Juan Cole on Cheney’s Criminal Irrelevance – II

Posted on July 15, 2009 by RagBlog


Truth Commission Needed to Examine Cheney, Assassination Squads, Cover-Ups
By Juan Cole / July 13, 2009

It turns out that the secret CIA program that Leon Panetta cancelled, and which former VP Richard Bruce Cheney ordered hidden from Congress, was in fact an assassination squad focusing on al-Qaeda figures.

The problem with assassination teams is that they are extra-judicial. They are killing people who have not been proven to have done anything wrong. The long litany of mistakes that security organizations have made in recent years, targeting innocents, should form a legion of cautionary tales about just killing people. Maher Arar, for instance, might as well have simply been shot down like a dog as shackled and sent for torture by the Baath Party in Damascus. He was innocent. Murat Kurnaz might have as easily had two bullets put behind his right ear as to have been arrested and sent for “interrogation” to Guantanamo (this is the link for his book). Then there was that little Khaled el-Masri ‘oops’ moment, which would have been even more embarrassing to the US government if he had been shot between the eyes by a US government sniper. I could go on and on (the majority of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay now appears to have been clueless innocents, and Bush-Cheney appears to have wanted to sentence them to life imprisonment without a trial; they could have as easily just been shot on sight).

It could be argued that the CIA would be more careful about who it killed than about who it had detained or had tortured, but we cannot really be sure of that, can we? In fact, Cheney did the CIA itself a grave disservice by putting it in the position of having to plan, at least, to act extra-judicially and beyond the reach of any oversight except his own (shudder). A bureaucracy dedicated to fighting a struggle needs mechanisms for judging its performance and needs to be told when it has gone too far.

My neighbor congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) seems to think that the issue is how much money was spent on this program, which apparently never got off the ground. That it was a small program is not important. September 11 itself probably only cost al-Qaeda $500,000 or so, yet resulted in large loss of innocent life. The issues are ones of constitutionality, good governance, and ethics.

Since we now know that the CIA 007’s were only in training and it is alleged at least, that they were not actually put into the field with a mission, a dark thought crosses my mind. What if Cheney, who notoriously disliked the CIA, decided to give the assassination missions to the military special ops, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), as detailed by Seymour Hersh, instead? That is, the program Panetta closed down may not be the one that went operational. Who is in charge of JSOC now? Anyone? Still Cheney?

Then there is the issue of congressional oversight. I know Congress can be leaky. But frankly you cannot have any sort of democracy if you have a covert organization carrying out black operations with no oversight from any branch of government but the Executive. The CIA is in the executive branch and so can hardly be policed by it. There will always be the temptation to use covert operations to influence American public opinion, and even to influence the outcome of elections. In the 1962 Operation Northwoods, even the Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed committing terrorism against Americans to whip up sentiment in favor of intervention in Cuba. And the JCS is not even a covert organization. Some assassinations could drag the United States into war if their circumstances became known, and you could never be sure they would not be. Even just a supposedly simple rendition (kidnapping), like that of Abu Omar from Milan, unwound like a silent-era Keystone Cops episode; then what about actually killing someone? Nor would all the agents involved defend their actions in Milan; if they regret that, how would they feel if they had been ordered to kill Abu Omar (who, by the way, may never have committed any crimes)?

Me, I think terrorists operating in societies at peace are criminals and should be dealt with as a police matter. I don’t deny that there may be extraordinary circumstances in which direct and immediate action might save a lot of lives; but then, I would put that under the rubric of policing, as well.

Senator Diane Feinstein thinks Cheney may have broken the law by keeping Congress in the dark about the program. If he didn’t, then the law needs to be rewritten!

Now that it is becoming clear that Cheney’s warrantless wiretapping program at the National Security Agency was just enormous, and that he was at the heart of efforts to stonewall after the Valerie Plame leak, it seems to me only a matter of time until so many of Cheney’s crimes become public that pressure will grow to at least have a fact-finding commission on his dirty deeds.

Cheney is a traitor for his role in outing Valerie Plame (and yes, he had Irv Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, try like hell to out her; it is not relevant that Bob Novak took the information from Armitage first). He hid covert operations from Congress. He contemplated assassination squads and for all we know ran some. If Congress doesn’t want to look mean-spirited or to risk disillusioning the public with government by prosecuting the former vice president, let’s at least have a truth commission that gets documents declassified and lays out his full role so we don’t have to wait until 2039 to judge it.

The only thing worse than impunity for crimes is a decades-long cover-up of those crimes from the American people. Complete sunshine on Richard Bruce Cheney’s misdeeds is the minimum necessary to work against them being repeated by the next administration.

Source / Informed Comment

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Obama’s Non-Nuclear World: A Hiroshima Survivor’s Thoughts

Posted on July 15, 2009 by RagBlog

Hiroshima: Ten Years Later. “I’m Just Waiting For Death.” Those are the words of Mrs. Yoskio Nishikawa, 43, bedridden “A-Bomb widow” who lives on $22 a month in charity. Yukiko, 15, one of her four children, cools her forehead with a wet towel as the 70-pound widow rests in their nine-foot square room, part of a frame charity home housing families of 20 widows. A small wooden Shinto shrine, in memory of her blacksmith husband who was killed while riding to work, occupies a place of honor. Mrs. Nishikawa suffers from radiation effects because she combed the city searching for her husband after the bomb fell. She has a bad heart and liver trouble. (1955) Photo: Source.

A Flash of Memory
By Issey Miyake / July 13, 2009

Tokyo — IN April, President Obama pledged to seek peace and security in a world without nuclear weapons. He called for not simply a reduction, but elimination. His words awakened something buried deeply within me, something about which I have until now been reluctant to discuss.

I realized that I have, perhaps now more than ever, a personal and moral responsibility to speak out as one who survived what Mr. Obama called the “flash of light.”

On Aug. 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on my hometown, Hiroshima. I was there, and only 7 years old. When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape — I remember it all. Within three years, my mother died from radiation exposure.

I have never chosen to share my memories or thoughts of that day. I have tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to put them behind me, preferring to think of things that can be created, not destroyed, and that bring beauty and joy. I gravitated toward the field of clothing design, partly because it is a creative format that is modern and optimistic.

I tried never to be defined by my past. I did not want to be labeled “the designer who survived the atomic bomb,” and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima. They made me uncomfortable.

But now I realize it is a subject that must be discussed if we are ever to rid the world of nuclear weapons. There is a movement in Hiroshima to invite Mr. Obama to Universal Peace Day on Aug. 6 — the annual commemoration of that fateful day. I hope he will accept. My wish is motivated by a desire not to dwell on the past, but rather to give a sign to the world that the American president’s goal is to work to eliminate nuclear wars in the future.

Last week, Russia and the United States signed an agreement to reduce nuclear arms. This was an important event. However, we are not naïve: no one person or country can stop nuclear warfare. In Japan, we live with the constant threat from our nuclear-armed neighbor North Korea. There are reports of other countries acquiring nuclear technology, too. For there to be any hope of peace, people around the world must add their voices to President Obama’s.

If Mr. Obama could walk across the Peace Bridge in Hiroshima — whose balustrades were designed by the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi as a reminder both of his ties to East and West and of what humans do to one another out of hatred — it would be both a real and a symbolic step toward creating a world that knows no fear of nuclear threat. Every step taken is another step closer to world peace.

[Issey Miyake is a clothing designer. This article was translated by members of his staff from the Japanese.]

Source / New York Times

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Food Safety Meets Organic Farming: Destroying the Conceptual Foundations by Hyper-Technologizing

Posted on July 15, 2009 by RagBlog

Farmworkers harvest organically grown lettuce at Lakeside Organic Gardens Farm in Watsonville. Photo: Paul Chinn/The Chronicle.

Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety
By Carolyn Lochhead / July 13, 2009

Washington — Dick Peixoto planted hedges of fennel and flowering cilantro around his organic vegetable fields in the Pajaro Valley near Watsonville to harbor beneficial insects, an alternative to pesticides.

He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind.

“I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop,” he said. “On one field where a deer walked through, didn’t eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop.”

In the verdant farmland surrounding Monterey Bay, a national marine sanctuary and one of the world’s biological jewels, scorched-earth strategies are being imposed on hundreds of thousands of acres in the quest for an antiseptic field of greens. And the scheme is about to go national.

Invisible to a public that sees only the headlines of the latest food-safety scare – spinach, peppers and now cookie dough – ponds are being poisoned and bulldozed. Vegetation harboring pollinators and filtering storm runoff is being cleared. Fences and poison baits line wildlife corridors. Birds, frogs, mice and deer – and anything that shelters them – are caught in a raging battle in the Salinas Valley against E. coli O157:H7, a lethal, food-borne bacteria.

In pending legislation and in proposed federal regulations, the push for food safety butts up against the movement toward biologically diverse farming methods, while evidence suggests that industrial agriculture may be the bigger culprit.

‘Foolhardy’ approach

“Sanitizing American agriculture, aside from being impossible, is foolhardy,” said UC Berkeley food guru Michael Pollan, who most recently made his case for smaller-scale farming in the documentary film “Food, Inc.” “You have to think about what’s the logical end point of looking at food this way. It’s food grown indoors hydroponically.”

Scientists do not know how the killer E. coli pathogen, which dwells mainly in the guts of cattle, made its way to a spinach field near San Juan Bautista (San Benito County) in 2006, leaving four people dead, 35 with acute kidney failure and 103 hospitalized.

The deadly bug first appeared in hamburger meat in the early 1980s and migrated to certain kinds of produce, mainly lettuce and other leafy greens that are cut, mixed and bagged for the convenience of supermarket shoppers. Hundreds of thousands of the bug can fit on the head of a pin; as few as 10 can lodge in a salad and end in lifelong disability, including organ failure.

Going national

For many giant food retailers, the choice between a dead pond and a dead child is no choice at all. Industry has paid more than $100 million in court settlements and verdicts in spinach and lettuce lawsuits, a fraction of the lost sales involved.

Galvanized by the spinach disaster, large growers instituted a quasi-governmental program of new protocols for growing greens safely, called the “leafy greens marketing agreement.” A proposal was submitted last month in Washington to take these rules nationwide.

A food safety bill sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, passed this month in the House Energy and Commerce Committee. It would give new powers to the Food and Drug Administration to regulate all farms and produce in an attempt to fix the problem. The bill would require consideration of farm diversity and environmental rules, but would leave much to the FDA.

An Amish farmer in Ohio who uses horses to plow his fields could find himself caught in a net aimed 2,000 miles away at a feral pig in San Benito County. While he may pick, pack and sell his greens in one day because he does not refrigerate, the bagged lettuce trucked from Salinas with a 17-day shelf life may be considered safer.

The leafy-green agreement is based on available science, but it is just a jumping-off point.

Large produce buyers have compiled secret “super metrics” that go much further. Farmers must follow them if they expect to sell their crops. These can include vast bare-dirt buffers, elimination of wildlife, and strict rules on water sources. To enforce these rules, retail buyers have sent forth armies of food-safety auditors, many of them trained in indoor processing plants, to inspect fields.

Keeping children out

“They’re used to working inside the factory walls,” said Ken Kimes, owner of New Natives farms in Aptos (Santa Cruz County) and a board member of the Community Alliance With Family Farmers, a California group. “If they’re not prepared for the farm landscape, it can come as quite a shock to them. Some of this stuff that they want, you just can’t actually do.”

Auditors have told Kimes that no children younger than 5 can be allowed on his farm for fear of diapers. He has been asked to issue identification badges to all visitors.

Not only do the rules conflict with organic and environmental standards; many are simply unscientific. Surprisingly little is known about how E. coli is transmitted from cow to table.

Reducing E. coli

Scientists have created a vaccine to reduce E. coli in livestock, and a White House working group announced plans Tuesday to boost safety standards for eggs and meat. This month, the group is expected to issue draft guidelines for reducing E. coli contamination in leafy greens, tomatoes and melons.

Some science suggests that removing vegetation near field crops could make food less safe. Vegetation and wetlands are a landscape’s lungs and kidneys, filtering out not just fertilizers, sediments and pesticides, but also pathogens. UC Davis scientists found that vegetation buffers can remove as much as 98 percent of E. coli from surface water. UC Davis advisers warn that some rodents prefer cleared areas.

Produce buyers compete to demand the most draconian standards, said Jo Ann Baumgartner, head of the Wild Farm Alliance in Watsonville, so that they can sell their products as the “safest.”

State agencies responsible for California’s water, air and wildlife have been unable to find out from buyers what they are demanding.

They do know that trees have been bulldozed along the riparian corridors of the Salinas Valley, while poison-filled tubes targeting rodents dot lettuce fields. Dying rodents have led to deaths of owls and hawks that naturally control rodents.

Unscientific approach

“It’s all based on panic and fear, and the science is not there,” said Dr. Andy Gordus, an environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game.

Preliminary results released in April from a two-year study by the state wildlife agency, UC Davis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that less than one-half of 1 percent of 866 wild animals tested positive for E. coli O157:H7 in Central California.

Frogs are unrelated to E. coli, but their remains in bags of mechanically harvested greens are unsightly, Gordus said, so “the industry has been using food safety as a premise to eliminate frogs.”

Farmers are told that ponds used to recycle irrigation water are unsafe. So they bulldoze the ponds and pump more groundwater, opening more of the aquifer to saltwater intrusion, said Jill Wilson, an environmental scientist at the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in San Luis Obispo.

Wilson said demands for 450-foot dirt buffers remove the agency’s chief means of preventing pollution from entering streams and rivers. Jovita Pajarillo, associate director of the water division in the San Francisco office of the Environmental Protection Agency, said removal of vegetative buffers threatens Arroyo Seco, one of the last remaining stretches of habitat for steelhead trout.

Turning down clients

“It’s been a problem for us trying to balance the organic growing methods with the food safety requirements,” Peixoto said. “At some point, we can’t really meet their criteria. We just tell them that’s all we can do, and we have to turn down that customer.”

Large retailers did not respond to requests for comment. Food trade groups in Washington suggested calling other trade groups, which didn’t comment.

Chiquita/Fresh Express, a large Salinas produce handler, told the advocacy group Food and Water Watch that the company has “developed extensive additional guidelines for the procurement of leafy greens and other produce, but we consider such guidelines to be our confidential and proprietary information.”

Seattle trial lawyer Bill Marler, who represented many of the plaintiffs in the 2006 E. coli outbreak in spinach, said, “If we want to have bagged spinach and lettuce available 24/7, 12 months of the year, it comes with costs.”

Still, he said, the industry rules won’t stop lawsuits or eliminate the risk of processed greens cut in fields, mingled in large baths, put in bags that must be chilled from packing plant to kitchen, and shipped thousands of miles away.

“In 16 years of handling nearly every major food-borne illness outbreak in America, I can tell you I’ve never had a case where it’s been linked to a farmers’ market,” Marler said.

“Could it happen? Absolutely. But the big problem has been the mass-produced product. What you’re seeing is this rub between trying to make it as clean as possible so they don’t poison anybody, but still not wanting to come to the reality that it may be the industrialized process that’s making it all so risky.”

Some major recent outbreaks of food-borne illness

The Food and Drug Administration lists 40 food-borne pathogens. Among the more common: E-coli O157:H7, salmonella, listeria, campylobacter, botulism and hepatitis A.

June 2009: E. coli O157:H7 found in Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough manufactured in Danville, Va., resulted in the recall of 3.6 million packages. Seventy-two people in 30 states were sickened. No traces found on equipment or workers; investigators are looking at flour and other ingredients.

October 2008: Salmonella found in peanut butter from a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Georgia. Nine people died, and an estimated 22,500 were sickened. Criminal negligence was alleged after the product tested positive and was shipped.

June 2008: Salmonella Saintpaul traced to serrano peppers grown in Mexico. More than 1,000 people were sickened in 41 states, with 203 reported hospitalizations and at least one death. Tomatoes were suspected, devastating growers.

April 2007: E. coli O157:H7 found in beef, sickening 14 people. United Food Group recalled 5.7 million pounds of meat.

December 2006: E. coli O157:H7 traced to Taco Bell restaurants in New Jersey and Long Island, N.Y. Green onions suspected, then lettuce. Thirty-nine people were sickened, some with acute kidney failure.

September 2006: E. coli O157:H7 found in Dole bagged spinach processed at Earthbound Farms in San Juan Bautista (San Benito County). The outbreak killed four people, sent 103 to hospitals, and devastated the spinach industry.

Source / San Francisco Chronicle

Thanks to Janet Gilles / The Rag Blog

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Sen. Sessions : Alabama Hypocrite Would Sit in Judgment

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic: US News & World Report, June, 16, 1986.

Click on image to enlarge.

There is great irony here in the once rejected nominee [for federal judge] now trying to sharpen his claws on Judge Sotomayor. But she is lots tougher and sharper than Sessions could ever be, and is letting him claw away, as he loudly displays his lightweight duplicity and demagoguery.

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

The Republican Party’s finest continue to exhibit just how sorry, brazen, and unprincipled many of them can be as questioning of Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor has gotten underway. One of the worst and most shameless of the GOP interrogators is Alabama junior senator, Jeff Sessions.

In 1986 Sessions himself sat in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee as a Reagan nominee for a federal judgeship, and was promptly rejected because of his history of racially insensitive remarks and a poor civil rights record. One of those questioning Sessions was Senator Edward Kennedy who even back in 1986 called him “a throwback to a shameful era.”

Today, after 23 years of playing the good old boy politician, becoming a U.S. Senator in 1997, Sessions, who switched from the Democratic to the Republican party, was assigned to be the Ranking Member on the Senate Judiciary Committee less than three months ago.

There is great irony here in the once rejected nominee now trying to sharpen his claws on Judge Sotomayor. But she is lots tougher and sharper than Sessions could ever be, and is letting him claw away, as he loudly displays his lightweight duplicity and demagoguery.

In his confrontational opening statement of the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, Sessions, in his high nasal whine, he lectured the nominee about ‘prejudice’ in the legal system.

Twenty years ago when Sessions sat before the very panel he now heads, he was asked about well documented reports of his publicly recognized racism. His response, “I may have said something about the NAACP being un-American or Communist, but I meant no harm by it.”

Sessions allegedly referred to the (NAACP) and the (ACLU) as “un-American” and “Communist inspired” because they “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” At his confirmation hearings, Sessions said that the groups could be un-American when “they involve themselves in un-American positions” in foreign policy.

Sessions had been frequently accused of “gross insensitivity” on racial issues by his detractors. Among a variety of blatant racial comments his opponents pointed to, was his joking reference to the Ku Klux Klan which he said “was not so bad until he found out that some of them smoked marijuana.” Sessions, with a straight face, claimed his remarks were made in jest.

The panel didn’t buy it, and rejected him. One of those voting against him was Alabama Democratic Senator Howell Heflin.

Today Republican Senator Sessions is but one more example of GOP leadership tinged with documented hate, racism, anti immigration xenaphobia, and unrealistic conservative dreams of “keeping things like they have always been.”

The almost certain approval of Judge Sotomayor will, indeed, not be the way things have always been. That is the point of President Obama’s having nominated her to the join the ranks of what has historically been the dominion of white men only, with only recent minor exceptions.

Meanwhile Senator Sessions may well be called into other hearings since he was one of of only nine opponents of Senator John McCain’s anti-torture amendment. Sessions supports former Vice President Dick Cheney’s proposal to exempt the (CIA) from any ban on the use of torture.

Session’s is a real humanist too. Last month reportedly during testimony by a 42-year-old Filipino woman scheduled to be deported, the mother of two American children, who had been in the USA for 23 years, Sessions was clearly heard telling one one of his aides, “Enough with the histrionics,” when the woman’s 12-year-old son began crying during the testimony.

And now he lectures a Supreme Court nominee about “prejudice in the legal system.”

The only thing more disgusting and upsetting than Sessions’ troubling racist past are the voters out there who are nodding their heads in agreement with his “tough questioning.”

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

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Obama’s Nuclear Gambit : Savvy or Softy?

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Above, John Bolton: a neocon looks backward. Below, Barack Obama with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev. Photo by Dmitry Astakhov / AFP / Getty Images.

Obama’s nuclear gambit:
Cold warrior Bolton says he gave too much

These views never made much sense during the dreary days of the Cold War. They are even sillier and more self-defeating in the present context.

By Steve Weissman / July 14, 2009

Former UN Ambassador John Bolton, the mustachioed neocon, sometimes gets it half right. President Barack Obama is, in fact, reducing America’s nuclear advantage over Russia, just as Bolton argues. But the hell-for-leather Bolton fails completely to understand what Obama is doing and why, as do many Obama supporters.

“Americans may have voted for a lower profile in Iraq, but they did not vote for a weaker United States globally,” Bolton wrote right before Obama’s trip to Moscow.

Obama would, in Bolton’s view, give the Russians everything they wanted: “Major new restrictions on strategic nuclear weapons, postponing construction on US missile-defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic and, indeed, downsizing America’s entire missile-defense program, sidelining Georgia’s and Ukraine’s NATO membership applications, and leaning hard on Israel to stop all West Bank settlement construction and accept a Palestinian state.”

Caught up in yesterday’s Cold War, Bolton can only see these as unwarranted concessions to an unrelenting rival, for which the United States would get little in return.

After the signing of the “Joint Understanding” in Moscow, Bolton berated Obama even more. “Obama’s policy is risky for America and its global allies who shelter under our nuclear umbrella,” Bolton wrote. “Although Obama hopes dramatic US nuclear weapons reductions will discourage proliferation, the actual result will be the exact opposite.”

No doubt, Bolton is playing Republican politics by painting Obama as a naïve idealist who would endanger American security and that of our allies, notably the Israelis.

Sadly, many nonpartisan analysts join Bolton in seeing Obama’s efforts through the prism of an outdated arms race with the Soviet Union. They also see American military power as the prime deterrent to the nuclear ambitions of Iran, North Korea and any other nation that might seek the bomb.

These views never made much sense during the dreary days of the Cold War. They are even sillier and more self-defeating in the present context.

To expand on Henry Kissinger’s recent remark in Der Spiegel, Obama works like a chess master playing several matches at the same time. In playing the Russians, he started from a simple calculation. The United States has enjoyed an overwhelming nuclear superiority over both Russia and the Chinese, as Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press explained in the March 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs.

“Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy,” they wrote. “It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike.”

With increasing tensions between the Russians and the West since 2006, they have apparently made some efforts to catch up. But, even with America’s nuclear advantage, Washington found no way to use it to modify Russia’s behavior, not even in Georgia and Ukraine. Short of threatening a nuclear shoot-out, having more nukes than Moscow actually hurt rather than helped.

Obama has opted to play a softer game against the Russians, to which they responded by not standing in the way of a new deal for an airbase in Kyrgyzstan and opening their own airspace for American supply flights to US and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Better that Russia help persuade Obama to get out of Afghanistan while he still can, but give the two governments credit for moving toward win-win agreements rather than the win-lose confrontations of the past.

Obama’s second chess game tries to get Moscow to help pressure Tehran to rein in its nuclear energy program and stop short of atomic weapons. Here the Russians have mixed interests. They do not look happily on the prospect of nearby Iran getting the bomb and have quietly put obstacles in the way during its construction of the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr. But the Russians have a large commercial interest in providing the reactor and other nuclear equipment, and also in selling costly conventional weapons, not the least anti-aircraft defenses to protect Iran against Israel or American air strikes.

In a third chess game, Obama is playing directly with Iran and other countries looking for nuclear arsenals of their own. Without Russia and the United States cutting their own nuclear arsenals, as the two countries committed to do in the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, Obama has no chance of bringing Iran and the others to the table.

This is where Bolton and those who share his views most misunderstand reality. American military power failed utterly to prevent China, India, Pakistan and Israel from getting nuclear weapons, and it will not stop any other nation that sees the bomb as a way to deter a military attack by rivals, large or small.

The most dramatic evidence of this came from the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, in the recently released transcripts of his interrogations by and casual conversations with the FBI. Saddam, it turns out, let the Bush administration believe he had nukes and other weapons of mass destruction because he feared looking weak to Iran.

As the Arabic-speaking FBI interrogator summed it up, “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

The ruse cost Saddam his country and his life. But that is how important nuclear deterrence has become to the less-than-Great Powers of the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Obama, the chess master, hopes to find a way around the problem with his nuclear summit in Washington next March. In the meantime, he would do well to stop the threats to Iran coming from the Israelis and from within his own administration.

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now lives and works in France.]

Source / truthout

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Robert Jensen : The Color of the Race Problem is White (Video)

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

The Color of the Race Problem is White
By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog

“The Color of the Race Problem Is White” was a lecture by Professor Robert Jensen, recorded at the University of Texas at Austin on March 30, 2009. The lecture itself is 28 minutes and also includes 24 minutes of discussion. Jensen is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege.

In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois suggested that the question white people so often want to ask black people is, “How does it feel to be a problem?” This program turns the tables and recognizes some simple facts: Race problems have their roots in a system of white supremacy. White people invented white supremacy. Therefore, the color of the race problem is white. White people are the problem. White people have to ask ourselves: How does it feel to be a problem?

Following the ideas in his book The Heart of Whiteness, Jensen argues that — even decades after the significant achievements of the civil rights movement and with an African-American president — it is still appropriate to describe the United States as a white-supremacist society, in terms of how we think and how we live.

Through an analysis of contemporary racial ideology, Jensen presents a framework for critiquing the naturalizing of power and privilege in other arenas of our lives (gender, class, nationality, and ecology). How have we come to accept so easily systems of domination and subordination? How did we become resigned to hierarchy? How can we challenge the unjust and unsustainable nature of the systems in which we live?

[Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. Among his books is The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005) Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary filmAbe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing, which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online here.]

The Rag Blog / Posted July 14, 2009

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‘Magic’ Poet, ‘Weed Ambassador’ Simon Vinkenoog Dead at 80

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Poet Simon Vinkenoog, a Sixties icon.

With the death of Simon Vinkenoog Amsterdam loses one more of its iconic ambassadors of the ‘Swinging Sixties’… when the Dutch capital gained its reputation as a drugs-friendly Magic Centre…

By Rob Kievit / July 14, 2009

AMSTERDAM — Poet and author Simon Vinkenoog, who had been known as Amsterdam’s “weed ambassador” since the 1960s, has died aged 80, his family said on Sunday. He had been ill for some time, having undergone a leg amputation and suffered a fatal brain hemorrhage.

His first volume of poems, entitled Wondkoorts (“Traumatic Fever”), appeared in 1950; one of his last works was a bundle of translations of Allen Ginsberg’s poetry, Me and my peepee (2001). Twenty years earlier he had also turned his attention to the American Beat Poets of the 1950s, publishing Jack Kerouac in Amsterdam. Vinkenoog loved the city where he was born and where he lived, as he expressed in his ode to his native town Am*dam Madmaster, published last year.

In 2004 Simon Vinkenoog was elected Poet of the Fatherland (Dutch poet laureate), a position which he held until 2005.

Drugs advocate

In 1965 he served six weeks in jail for possessing marijuana, a drug he continued to enjoy until he died. Vinkenoog was an advocate of recreational drugs use, as illustrated by titles like How to Enjoy Reality (1968). He often appeared in public reciting his poetry. One of his most recent appearances was in 2007, when he lent his support to a demonstration in Amsterdam against a proposed ban on magic mushrooms. In the 2006 general elections, he was a figurehead candidate for a small party which promoted the legalisation of cannabis. The party did not succeed in winning any seats in the Lower House.

In addition to his purely literary work, Vinkenoog wrote profusely about his experiences with drugs. Esoteric magazine Bres published an apparently never-ending series of articles, starting with an exploration of LSD in 1968, and ending in 2004.

1960s fading away

With the death of Simon Vinkenoog Amsterdam loses one more of its iconic ambassadors of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ (1960s), when the Dutch capital gained its reputation as a drugs-friendly Magic Centre, which it has managed to retain to this day. Earlier this year, performance artist Robert Jasper Grootveld died. Grootveld was known for his large-scale open-air ceremonies in the mid-Sixties in which he mocked bourgeois hypocrisy.

Source / RNW

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Darth Vader Redux : Cheney and the CIA’s ‘Executive Assassination Ring’

Posted on July 14, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

President George W. Bush and George J. Tenet, then director of the CIA, meet at the agency headquarters in 2001, the year the secret program began. Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP / Washington Post.

Dick Cheney and the CIA:
The hits just keep on coming

By mcjoan / July 14, 2009

CIA linked to Bhutto’s murder? Video Below.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the secret CIA program Dick Cheney ordered kept from Congress was aimed at capturing and killing al Qaeda members.

According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.

In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn’t clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.

Those discussions must have “tapered off” when Cheney decided that it was more important to start torturing detainees to get false intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq. And then of course, the actual invasion of Iraq, which pretty much ended any real effort to fight al Qaeda–the enemy actually responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

This report contradicts other reporting that the program was “an ‘on-again, off-again’ attempt to create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.” If true, it goes far beyond intelligence collection. It also circles us back to the speculation that arose when the story first broke that the program might be related to Sy Hersh’s allegations of an “executive assassination ring” that reported to Cheney.

That’s one possibility, but it raises more questions, as Zachary Roth details. Would the reaction of Panetta and the Democrats be warranted by this program?

Perhaps most importantly, a program, launched immediately after September 11 to capture or kill top al Qeada operatives just doesn’t seem sufficiently radioactive to have provoked the kerfuffle it has. To be sure, Congress outlawed targeted CIA assassinations in the 1970s in response to the excesses of 50s and 60s, and the issue played a key role in the move during the same period to give Congress greater powers to oversee the agency. And if the program allowed CIA to act without the consent or knowledge of liaison services in the countries where the targets were located, that’s obviously a big deal.

Still, the US military has openly been trying to get Osama Bin Laden and other top Qaeda leaders “dead or alive” since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Would CIA involvement in that effort be so explosive that it would not only need to be kept from Congress in the first place, but would also have been shut down by Panetta as soon as he learned about it?

By the same token, it was Democratic lawmakers who brought the issue into the news last week by complaining that they had for years been kept in the dark on the unidentified program. Would they have chosen to initiate that spat when it seems to allow them to be portrayed as opposing an effort to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists?

Or, was it something else entirely? TIME says maybe domestic spying:

[T]wo former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there’s another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA’s purview -– it’s usually the FBI’s job –- and it’s easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress.

Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they’re only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

“People may want this to be about hit squads bumping off shady Saudis in Geneva, but that’s very unlikely,” says one official. “More likely, it was a plan to spy on some suspicious American citizens or organizations, without telling the FBI.”

The IGs’ report released last week demonstrated that there was a greater CIA involvement in the NSA warrantless wiretapping scheme than was previously known, but did it go beyond threat assessments to its own spying program? You couldn’t put it past either the CIA or Cheney.

Source / Daily Kos

CIA linked to Bhutto’s murder?

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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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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