Even Genghis Kahn Knew Torture Doesn’t Work

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Genghis Kahn. Art from Chinese Culture / Brooklyn College.

Torture and the complicity of the physician

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / April 27, 2009

Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to Thomas Cooper in 1823: “Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye.”

There is an old adage that “young men have visions and old men dream dreams.” As a physician I have felt dirty, I have felt violated, by the fact that physicians were involved in the vile practices that my country has carried out at our detention facilities at Guantanamo. We, a profession dedicated to healing, to alleviate suffering, were overtly complicit in causing pain and suffering to other human beings that might — and I emphasize “might” — have been involved in doing harm to other human beings.

To compound the insult the administration seemingly has forgotten the Nuremberg trials and the so-called “Nuremberg Defense” (“I was ordered to do it”). Quite a few German subordinates went to the gallows or to prison because the tribunal at Nuremberg felt that this defense was without merit. The entirety of this hypocrisy is reviewed by Ray McGovern in an April 23 article in Common Dreams.

On television program after television program we are informed of the “complexities” of the problem. What is “torture,” what is “enforced interrogation?” That is the same as asking, “Did he have ‘sex’ or did he have ‘intercourse?’” Hours are spent parsing words, playing semantic games, trying to confuse the uninformed public. I watch this foolishness, this propaganda , and ask myself, “How did colleagues of mine become involved in this vile, immoral, unethical, endeavor?” This is naive on my part, as I have read, with much soul searching, Dr. Robert Jay Lifton’s horrifying book “The Nazi Doctors.” One would hope that anyone interested in the controversy currently with us would take time to read Dr. Lifton’s book. Are American physicians any more or less sophisticated than were our German colleagues?

We have the word of many interrogation experts — from the CIA, FBI, army, navy, air force — that information is much more easily obtained by civil means than by resorting to humiliation and pain. This was even apparent to Genghis Khan who forbade torture of his prisoners. Granted Khan was a brutal warrior, a master of the battlefield; however, once he had conquered he had the foresight to run a generally benevolent administration, with personal and religious freedom.

The classic example of the futility of torture in historical context reverts to the ongoing torture of Jacques de Molay in 1314. When the treasury of King Phillip IV of France ran dry, his advisers suggested that he destroy the order of The Knights Templar and take for himself the suspected considerable treasure that they had accumulated. Hence, with the approval of Pope Clement V, he undertook the task of arresting, executing and exiling many of the members. There are many historical variations, theories, of detail; hence, we will not try and resolve these problems. However, one thing is sure: de Molay, the Grand Master, was tortured for many days, being nailed to his wooden cell door with nails through his hands; he was beaten, burned, and humiliated, but he never broke (if, indeed, he was even aware of the treasure’s existence). He went to the pyre without giving any information to Phillip. The classic tale has him cursing Phillip and Clement from the pyre, invoking their deaths — and both died within the year.

There are more recent examples such as the Gestapo torture of the French Resistance members, whom they alluded to as “terrorists,” with dental drills and pincers, or the classical Chinese “death of 1000 cuts.” One may refer to the Philippine Insurrection, after the Spanish American War. Little appears in U.S. History books regarding that event, but it lasted some years, destroyed thousands of lives, primarily among the natives, and produced the concept of waterboarding.

Largely as a result of Nuremberg the international community enacted an international ban on torture and emphasized it in the Geneva Convention. The nations of the civilized world adhered to the premise until George W. Bush, almost immediately after taking office, and long before 9/11, decreed that the United States would not be a member of the International Criminal Court. At the time I wondered why, but after the misinformation about 9/11 and subsequent events it became crystal clear. Now we can pride ourselves in joining Pol Pot and Idi Amin, in violating these concepts.

Should we be surprised at the developments? Not those of us aware of the plans and programs which came about as a result of the “brainwashing” of our troops during the Korean War. One can turn to the research done at McGill University under the auspices of clandestine departments of the U.S. government. It is these methods that are now applied to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. In the 1950s a Montreal doctor was funded to perform bazaar experiments on his psychiatric patients, keeping them asleep and in isolation for weeks, then administering huge doses of electroshock and experimental drug cocktails, including the psychedelic LSD and the hallucinogenic PCP, commonly known as angel dust.

This story is detailed in all of its horror in the initial chapter of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine. I will quote one paragraph:

“In 1988 The New York Times ran a groundbreaking investigation into U.S. involvement in torture and assassinations in Honduras. Florencio Caballero, an interrogator with Honduras’s brutal Battalion 3-16, told The Times, that he and twenty-four of his colleagues were taken to Texas and trained by the CIA. ‘They taught us psychological methods — to study the fears and weaknesses of a prisoner. Make him stand up, don’t let him sleep, keep him naked and isolated, put rats and cockroaches in his cell, give him bad food, serve him dead animals, throw cold water on him, change the temperature.’”

This was part of a program funded by the U.S. government consisting of a decade of research in the 1950s, costing $25 million, involving 80 institutions, seeking to find new ways to break prisoners suspected of being Communists and double agents. It was first code-named Project Bluebird, then Project Artichoke, and finally renamed MKUltra. Interestingly most of the paperwork has vanished from official archives.

I took the Hippocratic Oath in 1943 and did my best over many years to adhere to its tenants. When I know that colleagues of mine were involved in the inhumanities at Guantanamo, I feel revulsion. Several certified psychologists were involved, early on, in the interrogations and their names have become part of the public record. I would hope that the leaders in the field of medical ethics would choose to speak up regarding the physicians involved even though the revelations are cloaked in the excuse, “They were merely following orders.” I would suggest that we as professionals in the future not co-mingle with the degenerates who achieve pride in becoming the torturer.

Finally, we are indoctrinated to believe that harsh methods are needed in case, for instance, that an atomic device has been placed in an American city and a suspect taken into custody. Is torture permissible in that instance? Can anyone imagine a terrorist group, aware of this possibility, choosing a trigger man who would break under torture? Come on, if these folks will put on explosive belts, to maim and kill themselves and others, they would select a perpetrator with care and be assured that, in deference to Allah, he would not give way to earthly pain and suffering.

[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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Bridging the Gap : US Sponsors Forum on Che

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“Guerrillero Heróico.” This iconic photograph of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda is said to be the most reproduced of all time. Image from artdaily.org.

The forum was a creative way to reach out to the Argentines (and other Latin Americans) and try to repair the bad feelings the Bush administration had created there.

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / April 27, 2009

This is a perfect example of the difference between the Obama administration and the Bush administration. The Bush administration viewed the world in a very simplistic and unrealistic way. The world was divided into good and evil. There was no in-between. The good were composed of those people and countries who approved of the United States and agreed with our policies. Everything else was evil.

The Obama administration has a much more complicated view of the world. President Obama understands that just because a country acts in its own best interests rather than how the U.S. wanted, it does not necessarily mean that country is an enemy. Obama has decided to reach out to these countries on their own terms.

Last Friday, at the 35th International Book Fair in Buenos Aires, the United States sponsored and funded a forum on the revolutionary Che Guevara (who was from Argentina). Guevara was Fidel Castro’s trusted right-hand in the Cuban Revolution, who dedicated his life to fighting for the poor and oppressed people of the Americas.

The forum featured two readings and a discussion about a new book on the iconic power of Che Guevara. It was attended by dozens of people, including local elementary school students.

The current administration is smart enough to realize that while many in the United States don’t like Che Guevara, he is considered to be a hero in most of Latin America. The forum was a creative way to reach out to the Argentines (and other Latin Americans) and try to repair the bad feelings the Bush administration had created there.

This forum certainly won’t hurt our efforts to bridge the political gap with Cuba either.

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

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Pete Seeger and our Progressive Culture

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen sing “This Land is Your Land” at the Barack Obama inaugural celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., Jan.18, 2009. Photo by Mandel Ngan / AFP / Getty Images.

The culture provides a way for people in all different places, engaged in all different parts of the mass movement, to experience a common sense of themselves and what they share with others.

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / April 26, 2009

Social movements are defined in several ways; their leadership, their membership, their vision, their strategies, their resources, and their successes and failures. We often forget, however, that each of these elements are woven together by a culture. This culture can be poetic, dramatic, pictorial, or musical, or some of each. The culture provides a way for people in all different places, engaged in all different parts of the mass movement, to experience a common sense of themselves and what they share with others. It may be the case that a movement without a culture is a movement without a sense of vision, of shared purpose, of passion.

It is these thoughts that come to mind this week as we gear up to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger, a man who has brought song to our hearts and minds for 70 years. Pete and those musicians who were inspired by him helped influence many of us to join the great twentieth century movements for social change: labor, civil rights, feminist, ecology. It was through his practice, getting sometimes thousands of fans to sing together in unison about building a better world, that people learned that working together is how change occurs.

And when progressives look back at the twentieth century and see a very mixed record of successes and failures, glorious victories and tragic defeats, it is the culture that reminds people of the nobility of the goals that social movements pursued and what still needs to be achieved. And no greater symbol of redemption of twentieth century progressive movements and cultures was evidenced than Pete’s leading 500,000 people in front of the Lincoln Memorial two days before the inauguration of President Barack Obama in singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” Pete included the verses that delegitimized private property and celebrated the continued struggle for fundamental social change.

That performance reminded older people of the fundamental justice of the old movements and the need to create new movements with new cultures in the 21st century. Vital to that brief sing out also was the message that the old political culture should not be forgotten even as new politics and culture is created. The old and the new are like links in a chain.

Let’s all celebrate the life and work of Pete Seeger as he turns 90 and celebrate ourselves as well.

A few additional words:

Paul Robeson:

Continued study and research into the origins of the folk music of various peoples in many parts of the world revealed that there is a world body — a universal body — of folk music based upon a universal pentatonic [five tone] scale. Interested as I am in the universality of [hu]mankind-in the fundamental relationship of all peoples to one another-this idea of a universal body of music intrigued me, and I pursued it along many fascinating paths.

Woody Guthrie:

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim. Too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. . .

Pete Seeger:

Imagine a big see-saw, with a basketful of rocks sitting on one end. That end is down on the ground. At the other end, up in the air, is a basket half full of sand. Some of us are trying to fill it, using teaspoons. Most folks laugh at us: “Don’t you know the sand is leaking out even as you put it in?” We say that’s true, but we’re getting more people with more teaspoons all the time. One of these days that basket of sand will be full and you’ll see this whole see-saw just tip the opposite way. People will say, “Gee how did it happen so suddenly?” Us, and our goddam teaspoons.

[Harry Tarq is a professor in American Studies who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical.]

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The Republican Strategy Going Forward

Posted on April 27, 2009 by RagBlog

Cartoon by Charlie Loving / The Rag Blog

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Conspiracism, Right Wing Populism and Alex Jones

Posted on April 26, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Art by Andy B. Clarkson / Kenny’s Sideshow

The following column by John Zorabedian on the mushrooming and quite frightening growth of “conspiracism” was passed along to us by Carl Davidson. It was first published on Examiner.com on April 11, 2009. After that, we post a related feature by Zorabedian, from April 9, 2009, on Austin conspiracy meister Alex Jones, that is followed by some vitriolic reactions from Jones fans — and then a video trailer of Alex Jones’ film, “The Obama Deception.”

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / April 26, 2009

‘The conspiracy theorists, notably radio host and filmmaker Alex Jones, propose that President Obama is the frontman for a shadowy group of financiers who are pulling the strings, preparing to enslave the population through domestic surveillance and military-style policing, in the name of protecting their global empire — a New World Order.’

By John Zorabedian / April 11, 2009

See ‘Alex Jones exploits fear and populism, stokes paranoia and rage,’ By John Zorabedian, and a Video trailer from ‘The Obama Deception‘ by Alex Jones, Below.

Populist sentiment has reached feverish levels in recent months, as the economy melted down and the culprits, Wall Street bankers, walked away with millions in bonuses. The response to the global financial crisis has only added fuel to the fire, raising fears of one world government among a subculture of conspiracists and right-wing populists.

The conspiracy theorists, notably radio host and filmmaker Alex Jones, propose that President Obama is the frontman for a shadowy group of financiers who are pulling the strings, preparing to enslave the population through domestic surveillance and military-style policing, in the name of protecting their global empire — a New World Order.

But although Jones claims in his film The Obama Deception that the new president has long been groomed for his role as demagogue and enforcer of the new regime, the consiracy theory has had a long life of its own. Obama is a convenient vessel for their beliefs about our government.

The conspiracist, who is a believer in secret plots by select elites, oftentimes Jews, is a political type that has a long tradition in the United States. According to Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a think tank that studies right-wing social movements, conspiracism “is woven deeply into US culture and the process appears not just on the political right but in center and left constituencies as well.”

Berlet’s research underscores the importance of underlying emotions among the population — the scapegoating of minorities and fears of social and economic unrest — for conspiracy theories to take hold in the popular imagination. What adds to a conspiracy’s appeal is the apparent basis in fact of many of the conspiracists assertions.

The conspiracist “makes irrational leaps of logic in analyzing factual evidence in order to ‘prove’ connections, blames social conflicts on demonized scapegoats, and constructs a closed metaphysical worldview that is highly resistant to criticism,” Berlet explains.

For an example of how Jones’s websites distort facts to make these conspiracy theories seem like valid arguments, see my post Infowars.com claims Obama uses “mind control,” scientists say hogwash.

What makes these theories and fears so compelling to so many people is what also makes them dangerous to a rational society and potentially leads to violence. Berlet writes: “When conspiracist scapegoating occurs, the results can devastate a society, disrupting rational political discourse and creating targets who are harassed and even murdered.”

Mass movements

Something else, though, is stirring in our political discourse that resembles a mass movement. It consist of disaffected conservatives, many of whom feel abondoned by the Republican Party, some loyal to Rep. Ron Paul, others devoted followers of right-wing talk hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and others devoted to “nonpartisans” like Alex Jones.

Through meet-ups and social networking around events like the Tax Day Tea Parties being organized around the country, these groups, with members who, in some cases, share the worldview of the conspiracists and doomsday Rapturists, are forming a mass movement similar in its base of support to the militia movement of the 1990s.

Mass movements have also produced many positive, progressive changes in our society — the civil rights movement, to name just one. But mass movements also attract and give force to people whose normally antisocial tendencies produce something more fanatical and driven overall by hatred and fear.

The social theorist Eric Hoffer, in his 1951 book “The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements,” explains that the fanatic joins a mass movement to escape his own inadequacy and frustration. Through hatred of outsiders, secret elites, minorites, Jews and one’s own failures, a mass movement coalesces.

Hoffer writes: “[T]he chief preoccupation of an active mass movement is to instill in its followers a facility for united action and self-sacrifice … by stripping each human entity of its distinctness and autonomy and turning it into an an anonymous particle with no will and no judgment of its own.”

The movement is not only unified in its drive and purpose, but it is homogenous in its convictions and intolerant of dissent or criticism of itself or its leaders.

Source / Examiner.com / Posted April 11, 2009

Conspiracy freak/radio personality Alex Jones.

Alex Jones exploits fear and populism, stokes paranoia and rage

By John Zorabedian / April 9, 2009

Radio host Alex Jones has one thing in common with his nemesis President Barack Obama; both men are masters of viral web 2.0 propaganda. Jones’s documentary-style film The Obama Deception has burned up the internet since it dropped on March 15, and no one can tell how many millions will see the video as it spreads by email and blogs across the globe.

Jones’s popularity among followers of his websites is undisputable, and he has spawned an army of attackers who fan out across the web and push his line, much like Obama’s supporters did during his long campaign for the presidency.

Jones’s PrisonPlanet.com and related websites like Infowars.com post articles, blogs and videos for the media consuming public. These popular sites inspire mimickers who defend Jones and his theories to the hilt.

What exactly is the content of this message that inspires such ardent followers? For both President Obama and Jones, it is some kind of combined effect of their sheer media presence that is almost unidentifiable by the pieces of their media works alone. But some examples will help paint a picture.

The trailer for The Obama Deception shown below shows us how the tone of Jones’s voice gives weight to his words. When combined with crafty imagery, music and spliced together clips of video, Jones builds up extraordinary tension.

Watching this effective piece of filmmaking, it is hard not to have an emotional response–is it fear, hatred, anger, sadness, anxiety that we feel?

Jones’s style is not unlike right-wing tlak show hosts Rush Limbaugh or
Glenn Beck, who exploit similar emotions in their appeals to traditional values and outrage over moral failures. But Jones is not a conservative, and he does another thing well that resembles Obama’s success as well–he plays both sides of the debate to get everyone thinking the same thing.

Jones uses the film to rail against Wall Street, global finance and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to get everyone agreeing with something–things are really bad and the world is a terrible, dangerous place ruled by horrible men.

In this construct, President Obama is the perfect lynchpin to set off a firestorm of righteous, fearful anger. A black man from Chicago with a Muslim name and a Harvard Law degree, who came from nowhere to win the presidency in a year of chaotic disorde rin the financial markets, a new president who has had to rapidly acclimate himself and insinuate himself into the small cadre of powerful people who are running the show.

Obama’s European and Middle Eastern trip, like his last trip abroad, have had a dual effect. His supporters believe in him thoroughly, and his detractors find cause to dislike his every move.

Update: My humble effort to point out how Jones inspires fear and rage among his supporters spurred a torrent of comments from Jones fans, directed to this article by message boards on Infowars.com.

Rather than refute their claims to the contrary, I invite you to read their comments and assess the nature of their rhetoric and purpose of their comments for yourself.

Here are a few of the choicest ones (I have added emphasis where I believe it is useful):

TdoubleU says:
What you wrote about Alex will exploit fear populism, stokes of paranoia and rage towards you!
April 11, 2:08 PM

Pedro says:
I wish Alex Jones didnt have the job he has But unfortunately for us The globalist are Indeed Taking over and His network is tip of the Spear To kill this diabolical scum taking over.
April 10, 10:19 PM

Sovereignty Soldier says:
Are we fuming? Hell yeah. We are being forced into world government, we are being forced to lower our standard of living, we are being brainwashed from birth with propaganda. What the hell do you think we should feel. What am I supposed to leave my daughter? A world of slavery to pay debt to crooked bankers? Socialism? How about a world of eugenicists trying to kill her or sterilize her? What the hell is wrong with you journalists? Don’t you realize your gonna be victimized too. You are being used until no longer needed, then your a useless eater like us.
April 10, 9:39 PM

Sovereignty Soldier says:
Wow, alot of my fellow Americans are awake here. Good! RIP corporate media, go away, we hate you and your lies. Can you feel anger and hate directed to you. Independent and foreign press is the wave of the future. Hope you lose your “journalism” job, your home, and your ability to feed yourself you globalist traitor!
April 10, 5:47 PM

fukyu says:
it amazes me this guy was ignorant enough to say alex promotes fear and rage when the rage comes from the acts of our so called “president” and the fear that we all feel comes from the direction this country has gone in the last 9 years. and to top it all off this guy brings up the fact that our president is supposedly black(for all u idiots out there hes only 6.3% black,50% white n 43.7% muslim if u dont believe it do his geneology) and “he came out of nowhere”….you mean nowhere like being groomed for his position by kissinger for the last 20+ years……..i was just as happy everyone else was when america was actually able to elect what the people thought was an african american president…but then come to find out he is neither african nor american leaves a pretty bitter taste……alex jones always promotes peaceful solutions…journalists should do actual research before spouting defamatory statements…….oh wait i forgot you’re not a journalist,you’re a propagandist………..so i guess the NWO doesnt exist when they are announcing it all over the main stream media, WTC building 7 collapsed due to a fire on several floors when the 50+ story tower in beijing which was completely engulfed in flames didnt, and 12.8 trillion dollars was not funneled out of the economy into off shore banks(make sure u tell bloomberg….or does bloomberg not exist either)
April 10, 2:59 PM

LogicRealityTruth says:
RE: Matt said it very will above.

Alex, by telling us that scary things are being done in our good name, is not the cause of our fear.

That’s like calling Paul Revere a “fear-mongerer”.

“nah, the brittish aren’t coming, you’re just a paranoid conspiracy nut!”

Oh, and to BB, Alex lives very modestly for the amount of profit he actual brings in. He then cycles that money into making better films and expanding the reach of them. He makes more documentaries and gives them to the world for free!

I deeply respect Alex’s integrity as a peaceful humanitarian.

If you hear Alex talk about violence, it’s when he predicts that the NWO will force us to defend ourselves, which according to our Nation’s founding documents and principles, we most certainly WILL DEFEND OURSELVES.
April 10, 2:16 PM

rick smith says:
Hay John the d_ck,
Have you noticed that most comments are AGAINST you and your trash writeding. Your nobody!! Your a CON– Alex is a true patriot.

John go F__k Your self.
April 10, 2:12 PM

Shannon says:
You come to Me carrying the heads of Kings threatening my people with death and slavery. You insult my Queen. This is Sparta (kick in the stomach to the messenger, soldiers kill the escorts and down into the bottomless pit they go) Does anybody remember the movie 300?
April 10, 1:47 PM

Jan says:
You better believe I’m angry. I’m angry that people like you – who consider themselves “journalists” – slander and malign others because you don’t agree. I’m angry that America has been hijacked and you’re helping them. I’m angry because I know that nothing will be done to change it – also you are not helping. God help you take the blinders off your eyes and look into the Hell that America has been thrown into because unethical “elected” officials. WAKE UP!
April 10, 12:38 PM

Source Examiner.com

Trailer — ‘The Obama Deception’ by Alex Jones

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Obama’s First 100 Days : Now a Piggy Pandemic?

Posted on April 26, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.

The implications of a global flu pandemic superimposed upon the USA at this point in our history are staggering.

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / April 26, 2009

As President Obama’s first 100 days draw to a close, another potentially deadly challenge has been added to the myriad complex problems he has been thoughtfully working his way through. Identified as “Swine Flu” or the N1H1 flu virus, it has a potential to become a global flu pandemic.

Starting out already waist-deep in the mess passed along by Mssrs. Bush and Cheney including wars in the Middle East, America’s battered international image, and an economic nightmare, Mr. Obama has nonetheless gotten high marks for his leadership and action. But the implications of a global flu pandemic superimposed upon the USA at this point in our history are staggering.

I read John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza” a few years ago. Barry meticulously details the “Spanish Flu” of 1918. His finely researched narrative left me astounded at the far-reaching damage a ravaging pandemic can cause. It is generally agreed that a flu outbreak on a Kansas farm originating from farm animals infected soldiers in Kansas who quickly spread the disease to other soldiers headed for the WWI front in Europe.

It became known as the Spanish Flu because Spain was one of the only countries left with a free press and they reported on the panic with detailed accounts of how those infected bled from the nose and ears and turned blue from lack of oxygen. Helpless victims suffered aches saying they felt like their bones being broken. Death came quickly. The rampaging pandemic killed more people in one year than the plagues of the Middle Ages killed in a century. A third of the world’s population were infected and worldwide deaths are estimated at between 50 and 100 million.

In the United States, as troops mustered in huge cantonment camps across the nation preparing to ship out to the war in Europe, President Woodrow Wilson, a conservative Democrat and religious fundamentalist, clamped down on press freedom. Citing patriotism and the need to keep Americans on a righteous and patriotic path, he personally prevented even a mention of the raging flu. A public health official in Philadelphia even allowed young soldiers to mingle with the public during a parade. The bureaucrat noted that, “It is not patriotic to establish guidelines to protect the civilian public.” Whole ships, loaded with sick and contagious troops were sent on to Europe rather than admit openly that there was a problem. They were aptly called “death ships” with most of the troops dead or wretchedly ill as they arrived in European ports.

The mass movement of people to and across Europe hastened the spread of the virulent flu. In the USA, people were most infectious to others during the days before they experienced any symptoms themselves. Conservatively, some 10% of those who came down with the flu died. In the fall and winter of 1918 more people died from influenza than from any other pandemic before or since.

This Sunday afternoon, unlike Woodrow Wilson, the White House declared a “public health emergency” and the center for disease control announced, “We expect to see more cases of swine flu. As we continue to look for cases, I expect we’re going to find them.”

Politics remain at play as the seriousness of the current swine flu outbreak is assessed. The World Health Organization is taking its characteristic cautious stance calling the present flu outbreak in Mexico that has already killed 80 and infected another 1,800, “a public health emergency of international concern.” The W.H.O. is holding off till Tuesday to announce if it will raise the threat level. Dr. Keiji Fukuda, deputy director general of the W.H.O. is reported to have said, “Raising the threat to level 4 “would be a very serious signal that countries ought to be dusting off pandemic plans.”

So, here we are at the early, early stages of a strain of flu that seems to have developed in pigs and birds, mutated into a unique virus that is now being transmitted directly from human to human. Mexico seems to be the originating point. Already milder cases are being reported and identified across America and cases are now being reported in Canada.

We have learned a great deal about combating pandemics, and have new medicines and vaccines that were nonexistent in 1918. But it is sobering to realize that by the early 1990s, 75 years of research had failed to answer a most basic question about the 1918 pandemic: why was it so fatal? In recent years we have made some progress, but there are still lots of unanswered questions.

Today human fear and uncertainty remain pretty basic. A growing number of Americans are already barely living on the edge following loss of jobs, homes, savings, and face health care that is out of reach because of lack of insurance. America’s vulnerability to a sweeping killer flu pandemic is doubly frightening today because so many families are already terribly weakened from the results of another endemic disease . . . greed.

Fat greed that grew and mutated while the host banks and financial giants flourished. Then just like in some farmyard in Mexico the greed genes intermingled, mutated and became toxic. We are already fighting the results of a pandemic of unregulated greed. Now real swine instead of figurative pigs once again spawn a physically life-sapping virus.

If ever there was a need for cool, serious and effective leadership and consensus, it is today. This also is a chance for detached conservative Republicans to get over their loss at the polls, and instead of throwing tepid tea parties, to come together and join in positive action to see America safely through what could be even tougher times ahead.

Swine flu is non partisan.

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

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Ewwwww !! Tea-Baggin’ Parties

Posted on April 26, 2009 by RagBlog

Source / Daily Kos

Thanks to Keith Joseph / The Rag Blog

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American War Crime: The Case of John Walker Lindh

Posted on April 26, 2009 by RagBlog


A Victim of War Crimes Perpetrated by His Fellow Americans: Free John Walker Lindh!
By Dave Lindorff / April 24, 2009

Enough is enough. It’s time to free John Walker Lindh, poster boy for George Bush’s, Dick Cheney’s and John Ashcroft’s “War on Terror,” and quite likely first victim of these men’s secret campaign of torture.

Lindh is in the seventh year of a 20-year sentence for “carrying a weapon” in Afghanistan and for “providing assistance” to an enemy of the United States. The first charge is ridiculously minor (after all, it’s what almost everyone in Texas does everyday). The second is actually a violation of a law intended for use against US companies that trade with proscribed countries on a government “no trade” list like Cuba or North Korea. Ordinarily, violation results in a fine for the executives involved.

As I wrote in an article in the Nation back in 2005, Lindh was put away for so long on these minor charges not because he was a traitor or terrorist, but because he was living proof, back at the time of his trial in 2002, that the US had begun a program of brutal torture in the so-called “War on Terror.”

Lindh, in fact, was never really an enemy of the US. Son of middle-class white parents in suburban San Francisco, he had developed an interest in Islam which, following his graduation from high school, he decided to pursue by traveling to Pakistan. In 2001, still just 18, he began studying at a madrassa, or religious school. There he learned about the struggle of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan to free that nation of the influence of warlords who had collaborated with a brutal Soviet occupation. Attracted by what he saw as the nobility of that struggle, and with a youthful sense of adventure, Lindh volunteered. In August of 2001, at a time that Bush administration officials were negotiating about a possible oil pipeline deal with Afghanistan’s Taliban government, and talking about providing funds for a program to get farmers to shift away from opium cultivation to more useful cash crops—a time, that is, when the Taliban were not considered America’s enemy—Lindh crossed the border and started training to be a fighter.

A month later, of course, the World Trade Center in New York, and the Pentagon in Washington, were struck, and the US launched a war against both Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Lindh, who was still just in training, found himself suddenly in the wilds of the Hindu Kush, with American planes bombing and with US Special Forces troops firing at him and his companions. Whether he wanted to be there or not, he was in no position at that point to change sides. You don’t just walk away from a group like the Taliban—especially if you are an American to begin with, and you’re deep in the bush.

Eventually, a malnourished, dehydrated, and wounded (in the leg) Lindh was taken prisoner along with a group of Taliban fighters by American forces.

At that point, when the Americans discovered they had an American among their captives, Lindh’s situation worsened dramatically. Stripped naked and duct-taped, blindfolded, to a gurney, he was then placed inside an unheated metal shipping container. Left there for days in the cold and dark, Lindh was removed once daily and interrogated. His interrogators allegedly tortured him, as well as threatening him repeatedly with death. His pleas to see an attorney were mocked, and word that his parents had already arranged for representation was withheld from him (a situation that led a government lawyer involved in his case to protest and ultimately resign).

At some point during this abuse, Lindh caved in to his fears of death at the hands of his captors and signed a “confession” to being a traitor to America. At that point he was flown back to the US, where Attorney General Ashcroft touted him as the “American Taliban,” initially vowing to try him for treason (which carries a death sentence).

What changed things dramatically, as I reported in 2005, was a decision by Federal District Judge T.S. Ellis to permit Lindh and his defense team—over strenuous government objections-to challenge that confession letter by introducing evidence that Lindh had signed it while being subjected to torture at Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan. The judge ruled that Lindh would be able to call witnesses from Guantanamo and from among the soldiers where he had been held in Afghanistan. Suddenly, the Justice Department, in the person of Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division and in charge of terrorism prosecutions, offered a one-day-only, take-it-or-leave-it plea deal. Chertoff (acting with an alacrity that stands in marked contrast to his sluggish response time several years later when faced, as secretary of homeland security, with the Katrina disaster in New Orleans) offered to drop the serious charges in return for a guilty plea to the two minor charges, but only if—and this is the key—Lindh would cancel the scheduled evidentiary hearing into torture [emphasis added]. Under the offered deal, Lindh would also have to sign a letter stating that he had “not been intentionally mistreated” by his American captors, and waiving any right to claim such mistreatment or torture any time in the future. Lindh agreed, but following sentencing, Chertoff also added a gag order, technically a “special administrative measure,” barring Lindh from even talking about his experience for the duration of his sentence.

It is now clear why Chertoff went to such hurried great lengths to completely silence Lindh. His wasn’t just the first trial in the “War on Terror.” Lindh was the first victim of the secret Bush/Cheney torture program.

Now that we have the trail of memoranda that set that wretched torture campaign in motion, it’s time for the Obama Justice Department to free Lindh. If President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder think Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens suffered from malicious prosecution and were willing to drop charges against him, they certainly should toss out the case against Lindh, who besides being innocent of the original serious charges leveled against him, was a victim of war crimes perpetrated by his own fellow Americans, and authorized by his own government. His arrest, conviction and sentencing are a travesty of justice, and perhaps, given that torture is a criminal offense in the US Code, even constitute a crime of cover-up.

Free John Walker Lindh!

[Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com.]

Source / CounterPunch

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Roger Baker : Should the Left Diss the Tea-Baggers?

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Sign at Tea Party protest in Wichita, Feb. 27, 2009. Photo from Voice for Liberty in Wichita.

The tea baggers versus Obama formulation should be seen as opportunistic political theater that avoids a serious examination of the important issues.

By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / April 25, 2009

Should we diss the tea-baggers?

Maybe in a thoughtful well-delineated sort of way, but not in a right-versus-left emotional way.

This is an interesting issue because it’s sort of like 1933 with severe economic crisis and a fearful angry populace looking for answers and scapegoats. The kind of situation that breeds extreme political movements and bad solutions.

I think the tea bag thing was a sort of Libertarian-initiated objection to Obama’s spending. The tea bags are a taxing rebellion by those who don’t expect to benefit much. It was opportunistically promoted by Fox news and right wing Republicans.

The left wants to interpret tea baggers as an early stage of Fascism, which it could indeed become. But, IMO, that is a simplistic interpretation that encourages needless class division for the following reason.

The Obama administration is so far siding with the banks; using taxpayer money to bail them out while the banks maintain financial control. Heads they win tails we lose. A situation so ovbiously unfair that EVERYONE should be holding tea bag-like demos opposing the vast majority of out tax obligation money so far going to prop up a sick and dysfunctional banker-ocracy.

The tea baggers are saying that the government is largely squandering our money as usual on future tax obligations where we take the hit without many results. Which seems legitimate to me.

The left should say, yes, that is true, but the proper solution is to form a united front, a broad reform coalition, against the banks and their army of lobbyists. Let the banks and their attached social class fail. They gambled and lost, so what now?

Now set up a parallel government financing system to do the things we really need to do like universal health care, local food production, restructuring society away from carbon fuel addiction, etc.

The tea baggers versus Obama formulation should be seen as opportunistic political theater that avoids a serious examination of the important issues.

A lot of this strong political energy should be harnessed into a broad political reform movement directed against the central issue of big banker-led corporate domination that leads to most of our other problems.

FDR sided with the people and against the banks. So why can’t Obama do that too?

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Kate Braun: Beltane Seasonal Message

Posted on April 25, 2009 by RagBlog


Beltane Seasonal Message
By Kate Braun / The Rag Blog / April 25, 2009

“It’s May, it’s May, the merry month of May…”

Thursday, April 30, 2009, is Beltane, a “cross-quarter” celebration on the Wheel of Life. Solstices and equinoxes are quarterly events; the cross-quarter events mark the midpoints between them. Beltane falls between the Vernal Equinox and the Summer Solstice. Another name for this festival is May Day. If it is more convenient for you to plan your celebration for Friday, May 1, that is also a good date. If at all possible, plan to celebrate outdoors.

Beltane is a fire festival, a fertility festival, a time to take action on the activities and projects you planned at your Vernal Equinox celebration. Decorations and activities at Beltane honor the union of God and Goddess; it is the last of the three spring fertility festivals of Imbolc/Candlemas and Ostara/Vernal Equinox. Braiding, plaiting, weaving in a May Pole dance all represent the union that will generate “a good harvest” in every sense of that phrase.

All colors are appropriate to wear and to use in your decorations. Any fire is appropriate, be it in the charcoal grill, as many candles on the table, or a bonfire in a field. It is good to add blessing, prosperity, fertility, and/or protection incense to your fire (or in a separate cauldron if you are lighting only candles). You and your guests should process or dance through the smoke, waving it towards each other. Include household pets in this blessing.

If you have a large group, select a man and woman to represent Robin Hood and Maid Marian. Crown them with wreaths of fresh (not artificial) greenery and/or braided ribbons. At Robin’s invocation, Maid Marian blesses all living beings that walk/dance through the smoke. Then, she and Robin Hood kiss, symbolizing the Blessed Union.

Feast on sweets of all kinds, dairy foods, all red fruits, green salads, all breads and cereals. Make toasts with red or pink wine punch. Be sure to recognize all household guardians, brownies, and garden sprites. Serve them small tidbits from the table and decorate a living tree or shrub with bells, wind chimes, and pretty ribbons. Keep in mind that red carnations will attract to your garden faeries who enjoy healing animals, clover is wildly attractive to faeries, rosemary protects the property from baneful faeries, and lobelia attracts winged faeries.

This is a joyful time. Ring bells, blow horns, make a Joyful Noise!

Tarot by Kate 512-454-2293
www.tarotbykatebraun.com
kate_braun2000@yahoo.com

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Jim Hightower : Texas’ Governor Goodhair is One Pandering Goober

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Texas’ Panderer-in-Chief, Gov. Rick Perry, covers his lovely locks with a gimme cap at the Texas tea party rally April 15, 2009 at the state capitol. With him is Michael Quinn Sullivan of Texans for Fiscal responsibility. Photo by Harry Cabluck / AP.

The Governor of Texas is one bad haircut away from Blagojevichian levels of gubernatorial gooberness.

By Jim Hightower / April 25, 2009.

Texas politics has long been a source of great amusement for the people of our state, but it’s often a source of bafflement for people beyond our borders. So, sometimes there’s a need to explain what’s going on here, and this is one of those times. In this case, the explanation is simple: Our governor is a goober.

Texans have known this for some time, but Rick Perry — whose chief claim to fame had been that he has a spectacular head of hair — was unknown outside the state, so he was our little secret. Now, however, Perry’s gooberness has gone viral. He’s a YouTube phenomenon and a new darling of the GOP kingmaker, Rush Limbaugh.

He broke into national consciousness on April 15, when he spoke at one of the many “teabag” rallies that Republican operatives set up around the country to protest Barack Obama’s deficit spending. Appearing in Austin before a boisterous crowd of about a thousand people who were fuming about everything from gun control to the Wall Street bailout, the governor opened with this shot: “I’m sure you’re not just a bunch of right-wing extremists. But if you are, I’m with you.”

Then came the thought that earned him YouTuber-of-the-Day and a favorable mention from Lord Limbaugh: Texas just, By God, might secede from the union if Washington keeps messing with us.

No doubt many people in the other 49 states burst into applause at this notion, but it caused quite a bit of consternation among home folks, who rather like being both Texans and Americans. Was he serious? Apparently so. When reporters asked afterward about the legality of such a rash move, Perry pointed out that Texas had entered the union under a unique agreement that gave us the right “to leave if we decided to do that.” Good line, but utterly untrue. No such agreement ever existed.

Facts aside, what’s going through Perry’s perfectly coiffed head is that polls presently show him losing his re-election bid in next year’s Republican primary. Thus, he’s scrambling to excite the most rabid of the Texas GOP fringe by posing as a courageous defender of Texas sovereignty against meddlers from Washington. His chief target is $555 million in federal money that would come to our state under Obama’s economic stimulus program. This is desperately needed money that would go straight into our nearly broke unemployment compensation fund, but he asserts that he will reject it, claiming that the federal dollars come with strings attached.

The “strings” are actually simple and sensible threads of reform that would help the hard-hit workaday people of our state. For example, the federal stimulus program requires that part-time workers also be eligible for unemployment comp. In today’s harsh economy, when part-time work is all that many people can get, they ought to be covered, too. But common sense has never met Perry, much less befriended him, so he continues to posture: “We think it’s time to draw the line in the sand and tell Washington that no longer are we going to accept their oppressive hand in the state of Texas,” he recently spewed.

Yes, comandante, but what about that other $16 billion or so in Obama’s stimulus money that you are going accept? For example, while you slap away funds to help working folks, you’re eagerly reaching out with your other hand to grab $1.2 billion of those filthy federal dollars to put into your pet project of saddling Texans with a network of privatized toll roads. If it’s a matter of principle, why not reject all federal money? Indeed, you used to be a cotton farmer who benefited from Washington’s crop subsidy programs — how oppressive was that for you?

OK, our governor has not quite attained the Blagojevichian level of gubernatorial gooberness, but he’s a striver, and he’s only one bad haircut away from getting to the top. Illinois, we feel your pain.

Copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate Inc.

[Texan Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow(Wiley, March 2008). He publishes the monthly “Hightower Lowdown,” co-edited by Phillip Frazer.]

Source / AlterNet

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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BOOKS / ‘Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America’

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

What I found striking in this volume is the extent to which advances in behavioral science and pedagogical experience have played almost no role in the evolution of corrections: Sentencing policies and prison conditions stem from basic, often religious and primitive, attitudes and beliefs.

By Eve Pell / April 24, 2009

[Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America, Dr. Anne-Marie Cusac; Yale University Press, 336 pp; $27.50]

When I was involved in prison reform in the early 1970s, my colleagues and I were shocked that our state, California, held so many prisoners, 22,000. Now, 35 years later, California’s prison population has ballooned to 165,000. Since 1973, the U.S. imprisonment rate has multiplied more than five times; we hold the dubious distinction of being the most imprisoning nation in the world.

Why does our nation, with 5 percent of the world’s people, have 25 percent of its prisoners, about 2 million? Why do we keep at least 25,000, maybe double that, in long-term isolation, a situation known to cause insanity, when other nations have more effective and humane methods of managing violence? Why do we inflict intense physical pain, sometimes to the point of death, with tasers, stun belts and restraint chairs at a time when violent crime is not on the increase?

Anne-Marie Cusac, an award-winning reporter (and published poet) with years of covering criminal justice issues, tackles these questions in her book, Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America. In just-the-facts, dispassionate style, she traces the methods our society has used to discipline offenders and nonconformists, from 17th century floggings and stocks in the public square to 21st century super-maxes designed to deprive inmates of human contact. She chronicles the motivations driving such vengeful practices, from Protestant Christian beliefs in the devil and the sinful nature of man to public fear of crime whipped up by television cop shows and exploited by politicians.

Cusac, who teaches communications at Roosevelt University in Chicago, also traces the history of American attitudes toward punishment from colonial days and the Rev. Jonathan Edwards in 1740 to modern-day Christian conservatives and the tortures at Abu Ghraib. (“All are by nature the children of wrath and heirs of hell…” preached Edwards, insisting that the wills of young “vipers” must be beaten down and broken.) Using a wide lens, she examines the intentional infliction of pain as a means to discipline and reform those who are deemed in need of chastisement, from lashings with cat-o’-nine-tails and boring holes in tongues with a hot iron, as was done in the Massachusetts colony, to hooding and beating inmates, or shackling them to restraint poles in freezing cold or searing heat, as happened recently in some U. S. prisons. The same philosophy extends to families: I was astonished to find that one can order spanking rods—a Speak Softly Spanking Stick, for instance—on the Internet, for administering biblically sanctioned punishment to one’s child.

Cusac links changes in attitudes toward punishment to changes in American culture. After the American Revolution, for example, the former colonists mitigated the harsh penalties imposed under monarchical rule, finding lesser punishments more in line with their new democracy. She describes the evolution of reformist and anti-reformist movements as they swept across the nation and conflicted with one another.

What I found striking in this volume is the extent to which advances in behavioral science and pedagogical experience have played almost no role in the evolution of corrections: Sentencing policies and prison conditions stem from basic, often religious and primitive, attitudes and beliefs. The role prisons should play in our society is answered, most often, by the response to this question: Should offenders have their wills broken by pain and suffering, or do they retain some capacity for rehabilitation? As Cusac shows, we lean far more toward the former.

In some schools of thought over the years, human beings were considered capable of redemption; in others, human nature was considered sinful and meriting only punishment. There were brief periods when, under the sway of Enlightenment principles, reformers like Benjamin Rush opposed physical punishment and the death penalty in favor of hard labor and solitary confinement—then viewed as a less punitive means of helping criminals to reform. But over time, as punishment migrated from the public square to walled-off prison cells, these “reforms” morphed into abuses—what Cusac calls “punishment creep,” perhaps because prisons were hidden from public view.

In the 19th century, liberationist movements evoked conflicting ideas: Abolitionists organized to stop the whipping and bondage of slavery, while pro-slavers favored the use of pain to maintain domination. In the Navy before 1850, officers used flogging to maintain discipline; later on, reformers organized to make flogging aboard ships unlawful.

Throughout the book, prevailing philosophies of punishment seesaw back and forth as intellectual, political and religious tides wax and wane. Emerging science sometimes plays a role in the debates; backlashes to prevailing philosophies result in hardening or softening of attitudes. (Though attitudes seem to harden much more easily than they soften.) Cusac summarizes the work of scholars, commentators and law enforcement officials in order to arrive at generalizations describing different eras.

But, perhaps because the ebb and flow of ideas is itself untidy and irregular, in some chapters the book skips and hops unevenly from one thing to another. Cusac quotes Source 1 saying A, Source 2 saying B, Source 3 saying something else. I wanted a firmer hand on the tiller in such places. A chapter that aims to show how the urge to punish surged in the 1970s cites Time and Newsweek on the wickedness of Generation Xers; gives blow-by-blow accounts of the plots of “Rosemary’s Baby, “The Exorcist” and “Carrie,” movies that portray a powerful devil; and describes the conservative backlash against the liberal movements of the ’60s like feminism and gay liberation. With “evil” alive and abroad in the land, societal problems are blamed not on racism or poverty, but rather on bad individuals and drug “fiends,” an underclass whose personal vices lead to crime. This climate of opinion provides fodder for neoconservatives to justify longer sentences, harsher prison conditions and larger expenditures for new prisons. It may be that Cusac’s pop history is on the money, but it seemed a little glib and I wasn’t quite convinced.

But there is no discounting the lasting influence of the vengeful Protestant ethos. This attitude lives on, epitomized by the little-known Christian Reconstructionist movement, which advocates a theocracy in which sins like blasphemy merit death by stoning or burning alive. Cusac links this movement to Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, who has said that he favors the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions.

My criticisms of her work are relatively minor: In writing about the short-lived movement for prison reform of the early 1970s, Cusac misstates the title of Jessica Mitford’s exposé of prisons, calling it “Kind and Unusual Punishment.” The correct title is “Kind and Usual Punishment,” Mitford’s ironic take on the corrections industry and its failings. More generally, when Cusac relies on selections from many diverse sources, the resulting argument feels a bit mushy. By contrast, where she relies on her own years of reporting, the book takes on real power. Her linkage of the abuses of Abu Ghraib to American correctional practices is a case in point—the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, even threatening inmates with dogs, had happened in American prisons. “George Bush said he was exporting democracy to Iraq,” she writes, “but he seems to have exported a much uglier aspect of American public policy—some of the most sadistic practices employed in the U.S. prison system.”

Her chronicling of severe injury and death to inmates from new technology shocks the conscience—stun belts, tasers, restraint chairs, supermax isolation … she cites names and circumstances of outrage after outrage. Back in the 1970s, when I was a newbie reporter writing about brutality behind bars, I thought that if the public only knew that terrible cruelty was taking place, there would be an outcry and corrections officials would have to change their ways. I don’t think that anymore. There is no powerful constituency, no high-paid K Street lobby, no fat source of campaign funding from those who want to reform our prisons. And though Cusac says her book demonstrates the hazards of ignoring the current situation, it is difficult for me to see how it will help to bring about much-needed change. People don’t care enough about the thousands of inmates in solitary slowly going insane, week in and week out. In fact, a politician who is seen as being soft on criminals stands to lose big—remember Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton?

But I am encouraged by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., who recently spoke out against our useless, expensive and counterproductive incarceration establishment. As he says, it is a system of “chaos and mismanagement” that wastes billions of dollars as it creates “violence, physical abuse and hate.” Anne-Marie Cusac’s book helps to explain how we got to this awful pass.

Source / truthdig

Find Cruel and Unusual: The Culture of Punishment in America at Amazon.com.

Thanks to Jeffrey Segal / The Rag Blog

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