Gaza: Still in Misery Following the War

Posted on May 30, 2009 by RagBlog

Four months after Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Suad Khadir and her family are still living in a tent. To escape the heat, they often seek refuge under the rubble. Photo: Ashraf Amra/New York Times.

Misery Hangs Over Gaza Despite Pledges of Help
By Ethan Bronner / May 28, 2009

GAZA — Dozens of families still live in tents amid collapsed buildings and rusting pipes. With construction materials barred, a few are building mud-brick homes. Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled through desert tunnels from Egypt. Among the items that people seek is an addictive pain reliever used to fight depression.

Four months after Israel waged a war here to stop Hamas rocket fire and two years after Hamas took full control of this coastal strip, Gaza is like an island adrift. Squeezed from without by an Israeli and Egyptian boycott and from within by their Islamist rulers, the 1.5 million people here are cut off from any productivity or hope.

“Right after the war, everybody came — journalists, foreign governments and charities promising to help,” said Hashem Dardona, 47, who is unemployed. “Now, nobody comes.”

But with the Obama administration pressing Israel to allow in reconstruction materials, and with attention increasingly focused on internal Palestinian divisions, Gaza will soon be back at the center of Middle East peace negotiations. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with President Obama on Thursday in Washington.

For many Israelis, Gaza is a symbol of all that is wrong with Palestinian sovereignty, which they view increasingly as an opportunity for anti-Israeli forces, notably Iran, to get within rocket range.

The ruins of the parliament building in Gaza City, which was destroyed by Israel during the war four months ago. Photo: Ashraf Amra/New York Times.

That leaves Gaza suspended in a state of misery that defies easy categorization. It is, of course, crowded and poor, but it is better off than nearly all of Africa as well as parts of Asia. There is no acute malnutrition, and infant mortality rates compare with those in Egypt and Jordan, according to Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization here.

This is because although Israel and Egypt have shut the borders for the past three years in an effort to squeeze Hamas, Israel rations aid daily, allowing in about 100 trucks of food and medicine. Military officers in Tel Aviv count the calories to avoid a disaster. And the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees runs schools and medical clinics that are clean and efficient.

But there are many levels of deprivation short of catastrophe, and Gaza inhabits most of them. It has almost nothing of a functioning economy apart from basic commerce and farming. Education has declined terribly; medical care is declining.

There are tens of thousands of educated and ambitious people here, teachers, engineers, translators, business managers, who have nothing to do but grow frustrated. They cannot practice their professions and they cannot leave. They collect welfare and smoke in cafes. A United Nations survey shows a spike in domestic violence.

Some people say they have started to take a small capsule known as Tramal, the commercial name for an opiate-like painkiller that increases sexual desire and a sense of control. Hamas has recently warned of imprisonment for those who traffic in and take the drug.

Yet the pills arrive, along with clothing, furniture and cigarettes, through the hundreds of tunnels punched into the desert at the southern border town of Rafah by rough-edged entrepreneurs who pay the Hamas authorities a tax on the goods.

A smuggler digging a tunnel at the border of Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled in. Photo: Ashraf Amra for The New York Times.

Similar tunnels also serve as conduits for arms. Israel periodically bombs those in hopes of weakening Hamas, which says it will never recognize Israel and will reserve the right to use violence against it until it leaves all the land it won in the 1967 war. After that, there would be a 10-year truce while the next steps were contemplated, although the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel in any borders.

Israel began the siege after Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. It was tightened after Hamas pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in June 2007. Iranian backing for Hamas has added to Israel’s conviction that the siege is the right path.

The aim is to keep Gaza at subsistence and offer a contrast with the West Bank, which in theory benefits from foreign aid and economic and political development. Hamas supporters will then realize their mistake. The plan has not gone well, however, partly because the West Bank under Israeli occupation remains no one’s idea of paradise and partly because Hamas seems more in control here every year, with cleaner streets and lower crime, although its popularity is hard to gauge.

“Hamas is learning from its mistakes and getting stronger and stronger,” said Sharhabeel al-Zaeem, a prominent lawyer here. He and others have been urging international officials to get construction materials and other goods into Gaza through the closed crossings.

They argue that the current system serves only Hamas, since it taxes the illicit tunnel goods and limited currency exchanges and is not blamed by the people for the outside siege. If glass and cement were allowed in through the crossings with Israel, they say, Hamas would not get the credit and the Palestinian Authority could collect the taxes.

“The people of Gaza are depressed, and depressed people turn to myth and fantasy, meaning religion and drugs,” said Jawdat Khoudary, a building contractor. “This kind of a prison feeds extremism. Let people see out to see a different version of reality.”

Israeli officials remain skeptical of opening the borders. Many believe that their war served as deterrence and note the drastic reduction in rocket fire as evidence. They fear that steel or cement will be siphoned off by Hamas for arms. But they are feeling pressure from the Americans and United Nations, and they are discussing a pilot project.

Meanwhile, Gaza feels more and more like a Hamas state and less linked to the West Bank. Men are increasingly bearded, women are more covered. Hamas is the main employer. Schools and courts, once run by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, are all Hamas. The government is collecting information on companies and nonprofit groups and seeking control over them.

Many here are especially worried about the young. At a program aimed at helping those traumatized by the January war, teenagers are offered colored markers to draw anything they like, says Farah Abu Qasem, 20, a student of English translation who volunteers at the program.

“They seem only to choose black and to draw things like tanks,” she said. “And when we ask them to draw something that represents the future, they leave the paper blank.”

[Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting.]

Source / New York Times

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‘Pedro’ Tancredo : GOP Mad Buffoon du Jour

Posted on May 30, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Pedro Tancredo in full battle array. Graphic by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.

Republican attack dog Tom Tancredo calls Sonia Sotomayor a racist

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a long list of hateful, insane acts and statements by Tancredo.

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / May 30, 2009

Like a buzzard to fresh roadkill, disgraced former GOP congressman, Tom Tancredo could not pass up the lights and cameras. Dusting off his career xenophobic Latino bashing, he attacked Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor calling her a “racist.”

In case you don’t immediately place Uncle Tom Tancredo, he is the grandson of Italian immigrants and ran for congress from Colorado’s 6th Congressional District promising to only serve three terms. Tancredo stumped with unforgettable magniloquence, “We want to reinvigorate the electoral process by introducing people into the system who think of government service as a temporary endeavor, not as a career.”

He etched in stone his three term limit promise saying, “For me, the issue of giving one’s word and promising to do something like this is more important than the rest of it … I took the pledge. I will live up to the pledge. That’s it. That’s the overriding issue.”

Tancredo broke his pledge and ran for a fourth term in Congress in 2004.

Then on April 2, 2007, Tancredo announced that he would run for President in the 2008 election. His singular platform issue, his signature fixation, was illegal immigrants and immigration reform.

In the May 3, 2007 debate among the ten candidates for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination, Tancredo was one of three who raised their hands when asked if anyone did not believe in the theory of evolution. Starting to place him now?

A month before he dropped out of the race, he ran a TV ad with a voice of death warning, “There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs … the price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.” Mercifully, he ended his candidacy on his 62nd birthday.

During his time as a US Congressman, he was a strident anti-abortionist, and had hawkish pronouncements on the Iraq war, even though when he was eligible for the Vietnam war draft, in June 1969 he went for his physical, telling doctors he had been treated for depression, and eventually got a “1-Y” deferment.

Though he was raised a Roman Catholic, he attacked Pope Benedict XVI for “encouraging illegal immigration to the USA to boost membership in the Catholic Church.” Tancredo now attends a Christian evangelical church.

But illegal immigration is his constant one-note samba. Whenever Lou Dobbs hears it he dances gleefully.

Tancredo was persona non grata at the White House after getting into a shouting match with Karl Rove, ranting at him, “if the nation suffered another attack at the hands of terrorists able to skirt immigration laws, the blood of the people killed would be on Bush’s and Congress’ hands.” Rove had him blacklisted from entering the White House, calling Tancredo a “traitor to the Party.”

Tancredo said if we have another terrorist attack on the USA we should bomb Mecca.

He suggested that state legislators and ‘sanctuary city’ mayors should be imprisoned for passing laws contrary to federal immigration law.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of a long list of hateful, insane acts and statements by Tancredo who, incidentally, was given an A+ for his opposition to amnesty for illegal aliens by “Americans for Better Immigration.” The average Congressmen was given a C+.

Last Thursday, May 28th, Tancredo appeared on CNN to voice his opposition to Judge Sotomayor as nominee for appointment to the Supreme Court. CNN host, Rick Sanchez asked him if he thought Sonia Sotomayor is a racist, Tancredo replied “certainly her words would indicate that that is the truth” and he then compared the Hispanic-American advocacy group. “La Raza” to the KKK.

And Tancredo would know about the KKK. On September 11, 2006 in Colombia, South Carolina he was guest speaker before a group he helped form, the “Americans Have Had Enough Coalition.” The room in which he spoke was reportedly decked out with large portraits of Robert E. Lee and lots of Confederate battle flags. After Tancredo spoke, men dressed in Confederate uniforms are said to have broken into a rousing chorus of “Dixie.”

Tancredo panders to racists. He thunders about “racial multiculturalism” being the ruin of America. He called Miami a “Third World Country.” Governor Jeb Bush called his remarks “naive” and countless organizations and political leaders have denounced Tancredo’s blatant racism.

I will stop here, but I just wanted to paint a clear picture of this loud, mistaken dogmatist who now is the latest spokesperson du jour for the leaderless Republican Party, whether they like it or not.

Today some Republican Congressmen started breaking ranks with their sour conservative party core calling Tancredo’s rant disgraceful and not representative of the Grand Old Party. Even GOP Party Chairman, Michael Steele, has completely disavowed Tancredo.

Judge Sotomayor’s early comment, taken out of context by both Tancredo and Rush Limbaugh, who compared Sotomayor to KKK leader David Duke, will certainly be thoroughly reviewed in her upcoming confirmation hearing. Hopefully Republicans in the hearing will not take the low road.

Too bad Tancredo and Limbaugh are both opponents of same-sex marriage, because theirs would be a marriage made in hypocrites’ heaven.

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

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Labor Justice : ‘Last Vestige of Slavery and Segregation’

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“Brothers of the Sun” by Luana Boutilier / Farmworker Movement

…two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law’s protections — farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

By Dick Meister / May 28, 2009

It’s been three-quarters of a century since enactment of the National Labor Relations Act that grants U.S. workers the basic legal right of unionization — the right to bargain with employers on setting their wages, hours and working conditions.

But for all that time, two groups of our most highly exploited workers have been denied the law’s protections — farm workers, and housekeepers, nannies, and other domestic workers.

Congress should remedy the situation by amending the law to include the excluded workers. Which is the goal of a campaign – “Labor Justice” — that’s been launched by two veterans of United Farm Worker union campaigns, longtime UFW activist LeRoy Chatfield and former UFW attorney Jerry Cohen. They’ve already won the backing of labor, political, civil rights, academic, religious and community leaders and organizations in more than 30 states.

Chatfield and Cohen played key roles in passing the 1975 law that granted union rights to California’s farm workers. There have been drives to enact similar laws in other states, but none have even come close to passing. Neither have drives for state laws to grant union rights to domestic workers.

The need to extend the legal protections is obvious. Most farm workers’ pay is at or near the poverty level. They typically have few fringe benefits and very little legal protection from employer mistreatment.

Domestic workers, some of them self-employed, some of them employees of companies that hire them out, also generally earn little more than poverty-level pay and have few benefits. Most are women, who often are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Some have formed union-like organizations to seek better treatment, but need the force of law behind them.

The “Labor Justice” campaign leaders call the exclusion of farm workers and domestics from the protections of the Labor Relations Act “one of our nation’s last vestiges of slavery and segregation.”

Certainly the exclusion is at the least racist, since the vast majority of U.S. farm and domestic workers are Latino immigrants. In a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis urging the Obama administration to back the proposed expansion of the law, Cohen compared the exclusion of farm workers and domestics to the situation in racist South Africa under Apartheid. “Blacks,” Cohen noted, were specifically excluded from the protections of South Africa’s equivalent of the National Labor Relations Act.

It was racism, in fact, that kept farm workers and domestics from being granted the protection of the U,S. law originally, although it was a more subtle racism – a “sleight of hand,” as Cohen said.

At the time of the law’s introduction in 1935 as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, most farm workers and domestics were African-American. The segregationist Southern Democrats in Congress, an important part of FDR’s political base, absolutely refused to vote for a law that would grant African-American workers the same rights as white workers.

So, as presented to Congress by Roosevelt and as passed, the Labor Relations Act, the basic labor law of the land, specifically excluded from its legal protections “agricultural laborers” and anyone “in the domestic service of any family or person.”

But now, 74 years later, we finally have the opportunity to correct that shameful exclusion. Finally, we have the chance to provide every worker – every one of them – the vital right of unionization.

[Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist, has covered labor and political issues for a half-century as a print, broadcast and online reporter, editor and commentator. Contact him through his website.]

Source / Portside

Also see Key Leaders Endorse National Labor Justice Campaign by Randy Shaw / Beyond Chron / LA Progressive / April 14, 2009

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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Harvey Wasserman : Big Troubles for Big Nuke

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Nuclear reactor fiasco in Oikiluoto, Finland. Four years under construction; defects multiply and price tag keeps climbing. Photo by Henna Aaltonen / The International Herald Tribune.

The New York Times finally reports the economic disaster of new nukes

Despite the torrent of bad economic indicators, Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) continue to demand massive government funding for new reactor construction.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 29, 2009

In a devastating pair of financial reports that might be called “The Emperor Has No Pressure Vessel,” the New York Times has blazed new light on the catastrophic economics of atomic power.

The two Business Section specials cover the fiasco of new French construction at Okiluoto, Finland, and the virtual collapse of Atomic Energy of Canada. In a sane world they could comprise an epitaph for the “Peaceful Atom.” But they come simultaneous with Republican demands for up to $700 billion or more in new reactor construction.

The Times’s “In Finland, Nuclear Renaissance Runs Into Trouble” by James Kanter is a “cautionary tale” about the “most powerful reactor ever built” whose modular design “was supposed to make it faster and cheaper to build” as well as safer to operate.

But four years into a construction process that was scheduled to end about now, the plant’s $4.2 billion price tag has soared by 50% or more. Areva, the French government’s front group, won’t predict when the reactor will open. Finnish utilities have stopped trying to guess.

Finnish inspectors say Areva allowed “inexperienced subcontractors to drill holes in the wrong places on a vast steel container that seals the reactor.” The Finns have also cited Areva for “the attitude or lack of professional knowledge of some persons.”

Areva hopes to build similar reactors in the U.S. Its boosters have promised cheaper, cleaner, faster nuke construction with standardized designs like the one at Okiluoto. But “early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones a generation ago” whose price tags soared by 700% and more, and whose completion schedules ran into the decades.

Areva’s second “new generation” project at Flamanville, France, is also over budget and behind schedule. Cracks have turned up in critical steel and concrete components, along with revelations that critical work has been done by unqualified welders.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not approved the Areva design in use at Okiluoto and Flamanville. Four other designs under consideration are also mired in process. Some are still being altered. A post 9/11 issue is their ability to withstand a jet crash, which the 104 US reactors currently licensed to operate were not forced to consider.

The fiascos in Finland and Flamanville have thrown Areva into economic chaos now being mirrored at the Atomic Energy of Canada, Limited. Once touted as a global flagship, AECL sucked up 1.74 billion Canadian dollars in subsidies last year and has been a long-term money loser which the government has now announced it wants to sell.

AECL’s natural uranium/heavy water design has flopped in the world market. “Design issues” with its installed plants require heavy maintenance. AECL’s Chalk River research facility, which suffered a major accident in 1952 (in which former President Jimmy Carter served as a “jumper”) needs 7 billion Canadian dollars for clean-up work. Its 51-year-old medical isotope facility recently popped a major leak that may close it forever.

The Paris-based energy expert Mycle Schneider reports that of 45 reactors being built worldwide, 22 are behind schedule and nine have no official ignition schedules.

Despite the torrent of bad economic indicators, Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) continue to demand massive government funding for new reactor construction. Alexander says he wants the US to build as many as 100 new reactors here, even though the private sector won’t finance or insure them. The media is citing the idea as a $700 billion package, but in fact the project price of building new reactors is on the rise, and by some estimates has already exceeded $10 billion each. The Department of Energy has cited four finalists for $18.5 billion in loan guarantees voted in with the 2005 Bush Energy Plan. Florida and Georgia have raised rates to pre-pay proposed new reactors.

But Missouri has turned down a proposed rate hike for a new Areva project. And green activists have three times beaten proposed $50 billion federal loan guarantee packages to fund “new generation” construction. Grassroots battles are now raging to prevent the re-licensing of aging reactors like Vermont Yankee and New York’s Indian Point.

As Congress deals with a wide range of energy-related legislation, the nuclear industry is desperately grabbing for any federal money it can get. One bill after another has been floated with nuclear hand-outs hidden in various nooks and crannies.

As the comparative price of efficiency and renewables plummets, the window may be closing fast on the possibility of building new nukes in the US, raising the industry’s desparation level.

This battle will certainly rage for years to come. But the appearance of such brutally bad news from Finland and Canada in the Business Section of the New York Times bodes ill for an industry that, after fifty years, cannot get private funding or liability insurance, cannot deal with its wastes, and now cannot demonstrate the ability to produce new product anywhere near on time or budget.

At very least, Paul Joskow of MIT tells the Times, the rollout of new nukes may be “a good deal slower than a lot of people were assuming.”

[Harvey Wasserman is an author, a journalist, an educator, an activist, and a utopian thinker. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is available at solartopia.org. This article was also published by The Free Press.]

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Health Care Reform : Our Last Stand

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Health Care for America Now

This effort, in my opinion, represents our last stand to effectively combat the forces that would deny Americans decent health care merely to increase the profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical cartels.

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / May 28, 2009

As I watch the proposals for a national health program, and the well financed opposition in Congress, I am reminded of a warning sounded by Eric Hoffer in 1951. Hoffer wrote, and this surely applies to the increasing roar of the opposition, that

“Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts. No solid, tangible advantage can hold a following and make it zealous and loyal unto death. The leader has to be practical and a realist, yet must talk the language of the visionary and the idealist.”

The two most recent organizations created by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries — which they hope the American public will accept as bona fide entitles — are Patients United Now and Americans For Prosperity. These creations exemplify charlatanism at its finest; their appeal is to the naive and ill-informed. The really dirty stuff is just beginning.

I attended a local meeting of Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and would strongly suggest that all readers of The Rag Blog take advantage of the organization’s web site. This effort, in my opinion, represents our last stand to effectively combat the forces that would deny Americans decent health care merely to increase the profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical cartels. I entered this contest as a strong backer of single payer/universal health care as outlined by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP); however, as a pragmatist one must make concessions, as I did to Dr. Marc Stier, the energetic, intelligent, and dedicated leader of the Pennsylvania chapter of HCAN.

I continue to feel that single payer is the program of choice; however, the realities that we face in the United States Senate (we can almost visualize the wire transfers to Switzerland and Liechtenstein while we watch the Finance Committee prostrate itself before the insurance and pharmaceutical giants) alone illustrates the seeming futility of facing any significant legislation. The Lehigh Valley News has a thoughtful discussion of why single payer is in trouble in an article titled “Why Is Single Payer Care Off the Table” by Rev. Sandra L. Strauss, who is director of public advocacy for the Pennsylvania Council of Churches.

The HCAN meeting I attended convened with an eight person panel, including Dr. Stier. Brief — but the statements given by representatives of the two U.S. Senators, and our local Congress-lady rang hollow. There is, however, some encouraging news regarding Sen. Robert P. Casey of Pennsylvania. According to an article from The Hill, distributed by truthout, Sen. Casey, a member of the Senate Health care Committee, will follow Sen. Edward’s Kennedy’s lead. It also appears that Senators Durbin, Gillibrand, Harkin, Inouye, Kaufman, Levin, Merkley, Reed, Rockefeller, Schumer, Stabenow, Whitehouse, Webb, and Sanders are on board as well.

I would guess that there were 50-60 individuals present at the gathering. Some, including Dr. Stier, speaking to a generally well-informed audience, clarified the plans and intents of HCAN. There were several handouts; one was titled “A public Health Insurance Plan Option — What Is It?” This was concise and to the point; however, one clause gave me pause: “May hire insurance companies, where efficient and appropriate, to handle administrative functions such as paying claims.” Shades of “Medicare Advantage,” the Bush administration’s attempt, still ongoing, to privatize Medicare.

It was noted that HCAN is planning a march on Washington in June, and is hoping for 20-30,000 participants. This calls to mind a “march” some years ago, the “one million man march” which was organized, in essence, to prove the participants’ masculinity. This brings to mind a thought that occurred to me during the meeting: “Where ARE the uninsured; where are the folks that we are representing?” Will any of these people come to the June gathering in Washington? Which brings to mind more words of Eric Hoffer from The True Believer>:

“The poor on the borderline of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility. The goals are concrete and immediate. Every meal is a fulfillment; to go to sleep on a full stomach is a triumph; and every windfall a miracle. What need could they have for ‘an inspiring super-individual goal which would give meaning and dignity to their lives?’ They are immune to the appeal of a mass movement.”

I would suggest that all progressives, at this time of feelings of ambivalence regarding President Obama, review Hoffer’s thinking. To me he is more relevant than he was in 1951.

President Obama, speaking on C-SPAN on May 24, reportedly vowed that his health care plan will provide “basic coverage” to all Americans. He gave no specifics but repeated the mantra that his plan “will invest more in prevention and wellness programs” as including as a move to increase electronic data-keeping. Once again, a cop-out! The anxious mother with a feverish child wants a physician at the bedside and does not give a hoot about wellness programs. The husband, sitting in an intensive care unit with his wife in a diabetic coma, wants a competent endocrinologist in charge and does not give a tinker’s damn about electronic data keeping. “Basic coverage?”

Are we discussing something akin to Medicaid ? Medicaid, a half-way measure in the search of health car?. A fraud in many instances which provides “care” on paper but in the real world provides nothing in the way of first class medical attention.

To make the situation even more frightening, an AP story carried in the Erie Times News reports that “a major health insurer says that the government can save more than $500 billion in Medicare spending by sending patients to less expensive, more efficient doctors, reducing hospital visits by the elderly, and cutting down on unnecessary care.” The ‘health insurer’ consulted by some idiot in Washington is the United Health Group, the largest participant in the Bush administration’s “Medicare Advantage,” a company that pays its CEO some $30-plus million per year. Nowhere does the “consultant” suggest doing away with Medicare Advantage plans, which are draining the Medicare trust fund by billions of dollars per year. One wonders who the demented individual in Washington was that provoked this “consultation” which is rather akin to asking the Godfather to review the business practices of the family industries to which the Mafia sells protection. Not really a fair comparison since the Costa Nostra never had it as good as the United health Group.

The other concern regarding “basic coverage” is that it will require, by law (probably unconstitutional) that everyone purchase private insurance. Of course, the policies of the less fortunate will have something like a $5,000 yearly deductible, high co-insurance payments, and numerous exclusions. For instance, they will state that they will pay for “management of diabetes,” but in the very, very small print will exclude payment for “diabetic complications.” This all dovetails nicely with a report from the Philadelphia Inquirer that says that the cost of insurance from Independence Blue Cross, for a family of four, non-group subscribers, would rise from $1,069.15 per month to $1,634, a 52.8% increase. Of course, there are cheaper plans, but here again we find the large deductibles, the co-insurance, and the exclusions.

And as far as Blue Cross is concerned, these folks are politically active, as Paul Krugman points out in the May 22 New York Times (“The Blue Double Cross”). On the Monday following the White House photo-op, The Washington Post reported that Blue Cross of North Carolina was preparing a series of ads attacking a public option insurance. The insurance industry will not be satisfied with merely doing away with single payer/universal care, but will stoop to all manner of deceit to persuade the gullible public that a public option plan is not in its interest. Not only will our elected representatives receive baksheesh, but we will see contrived ads about how bad health care is in other countries, how freedom of choice will be disallowed by a public plan, and we will be told that the “government will choose your doctor” and that there will be waiting periods of weeks to obtain care, etc. All hogwash, lies, and misrepresentations.

Two final thoughts:

We who support health care for all must, as well, support The Employee Free choice Act. These programs, in my opinion, are joined at the hip. And, we must support the American College of Physicians PAC in its efforts 1) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable care; 2) to pilot test new Medicare payment models that realign incentives to support effective, efficient, patient-centered, coordinated care; 3) to improve Medicare fee for service payments to make primary care competitive with other specialties; and 4) to establish a national workforce policy to ensure sufficient numbers of primary care and other physicians.

Since we are writing from Erie, Pa., the site of ex-President Bush’s “coming-out” speech on June 17, we will try to keep you informed of an occasion that The Erie Times News, a good companion newspaper to the Washington Times or Greensburg Tribune, will turn into a memorable, earth shattering, event.

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

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New Abu Ghraib Photos Said to Depict Graphic Rape Scenes

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Previously released photo from Abu Ghraib prison. The new photos, many reportedly depicting sexual abuse, are said to be much worse. Photo from Telegraph, U.K.

Photographs which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

By Duncan Gardham and Paul Cruickshank / May 28, 2009

At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.

Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.

Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.

The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.

Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.

“I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.

“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”

In April, Mr Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favour of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.

Earlier this month, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”

It was thought the images were similar to those leaked five years ago, which showed naked and bloody prisoners being intimidated by dogs, dragged around on a leash, piled into a human pyramid and hooded and attached to wires.

Mr Obama seemed to reinforce that view by adding: “I want to emphasise that these photos that were requested in this case are not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib.”

The latest photographs relate to 400 cases of alleged abuse between 2001 and 2005 in Abu Ghraib and six other prisons. Mr Obama said the individuals involved had been “identified, and appropriate actions” taken.

Maj Gen Taguba’s internal inquiry into the abuse at Abu Ghraib, included sworn statements by 13 detainees, which, he said in the report, he found “credible based on the clarity of their statements and supporting evidence provided by other witnesses.”

Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

The translator was an American Egyptian who is now the subject of a civil court case in the US.

Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.

Source / Telegraph, U.K.

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Steve Russell, Indian : Advice to Myself at 14

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

I seldom got caught skipping school because the last place they would look for a truant was the public library. I read books by the shelf rather than by author or topic. It was a small library.

By Steve Russell / The Rag Blog / May 28, 2009

My usual contributions to Rag Blog are about foreign policy or economic policy, much like my contributions to The Rag were. I am a paid columnist for Indian Country Today, but my subjects there seldom cross paths with my subjects here even though my copyright agreement allows me to republish my columns if I choose.

This column is different from my usual ICT fare and I got so many emails from concerned parents and kids that I have become convinced it may resonate outside of Indian Country. In response to a question I’ve gotten here more than once: I’ve been an Indian all my life, born and raised in Indian Country, and I’ve never heard an Indian say “Native American” without smirking.

I usually write this column primarily for people who care about tribal government. This one is different. If you are currently an important person by conventional standards, you may want to skip this because I’m speaking to myself at age… oh, 14 or so, upward.

I know you because I was you, raised on Indian land currently occupied by white people. Raised by extended family rather than a mother and a father and not knowing anybody who finished high school.

Honestly, I had few encounters with white people who flat out did not like Indians. However, being known as who I was meant that I was destined to work with my hands, unless I could be an artist of some kind. The people who assumed that did not mean me any harm, but directing me to classes and activities for which I had no talent was not helpful.

I’ve heard people say they didn’t know they were poor. That’s the case unless somebody tells you, and plenty of people let me know. It did not take me long to figure out that most of the other kids did not have commodities and they lived in houses with light switches on the wall rather than a bulb dangling in the center of the room and several cords running away from that one connection so the wires were often hot to the touch.

There’s never any shortage of adults who want to tell you what to do, right? Do they still show you Indians in the textbooks that were either savage or stupid? I hope not. If so, I hope your folks give you stuff like the book I had about Will Rogers, an Indian who was smart and funny. They tell you your life is over if you can’t finish school, even though school is one teenage horror after another.

You might live with grandparents who have nothing except Social Security and a VA pension. You need to work. You are ashamed of being a burden. You see what you need to do. What could I possibly tell you?

Well kid, I’m about to retire from my second career as a university professor. My first one was state court judge. Since I got my school loans paid off, I’ve had a middle class life, the kind of life I used to think of as “rich.” My kids never missed a meal and never took charity. I drive a truck that starts, every time. My light switches are on the walls.

What they say about finishing school — that your life will be over if you drop out — is nonsense. I quit in the ninth grade and my only regret is that I didn’t quit sooner, but it is true that you must have an education, unless you are just incredibly talented. That is, the great Indian artist. If you are that, you probably know it by now.

It will probably be easier for you if you stay in school, but if you do, you need to know that your grades matter. If I had stayed in high school long enough to get a transcript, I probably would not have been able to talk my way into the University of Texas, because my grades were horrible.

If you are smart, you are interested in how the world works, and if the school won’t teach you the things you need you will have to teach yourself. Whether your schools work for you is something you probably understand better than the adults in your life. Since you are me, the schools are not working for you, so I have one word that will save your life: read.

I seldom got caught skipping school because the last place they would look for a truant was the public library. I read books by the shelf rather than by author or topic. It was a small library.

I delivered the Oklahoma City Oklahoman and Times and the Tulsa World and Tribune and I read every one of those suckers front to back every day. I did not understand at the time how awful they were because I had nothing to compare them with, but reading crap is better than not reading. Speaking of reading crap, my grandparents had a trunk full of old Reader’s Digests. I read them all, including the “condensed books” which are to books as condensed soup is to soup.

Starting then and continuing to this day, whenever I run across a word I don’t know, I either dog ear the page or make a note on a piece of paper I use for a book mark if I don’t own the book. Then I go back and look up all the words that I had not recognized.

When I got to the university, I knew more words than the high school graduates, although I often did not pronounce them correctly. While I thought Camus was pronounced “K-Moose” and Goethe was pronounced “Goth” and that embarrassed me, being familiar with their ideas was more important. Besides, looking back on it, being made fun of was a handy reminder not to forget my origins.

Read everything. Even stuff you do not yet understand. If you manage that, other survival skills will come to you. Some that came to me were looking up the publications of professors, going to the bookstore to see the assigned books in advance and trying to get more than one class with the same books (that had to do with money, but it turned out to be a useful learning tool as well), knowing when to drop a class and when to bear down.

I also used stuff I already knew: stuffing newspapers in shoes with holes, pocketing untouched dinner rolls off the rich kids’ plates in the cafeteria, using an older edition out of the library when I could not afford textbooks.

You may need to quit school to work. That does not mean you have to give up your education. Lots of folks still think Indians and people from the boondocks are stupid. You and I know better. Don’t listen to them. The future is waiting for you. Go grab it by the scruff of the neck.

[Steve Russell, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, is a Texas trial court judge by assignment and an associate professor of criminal justice at Indiana University. He is a columnist for Indian Country Today, where an earlier version of this article appeared. Steve wrote for Austin’s The Rag in the Sixties and seventies and is a regular contributor to The Rag Blog. He lives in Bloomington and can be reached at swrussel@indiana.edu.]

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Mancow on Waterboarding : ‘I Would Have Said Anything to Make it Stop’

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Mancow on Olbermann. Below, waterboard denier Sean Hannity. Photo by Douglas C. Pizac / AP.

Mancow: Hannity called me after I was waterboarded and said, ‘It’s still not Torture’

By Satyam Khanna / May 27, 2009

With Keith Olbermann Video.

Last month, Fox News’s Sean Hannity claimed he would agree to be waterboarded “for charity…for the troops’s families.” Since then, multiple pundits have challenged Hannity to undergo the torture tactic, yet he has been unusually silent on the subject of waterboarding since.

Last week, right-wing radio host Erich “Mancow” Muller stepped up to the plate and had himself waterboarded to prove that it isn’t torture. Immediately afterwards, Mancow admitted that it was “absolutely torture” and was “way worse” than he expected.

Yesterday, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann interviewed Mancow about his experience under the bucket. “I would have said anything to make it stop,” Mancow said, further confirming that torture does not produce reliable intelligence. “I don’t think drowning is harsh enough. … This is worse. This isn’t gulping for air. This is your brain is shut off.” Mancow said that despite the “horrific” event, Hannity called him afterwards to insist that waterboarding still isn’t torture:

MANCOW: First of all, Sean Hannity called me and said, “It’s still not torture.” I said, “Sean” — he is a friend of mine — “it is torture.” All right. But, look, you are giving 10,000 dollars to the Veterans of Valor.org. So I think you are stand-up guy for doing that.

“I felt the effects for two days. I had chest pains. I told my wife — I have two little kids. We prayed. I said, dear God, help me. I had chest pains. I was so stressed out by this,” Mancow said. Watch it:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Time and again, those who have dared to undergo waterboarding have said it is torture. Mancow, who initially scoffed at the tactic, explained to Olbermann: “Look, I see the video…the sprinkling of the water, big deal. … I was laughing at it. I was willing to prove and ready to prove that this was a joke. And I was wrong.”

Mancow laughed at waterboarding until he tried it himself. Hannity’s fact-free claim that waterboarding is “not torture” might carry more weight if he displayed the courage of Mancow.

Source / Think Progress

Also see Talk Show Host Waterboarded : ‘It Was Instantaneous… Absolutely Torture’ by John Byrne / The Rag Blog / May 22, 2009

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Great Britain : Extensive Camera Network Ups Police State Ante

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo from Getty Images.

The BBC says the massive tracking database will be up and fully functional in a matter of months.

By Stephen C. Webster / May 25, 2009

See BBC Video, Below.

The British government will soon have a fully-operational network of cameras fitted with license plate recognition software, according to a published report.

In a major first for any Western government’s police enforcement apparatus, the new system will allow any vehicle in the United Kingdom to be tracked to its precise location.

Excerpts from the BBC:

A number of local councils are signing up their Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems to the ANPR network. As long as the cameras are technically good enough, they can be adapted to take the software.

[….]

John Dean, who is co-ordinating the ANPR network for the Association of Chief Police Officers, said: “It’s the finest intelligence-led policing tool we’ve got.

“It covers so many different areas from crime reduction, crime detection to road safety and everything in between.”

The British news service also details the case of John Catt, who’s already had a rather unpleasant run-in with Britain’s Big Brother.

John Catt found himself on the wrong side of the ANPR system. He regularly attends anti-war demonstrations outside a factory in Brighton, his home town.

It was at one of these protests that Sussex police put a “marker” on his car. That meant he was added to a “hotlist”.”

This is a system meant for criminals but John Catt has not been convicted of anything and on a trip to London, the pensioner found himself pulled over by an anti-terror unit.

‘I was threatened under the Terrorist Act. I had to answer every question they put to me, and if there were any questions I would refuse to answer, I would be arrested. I thought to myself, what kind of world are we living in?’

Quite an apt question, wouldn’t you say? The BBC says the massive tracking database will be up and fully functional in a matter of months.

Do not be surprised when this software makes its way to the United States. It’s only a matter of time.

Source / The Raw Story

BBC: Camera grid to log license plates

Thanks to Richard Bowden / The Rag Blog

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Harvey Wasserman : The Eight Green Steps to Solartopia

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Pete Seeger sings Solartopia. Download here.

Solartopia is diverse, sustainable, and socially just, the necessary, possible vision of a civilization in which we can all survive and thrive.

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

Includes Video of ‘From Ecotopia to Solartopia — A Visionary Conversation’ with Ernest Callenbach.

The noble vision of a Solartopian green-powered Earth is at last upon us.

Our eco-future is defined by the four Great Green Truths: we have a global crisis, it has a solution, the solution is winnable, and winning requires a “middle path” of action that is both non-violent and non-stop.

There are technological solutions to the crisis, but they demand political action. Together they comprise the Eight Green Steps to a sustainable world:

1. Ban waste and war: Nothing may be produced that cannot be fully recycled or that will not completely bio-degrade. This includes weapons whose sole purpose is death and destruction, and whose manufacture and use must be ended by a global community that knows war to be the ultimate act of ecological suicide.

2. Maximize efficiency and conservation: From energy to building materials, food to fiber, water to paper, our resources must be preserved. Our unsustainable consumption and wasteful industries must be made appropriate and efficient, starting with a reborn mass transit system and complete preservation of all remaining virgin land and waters.

3. Transcend fossil/nuke: King CONG (Coal, Oil, Nukes & Gas) must take its place in the compost heap of history. Our addiction to filthy, finite fossil/nuclear fuels has led us to the brink of economic and ecological collapse. In the new green millennium, we either kick the habit, or it kills us.

4. Convert to renewables: Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, wave, current, sustainable bio-fuels and their green siblings are proven, profitable and have time on their side. Each has its imperfections, and no single source will dominate. But union-made renewables sing in economic and ecological harmony, and are the ultimate job-creators.

5. Go organic: Factory farming, genetically modified crops and chemical pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers are unsustainable. Diverse, community-scaled, reliably organic agriculture is the key to a future fed by food that’s fit to eat.

6. Transform the corporation: Our most powerful — and destructive — institution claims human rights without human responsibilities. Corporate charters must require social service, ecological accountability and establish a barrier between capitalism and cannibalism. “Green” corporations whose legal mandate still remains limited to accumulating profits will make a mess of the planet as surely as all those that have come before.

7. Assure social democracy: Universal hand-counted (recycled) paper ballots and curbs on the power of money to sway elections are the essence of global democracy, as is the demand for social justice. Until all humans are assured the basics of life — food, shelter, clothing, health care, education — democracy and freedom are shallow illusions.

8. Empower women/control population: Where enfranchised, educated, fairly paid and in control of their own bodies, the natural union of women with Mother Earth brings us the children She wishes to support. On a healthy planet, birth rates find their natural level when all children are loved and wanted, which is where Solartopia starts.

This list follows the form of Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths and Eight-Fold Path to Enlightenment. But all religions at their core call for universal harmony between people and the planet.

Solartopia is diverse, sustainable, and socially just, the necessary, possible vision of a civilization in which we can all survive and thrive.

See you there!

[Harvey Wasserman is an author, a journalist, an educator, an activist, and a utopian thinker. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is available at solartopia.org.]

From Ecotopia to Solartopia — A Visionary Conversation

Ernest Callenbach (Ecotopia, 1975) and Harvey Wasserman (Solartopia, 2007) discuss the role of the visionary novelist in opening public discourse to “outside the box” possibiltiies. They look at the many elements of Callenbach’s Ecotopian vision that have actually come into being (and some that haven’t yet) and explore the catalytic power of realistic hope to shape the present and the future. They agree the time has come to democratically enlarge our vision of sustainable society from local, national and regional spheres to the planetary context. For more info about Ernest Callenbach, go here.

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California Supremes on Prop. 8 : The Return of Separate But Equal

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Demonstrators placed signs on a statue of Lincoln in front of San Francisco City Hall on May 26, 2009, after the California Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8. Photo by Paul Sakuma.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination.

By Jeff Jones / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — Yesterday’s California Supreme Court decision to uphold Proposition 8 created a bizarre post-modern version of “separate but equal” with three separate water fountains to drink from.

First, the court ruled that California’s Constitution officially reserves the designation of the term “marriage” for opposite-sex couples. Second, the court ruled that despite restricting the word “marriage” to opposite-sex couples, the 18,000 same-sex couples who got married before the passage of Proposition 8 remain officially “married” and their marriages are legally recognized by the state.

Finally, the Court claimed that same-sex couples have the same rights as opposite sex couples: supposedly, we have the right to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship (translation: civil union) that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage.”

At the center of this controversy is the first paragraph of California’s State Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal rights. So let me state the obvious by paraphrasing Gertrude Stein: equality is equality is equality is equality.

In yesterday’s bizarre ruling, the California Supreme Court codified three different sets of rules for three different types of supposedly “equal” citizens: all non-LGBT people have the right to get married; some LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals have this right; most do not. Chief Justice Ronald M. George said the measure “carves out a narrow and limited exception” to the citizens’ constitutional rights but leaves undisturbed “all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s (rights).”

But how can this ruling meet the constitutional guarantee of equality if some queers can be legally married while the rest are legally prohibited from doing the very same thing? In essence, the ruling implies that words have no meaning; ”marriage,” apparently, is essentially symbolic.

But such thinking is patently absurd: as any LGBT individual knows, the state and federal governments use legal definitions of marriage to determine eligibility for numerous rights and benefits including sick leave, tax breaks, prison visitation rights, property, health benefits, adoption, social security benefits etc. As an article in today’s New York Times pointed out, the Supreme Court’s tortured logic is like telling black people that sitting in the back of the bus is not important, as long as the front and the back of the bus arrive at its destination at the same time.

In reality, the point of the Court’s muddled ruling is to legally justify homophobic discrimination. As the lone dissenter — Justice Carlos Moreno — wrote: “Proposition 8 strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and “places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities.”

Also see The Laudable Dissenting Opinion in Today’s California Court Decision by Rieux / Daily Kos / May 26, 2009

And read Justice Moreno’s dissent here.

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Lisa Sánchez González on the Sotomayor Nomination : Fighting my Inner Cynic

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Barack Obama introduces his Supreme Court nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, a Boricua from the South Bronx. Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP.

Obama nominates a Boricua from the South Bronx:
A tease or a real slice of hope?

By Lisa Sánchez González / The Rag Blog / May 27, 2009

When news broke last month that a Boricua from the South Bronx, a woman, was being considered for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, I bet a Native American co-worker a box of pencils that she’d never get the seat.

Then yesterday, President Obama announced that 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor had, in fact, received the nomination.

After I fainted, picked myself up off the floor, and brushed myself off, I began to ponder what had fed my inner cynic (which I generally keep under lock and key) so much defeatism that the very idea of a Boricua woman becoming a Supreme Court justice sounded to me like, well, the sci-fi version of a Horatio Alger novel (emphasis on the sci-fi). Why did it seem so wildly surreal — even extraterrestrial — to me that, through dint of hard work, talent, her family’s support, sacrifice (and a little luck), a woman like Sotomayor, no matter how qualified, could ever be nominated by a President to serve on something as sacrosanct as the Supreme Court?

Maybe it’s because I’m so used to hearing people in decision -making or -influencing positions dismiss the credentials of highly qualified Latinas just because they can (and because so few protest when they do), that I doubted there was any hope that, even if God were to descend to announce His support for a puertorriqueña Supreme Court Justice, she’d have any better than a 50/50 chance of getting considered on her own merit. That is, of course, presuming that she’s a moderate conservative, a centrist, a liberal, or (eek!) an actually existing leftist. We all know that, at least for the past decade or so, the political fast-track to celebrity for an ultra-conservative Latina with more ambition than intellect (or any other qualification) is a yellow brick road paved by the Heritage Foundation (am I the only blogger old enough to remember Linda Chaves?).

My inner cynic has been well fed for weeks now too in the blogosphere, which has been littered with sensationalist commentaries, slathered in both overt and thinly veiled bigotry, about Sonia Sotomayor: “She’s a bully!” “She’s not really that smart!” and other drivel that suggests it might be ok, in public evaluation of a potential Supreme Court Justice (who, mind you, currently holds a seat on a Circuit Court, i.e. belongs to the nation’s second-highest judicial echelon), to revert to the name-calling used on elementary school playgrounds. Did the criticism of any of the others on the widely publicized short list take on such a condescending and infantilizing tone? (If it did, I didn’t see it.)

My inner cynic got enough sustenance that it escaped its shackles and started running loose as a snarky post-atomic Gila monster. Now it is nibbling on the mainstream media, especially their inability to make sense of why this nomination is so historic. The coverage — which is so far all about reading Sotomayor’s nomination as a leftist coup, and which is equally disinterested in what President Obama himself described as her “sterling” qualifications — completely ignores, for example, what this nomination means in the historical context of U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico, or the long history of violent and peaceful struggle against that colonial relationship, or the mass migration of Sotomayor’s parents’ generation to the states that was engineered by U.S. maldevelopment policies, or the history of the South Bronx as a Boricua ghetto, not to mention the enormous odds (plug in any quality of life stat) that her success story means she overcame.

Obviously, we don’t expect anything but shoddy faux journalism from the far right. But will Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann — the supposed rugged left of the lefty prime time media — care enough to do their homework and get it right?

Probably not, which is a shame. Or maybe that’s the Gila monster talking.

The sad thing is, my many years of striving in another sacrosanct American institution — academia — have often fueled my cynicism. I’m a Boricua scholar whose parents were born and raised in the South Bronx. They worked heroically, like Celina Sotomayor (Sonia’s mom), to give their children a better start in life than they had had. Yet too often I’ve found that, in my career, the proverbial glass ceiling looks more like a steel door viewed from a vipers’ pit (with walls paved in wet limestone).

But now, thanks to President Obama, I have to rethink all this; I need to come to terms with the fact that I’ve been force-fed a big dose of hope.

I have to admit, it tastes good. Obviously, I’m not re-caging the Gila until the confirmation hearing is over in the Senate, and I’ll be keeping close watch on the coverage until then. But — dare I say it aloud? — I really really hope I owe someone a box of pencils come fall semester.

Lisa Sánchez González is the author of Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora. Read her blog here: http://holamisu.blogspot.com/.

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