Obama’s Financial Reform: Just Plugging a Few Leaks Rather Than Repairing the Dam

Posted on June 19, 2009 by RagBlog

US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told the Senate Banking Committee that he plans to reform the system of financial regulation. Photo: Bloomberg.

Only a Hint of Roosevelt in Financial Overhaul
By Joe Nocera / June 17, 2009

Three quarters of a century ago, President Franklin Roosevelt earned the undying enmity of Wall Street when he used his enormous popularity to push through a series of radical regulatory reforms that completely changed the norms of the financial industry.

Wall Street hated the reforms, of course, but Roosevelt didn’t care. Wall Street and the financial industry had engaged in practices they shouldn’t have, and had helped lead the country into the Great Depression. Those practices had to be stopped. To the president, that’s all that mattered.

On Wednesday, President Obama unveiled what he described as “a sweeping overhaul of the financial regulatory system, a transformation on a scale not seen since the reforms that followed the Great Depression.”

In terms of the sheer number of proposals, outlined in an 88-page document the administration released on Tuesday, that is undoubtedly true. But in terms of the scope and breadth of the Obama plan — and more important, in terms of its overall effect on Wall Street’s modus operandi — it’s not even close to what Roosevelt accomplished during the Great Depression.

Rather, the Obama plan is little more than an attempt to stick some new regulatory fingers into a very leaky financial dam rather than rebuild the dam itself. Without question, the latter would be more difficult, more contentious and probably more expensive. But it would also have more lasting value.

On the surface, there was no area of the financial industry the plan didn’t touch. “I was impressed by the real estate it covered,” said Daniel Alpert, the managing partner of Westwood Capital. The president’s proposal addresses derivatives, mortgages, capital, and even, in the wake of the American International Group fiasco, insurance companies. Among other things, it would give new regulatory powers to the Federal Reserve, create a new agency to help protect consumers of financial products, and make derivative-trading more transparent. It would give the government the power to take over large bank holding companies or troubled investment banks — powers it doesn’t have now — and would force banks to hold onto some of the mortgage-backed securities they create and sell to investors.

But it’s what the plan doesn’t do that is most notable.

Take, for instance, the handful of banks that are “too big to fail”— and which, in some cases, the government has had to spend tens of billions of dollars propping up. In a recent speech in China, the former Federal Reserve chairman — and current Obama adviser — Paul Volcker called on the government to limit the functions of any financial institution, like the big banks, that will always be reliant on the taxpayer should they get into trouble. Why, for instance, should they be allowed to trade for their own account — reaping huge profits and bonuses if they succeed — if the government has to bail them out if they make big mistakes, Mr. Volcker asked.

Many experts, even at the Federal Reserve, think that the country should not allow banks to become too big to fail. Some of them suggest specific economic disincentives to prevent growing too big and requirements that would break them up before reaching that point.

Yet the Obama plan accepts the notion of “too big to fail” — in the plan those institutions are labeled “Tier 1 Financial Holding Companies” — and proposes to regulate them more “robustly.” The idea of creating either market incentives or regulation that would effectively make banking safe and boring — and push risk-taking to institutions that are not too big to fail — isn’t even broached.

Or take derivatives. The Obama plan calls for plain vanilla derivatives to be traded on an exchange. But standard, plain vanilla derivatives are not what caused so much trouble for the world’s financial system. Rather it was the so-called bespoke derivatives — customized, one-of-a-kind products that generated enormous profits for institutions like A.I.G. that created them, and, in the end, generated enormous damage to the financial system. For these derivatives, the Treasury Department merely wants to set up a clearinghouse so that their price and trading activity can be more readily seen. But it doesn’t attempt to diminish the use of these bespoke derivatives.

“Derivatives should have to trade on an exchange in order to have lower capital requirements,” said Ari Bergmann, a managing principal with Penso Capital Markets. Mr. Bergmann also thought that another way to restrict the bespoke derivatives would be to strip them of their exemption from the antigambling statutes. In a recent article in The Financial Times, George Soros, the financier, wrote that “regulators ought to insist that derivatives be homogeneous, standardized and transparent.” Under the Obama plan, however, customized derivatives will remain an important part of the financial system.

Everywhere you look in the plan, you see the same thing: additional regulation on the margin, but nothing that amounts to a true overhaul. The new bank supervisor, for instance, is really nothing more than two smaller agencies combined into one. The plans calls for new regulations aimed at the ratings agencies, but offers nothing that would suggest radical revamping.

The plan places enormous trust in the judgment of the Federal Reserve — trust that critics say has not really been borne out by its actions during the Internet and housing bubbles. Firms will have to put up a little more capital, and deal with a little more oversight, but once the financial crisis is over, it will, in all likelihood, be back to business as usual.

The regulatory structure erected by Roosevelt during the Great Depression — including the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the establishment of serious banking oversight, the guaranteeing of bank deposits and the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, which separated banking from investment banking — lasted six decades before they started to crumble in the 1990s. In retrospect, it would be hard to envision even the best-constructed regulation lasting more than that. If Mr. Obama hopes to create a regulatory environment that stands for another six decades, he is going to have to do what Roosevelt did once upon a time. He is going to have make some bankers mad.

Source / New York Times

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Goran Bregović : The Weddings and Funerals Orchestra

Posted on June 19, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Goran Bregović fans waved Serbian flags, clapped, and danced. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Bregović was dressed the part of rock star in a white satin suit, playing various instruments and directing the performance as it ranged from soothing to rowdy.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / June 18, 2009

It was clear that the musical event featuring Goran Bregović would defy boundaries when the conservatively-attired string section was overpowered by a five-person horn section marching down the right aisle in gypsy attire. Wearing vests and cummerbunds and folkloric leather shoes that turned up at the toe, they thundered a beat that brought devoted fans to their feet. The Eastern Europeans near us –- including three generations from one family –- were suddenly waving Serbian flags, hands above their heads, clapping and dancing.

When my eclectic, live-in musical consultant got tickets to the Wedding and Funerals Orchestra at Bass Concert Hall in Austin, he knew what to expect. I was blown away. Rounding out the orchestra were two women in traditional Eastern European dress, their hats adorned with colorful cloth flowers, a gypsy drummer in black who sang with a haunting warble, and a chorus of men wearing black suits and ties. One of the male singers sported a white flat-top that would have made the KGB happy in the 60s.

A lithe and legendary rock star, Goran Bregović, guitarist and composer, assembled this crew. Born to a Croatian father and Serbian mother in Bosnia and Herzegovina, his roots are tangled in the former Yugoslavia. Bregović became famous as the lead guitarist for The White Button. He is best known in recent years for his film work. He has written the musical score for 30 movies, including Arizona Dream, Time of the Gypsies, Underground and Mustafa.

Bregović was dressed the part of rock star in a white satin suit, playing various instruments and directing the performance as it ranged from soothing to rowdy. The words were in a language, or languages, that I couldn’t understand, but the Serbians around us were happily singing along.

The Wedding and Funerals Orchestra was a stunning ensemble performance that had people dancing in the aisles. The music seemed to do more than transcend the new borders of Eastern Europe. It fused the disparate cultures into a powerful, pulsating sound.

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No Meaningful Evidence of Election Fraud in Iran

Posted on June 19, 2009 by RagBlog

An Iranian supporter of defeated reformist presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi demonstrates on June 17, 2009 in Tehran, Iran. Getty Images

Experts see no ‘smoking gun’ for Iran election fraud
By Andrew Beatty / June 17, 2009

WASHINGTON — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election victory is disbelieved by hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have poured onto Tehran’s streets in protest, but experts say hard evidence of vote rigging is elusive.

Since the government handed the incumbent president a landslide win over opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi hours after Friday’s vote, Tehran has been convulsed by protests unseen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Outside Iran, debate over the election result is split down largely political lines.

Former US presidential candidate John McCain, a conservative, has insisted he is “sure” the elections in Iran were rigged. With equal ferocity leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lambasted “foreign efforts” to discredit an “historic” election.

But with few independent observers on hand to witness the vote, analysts warn there is little evidence of a smoking gun of electoral fraud, or evidence that would affirm a fair vote.

Statisticians, pollsters and Iran experts have been poring over the results for hints of vote-rigging, or the possibility that the controversial president is backed by around 63% of voters.

Ken Ballen, president of the Washington-based Terror Free Future think tank, three weeks ago conducted a rare country-wide poll by phone of 1,001 people to gauge Iranians’ voting intentions.

According to Mr. Ballen it is not obvious from that poll that the results of the election were rigged. “At that time Mr. Ahmadinejad was ahead by two to one. Is it plausible that he won the election? Yes.”

The survey showed that 34% of Iranians intended to vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad. Mr. Mousavi was the choice of just 14% of respondents.

But Mr. Ballen cautioned against concluding that the vote was fair.

The poll result fell far short of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s margin of victory, and 27% of Iranians surveyed were still undecided at the time the survey was taken. “Anything could have changed,” Mr. Ballen said.

Mr. Mousavi supporters point to the amazingly quick tallying of millions of hand-counted ballots and the Mr. Ahmadinejad’s surprise win in Mr. Mousavi’s home town, Tabriz, as proof positive of foul play.

Mr. Mousavi is from Iran’s Azeri minority, so voters in his native region in East Azerbaijan province were expected to back him to the hilt, according to Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

Instead official results showed Mr. Ahmadinejad won the town and Mr. Mousavi’s tally across the province was a modest 42%.

But Mr. Ballen’s poll indicated only 16% of Azeri Iranians would vote for Mr. Mousavi, against 31% of Azeris who claimed they would vote for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Walter Mebane, a University of Michigan professor, has been examining the election results using statistical and computational tools to detect fraud, a method he describes as “election forensics.”

Comparing 366 district results with those from the 2005 elections, Mr. Mebane concluded that the “substantial core” of local results were in line with the basic statistical trends.

“In 2009 Mr. Ahmadinejad tended to do best in towns where his support in 2005 was highest, and he tended to do worst in towns were turnout surged the most.”

But Mr. Mebane said data released by the Iranian authorities was not detailed enough to say whether the vote was rigged or not.

“The vote counts I see recorded here do connect to reality to some extent, but in no way do I think that any of this analysis rules out the possibility of manipulation,” he told AFP.

Mr. Mebane pointed out that trends would still ring true if the government simply inflated Mr. Ahmadinejad’s vote by a fixed percentage, perhaps offsetting it against deflated opposition tallies.

With half a million people on the streets, proof of such a falsification could spell the difference between a call for justice and a revolution, according to Mr. Alfoneh.

“If the system totally fails to provide documentation that this is not fraud, that is something that is going to radicalize the protesters,” Mr. Alfoneh said.

Source / Agence France-Presse / National Post

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Blowing Through Texas : Renewable Energy Ploy Brings an Ill Wind

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer



Blowing in the Wind

It’s the hitherto scenic, big sky Hill Country, with more stars than you can count in the night sky, that’s been chosen to carry the burden of hosting those high-voltage power lines between West Texas and the I-35 corridor and beyond.

By Sarito Carol Neiman / The Rag Blog / June 18, 2009

Renewable energy… it’s a good thing, right? And all us progressive types are really excited about getting behind the “new green economy.”

Then why has Texas, of all places, which is hardly known for supporting any tree-hugging, progressive tendencies among its citizenry, taken the lead in generating electricity from wind power? Why did the Texas legislature, together with the Public Utilities Commission — folks who are generally more friendly to Big Oil than the Sierra Club — create something called “Competitive Renewable Energy Zones” (CREZ) along with the wind farms to feed them, way back in 2005, smack dab in the middle of the Bush administration?



The answer, my friend, is… probably quite interesting, if my relatively cursory digs through the tangle of ol’ boy networks and overlapping board memberships to follow the money are any indication.

Meantime, plans are now proceeding full steam ahead to hook up all those new West Texas wind farms to “the grid” and build the infrastructure needed to transmit their renewable product to urban areas where it’s needed. Or will be needed, some day, so the theory goes. Because there appears to be no compelling need for all that electricity right at the present moment, we’ve got plenty.

The producers, however — persuaded to set themselves up in the stark landscape of West Texas by promises of great things to come — can’t start collecting their “federal production tax credits” and sell-able “renewable energy credits” till they have a functioning outlet to plug into. And it’s the hitherto scenic, big sky Hill Country, with more stars than you can count in the night sky, that’s been chosen to carry the burden of hosting those high-voltage power lines between West Texas and the I-35 corridor and beyond.

The diverse group of people who live in those Hill Country counties don’t like it much, and are mobilizing with energy and passion to head off, or at least minimize, a rape of the landscape that will be difficult if not impossible to reverse once it starts. Check out what they’re doing, and how you might be able to support them, at one or more of the following links:

To learn about the downsides of industrial wind power, see Wind Power Facts — it’s a good starting place to understand the issues.

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Robert Jensen : Human Identity and Radical Change

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

‘Patriarchy.’ Art from Transhuman Traditionalism.

What does it mean to be a human being? Balancing theological and political insights

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / June 18, 2009

My first venture into political activism was in the feminist movement to end men’s violence against women and men’s use of women in the sexual-exploitation industries (stripping, pornography, prostitution), grounded in a critique of the underlying conception of what it means to be a man that most of us have been socialized to accept: masculinity as a quest for control and domination, routinely leading to aggression and violence. Our understanding of what it means to be male has to change, and to drive home that point, I often offer this challenge to my brothers: “You can be a man, or you can be a human being.”

The point was not that we men should alter our bodies but that we couldn’t retain a loyalty to masculinity and still live fully human lives. I later adapted that question for talks on racism, United States foreign policy, and economics. We can be white people, or we can be human beings. We can be Americans, or we can be human beings. We can be affluent, or we can be human beings.

The common claim is simple: to embrace being a man in the conventional sense is to accept the oppression of women in patriarchy; to embrace being a white person in a racist society is to accept the oppression of non-white people; to embrace being American in a world dominated by our hyper-violent nation-state is to accept profound injustice in the world; and to embrace being affluent in a world structured by a predatory corporate capitalism is to accept the deprivation that billions around the world endure.

Underneath those claims is a structural analysis of the roots of an unjust and unsustainable system, and the recognition that for all its affluence and military power, the United States is in many ways a society in collapse — politically, economically, culturally and most important, ecologically. We live in an increasingly callous culture that exploits sexuality and glorifies violence, often with racist images and themes; embedded in a house-of-cards economy built on orgiastic consumption, deepening personal and collective debt, and an artificially inflated dollar; at the end of an imperial era that is grinding to a potentially disastrous demise. And looming over all those crises are the consequences of ignoring for too long the unraveling ecological fabric that makes life possible.

This framework no doubt would seem radical, even crazy, to many. It is radical, in the foundational sense of the term: going to the root, trying to understand the nature of things. In this new century, we need radical analyses more than ever. That’s not crazy, but is in fact the only sane response to a world facing such crises. Radical is realistic, and realistic is sane.

When we dare to be radical, we confront the reality that, at both the personal and planetary levels, we are surrounded by systems based on a domination/subordination dynamic, which we have to challenge at all levels. It’s important to be clear about these particular systems — race, gender and sexuality, capitalism, and empire — all of which must be examined in the context of the coming ecological collapse.

A focus on the first two, race and gender, is often dismissed as mere “identity politics,” and there certainly is a way in which a shallow “diversity talk” can derail radical politics. But there is no way to talk about progressive social change in this country and the wider world if we don’t confront the pathologies of white supremacy and patriarchy, both of which are woven deeply into the fabric of U.S. society. Such terms may seem old-fashioned, but we live in a world of enduring racialized disparities in wealth and well-being, rooted not in the inadequacy of people of color but in white dominance, and a world in which women still face the social limitations and physical threats that come from male dominance.

These ideologies of white supremacy and patriarchy are linked to the systems of capitalism and empire, rooted in the glorification of a hyper-competitive, violent masculinity and a belief in the inherent superiority of the United States and Europe. Capitalism creates a world defined by greed and attempts to reduce us to crass maximizers of self-interest — not exactly a recipe for living a decent life consistent with our principles of equality and the dignity of all people. Empire allows the extraction of the wealth of the many to enrich an ever smaller number of people, not exactly a morally defensible model.

These systems leave half of the people on the planet to live on less than $2.50 a day (World Bank, “ World Development Report 2008”). More than 3 billion people struggle for food, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care on less than what one of us in the developed world might spend on a fancy cup of coffee. The people living at that level of poverty are disproportionately non-white and female. They live mostly in a Third World that has suffered, and continues to suffer, from military and/or economic domination by the First World, especially today by the United States. Radical politics says not only that this state of affairs is unjust, but that the systems and structures of power that give rise to it are fundamentally unjust and must be changed.

And then there is the question of sustainability. Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live — groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity — and ask a simple question: Where are we heading? Remember also that we live in an oil-based world that is fast running out of oil, which means we face a huge reconfiguration of the infrastructure that undergirds our lives. And, of course, there is the undeniable trajectory of climate breakdown.

That’s not a pretty picture, and it’s crucial we realize that there are no technological fixes that will rescue us. We have to go to the root and acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed. We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves. Here, just as in human relationships, we either abandon the domination/subordination dynamic or we don’t survive.

A radically realistic assessment of the nature of contemporary systems and institutions is necessary if we are to make progress toward real justice and real sustainability. It is realistic, though not pleasant to recognize, that when we draw our sense of self from the privilege and power that comes with being in a dominant position within unjust and immoral hierarchical systems — patriarchy, white supremacy, U.S. imperial domination, and capitalism — we sacrifice some deeper sense of our humanity. We can’t accept those privileges and that power without losing a part of ourselves, the part that gives real meaning to our lives, the part with which we yearn to connect to others.

We can be men/white/American/affluent, or we can be human beings.

That challenge leaves one obvious question unasked and unanswered: What does it mean to be a human being? Given all that we know and don’t know in the modern world, what does a claim to be human really mean at this moment in history? What qualities are we most focused on when we say we are human, when we talk about our humanity? We appeal to each other’s humanity all the time, but with surprisingly little discussion of what it means in the modern context.

As I worked on political issues connected to these systems of oppression, I found that the political traditions in which I was rooted gave me the tools I needed to analyze and resist those systems. Radical feminism, anti-racist theory and practice, traditional anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist movements, and the best thinking in ecology — all were more than adequate for providing an understanding of how these systems work and for putting together a holistic analysis of a profoundly unjust and immoral modern world. Those political traditions could take me a long way, but increasingly I had a sense they could not take me all the way home. I had difficulty fashioning an answer to that nagging question: What does it mean to be human?

So it was then, somewhat reluctantly, that I turned to theology and eventually joined a congregation. My motivation wasn’t a sudden surge of interest in the origins of the universe or a concern about what awaited me after death; my focus remains on the question of how to live fully and responsibly in the here and now. The same questions that had led me to radical politics nudged me to expand the scope of my inquiry. I had no interest in succumbing to New Age-style self-indulgence, nor did I intend to give up politics to pursue theology. My goal has been to deepen my politics through theology and open up to new ways of thinking about myself as well. Whatever I had thought of religious institutions in the past — I had never cared much for them — increasingly it seemed self-defeating to avoid engagement with religion, which is so clearly a powerful force for so many. Theology and organized religion are not, of course, the only routes to explore these questions, but there is no reason to reject the wisdom that theology might offer.

Our first step is not to pretend to answer questions but to pose questions clearly, in ways that would allow people of different views at least to start from some common ground. If I were to condense all this into one question, it would look like this:

Which practices, systems, and fundamental conceptions of what it means to be human, are consistent with a sustainable human presence on the earth, respectful of other life, in societies that provide the necessary resources for all people to live a decent life, within a culture that fosters individual flourishing alongside a meaningful sense of collective identity, helping us to take seriously our obligations to ourselves, each other, and to the non-human world?

Embedded in that one question are, of course, many complex questions that people have pondered for centuries without clear resolution. Completely new insights are unlikely to emerge here; maybe there are no truly original insights to be had by anyone. But if we want to take politics and theology seriously, we can’t pretend not to understand these questions, and we can’t evade our responsibility to struggle to understand and then to act on that understanding.

[This essay is excerpted from Robert Jensen’s new book, All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, from Soft Skull Press. Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, TX. He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007) and several other books. Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online here.]

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Republicans and Racism : Could Go the Way of the Whigs

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Republican emailing with pictures of all the presidents. Obama’s square is just a black space with two eyeballs.

It’s perfectly OK to be a racist in the Republican Party, as long as you keep it ‘in house’ and pass it off as a joke.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / June 18, 2009

Before the mid-sixties,the dominant political party in the South (and in Texas) was the Democratic Party. In fact, at that time, most of those states had virtually a one-party system. I know that in Texas, the only real election was in the Democratic primary, because the November election was a foregone conclusion. Republicans didn’t have a chance.

But that changed in the mid-sixties, when President Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats stepped up, bit the bullet, and did the right thing by passing the civil rights laws. It was badly needed and long overdue, but it was also disastrous for the Democratic Party in the South. Sadly, there were still a lot of racists in Texas and the South at that time, and they fled en masse to the Republican Party.

With the addition of this huge volume of racists, the Republican Party in the South not only became competitive, but became the dominant party of the region. It is still that way, although due to changing attitudes the Democrats are now starting to become more competitive in Texas and many Southern states, as more and more whites shed their racism.

But while white racists fled the Democratic Party in the late Sixties, African-Americans flocked to that party. Even to this date, it is not uncommon for African-Americans to vote for Democrats in a block — many times voting 90-95% Democratic in elections.

Republicans have pushed forward their tokens like Alan Keyes and Michael Steele, trying to give the impression they are a “big tent” party. Then they are amazed that these tokens aren’t able to attract African-Americans to their party. They haven’t figured out that the tokenism won’t work as long as their party harbors and accepts a rabidly racist element.

They not only harbor these racists, but in many instances they allow them to assume positions of power and influence in the party. A couple of fresh instances of this came to light just in the last week.

In South Carolina, a prominent GOP activist named Rusty DePass responded to a Facebook comment about a gorilla escaping a Columbia zoo by remarking, “I’m sure it’s just one of Michelle’s ancestors — probably harmless.”

When called to task on this incrediby racist remark, his only defense was “The comment was clearly in jest.” He thinks it’s OK to be racist, as long as its funny. Well, it’s not OK, and it shows just how accepting of racists and racism the Republican Party has become.

Meanwhile in Tennessee, Sherri Goforth, a legislative staffer for Republican State Senator Diane Black, e-mailed a little racist humor to some others in her party. It was a poster that had been knocking around the internet for a while among right wing racists. It shows pictures of all the presidents of the United States — all but President Obama. Obama’s square is just a black space with two eyeballs.

Was Ms. Goforth embarrassed by her obviously racist action? Not in the least. She was just upset because she accidently sent the e-mail to some who weren’t racists and she got exposed. She said, “I went on the wrong email and I inadvertently hit the wrong button. I’m very sick about it, and it’s one of those things I can’t change or take back.”

It’s perfectly OK to be a racist in the Republican Party, as long as you keep it “in house” and pass it off as a joke. These are not the only instances of Republican racism. There have been many others, like the poster showing the White House lawn turned into a watermelon patch. Is it any wonder that most African-Americans (and other minorities) don’t feel comfortable in the Republican Party — the party that accepts such behavior from its members?

With each succeeding generation, the United States becomes a little less racist. Added to the fact that many whites are shedding their racist tendencies, is the fact that in many parts of this country, the majority of the population is now composed of minorities. Both of these trends are going to continue, and that’s bad news for the Republican Party.

The Republican Party must face its internal racism and get rid of it. Failure to do so will ensure they become a party of little significance in the future, and could result in their demise. Dump the racism or go the way of the Whigs!

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

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Austin : Spirited Demonstration Denounces Iranian Elections

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Iranians and their supporters demonstrated at the Texas State Capitol Wednesday, June 17, 2009. Photos by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.

Dude. Where’s my Vote?

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / June 18, 2009

See more photos below.

A rally and march condemning alleged election fraud in Iran took place in downtown Austin yesterday, Wednesday, June 17, 2009, starting at 5 p.m. Some 350 people, a majority of them Iranians and many either students or faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, gathered in front of the Texas State Capitol.

Backed by live music fueled by two energetic drummers, they chanted, listened to speakers and poetry, and waved signs directed at passing rush hour traffic. Many in cars honked their support and flashed peace signs. The demonstrators’ placards called for “Democracy for Iran” and asked “Where is my Vote?” Non-Iranian supporters showed signs expressing their “Solidarity with Iran.”

Then the two-block long group marched down Congress Ave. to Sixth Street and back, chanting “What do we want? Democracy!” and “Ahmadinejad. Shame on You,” One distinguished grey-haired gentleman in tie, jacket slung over his arm, stepped proudly while holding up a sign that asked, “Dude. Where’s my Vote?”

The demonstration was organized by UT student group Iranians for Peace and Justice, and by the Persian Student Society of UT and Austin Permanent Peace Protest.

Also see Were Elections a Fraud? Uprising in Iran; Protest in Austin by Banafsheh Madaninejad / The Rag Blog / June 16, 2009




Demonstrators in Austin protest alleged voter fraud in Iran. Photos by James Retherford / The Rag Blog.

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Reaping What We Sow : Iran and Stolen Elections

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, a social democrat, was overthrown by the CIA. Here Mossadegh, with hat, is shown leaving the U.S. Supreme Court building on Nov. 5, 1951. Photo from the Truman Library.

After a half-century of dictatorship under the Shah and the CIA, followed by the Ayatollah and the fundamentalists, the Iranian public appears desperate to return to the social-democratic vision of Mossadegh…

By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / June 17, 2009

The parallels between the stolen Iranian election of 2009 and the American of 2000 and 2004 are tragic. The histories — and futures — of the two nations are inseparable. Bound up in their tortured half-century of crime and manipulation are the few glimmers of hope for lasting peace in the Middle East.

In both countries, a right wing fundamentalist authoritarian with open contempt for human rights and the Geneva Convention has come up a winner, with catastrophic consequences. In both countries, the blowback of two George Bushes loom large.

In the US, two “defeated” candidates — Al Gore and John Kerry — said and did nothing in the face of two stolen elections. But an unprecedented voter protection movement arose from the ashes of those defeats to assure the 2008 victory of America’s first African-American president.

In Iran, the “defeated” candidate — Mir Hussein Moussavi — is fighting back, along with a massive grassroots resistance. How far they get will define the Iranian future — as well as that of the Middle East.

In a fluid and unpredictable situation, here are some indisputables:

  1. A half-century ago, the people of Iran attempted a democratic revolution led by a moderate progressive, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, whose social-democratic inclinations have been revived by Moussavi.
  2. Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown by the Eisenhower Administration and its Central Intelligence Agency, which wanted to wall in the Soviet Union and protect western oil interests.
  3. Norman Schwarzkopf, Sr. (father of the Gulf War general of the same name) used a suitcase full of U.S. taxpayer dollars to bribe Iran’s anti-democratic sympathizers and help overthrow Mossadegh.
  4. They installed the pro-U.S. general Fazlollah Zahedi, who handed control of Iran to the brutal and vicious Shah. The dictatorial Shah ruled through the infamous secret terror/torture police force Savak, which Schwartzkopf helped train.
  5. A prototypical CIA asset, the Shah used his iron torturer’s hand to “Westernize” the country and make it more user-friendly to US oil interests.
  6. Among other things, the U.S., France and other western powers were moving to provide the Shah with up to 36 atomic power plants designed to provide electricity and, ultimately, radioactive materials with which to build his own atomic bombs.
  7. Despite his ostensible commitment to human rights, President Jimmy Carter made a point of spending a high-profile New Year’s with the Shah, evoking the bitter hatred of millions of Iranians.
  8. The Shah’s overthrow by fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini led to the 1979-80 hostage crisis that finally sank Carter’s presidency. Amidst indications of a secret deal involving past and future CIA Directors George H.W. Bush and William Casey, the release of the hostages was delayed long enough to guarantee Carter’s defeat, thus inaugurating the Age of Ronald Reagan, with 12 of its 28 years under the two George Bushes.
  9. Secret dealings between Reagan/Bush and the Iranians led to the iran-Contra Affair, when covert operatives like Oliver North funneled arms to the Iranians and laundered cash and drugs through the reactionary Contra forces fighting revolution in Nicaragua.
  10. The Contras in turn flooded the US with cocaine, feeding a horrific crack epidemic that has crippled the black and Hispanic communities here for two decades.
  11. Those US-financed arms were used to fight the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein, whom the U.S. also supported, and whom Donald Rumsfeld publicly embraced in the early 1980s. The American goal seems to have been to weaken both Iran and Iraq through a horrifying war that claimed at least a million casualties, ultimately infuriating both citizenries.

After a half-century of dictatorship under the Shah and the CIA, followed by the Ayatollah and the fundamentalists, the Iranian public appears desperate to return to the social-democratic vision of Mossadegh, denied so long ago.

In the U.S. in 2000 and 2004, the corporate/religious right put George W. Bush in the White House — and then kept him there — with a sophisticated election theft machine built around elimination of voter registrations, manipulation of the vote count, and a wide array of supporting tactics. The US Supreme Court set it all in stone with its infamous Bush v. Gore decision, which prevented a true vote count in Florida 2000. History repeated itself in Ohio 2004.

In Iran 2009, the ruling fundamentalist elite has barely pretended to count the votes at all, merely rushing to announce a predetermined outcome. The reigning Ayatollah has played the role of the U.S. Supreme Court by certifying the outcome before a real ballot tally could possibly occur. Blank spaces in the texts of Iranian newspapers and an electronic blackout created by official censors reflect the ongoing vacuum in the US corporate media, which has yet to seriously report what was done to the American elections of 2000 and 2004.

What will happen next in Iran is anyone’s guess. George W. Bush fueled its fundamentalist right by calling it a “terror state” whose nuclear weapons ambitions are fueled with materials produced by the “Peaceful Atom” Eisenhower inaugurated in 1953, around the time he was disposing of Mossadegh.

Bush’s counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is now turning the state terror apparatus — reminiscent of the Shah’s — against those who would mention the illegitimacy of his rule.

Thus tragedy looms at the brink of opportunity. That democracy in Iran so clearly won at the polls is a sign of great courage and hope on the part of the Iranian people. They are fighting terrible odds, not of their own making. Should they break free, the storm would reshape the Middle East — and much more.

In the meantime, perhaps their American counterparts, instructed by the ghost of Mossadegh, might finally face up to the true price of sowing such cynical, lethal whirlwinds.

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection. Bob’s Frankis Files are available via www.freepress.org, where this article was also published. Harvey Wallerman’s History of the United States is at www.harveywasserman.com.]

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Jimmy Carter : Palestinians Treated Like Animals

Posted on June 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Surrounded by journalists and Hamas officials, former President Jimmy Carter, center, stands in front of a building destroyed during Israel’s offensive in Gaza earlier this year, as he visits Jebaliya, northern Gaza Strip, Tuesday. Photo by Khalil Hamra / AP.

Carter declared: ‘My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people. . .’

By Jack A. Smith / June 17, 2009

Jimmy Carter was never one of the great American presidents, and he made a number of errors during his one term (1977-1981), but we have long maintained that he is the best ex-presidents our country has ever had.

He reaffirmed that characterization yesterday (June 16) on a visit to Gaza where he made some stunning comments about the plight of the Palestinian people, and had a meeting with Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Gaza, who is not recognized by the U.S. or Israel.

Haniya used the occasion to declare his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis: “If there is a real plan to resolve the Palestinian question on the basis of the creation of a Palestinian state within the borders of June 4, 1967 [as called for in the Arab Initiative], and with full sovereignty, we are in favor of it.”

The Hamas leader expressed a favorable view of President Obama’s June 4 speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. “We saw a new tone, a new language and a new spirit in the official U.S. rhetoric,” he said.

Carter, who calls for an end to all violence between Israelis and Palestinians, toured the ruins of Gaza, which remains a shambles months after Israel’s December-January invasion of the Palestinian enclave because of Israel’s blockade. The latest war resulted in the death of 1,400 Palestinian residents — largely civilians, including many children. Israel suffered 14 dead, mainly soldiers, some by friendly fire.

While touring, Carter declared: “My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people. . . Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings.”

Attending the graduation ceremony at the UN School in Gaza City, he commented: “The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life — never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself.”

At the debris that remained of the American School, another Israeli target, the former president said “I have to hold back tears when I see the deliberate destruction that has been wreaked against your people.” Noting that the school was “deliberately destroyed by bombs from F-16s made in my country,” Carter said “I feel partially responsible for this as must all Americans and Israelis.

Addressing political leaders in the U.S. and Europe, Carter — who helped bring about the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt 30 years ago — said they “must try to do all that is necessary to convince Israel and Egypt to allow basic goods into Gaza.”

Source / Hudson Valley Activist

Last month in Damascus [Carter] met Khaled Meshal, the head of the Hamas political bureau and the group’s effective leader. Carter has been meeting Israeli officials and travelled to a Jewish settlement on the West Bank at the weekend as part of his private diplomatic efforts. His visits are not always welcomed by the Israeli government, which has been angered by his meetings in recent years with Hamas.

On Sunday Carter criticised a policy speech given by Netanyahu, in which the Israeli prime minister, responding to weeks of pressure from ­Washington, gave carefully worded approval for a future Palestinian state under strict ­conditions, but insisted “normal lives” should continue in Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.

“My opinion is he raised many new obstacles to peace that had not existed under previous prime ministers,” Carter said during a visit to the Knesset in ­Jerusalem.

“He still apparently insists on expansion of existing settlements, he demands that the Palestinians and the Arabs recognise Israel as a Jewish state, although 20% of its citizens here are not Jews. This is a new demand.”

But Carter said he had encountered even greater differences with the former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, and had still managed to broker a peace deal between Israel and Egypt. . .

Rory McCarthy / Guardian, U.K. / June 15, 2009

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Iran : How I Helped Tweet the Revolution from San Francisco

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Students turn to Twitter. This photo from June 15, 2009 shows a picture of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, left bottom, next to a broken computer monitor in a room in a Tehran University dormitory after it was attacked by militia forces during riots in Tehran, Iran, in the early hours Monday. Photo from AP.

The State Department asked social-networking site Twitter to delay scheduled maintenance earlier this week to avoid disrupting communications among tech-savvy Iranian citizens as they took to the streets to protest Friday’s reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The move illustrates the growing influence of online social-networking services as a communications media. Foreign news coverage of the unfolding drama, meanwhile, was limited by Iranian government restrictions barring journalists from “unauthorized” demonstrations. — Washington Post

The Revolution will be Tweeted

Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media.

By Austin Heap / June 16, 2009

Also see ‘Cyberwar guide for Iran,’ by Cory Doctorow, Below.

SAN FRANCISCO — It all started at 10:40 p.m. on an otherwise quiet Sunday night. After talking about the Iranian election on and off for several hours, I saw a tweet (a message on Twitter) that pointed out CNN’s failure to cover the story. As an obviously rigged election in one of the world’s most important countries was being perpetrated, America’s oldest 24-hour news network was reporting primarily about how confusing the new fangled digital TVs were.

“Dear CNN: please report about Iran, not Twitter. #cnnfail #iranelection,” a user by the name of nympholepsy wrote. The dual hashtags (the pound symbol before a subject, which allows users to search for all tweets on the topic) opened the door for me, a 25-year old who had never even traveled to the Middle East, to become an activist in Iran.

It was probably the tag #cnnfail that appealed to me at first. In 2000, the first presidential election for which I was truly cognizant, I watched as legitimate claims of voter suppression in my native state of Ohio and across the country were ignored by the mainstream media as conspiracy theories.

If the media failed, the populace was complicit. There were no protests that rocked the stability of our government, no mass movements against the subversion of our democracy.

But the other tag, #iranelection, did not have the luxury of our delusion. Even before the ridiculously lopsided results were released, opposition headquarters were sacked, dissidents arrested. The government of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wanted to minimize the threat of any opposition leaders organizing a revolution against it. Unfortunately for them, this revolution did not need figureheads to lead it. The Ayatollah had not read the lessons of Moldova, where protestors used sites like Twitter to organize mass protests in April against the Communist government.

Through the power of social networking, individual Iranians were also able to mobilize each other. Twitter hashtags created an instantaneous collectivity that could never be created by mainstream media. When the government realized what was happening, they tried to shut it down. Members of the tech community across the globe did what they could to support it. We started posting functioning relays (or proxies) through which Iranians could subvert government firewalls.

The spontaneity of the tech movement was also one of its weaknesses. With so many updates at #iranelection, it became hard to tell which relays were working and which were not. I started monitoring all of the proxies and created a webpage that listed which proxies were functioning. I asked people I had never met to send messages to me on Twitter to let me know the status of each proxy. And they did.

But that information was public. Anyone on Twitter could find it. Anyone could access the page I had created. When Iran’s Guardian Council began monitoring tweets, other members of the community reported it to me. We had to adapt instantly in order to maintain the ability of the Iranian opposition to mobilize. I quickly set up a secure page. Instead of asking people to send me relays publicly, I now asked for them to be sent via Direct Message or e-mail. They came in a flood.

My website has been attacked by Iran. My servers are melting. But individuals in the opposition are still able to use technology to mobilize each other. And the tech community around the world is still able to support them.

Now, less than 24 hours later, I am receiving more than 2,000 simultaneous connections per second from Iran. When I wake up, I will have received more than 300 e-mails from volunteers trying to contribute and lighting the path forward for a movement that is both new and old.

Americans ignored the subversion of their democracy. When a people better than us stood up to secure theirs, I could not let them down. The revolution may not be televised, but it will be tweeted.

Source / New American Media

Cyberwar guide for Iran

By Cory Doctorow / June 16, 2009

Yishay sez, “The road to hell is paved with the best intentions (including mine). Learn how to actually help the protesters and not the gov’t in Iran.”

The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through Twitter.

1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distribute them discretely to bloggers in Iran.

2. Hashtags — the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88. Other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.

3. Keep your bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuously, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.

4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become “Iranians” it becomes much harder to find us.

5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind…

Source / boingboing

Thanks to Roger Baker and Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Chicago 1968 : Riot Cops to Hold Reunion

Posted on June 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Scenes from the police riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Photos from Chicago Tribune files.

1968 Chicago riot cops to hold reunion

‘It’s just a get-together for guys who worked together 40 years ago,’ said Mark Donahue, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. ‘Nothing more.’

By Erika Slife / June 17, 2009

The violent clashes between police and protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention aren’t typically considered proud moments in Chicago history.

But some members of the Fraternal Order of Police want to change that. On June 26, the Chicago police union will hold a “Chicago Riot Cops Reunion” at its hall to set straight “what really happened,” according to the reunion’s Web site.

“The only thing that stood between Marxist street thugs and public order was a thin blue line of dedicated, tough Chicago police officers,” the Web site says. “Chicago police officers who participated in the riots continue to endure unending criticism — all of which is unwarranted, inaccurate and wrong.”

Former Police Supt. Philip Cline is scheduled to be a keynote speaker.

Proceeds from the reunion will go to the Chicago Police Memorial Fund, which provides assistance to the families of officers killed or catastrophically injured in the line of duty.

Predictably, a protest to counter the event is being planned. Chicago Copwatch, a watchdog group, is organizing a march to the FOP hall the same night after a rally at Union Park at Ashland Avenue and Lake Street.

Their members’ memories of what happened during the convention are quite different, of course. They call it “one of the largest mass beatings in Chicago history.”

But Mark Donahue, president of the FOP, insists the union is not trying to make a statement.

“It’s just a get-together for guys who worked together 40 years ago,” he said. “Nothing more.”

Source / Chicago Tribune

Also see photospread, ‘Remember 1968 in Chicago?’ / Chicago Tribune

Thanks to Jay D. Jurie / The Rag Blog

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Another ‘Mistake’ in Amerikkka’s War of Terror

Posted on June 17, 2009 by RagBlog

Abu Zubaida pictured shortly after he was captured in Pakistan. He appears to be bloodied and on some type of stretcher. Source: ABC News.

CIA Mistaken on ‘High-Value’ Detainee, Document Shows
By Peter Finn and Julie Tate / June 16, 2009

An al-Qaeda associate captured by the CIA and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques said his jailers later told him they had mistakenly thought he was the No. 3 man in the organization’s hierarchy and a partner of Osama bin Laden, according to newly released excerpts from a 2007 hearing.

“They told me, ‘Sorry, we discover that you are not Number 3, not a partner, not even a fighter,’ ” said Abu Zubaida, speaking in broken English, according to the new transcript of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

President George W. Bush described Abu Zubaida in 2002 as “al-Qaeda’s chief of operations.” Intelligence, military and law enforcement sources told The Washington Post this year that officials later concluded he was a Pakistan-based “fixer” for radical Islamist ideologues, but not a formal member of al-Qaeda, much less one of its leaders.

Abu Zubaida, a nom de guerre for Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, told the 2007 panel of military officers at the detention facility in Cuba that “doctors told me that I nearly died four times” and that he endured “months of suffering and torture” on the false premise that he was an al-Qaeda leader.

Abu Zubaida, 38, was subjected 83 times to waterboarding, a technique that leads victims to believe they are drowning and that has been widely condemned as torture. The Palestinian was held at a secret CIA facility after his capture in Pakistan in March 2002.

The Abu Zubaida transcript, and those of five other “high-value detainees,” including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Versions of the transcripts were released by the Pentagon in 2007.

Abu Zubaida, Mohammed and 12 other high-value detainees were transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006 and continue to be held there at Camp 7, a secret facility at the naval base, part of a total population of 229 detainees.

After a meeting yesterday with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, President Obama announced that Italy has agreed to resettle three detainees.

The United States and the 27-nation European Union also issued a joint statement yesterday noting that “certain Member States of the European Union have expressed their readiness to assist with the reception of certain former Guantanamo detainees, on a case-by-case basis.”

The statement said the United States “will consider contributing to the costs” of resettling detainees in Europe.

Although little new information was released in the hearing transcript for Majid Khan, an alleged associate of Mohammed and a former resident of Baltimore, the extent of the redactions is more apparent in the latest document. When referring to his treatment at CIA “black site” prisons, the Pakistani’s transcript is blacked out for eight consecutive pages. In the version released earlier, this entire section was marked by a single word: “REDACTED.”

Similar redactions appear in other transcripts released yesterday. The ACLU said the continued level of redaction was unacceptable and vowed to return to court to press for unexpurgated transcripts.

“The only conceivable basis for suppressing this testimony is not to protect the American people but to protect the CIA from legal accountability,” said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney for the ACLU. “There is no reason to continue to censor detainee abuse allegations.”

George Little, a CIA spokesman, said, “The CIA plainly has a very different take on its past interrogation practices — what they were and what they weren’t — and on the need to protect properly classified national security information.”

The new transcripts provide some limited new insight into the interaction between the CIA and its prisoners.

Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times, appears to have invoked the U.S. Constitution to protest his treatment.

He described the response he received: “You are not American, and you are not on American soil. So you cannot ask about the Constitution.”

Mohammed also said he lied in response to questions about bin Laden’s location.

“Where is he? I don’t know,” Mohammed said. “Then he torture me. Then I said yes, he is in this area.”

Source / Washington Post

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