensics team to conduct a more thorough examination of the gravesite. “We met with blanket denials from the Pentagon,” recalls Jennifer Leaning, a board member with the group. “They said nothing happened.”

Pentagon spokesmen have said that the United States Central Command conducted an “informal inquiry,” asking Special Forces personnel members who worked with General Dostum if they knew of a mass killing by his forces. When they said they did not, the inquiry went no further.

“I did get the sense that there was little appetite for this matter within parts of D.O.D.,” said Marshall Billingslea, former acting assistant defense secretary for special operations, referring to the Department of Defense.

High-Level Conversation

Another former defense official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, recalled that the prisoner deaths came up in a conversation with Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense at the time, in early 2003.

“Somebody mentioned Dostum and the story about the containers and the possibility that this was a war crime,” the official said. “And Wolfowitz said we are not going to be going after him for that.”

In an interview, Mr. Wolfowitz said he did not recall the conversation. However, Pentagon documents obtained by Physicians for Human Rights through a Freedom of Information Act request confirm that the issue was debated by Mr. Wolfowitz and other officials.

As evidence mounted about the deaths, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell assigned Mr. Prosper, the United States ambassador at large for war crimes, to look into them in 2002. He met with General Dostum, who denied the allegations, Mr. Prosper recalled. Meanwhile, Karzai government officials told him that they opposed any investigation.

“They made it clear that this was going to cause a problem,” said Mr. Prosper, who left the Bush administration in 2005 and is now a lawyer in Los Angeles. “They would say, ‘We have had decades of war crimes. Where do you start?’ ”

In Washington, Mr. Prosper encountered similar attitudes. In 2002, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, then the White House coordinator for Afghanistan, made it clear that he was concerned about efforts to investigate General Dostum, Mr. Prosper said. “Khalilzad never opposed an investigation,” Mr. Prosper recalled. “But he definitely raised the political implications of it.”

Mr. Khalilzad, who later served as the American ambassador to Afghanistan, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Prosper said that because of the resistance from American and Afghan officials, his office dropped its inquiry. The State Department mentioned the episode in its annual human rights report for 2002, but took no further action.

Source / New York Times

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Loving: The Four Horsemen of Agriculture

Posted on July 11, 2009 by RagBlog

Cartoon by Charlie Loving / The Rag Blog

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