New York : Radical Queers Remember Stonewall With Spirited March

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo by Andrew Hinderaker.

Queers, allies and residents of the park took to the streets and marched to the Stonewall Inn to the applause of people on the sidewalks as we chanted “We will not be quiet! Stonewall was a riot!”

By wewantyou / The Rag Blog / June 23, 2009

The Radical Homosexual Agenda held its third Parade Without a Permit on the evening of June 19th to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion. This was the third Parade Without A Permit which started in 2007 when the New York City Police, with help of the City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, created an arbitrary rule that stated that if more than 50 people gathered without a permit, they would be subject to arrest.

We’ve challenged that rule while our openly gay city Council Speaker Quinn continues to side with the NYPD while anointing herself as the leader of the gay community.

With not a drop of rain and in high spirits, we began our march at Washington Square Park. Queers, allies and residents of the park took to the streets and marched to the Stonewall Inn to the applause of people on the sidewalks as we chanted “We will not be quiet! Stonewall was a riot!”

From the Stonewall Inn we continued our march down Christopher Street where onlookers stepped off of the sidewalks and into the streets to join our party. One onlooker stepped to the front of the banner and unleashed his inner baton twirler as the RHA drum core pounded out a rhythm and lead us in the chant, “This street is for faggots. F-A-G-G-O-T-S!”

The NYPD made their presence felt as they trailed behind us in squad cars. We continued down Christopher Street as we marched past an NYPD mobile command unit set up on the street. We marched past a commandeered city bus waiting to be used as a temporary arrest station and a generator with flood lights set up at an intersection to intimidate and harass the queer youth of color who come to the village.

We chanted: “We’re here! We’re queer! We’re fabulous! Don’t fuck with us!” as we crossed the West Side Highway and reached the end of our march at the Christopher Street Piers. But our trip down Christopher Street reminded us of how far we really haven’t traveled from 1969 to 2009.

It’s still 1969 when queers can’t assemble in peace without being harassed and arrested. It’s still 1969 when NYC queer clubs and bars are raided by the NYPD or fined out of their existence. It’s still 1969 when queers are arrested in police sting operations in sex shops, parks and private homes; and it’s still 1969 when lesbians are beaten by the NYPD.

For more photos, go here.

Thanks to Devra Morice / The Rag Blog

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Roky Erickson to Houston : Return of ‘Two-Headed Dog’

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Roky Erickson. Photo by Stephanie Chernikowski / The Rag Blog / Shout! Factory Records

Roky Erickson — nee of the 13th Floor Elevators — returns to Houston after 25 years

Erickson… is enjoying a fruitful second act that is creatively satisfying rather than a sentimental journey.

By Andrew Dansby

Among significant musicians who have endured monumental breakdowns and/or mental illness, few are more sweet and charming in conversation than Roky Erickson. The Austin-based psychedelic rock legend has had as bumpy a ride as any. He’s been drugged (voluntarily), arrested, incarcerated, institutionalized, shocked, drugged (involuntarily) and abandoned over a duration of time (more than two decades) that should’ve left him dead. But on the other end of a phone these days he’s unfailingly courteous.

Talking to some of rock’s eccentrics and near casualties is usually an exercise in futility. Brian Wilson was friendly enough the first and only time I spoke to him, though his shouty voice and naturally clipped answers gave a gruff impression beyond his control. “Thank you,” he shouted before hanging up. “That was a good interview.” (It wasn’t.) Waller native Daniel Johnston was once a chatterbox during an interview; another time he stared at a kitchen table and smoked cigarettes shaking like an old washing machine.

Interviewing such artists can sometimes feel like a self-serving pursuit. The purpose is the same as talking to non-eccentrics: an attempt to glean some sort of interesting information about their art from which to spin a minor profile. With Erickson, for instance, I learned last week that Little Willie John was a influence on his landmark 13th Floor Elevators song You’re Gonna Miss Me. (In a previous chat, James Brown had been mentioned.)

“I just heard one song of his on the radio,” Erickson said. “‘Better leave my kittie alone.’ We had this one real, tiny radio, and I heard Little Willie John sing that. Then I think I heard James Brown’s Night Train. I listened to mostly rock ’n’ roll … though I liked the blues a lot.”

Certain this personal revelation was hardly a national one, I opted not to Google Erickson and Little Willie. But as one prone to obsessing about music I thought it was plenty logical.

Erickson’s life and times following Miss Me were equally foggy, though they’ve been well documented since. The Elevators were short-lived. He spent years in the Rusk State Hospital to avoid jail time for marijuana possession, and came out damaged. He recorded sporadically through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, some of it listenable, much of it not. Broke and on the skids, he was rescued in the ’90s by a younger brother, who fixed his teeth and his finances and his living situation, and facilitated a remarkable comeback. These days Erickson is giving full performances (last year’s Austin City Limits Music Festival appearance was joyous and rocking). He’s also recorded with Austin’s Okkervil River, though there are no release details yet.

Erickson’s recall is sometimes keen, other times not so much. Many of his answers begin with a “let me see …” or “let me think …” Some details from 1966 are clear as a bell, others from years later are not. The Elevators were signed to the Houston-based International Artists label, which purchased Miss Me from the Contact label. He recalls the touchstone names in the region (Huey Meaux, Gold Star studio), but stops short of elaboration. Erickson also doesn’t recall the last time he played Houston, though his manager informs me that it was Aug. 11, 1984, at the Consolidated Arts Warehouse. So nearly a quarter century will have passed when he takes the stage at the Continental Club on Wednesday.

If Erickson’s ACL appearance is any indication, he’ll run through Miss Me along with other favorites like Creature With the Atom Brain and Two-Headed Dog.

Much psychedelic rock hasn’t aged very well over the years. It’s shackled to its era and infused with an earnest pursuit of hippie idealism less widely lovable than, say, jive swing, another bygone genre that fused an antiquated style to its substance.

But Miss Me has proven monumentally resilient, an urgently iconic nugget from 1966 that doesn’t attempt to lure you with slurry guitars and chanting about kaleidoscopic kittens. The soul and blues that Erickson cites infused the song with an urgency not found in the psych rock rooted in the folky jug-band tradition. That rawness gave Miss Me legs beyond some other music of its era.

Its opening guitar riff is a strangler, a war cry for 40-plus years of garage rock. And even something as blatantly hippie-esque as playing a jug is defiantly manipulated as to suggest some sort of wild-eyed mutation of something innocent. In the pointless music journalistic pursuit of the punk rock genesis (Iggy! Velvet Underground! New York Dolls! Elvis! Hank Williams!), the Elevators warrant mention if for nothing other than Erickson’s banshee singing, the result, at least in part, of his mother’s affinity for opera.

Musician Shandon Sahm, son of late Texas music legend Doug (a friend, admirer and collaborator with Erickson), says the production reminded him of Sahm’s landmark She’s About a Mover. “The jug is cool, the screaming rocks,” he says. “It’s hard to pin down exactly what makes it awesome, but as Doug used to say about Mover can apply to Miss Me, it just flat out had a groove to it.”

Erickson’s description of writing the song is somewhat cryptic.

“I was just at my house, and I thought I might write a song,” he says. “Then I found myself at this very strange place, some kind of a poetry place or something. All it had was one room and bar. And that was it.”

Erickson says he spends his days “reading a lot,” watching beloved horror movies that seem to inspire his music (see song titles in previous paragraph), and plinking on a pump organ in his home (“It’s missing a key”) and a new Yamaha keyboard, which has pre-programmed songs that he tweaks, other times he works up original compositions, which he figures number in the hundreds.

In the late-’90s Erickson was well-represented in record store bins, though the rash of new releases all featured old material that had been dredged up. But with the tantalizing tease of new music (his first in more than a decade) and his urgently loud performances, Erickson, like Wilson and Johnston, is enjoying a fruitful second act that is creatively satisfying rather than a sentimental journey.

Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Source / chron.com / Posted June 19, 2009

Roky Erickson in performance
Continental Club, 3700 Main, Houston
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 10 p.m.
Tickets : $25, continentalclub.com

Also see:

Thanks to Connie Clark / The Rag Blog

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James Retherford : Who Watches the Watchman? J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

J. Edgar Hoover and friend.

Part I
Who Watches the Watchman?

COINTELPRO and the Federal Government’s
Clandestine Attack on the U.S. Constitution

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / June 23, 2009

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
— Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

[A version of this series was originally researched and written six years ago. It describes in chilling detail how the U.S. government surreptitiously conspired to maintain lockdown social control of American citizens in the period up to and including post-Watergate. Go here for the introduction to “Who Watches the Watchman.”]

Every high school civics class in America intones the same message that, in a manner unprecedented in world history, the United States’ tripartite form of government with its system of “checks and balances” — all of which begin and end at the ballot box — provides its fully enfranchised, politically involved citizenry with the freedom to direct political will over the way we are governed.

Such is the mythology exported to all corners of the earth — ”America, land of the free” — in the form of “democratic nation building.”

Imagine then the surprise of thousands of Americans who, in 1971 and thereafter, discovered the existence of another American “government,” a would-be police state, a secret totalitarian government operated by a handful of anti-democratic white men heading the nation’s powerful and virtually autonomous intelligence agencies with the blessing of every American president from Franklin Roosevelt (and before) through Richard Nixon (and beyond). This “shadow” government peeped through keyholes, broke into homes and business offices, searched garbage cans, illegally opened mail and tapped phones, and compiled lengthy lists of “enemies,” designating tens of thousands of American citizens for incarceration in detention camps in the event of an undefined “national emergency” — for no other reason than the fact that they did not agree with the government’s policies.

And when these tactics failed to achieve the desired ends, this secret cabal launched a clandestine series of judicial frame-ups and political assassinations. In carrying out these clandestine operations against alleged subversive influences among the American people, the agencies and operatives responsible for repression were themselves practicing an insidious brand of subversion — they were guilty of subverting the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Spearheading this American secret police state was the Federal Bureau of Investigation, headed by its aging, conspiracy-obsessed director, J. Edgar Hoover. In the wake of the collapse of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade and amidst growing administration concerns about the U.S. Communist Party’s potential to commit “espionage and subversion” following the outcome of the Rosenberg trial, President Eisenhower on March 8, 1956, convened a meeting of the National Security Council at which Hoover briefed those present on the scope of the FBI’s surveillance of the Communist Party USA, including the bureau’s use of such illegal investigative techniques as break-ins, bugs, mail openings, and wiretaps; Hoover added that, in the interest of protecting national security, the FBI was seeking, in Hoover’s words, to “infiltrate, penetrate, disorganize and disrupt” the Communist party.

When he encountered no criticism following this disclosure of the FBI’s illegal activities and future plans, Hoover, on his own authority and without prior authorization of the attorney general or the president, in August 1956 launched the bureau’s first official Counter-Intelligence Program (code named COINTELPRO — Communist Party) to “harass, disrupt, and discredit” the party by targeting key officials and members and non-Communist radical activists as well.

Mindful that a series of recent Supreme Court decisions had limited the Justice Department’s ability to prosecute American Communists, Hoover shifted COINTELPRO’s mission away from developing information for prosecutorial purposes toward the use of aggressive tactics to contain and disrupt radical activists. As the program in the 1960s expanded to include first the Socialist Workers Party and Puerto Rican independence movement, followed by the Ku Klux Klan and white hate groups, then Black nationalist groups, and finally the New Left and American Indian Movement, more and more authority was granted to FBI field operatives to use subterfuge, plant agents provocateur, leak derogatory information to the media, and employ other disruptive tactics to destabilize the operations of the targeted groups. Similar tactics were employed against prominent individuals (such as the Rev. Martin Luther King, actress Jean Seberg, and attorney Leonard Boudin) whose political influence alarmed the FBI director.

In August 1967 Hoover sent a memo to FBI field offices announcing a new operation requiring “imaginative” agents experienced in working with Black nationalists, specifically the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Nation of Islam, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and even the avowedly pacifist Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The Black Panther Party would soon assume a featured position on the top of this list.

Fourteen months later, following the Columbia University strike and with anti-Vietnam War protests mounting in size and intensity across the nation, Hoover launched what would become the final phases of COINTELPRO, targeting the student-led anti-war movement and soon adding the leadership of the Native American struggle. In his July 5, 1968, letter to field operatives, Hoover outlined a twelve-point plan for “counterintelligence action against the New Left.” The FBI secretly instructed its field offices to propose schemes to “misdirect, discredit, disrupt and otherwise neutralize “specific individuals and groups.” Close coordination with local police and prosecutors was encouraged. Top FBI officials in Washington, wherein final authority on operations rested, demanded assurance that “there is no possibility of embarrassment to the Bureau.”


Various FBI documents pertaining to COINTELPRO reveal three types of methodology:

  1. Infiltration: Agents and informers did not merely spy on political activists. Their main function was to discredit and disrupt. Various means to this end are analyzed below.
  2. Other forms of deception: The FBI and police also waged psychological warfare from the outside — through bogus publications, forged correspondence, anonymous letters and telephone calls, and similar forms of deceit.
  3. Harassment, intimidation and violence: Eviction, job loss, break-ins, vandalism, grand jury subpoenas, false arrests, frame-ups, and physical violence were threatened, instigated or directly employed, in an effort to frighten activists and disrupt their movements. Government agents either concealed their involvement or fabricated a legal pretext. In the case of the Black and Native American movements, these assaults — including outright political assassinations — were so extensive and vicious that they amounted to terrorism on the part of the government.

Once again the goal was not to build judicial cases but to disrupt and destroy the political work being done by targeted individuals and organizations. For instance, when in 1969 an FBI special agent in San Francisco briefed Hoover that his investigation of the Black Panther Party revealed that in his city, at least, the group was primarily involved with feeding breakfasts to children, Hoover fired back a memo implying the agent’s career ambitions were directly related to his ability to supply the evidence that supported Hoover’s view was that the BPP was “a violence prone organization seeking to overthrow the Government by revolutionary means.” Hoover, with even more alacrity and candor, stated in a later departmental memo, “The purpose of counterintelligence action is to disrupt BPP [Black Panther Party] and it is immaterial whether facts exist to substantiate the charge.”

According to a report presented by members of the Congressional Black Caucus to the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Durban, South Africa, last year:

Between 1968-1971, FBI-initiated terror and disruption resulted in the murder of Black Panthers Arthur Morris, Bobby Hutton, Steven Bartholomew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis, Welton Armstead, Frank Diggs, Alprentice Carter, John Huggins, Alex Rackley, John Savage, Sylvester Bell, Larry Roberson, Nathaniel Clark, Walter Touré Pope, Spurgeon Winters, Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Sterling Jones, Eugene Anderson, Babatunde X Omarwali, Carl Hampton, Jonathan Jackson, Fred Bennett, Sandra Lane Pratt, Robert Webb, Samuel Napier, Harold Russell, and George Jackson.

Washington’s repressive shadow government developed equally effective means of neutralizing the activist leaders who escaped the death plots. Often working with sympathetic prosecutors and judges, the FBI was adept at fabricating evidence against targeted individuals and orchestrating subsequent trials so that counter-evidence was suppressed or hidden from the defense team. During the 1960s a number of effective leftist leaders were incarcerated on serious charges and sentenced to long prison terms, based on fictional evidence. One prominent example of an FBI “railroad” that became derailed was the New York City Black Panther 21 case, which in 1969 became the longest criminal trial in New York history — the prosecution spent months presenting evidence carefully contrived by the FBI and its informants and agents provocateur against the New York Black Panther Party leadership; the jury took less than ninety minutes to reach “not guilty” verdicts in all of the 156 counts against the thirteen defendants who stood trial.

In the case of the American Indian Movement, this has meant the wholesale jailing of the movement’s leadership. Virtually every AIM leader in the United States has been incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since 1968, some repeatedly. After the 1973 siege at Wounded Knee, the FBI caused 542 separate charges to be filed against those it identified as “key AIM leaders.” These resulted in fifteen convictions, all on such petty or contrived offenses as “interfering with a federal officer in the performance of his duty.” AIM leader Russell Means faced thirty-seven felony and three misdemeanor charges, none of which held up in court. However, AIM members often languished in jail for months as the cumulative bail required to free them outstripped the financial resources of AIM and its supporters. AIM’s most famous political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, is into his third decade of federal incarceration.

In fact, many American activists remain political prisoners thirty years after the alleged demise of COINTELPRO. Since Los Angeles Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, after thirty two years of false imprisonment, was set free due to findings of prosecutorial misconduct, the list of political “lifers” now includes, in addition to Peltier, Black Panthers Mumia Abu Jamal, Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Marshall Eddie Conway, and Ruchell Magee.

[James Retherford knows firsthand what it was like to be targeted by COINTELPRO. A founder and editor of The Spectator in Bloomington, Indiana, in 1966, Retherford is a director of the New Journalism Project, the nonprofit organization that publishes The Rag Blog.]

Go here for James Retherford’s introduction to “Who Watches the Watchman,” including his personal experiences as a victim of the COINTELPRO program.

Also see James Retherford : Brandon Darby, The Texas 2, and the FBI’s Runaway Informants by James Retherford / The Rag Blog / May 26, 2009

And for more background on the history of informants in Texas, read The Spies of Texas by Thorne Dreyer / The Texas Observer / Nov. 17, 2006.

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How to Rig an Election : See Florida, Ohio and Iran

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Good question! Demonstrator at June 17, 2009, Austin rally protesting the Iranian elections. Photo by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.

OOPS! We rigged the Iran/Florida-Ohio vote count AGAIN!!

The chief difference between Iran 2009 and Ohio 2004 — and Florida 2000 — is in the opposition. Iran’s Mir Hussein Mousavi has vowed martyrdom.

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / June 23, 2009

Iran’s Ayatollahs have just admitted that in some 50 cities there were as many as 3 million more votes cast than there were voters in the recent presidential election.

But, they say, that’s not enough to change the outcome. So, like Florida in 2000 and Ohio 2004, there will be no total recount and no new election. Election theft should be opposed, whether it’s sanctioned by a supreme Ayatollah or the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s as if the Iranian government is being advised by Ohio’s former Iman J. Kenneth Blackwell, who, as Ohio’s 2004 Secretary of State, purged hundreds of thousands of voters, and stole, switched and disappeared enough votes to put George W. Bush in the White House for a second term. The dubious Iranian tallies look very similar to the inflated Bush outcomes in 12 Republican southwest Ohio counties, most notably Warren, Clermont and Butler. They are reminiscent of the vote counts in two precincts in Perry County that reported turnouts of 121% and 118% of registered voters.

The chief difference between Iran 2009 and Ohio 2004 — and Florida 2000 — is in the opposition. Iran’s Mir Hussein Mousavi has vowed martyrdom.

John Kerry, trailing in Ohio by just 130,000 votes with more than 250,000 yet to be counted, walked away less than 12 hours after exit polls showed him a clear victor.

Gore fought a little, but instead of embracing martyrdom, opted for boredom, and for making sure there was no challenge in the U.S. Senate to the votes stolen.

Nationwide, Bush’s alleged 3 million-vote nationwide margin in 2004, and 600 votes in Florida 2000, were as fictional as those ballots the Ayatollahs now admit should not exist.

Moussavi believes he has a date with destiny. But Kerry apparently had one on the golf course. Gore’s failure to effectively respond in Florida 2000 remains an inconvenient truth.

Blackwell, Florida’s Jeb Bush and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard used registration tampering, disinformation, intimidation and fraud to disenfranchise millions of eligible voters before the balloting.

Blackwell and Bush then used a lethal mix of black box machines, faulty scantrons and hijacked ballots to finish the job. Blackwell worked with Diebold, ES&S, Triad, and other electronic magicians that let him disappear or switch all the votes he needed with a few keystrokes at around 2am election night. His high-tech IT henchman, Michael Connell, has since died in a mysterious plane crash.

The Times seems to finally understand the problem. In their July 22 editorial, “How to Trust Electronic Voting,” they argued the following: “In paperless electronic voting, voters mark their choices, and when the votes have all been cast, the machine spits out the results. There is no way to be sure that a glitch or intentional vote theft –- by malicious software or computer hacking –- did not change the outcome. If there’s a close election, there’s also no way of conducting a meaningful recount.”

Saddled with paper ballots that may or may not still exist, the Iranian authorities have simply trashed the whole election. “I don’t think they actually counted the votes,” one observer told the New York Times.

Because the American people did not take to the streets in the Iranian model, our democracy was subverted.

Thanks to Kerry and Gore, the public follow-up in Ohio and Florida was ineffective. As in Iran, the primary reporting has been largely limited to the Internet. The results — eight years of George W. Bush — speak for themselves.

But in the U.S., a nationwide election protection movement has arisen that protected the results in 2008, and that could make all the difference for the future of American democracy.

The Iranian people are speaking for themselves, and for the finest principles of democracy. For confirmation and inspiration, they need only look at America 2000-2008 to see the consequences of an unelected government.

[Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection. Bob’s Fitrakis Files is at FreePress.org, where this article also appears. Harvey Wasserman’s History of the U.S. is at harveywasserman.com.]

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Success Is Possible with Environmental Protection: The Cuyahoga River

Posted on June 23, 2009 by RagBlog

A healthier Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, which was known as “The Mistake by the Lake” after the river caught fire in 1969. Photo: Mark Duncan/Associated Press.

From the Ashes of ’69, a River Reborn
By Christopher Maag / June 20, 2009

CLEVELAND — The first time Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he worried he might die. The year was 1963, and the river was still an open sewer for industrial waste. Walking home, Mr. Roberts smelled so bad that his friends ran to stay upwind of him.

Recently, Mr. Roberts returned to the river carrying his fly-fishing rod. In 20 minutes, he caught six smallmouth bass. “It’s a miracle,” said Mr. Roberts, 58. “The river has come back to life.”

Monday is the 40th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River fire of 1969, when oil-soaked debris floating on the river’s surface was ignited, most likely by sparks from a passing train.

The fire was extinguished in 30 minutes and caused just $50,000 in damage. But it became a galvanizing symbol for the environmental movement, one of a handful of disasters that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and to the passage of the Clean Water Act.

“The Cuyahoga River fire was a spark plug for environmental reforms around the country,” said Cameron Davis, who was recently appointed to become the special adviser to the E.P.A. on Great Lakes environmental issues.

The fire turned Cleveland into “The Mistake by the Lake,” a national punch line that would endure for decades. Meanwhile, the city worked to reclaim its river.

Today, the Cuyahoga is home to more than 60 species of fish, said Jim White, executive director of the Cuyahoga River Community Planning Organization, a nonprofit group that coordinates cleanup efforts. Beavers, blue herons and bald eagles nest along the river’s banks. Long sections of the Cuyahoga are clean enough that they no longer require aggressive monitoring, regulators said.

“We’re very impressed with the progress made in the Cuyahoga,” said John Perrecone, a manager of Great Lakes programs for the E.P.A.

Other rivers in industrial cities have experienced similar rebirths, said Matthew Doss, policy director for the Great Lakes Commission, which oversees development and environmental efforts in the region for the United States and Canada.

“The Cuyahoga’s progress is notable because of how infamous it was,” Mr. Doss said. “This 40th anniversary gives us an opportunity to celebrate the progress we’ve made nationwide.”

The 1969 fire was tiny compared with those that engulfed the Cuyahoga and other rivers that received large amounts of industrial pollutants from the 1800s through the 1950s. One reason it received national attention, including a prominent article in Time magazine, was that the problem of rivers catching fire was mostly solved by then, said Jonathan Adler, an environmental law professor at Case Western Reserve University.

The outrage caused by the fire was a symptom of a society starting to leave its industrial identity behind, Professor Adler said.

“In the 1930s, when most people in Cleveland worked in factories, a fire on the river was considered just a nuisance,” he said. “By the ’60s, there was a hunger for symbols of humans’ insensitivity to the environment.”

The cleanup of the river advanced on many fronts. A year before the fire, Cleveland residents voted to tax themselves an additional $100 million for river restoration. Since then, local industries and the Northwest Ohio Regional Sewer District have spent $3.5 billion to reduce sewage and industrial waste pollution, Mr. White said.

The sewer district built miles of subway-tunnel-size tubes beneath the city. The tubes hold excess rainwater until it can be processed by treatment plants, reducing the number of times that plants become overwhelmed and spew sewage into the river.

In the next 30 years, Cleveland-area residents will spend about $5 billion more on the wastewater system, said Julius Ciaccia Jr., sewer district director.

“This didn’t happen because a bunch of wild-haired hippies protested down the street,” Mr. Perrecone said. “This happened because a lot of citizens up and down the watershed worked hard for 40 years to improve the river.”

Local governments removed dams, which trapped pollution and impeded fish migration. In 1974, President Gerald R. Ford created the Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area, which became a national park in 2000. The park saved miles of the river from suburban development.

Problems remain, however. The E.P.A. sued the City of Akron in February for dumping excessive amounts of sewage into the Cuyahoga. Along the last 5 of its 100 miles, the river is enclosed by steel walls and dredged regularly for commercial ships, making it difficult for habitats to recover.

“The good news is that we know what the problems are, and we know what the solutions are,” Mr. Davis said. “Now it’s a matter of getting the funding, rolling up our sleeves and doing the work.”

On Monday, people who have worked for years to clean the Cuyahoga will celebrate at its banks. “It’s just remarkable,” said Steve Tuckerman, the Cuyahoga River specialist for the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. “I never thought I would see in my lifetime, let alone in my career, such an amazing comeback of a river.”

Source / New York Times

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Deep Packet Inspection : Global Censorship Technology Used in Iran — AND in U.S.

Posted on June 23, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


Deep Packet Inspection:
Free Press warns of global censorship technology deployed in U.S.

DPI technology is America’s sleeping giant. It has been widely deployed by Internet service providers across the country, and could be secretly put to use without our knowledge or consent.

By Jen Howard / June 22, 2009

WASHINGTON — According to the Wall Street Journal, Iran and China are likely using Deep Packet Inspection technology to monitor and control the Internet.

This spring, a Free Press report, Deep Packet Inspection: The End of the Internet as We Know It?, argued that DPI technology poses a major threat to the open Internet, giving network providers unprecedented power over Internet users. The use of DPI by U.S. companies like Comcast and Cox has already sparked widespread concern about abuses of Net Neutrality and online privacy.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the Iranian government appears to be using this same technology “to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes.” The Chinese government is believed to be using DPI to implement its “Great Firewall,” “widely considered the most advanced and extensive censoring in the world” — an “arrangement that depends on the cooperation of all the service providers.”

In a May speech, President Barack Obama said, “Our pursuit of cybersecurity will not — I repeat, will not include — monitoring private sector networks or Internet traffic. We will preserve and protect the personal privacy and civil liberties that we cherish as Americans. Indeed, I remain firmly committed to Net Neutrality so we can keep the Internet as it should be — open and free.”

Josh Silver, executive director of Free Press, issued the following statement:

“DPI technology is America’s sleeping giant. It has been widely deployed by Internet service providers across the country, and could be secretly put to use without our knowledge or consent.

“The American Internet experience is not the same as that of Iran or China. But we see how dangerous this technology can be when it falls into the wrong hands, or is used for the wrong purposes. Whether DPI is wielded by a government or a big corporation, the power to pursue political or economic discrimination is disturbing.

“President Obama clearly understands the critical importance of preserving our online civil liberties. The United States should set a shining example by safeguarding the free and open Internet against power grabs by governments or ISPs.

“We urge our lawmakers to heed the cautionary tale of Iran and China. We should not blindly permit concentrated control over the Internet. Before this technology is widely activated, we encourage Congress to open a broad inquiry to determine what is in the best interest of the American people.”

[Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media, and universal access to communications. Learn more at www.freepress.net.]

Source / Free Press

Also read:

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Obama Must Fight for Public Option, Real Health Care Reform

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

President Obama addresses the American Medical Association, June 15, 2009. Photo by Charles Rex Arbogast / AP.

In some way the message must get through to the Senate Democratic leadership that they were elected to represent THE PEOPLE and were not brought to Washington to be prostituted to various amoral monied interests.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / June 22, 2009

Webster’s Universal College Dictionary defines “prostitute” in various ways; however, the most telling is: “A person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usu.for money.”

Enter the United States Senate. The latest reports from The Center for Responsive Politics as reported by The Lee Newspapers State Bureau showed that the campaign of Sen. Max Baucus and his Glacier PAC, which raises money and distributes it to other candidates, received 23% of their $14.8 million from health care and insurance interests. The $3.4 million from these sectors includes $853,000 from pharmaceutical and health products; 851,000 from health professionals; $467,000 from hospitals and nursing homes; $466,000 from health-service and HMO interests; and $784,000 from insurance. This is the Senator leads the way in the Senate concerning health care reform This is the Senator who had proponents of single payer, universal care arrested in handcuffs when they attempted to speak at his hearings.

Senator Baucus is not alone in his complicity with the insurance industry. He is joined by six or seven other turncoat Democratic Senators who are beholden to the monied interests in the insurance, pharmaceutical and health care industries. These were the same insurance companies whose executives testified before Congress, as reported in The L.A. Times, and when asked if they’ll stop dropping customers except where they can show “intentional fraud.” All said “No.”

Executives of three of the nation’s largest health insurers told lawmakers in Washington this past Tuesday that they would continue canceling medical coverage for some sick policyholders, despite withering criticism from Republican and Democratic members of Congress who decided the practices as unfair and abusive.

An investigation by the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations showed that health insurers WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group and Assurant, Inc. cancelled the coverage of more than 20,000 people, allowing the companies to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims over a five-year period.

It also found that policyholders with breast cancer, lymphoma and more than 1,000 other conditions were targeted for recission and that employees were praised in performance reviews for terminating the policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

Thus we can easily understand the public’s responses in a Harris Health Care poll in January, 2009, which showed the following results. When asked, “How much do you trust each of the following to do the right thing for the health care of those whom they have a responsibility for?” Answers were broken down into several categories: A Lot; Some; Not Much; Not At All; Not Sure.

Those responding “A Lot”: Nurses 65%; Doctors 61%; Dentists 56%; Pharmacies 49%; Hospitals 44%; Pharmaceutical Companies 14%; Employers 12%; Managed care companies 9%; Health Insurance Companies 8%.

Another category of questions : “And how much do you trust each of the following to do the right thing FOR YOU and your health care?” Those responding “a Lot”. Your doctor or doctors 63%; Nurses who treat you 60%; Your dentist 58%; The pharmacy or pharmacies you use 50%; The last hospital you visited 47%; The prescription drugs you take 44% ; Your employer 16%; Your health insurance company 15%; Your managed care company 9%..

In some way the message must get through to the Senate Democratic leadership that they were elected to represent THE PEOPLE and were not brought to Washington to be prostituted to various amoral monied interests.

Happily, The House of Representatives has provided us with a discussion draft of a program that provides affordable health care for all Americans and controls health care cost growth. This was made available on June 19, 2009. Thus, we have here a small step in the correct direction.

There is little or no hope for “bipartisanship.” It’s either a pipe dream or a cop-out. The Republicans continue to reduce the discussion to absurdity, still claiming that single-payer or public option will lead to “government rationing” of health coverage. As Dan Lipsher points out in the Summit Daily, “Guess what: Private insurance companies already ration health care, but instead of the law determining what to cover and how much to pay, it’s an insurance company making these decisions. Rather than being motivated by what’s best for the patient, these insurance company employees are compensated on the basis of how much money they can save their employers/stockholders.” Ever wonder why “usual and customary” coverage is never enough to pay your full medical or dental bill? That’s because treatment cannot realistically be found at the price the insurance company arbitrarily sets.

A government plan, on the other hand, can be required by law to pay 100% of the cost of necessary treatment. No more aftercare bills for hundreds or thousands of dollars because the cost of a CAT scan or chemo session exceeded the “usual and customary” allowance authorized by a nameless, faceless middle manager at Aetna or Blue Cross/Blue Shield. A government plan can also set maximum charges for treatments, reducing or eliminating overcharges by hospitals and other providers looking to maximize profits and making patients pay for months or years to satisfy their hospital bills — and reducing personal bankruptcies by a significant percentage as well.

Republicans claim that private insurance companies will not be able to compete with a government-sponsored health plan. Yet private insurance profits are so excessive that they have agreed to voluntarily cut costs by $2 trillion over 10 years — that’s $200 billion a year. In other words, private insurers have been gouging businesses and consumers to the tune of $667 per person per year. We hear a lot about “letting the market dictate price,” but clearly the fix is in when it comes to insurance premiums, deductibles, and pay-outs.

Where is the White House in all of this discussion? President Obama seems to have held his own in his speech to the AMA; however, the President, like much of the public, appeared to have only a vague idea of the nature of the AMA. The AMA is not and never has been an organization representative of American physicians. The AMA membership probably represents 30% of the physicians in the United States, and possibly one half of those are retired. The AMA is basically a marketing organization, largely sponsored by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries. It has no disciplinary function. The educational function is limited — most doctors keep abreast of their ongoing education through their speciality societies and journals.

The AMA traditionally has represented right wing politicians and opposed social change, i.e. Social Security and Medicare. It has imbued in the practicing physician the thought that high malpractice premiums are solely the fault of the “trial lawyers,” disregarding the fact that the doctor’s own negligence, lack of caring, and failure to communicate with the patient or other attending physicians are indeed part of the problem. Further, when the malpractice insurance companies are losing in their investment portfolios they increase premiums, to maintain profits, and blame the increase on the trial lawyers.

Time becomes of the essence; hence, the President must speak out to the Senate, as he did to the Congress on the recent War Appropriations bill. He must schedule an address to the American people where he unequivocally fulfills his campaign promises to provide decent health care, as is available in the majority of the free world. I would think that President Obama is as ashamed as I am of seeing the United States ranked #32 worldwide in health care delivery, a notch above Slovenia. Obama must make his own decision and not accept the council of the duplicitous Rahm Emanuel.

One admires the President’s insight and knowledge in taking a reasonable, sensible, and enlightened stand as regards the present civil conflict in Iran; one trusts that he will show like courage in facing down the Senate regarding health care and, if necessary, request the Senate to enact the “nuclear option” to bypass the Republican obstructionism and the Democratic acceptance of health insurance industry bribery

I had hoped to further address the legalization of cannabis; however, space is limited. I would suggest that anyone interested in the subject, as well as in the “war on drugs” obtain the July-August issue of Mother Jones, as much of the magazine is devoted to those topics, including an excellent historical review.

[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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Roger Baker :
Transportation politics and the Austin road lobby

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Part 2: The Austin road lobby: Texas transportation politics, the developers/ and those pesky populist reformers.

transportation politics

I-35 in downtown Austin. Photo by noname77065.

By Roger Baker | The Rag Blog | June 22, 2009

[This is the second part of a series on transportation in Austin. In the first installment, Baker debunked the myth of growth in Austin traffic congestion. Here he examines the politics of the highway establishment. This was to be a two-part series, but Roger tells us there’s more to come.]

How it got to be that way

The Author has been an observer of transportation politics in Austin since about 1979, beginning as a transit advocate, and then observing the sad failure of the Austin Tomorrow Plan; this is still official Austin growth policy but is mostly ignored due to the political influence of special interests tied to land development. While it is convenient to use the term “Road Lobby”, in many ways locally it is actually a land development lobby.

Given the strong historical role of real estate in Texas politics, it was almost inevitable that a politically powerful road lobby would evolve. Political corruption involving roads in Texas is a matter of long tradition, dating back to the period soon after the Texas Highway Department was established in 1916. After Texas Gov. James “Pa” Ferguson was impeached for corruption in 1918, his wife “Ma” Ferguson ran and won in 1924 and she became Texas’ first woman Governor. Subsequently, road contracting scandals kept her from being reelected in 1926. Here are some details about these early days of Texas road politics:
Continue reading →

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Steve Weissman : U.S. and Iran: Nonviolence 101

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Was there meddling in the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in 2004-2005?

Iran: Nonviolence 101

Washington’s promotion of nonviolent resistance in other countries is already casting suspicion on a number of activists and thinkers who, wittingly or not, have allowed themselves to become pawns in open — and covert — programs to ‘promote democracy.’

By Steve Weissman / June 22, 2009

Peter Ackerman and Ramin Ahmadi called the revolution on January 4, 2006, in an article in the International Herald Tribune with the prophetic title “Iran’s Future? Watch the Streets.”

“Against all odds, nonviolent tactics such as protests and strikes have gradually become common in Iran’s domestic political scene,” they wrote. “Student activists have frequently resorted to, and the violent response of the regime and repeated attacks of the paramilitaries have not succeeded in silencing them.”

Iran’s medical professionals, teachers, workers, bus drivers and women were also using non-violent tactics such as protests, industrial action, and hunger strikes in their fight for equal rights and civil liberties, the authors reported.

These “uncoordinated actions” had created “a grass-roots movement … waiting to be roused,” urged Ackerman and Ahmadi. But, “its cadres so far lack a clear strategic vision and steady leadership.”

Where would the Iranians find this vision and leadership?

“Nongovernmental organizations around the world should expand their efforts to assist Iranian civil society, women’s groups, unions and journalists,” the authors wrote. But, they left out a salient fact. In a chilling mix of Mahatma Gandhi and James Bond, Ackerman and Ahmadi themselves were already working with the United States government to engineer regime change in Iran.

A Wall Street whiz kid who made his fortune in leveraged buy-outs, the billionaire Ackerman was chair of Freedom House, a hotbed of neo-con support for American intervention just about everywhere. In this pursuit, he has promoted the use of nonviolent civil disobedience in American-backed “color revolutions” from Serbia to the Ukraine, Georgia, and Venezuela, where it failed.

Ahmadi teaches medicine at Yale and co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, using initial grants of $1.6 million in 2004 from the U.S. Department of State, according to The New York Times. Washington reportedly continued its open-handed support in succeeding years, allowing the center to publicize the abuses of the Ayatollahs in English and Farsi.

Ahmadi and the center also ran regular workshops for Iranians on nonviolent civil disobedience. These were in Dubai, across the straits from Iran. Some of the sessions operated under the name Iranian Center for Applied Nonviolence and included a session on popular revolts around the world, especially the “color revolutions.”

According to The Times, at least two members of the Serbian youth movement Otpor participated, as did the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which Peter Ackerman founded and chaired. The sessions taught the Iranian participants how to use Hushmail, an encrypted e-mail account, and Martus software to upload information about human rights abuses without leaving any trace on the originating computer.

“We were certain that we would have trouble once we went back to Tehran,” said one of the Iranians. “This was like a James Bond camp for revolutionaries.”

No one should question the value of nonviolent civil disobedience for those who would bring down an unpopular government. Nor does the American training deny the very real grievances felt by the millions of Iranians who have taken to the streets — or by the lesser numbers of middle class women who banged pots and pans as part of earlier CIA destabilization programs in Brazil and Chile. Even more important, no one should doubt the courage and commitment of anyone who would stand up against the Ayatollahs and their repressive state power.

But the presence of American involvement adds several dynamics of its own, which Ackerman and Ahmadi failed to explain to their Iranian trainees.

First, the Americans decide where to put their efforts — and when to stop them. Washington does not fund or provide training and technology for non-violent revolutions against regimes it backs, as in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel or Colombia.

Second, the American meddling makes it easier for the Ayatollahs to build support within their own ranks and among a large majority of the population for whatever repressive measures they finally decide to take.

Third, the nonviolent participants know nothing of other moves that the dark side of the American government might be making at the same time, whether staging acts of provocation, or supporting terrorist activities by breakaway groups such as the Baluchi Jundallah. Nor do the vast majority of participants know that American intelligence regularly uses training sessions of all kinds to recruit individual agents.

Fourth, the Iranian activists want to win. At least some in the America government might prefer to provoke a brutal defeat, a Tiananmen Square, to further isolate Iran and bring pressure within the Obama administration for a military response to the Iranian nuclear program.

Fifth, nonviolent tactics and organizational discipline offer ways to win the support of soldiers and police officers, isolate would be provocateurs, and avoid giving the government any easy excuse to bang heads and kill people. The same techniques also give the organizers ways to turn off the protest, as appears to have happened during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.

One other dynamic has more lasting effects. During the Cold War, the CIA funded and manipulated a number of liberal and social democratic intellectuals, labor unions, civil society groups and publications. The CIA-run Congress for Cultural Freedom and its vast network were perhaps the best known. When journalists at Ramparts and elsewhere exposed the CIA’s hand, many of these individuals and groups became discredited for having allowed Cold Warriors and dirty tricksters to use them.

Washington’s promotion of nonviolent resistance in other countries is already casting suspicion on a number of activists and thinkers who, wittingly or not, have allowed themselves to become pawns in open — and covert — programs to “promote democracy.” Nonviolent activists everywhere need to draw a clear line against cooperating with governments of any stripe in this foreign meddling.

[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. He is also a regular contributor to The Rag Blog.]

Source / truthout

Also see Iran and the USA: Who’s Diddling Democracy? by Steve Weissman / The Rag Blog / June 21, 2009.

The Rag Blog

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Tangled Web : Tech and the Struggle in Iran

Posted on June 22, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer


The War in Cyberspace
Web tangled in Iranian struggle

By Martin J Young / June 20, 2009

HUA HIN, Thailand — As Iranians attempt to come to terms with the outcome of their recent presidential elections, battle lines are being drawn in cyberspace. The combatants are the government in Tehran with its heavy-handed censorship of the Internet and media in one corner and the ever-increasing numbers of tech-savvy opposition supporters in the other.

Iran is up there with the likes of China, Vietnam, Thailand and North Korea when it comes to Internet censorship prowess, all of which have in recent years jailed Internet users and violated the rights of online free speech. Iran has more than 20 million Internet users, ranking the country second only to Israel in the Middle East in terms of the percentage of its population using the net.

Iran employs an advanced semantic filtering system in conjunction with an official committee responsible for identifying and reporting websites that violate the government’s stringent guidelines. These basically target all non-Islamic websites, women’s websites, and any that appear to be promoting Western cultural influences, such as movies and music. Every Internet service provider must be approved by both the Telecommunication Company of Iran and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. An estimated 10 million websites have already been blocked, and that was before the recent elections.

The media clampdown intensified as everyone from foreign correspondents to Iranian students took to the Internet to spread the word and share the news as events unfolded on the streets of Tehran this week. Social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube have become the favored platforms of communication as tracking users on these is not an easy task. The government’s only option would be to follow in China’s footsteps and block the websites entirely, which it has done for a number of them.

The US government has taken an unusual step by calling on Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance, which would cause a temporary suspension of service and prevent Iranians sharing information. The move could highlight the Barack Obama administration’s acknowledgement of the power that social websites have in the organization of protests and the flow of information.

Internet users across the globe have pledged to help Iranians avoid detection and possible arrest by attempting to make it harder for the government to track them. By using proxy servers, they are able to change their web addresses or location settings to make it appear as if they are posting information from outside Iran. This gives the Iranian Internet police a tough job in tracking down the genuine bloggers living inside the country. Sympathizers are also setting up their own proxies to help Iranians bypass government filters.

A proxy is essentially a web server or network that bridges the gap between the user and the destination website by masking the Internet address of either connection. By disguising the Internet address (IP) they can make the connection appear anonymous and thus enable access to otherwise blocked websites.

Popular websites themselves have offered support by providing software and means to bypass the censors in Iran. The Pirate Bay, a high-traffic file sharing site has offered support by temporarily changing its name to Persian Bay and linking to a protest forum it helped to setup. The forum “aims to be a secure and reliable way of communication for Iranians and friends”, and offers instructions on how to use proxy servers and access the Internet anonymously along side advice from techies around the world on circumnavigating government blocks.

Websites providing software to surf incognito such as the Tor Project have seen surges in traffic this week and a slew of new sites have appeared offering assistance. The Global Internet Freedom Consortium, or GIF, also provides anti-censorship software and has resumed services to Iran since the election crisis. It predominantly serves China. “Due to the dynamic situation in Iran caused by the election and its protest aftermath, the number of daily ‘hits’ from Iran has tripled during the past week,” said GIF deputy director Shiyu Zhou. The site has experienced server overloads this week from a reported 400,000 unique users accessing it from Iran. GIF last year introduced a Farsi language version of the Freegate software and usage has since surged.

Software solutions such as these have become popular throughout Asia in recent years as more countries stifle the free flow of information over the Internet.

[Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.]

Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.

Source / Asia Times

Thanks to Roger Baker / The Rag Blog

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Single Payer: The Republican Perspective

Posted on June 22, 2009 by RagBlog

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Singin’ on Sunday – Craig Cardiff

Posted on June 22, 2009 by RagBlog

Craig Cardiff / Thanks for Your Ears

Thanks to Deva Wood / The Rag Blog

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