Health Care and the Arrogant Republican Elite

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Aristocrat 01 by Gabriel Dzieslaw / mixmedia on canvas, 2007.

Also see, ‘Single-payer health reform bill introduced in Senate,’ Below.

‘…one watches the Republican Senate and House “leadership” posturing on television, in their Seville Row suits, sporting their salon or golf course tans, and one wonders why these folks dislike the poor, the ill, and the mentally impaired so very, very much…’

By Dr.Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / March 26, 2009

‘All conservatives are such from personal defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act on the defensive.’ — R.W. Emerson, 1860.

Digressing briefly, from my topic of health care, one watches the Republican Senate and House “leadership” posturing on television, in their Seville Row suits, sporting their salon or golf course tans, and one wonders why these folks dislike the poor, the ill, and the mentally impaired so very, very much. Why do they look on the homosexual as the folks of the 13th century looked upon the leper, confusing central nervous system developmental problems or illnesses with cultural or theological issues? Where do they develop the self assurance that they are right, and everyone else wrong, akin to the judges of the Inquisition? Where do these arrogant, hypocritical, intolerant folks arise from?

If one listens for long to their rantings one feels that they really believe that it is the insolvency of mortgages purchased by the poor that has caused the current financial collapse, while the majority of the so called TV “journalists” shake their heads in agreement. Yet in an editorial in The National Catholic Reporter, March 20, 2009, former Federal Reserve Governor, Randall Kroszner, speaking late last year, pointed out that half of subprime loans went to middle-class or higher-income borrowers, while fewer than 6% of loans made went to low-income borrowers.

This is the same group of our elected representatives, joined by many of the “blue-dogs,” that tell us that national health insurance is “too expensive,” or falsely assert that under a nationally sponsored health care plan one would not have a free choice of physician, or would encounter long waits to be seen. These are the same folks who howl in concert with the NRA that “Obama plans to take our guns,” i.e., the “blue helicopters are coming.” These prostitutes to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries recall Machiavelli’ statement in “The Prince” from 1513: “Men are so simple and yield so readily to the wants of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer himself to be tricked.”

It is pleasing to see that every day a number of unions and organizations are endorsing universal, single payer, health care. There is a ground-swell among the public to either enact HR 676 or a lesser, and much more fallible plan, the Obama option of an adjunctive public health care plan, i.e. “Medicare for All.” Even the latter throws our Republican and blue-dog friends into uncontrolled rage, for a public plan, administered as well as Medicare, would attract, in time, the majority of citizens, thus decreasing the billions of dollars of profits of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and reducing the funds available to their lobbyists to buy the votes of “the peoples representatives.”

Early in my days of practice I became aware of one common scam used by the insurers of the sick. As I recall, it was in the 1950s I saw a lady who had cancer of the stomach. Her insurance carrier contended that the “cancer predated her purchase of insurance.” She had purchased the insurance seven years earlier. I sent documentation of the entire episode to the Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, and by George, the insurer paid the claim. Over the years when confronted by like foolishness I never failed to find that the Insurance Commissioner was fair and open minded.

The other frequently used ploy by the private insurance companies is hidden in the fine print, i.e., exceptions for a variety of disease conditions. Always remember any insurance company is a business and businesses are formed to make money. Of course, this is in the interest of any of the great American corporations as the Washington Post pointed out in an article by E.J.Dionne, Jr., March 19, 2000. “A study of compensation levels in 2007 found that the average CEO pay at S&P 500 Companies was 344 times higher than the average worker’s wage, and that the top 50 investment fund managers took home 19,000 times as much as the typical workers earned.”

Harper’s Magazine, in April, 2009, issue, points out that a single-payer health care system would create 2,600,000 jobs. The same article notes that the current recession will cause an extra 71,000 deaths. Of these 1,800 will be suicides and 13,000 homicides. The author does not allude to the thousands of deaths yearly, commented upon in prior articles, occurring from pre-existing poverty or lack of health insurance.

The Republicans, when they develop any positive attitude towards health care, appear to like the Massachusetts model. Remember Gov. Romney helped write it! Yet, The Smirking Chimp, of Feb. 27, 2009, quotes Dr. David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School, who recountes the shortcomings of the plan. The plan has cost much more than anticipated, covering fewer than the promised universal claims and left states like Massachusetts and those who came before them in the same mess now faced throughout the land with soaring costs, inadequate delivery of what is sold as the financial protection called “health insurance” and begging with health systems for more cash. In the same article Dr. Himmelstein recounts the case of a lady with cancer who was obliged to decline chemotherapy because she could not afford to pay the insurance co-payments.

Then there is that now famous case of the McDonalds employee in Arkansas who came to the defense of a female customer who was being attacked by another man. The abuser shot the employee in the chest. The McDonalds workers comp insurance would not pay the $300,000 medical bill because “the employee was not acting during the normal scope of employment.” Unbelievable, yet the Republicans tell us there is nothing better than private insurance.

Whether we have single payer or Medicare for all, the cost of health care must be reduced. Let us start with the costs of pharmaceuticals and eliminate the absurd practice of TV advertising that must add millions to the cost of prescription medications. There is no real point in these ads since no competent physician gets his information from this source and if he bends to the desires of his/her patient who pushes for these items to placate the patient he is an obvious quack. Let us regulate the price of prescription drugs as we do in this country via V.A. pharmacies, or is done by government regulations in the remainder of the civilized world. For instance I am receiving treatment for cancer of the prostate with a drug named Lupron. I get an injection every four months. In looking at my latest Medicare report the cost of my last injection was $4228! I find that I can get the same medication, in generic form, from various Canadian pharmacies for roughly $1000.

We must, as previously noted, do away with the give away of Medicare money to the “Medicare Advantage Plans.” I have before me an ad widely dispersed locally announcing 10 “seminars” in various locations to explain to our seniors the advantage of joining the UPMC for Life Medicare Advantage HMO. These plans even provide a ‘Personal Health Concierge.”

I would suggest that the tremendous cost of “end of life” care be evaluated by a panel of ethicists and hospice physicians to achieve a realistic, compassionate way of exiting this world. Perhaps we could go as far as to legalize cannabis to lighten the discomfort of those final days.

We must look hard at Medicare fraud and the fraud that indirectly impacts costs because of unholy alliances between pharmaceutical companies and researchers. It is well documented that various clinical studies at well known teaching hospitals, underwritten by pharmaceutical companies, are published or suppressed at the discretion of the pharmaceutical industry. It was recently reported by the New York Times that a student in a first year pharmacology class at Harvard Medical School became wary of a professor promoting the benefits of anti-cholesterol drugs and belittling the side effects. The student did a bit of research on Google and found that the professor was a paid consultant for 10 drug companies, including the makers of cholesterol treatments.

We who support health care for all must push both the House and Senate, No health care legislation will ever get through the Senate unless it is attached to a budget reconciliation resolution or unless the “nuclear option” is employed. Whether our elected officials have the courage to do so is another matter. Whether they have acceded to the largesse of the lobbyists is another matter. The wave of populism inherent in our nation could force the issue; however, as I have noted before, this is a two edged sword. Mass demonstrations, sans violence, are tolerated in Europe; however, my fear, as posed in the writings of Naomi Klein, and others, is that mass nonviolent disobedience in the USA will give the well indoctrinated right wing here a like opportunity to that they seized in Germany in 1932.

I would suggest that someone with the means on the internet start a widespread petition for universal/single payer care to be sent to our elected representatives, and that citizen groups make peaceful visits to the offices of our senators and representatives in home districts and in Washington, and make our desires known. The more the better, but keep it civil. I understand that the target date for debating health care is June at the latest.

[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.]

Single-payer health reform bill introduced in Senate

Would save $400 billion on bureaucracy, enough to cover all 46 million uninsured Americans

Challenging head-on the powerful private insurance and pharmaceutical industries, Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a single-payer health reform bill, the American Health Security Act of 2009, in the U.S. Senate Wednesday. The bill is the first to directly take on the powerful lobbies blocking universal health reform in the Senate since Sen. Paul Wellstone’s tragic death.

The single-payer approach embodied in Sanders’ new bill stands in sharp contrast to the reform models being offered by the White House and by key lawmakers like Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Their plans would preserve a central role for the private insurance industry, sacrificing both universal coverage and cost containment during the worst economic crisis since the Depression.

In contrast, Sanders’ new legislation would cover all of the 46 million Americans who currently lack coverage and improve benefits for all Americans by eliminating co-pays and deductibles and restoring free choice of physician. The most fiscally conservative option for reform, single payer slashes private insurance overhead and bureaucracy in medical settings, saving over $400 billion annually that can be redirected into clinical care.

“This is excellent news for the nation’s health,” said Dr. Quentin Young, national coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program and a past president of the American Public Health Association. “There is now an affordable cure for our dysfunctional health care system. In the face of our present economic calamity, this is an urgent necessity.”

Highlights of the bill include the following:

  • Patients go to any doctor or hospital of their choice.
  • The program is paid for by combining current sources of government health spending into a single fund with modest new taxes amounting to less than what people now pay for insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.
  • Comprehensive benefits, including coverage for dental, mental health, and prescription drugs.
  • While federally funded, the program is to be administered by the states.

    • By eliminating the high overhead and profits of the private, investor-owned insurance industry, along with the burdensome paperwork imposed on physicians, hospitals and other providers, the plan saves at least $400 billion annually – enough money to provide comprehensive, quality care to all.

  • Community health centers are fully funded, giving the 60 million Americans now living in rural and underserved areas access to care.
  • To address the critical shortage of primary care physicians and dentists, the bill provides resources for the National Health Service Corps to train an additional 24,000 health professionals.

“We are confident that Sen. Sanders’ bill will accelerate the national drive for the only reform that we know will work,” Young said. “A majority of physicians endorse such an approach. Fifty-nine percent of U.S. physicians support national health insurance. Two-thirds of the public also supports such a remedy. We remember well that President Obama once acknowledged that single-payer national health insurance was the best way to go. It still is.”

Sanders, who serves on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, is a longtime advocate of fundamental health care reform. His new bill draws heavily upon the single-payer legislation introduced by the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) in 1993, S. 491, and closely parallels similar legislation pending before the House, H.R. 1200, introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.).

A single-payer bill introduced by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), H.R. 676, obtained 93 co-sponsors in the House during the last session. It has been reintroduced in the new Congress as the U.S. National Health Care Act with the same bill number.

A copy of the bill is available here. (PDF)

Source / Physicians for a National Health Care Program

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Amazon’s Kindle: A New Way to Burn Books?

Posted on March 26, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“Empty Bookshelves.” (Library for the Faculty of Philology at the Free University Berlin, Germany. Architect: Norman Foster.) Photo by svenwerk.

Kindle e-reader: A Trojan horse for free thought

Amazon and other e-media aggregators know that digital text is the irrational exuberance of the day, and so are seizing the opportunity to codify, commodify, and control access for tomorrow.

By Emily Walshe

[Emily Walshe is a librarian and professor at Long Island University in New York. This article originally appeared in the March 18, 2009, issue of the Christian Science Monitor.]

BROOKVILLE, N.Y. – All you really need to know about the dangers of digital commodification you learned in kindergarten.

Think back. Remember swapping your baloney sandwich for Jell-o pudding? Now, imagine handing over your sandwich and getting just a spoon.

That’s one trade you’d never make again.

Yet that’s just what millions of Americans are doing every day when they read “books” on Kindle, Amazon’s e-reading device. In our rush to adopt new technologies, we have too readily surrendered ownership in favor of its twisted sister, access.

Web 2.0 and its culture of collaboration supposedly unleashed a sharing society. But we can share only what we own. And as more and more content gets digitized, commercialized, and monopolized, our cultural integrity is threatened. The free and balanced flow of information that gives shape to democratic society is jeopardized.

For now, though, Kindle is on fire in the marketplace. Who could resist reading “what you want, when you want it?” Access to more than 240,000 books is just seconds away. And its “revolutionary electronic-paper display … looks and reads like real paper.”

But it comes with restrictions: You can’t resell or share your books – because you don’t own them. You can download only from Amazon’s store, making it difficult to read anything that is not routed through Amazon first. You’re not buying a book; you’re buying access to a book. No, it’s not like borrowing a book from a library, because there is no public investment. It’s like taking an interest-only mortgage out on intellectual property.

If our flailing economy is to teach us anything, it might be that an on-demand world of universal access (with words like lease, licensure, and liquidity) gets us into trouble. Amazon and other e-media aggregators know that digital text is the irrational exuberance of the day, and so are seizing the opportunity to codify, commodify, and control access for tomorrow. But access doesn’t “look and read” like printed paper at all – just ask any forlorn investor. Access is useless currency.

Why is this important? Because Kindle is the kind of technology that challenges media freedom and restricts media pluralism. It exacerbates what historian William Leach calls “the landscape of the temporary”: a hyper mobile and rootless society that prefers access to ownership. Such a society is vulnerable to the dangers of selective censorship and control.

Digital rights management (DRM), which Kindle uses to lock in its library, raises critical questions about the nature of property and identity in digital culture. Culture plays a large role – in some ways, larger than government – in shaping who we are as individuals in a society. The First Amendment protects our right to participate in the production of that culture. The widespread commodification of access is shaping nearly every aspect of modern citizenship. There are benefits, to be sure, but this transformation also poses a big-time threat to free expression and assembly.

When Facebook, for example, proposed revisions to its terms of service last month – claiming ownership of user profiles and personal data – the successful backlash it spawned caused complex (even existential) ideas about property, identity, and capitulation to bubble up: Is my Facebook profile the essence of who I am? If so, who owns me?

The hallmark of a constitutionally governed society, after all, is the acknowledgment that we are the authors of our own experience. In an Internet age, this is manifest not only in published works, but also an ever-evolving host of user-generated content (Twitter, Blogger, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). If service providers lay claim to digital content now, how will it all end?

Print may be dying, but the idea of print would be the more critical demise: the idea that there needs to be a record – an artifact of permanence, residence, and posterity – that is independent of some well-appointed thingamajig in order to be seen, touched, understood, or wholly possessed.

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture,” Ray Bradbury once said. “Just get people to stop reading them.”

Access equals control. In this case, it is control over what is read and what is not; what is referenced and what is overlooked; what is retained and what is deleted; what is and what seems to be.

To kindle, we must remember, is to set fire to. The combustible power of this device (and others like it) lies in their quiet but constant claim to intangible, algorithmic capital. What the Kindle should be igniting is serious debate on the fundamental, inalienable right to property in a digital age – and clarifying what’s yours, mine, and ours.

It should strike a match against the winner-take-all casino economies that this kind of technology engenders; revitalize American libraries and other social institutions in their quest to preserve the doctrines of fair use and first sale (which allow for free and lawful sharing); and finally, spark Americans to consider the extent to which they are handing over their baloney sandwich for a plastic spoon.

Like a lot of people, I’m a sucker for a good book. But not at the expense of freedom, or foreclosure of thought.

Source / The Christian Science Monitor

Thanks to Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog

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Counteracting the Backlash Against Clean Energy

Posted on March 26, 2009 by RagBlog

What I think we miss is that probably less than a quarter of the population of the planet have heard of global warming, and of those left who have, at least half of them are in denial. And sadly, the deniers have plenty of backup from scientists. Although this is largely a factual argument, there is plenty of grassroots talking to be done to convince those who are in denial that this is an urgent issue. I don’t know about you, but I really worry about my grandkids.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Barrie Maguire/NEWSART.

The fierce urgency of now
By Bill McKibben / March 25, 2009

Yes, windmills and dams deface the landscape but the climate crisis demands immediate action

Don’t be too “Canadian” about the backlash – this is no time for Mr. Nice Guy

Watching the backlash against clean energy projects build in Canada has moved me to think about what Americans have learned from facing this same problem. I have been thinking and writing for several years about overcoming conflict-avoidance and the importance of standing up for “Big Truths” even at the price of criticizing fellow environmentalists.

It’s not that I’ve developed a mean streak. It’s that the environmental movement has reached an important point of division, between those who truly get global warming, and those who don’t.

By get, I don’t mean understanding the chemistry of carbon dioxide, or the importance of the Kyoto Protocol, or those kinds of things – pretty much everyone who thinks of themselves as an environmentalist has reached that point. By get, I mean understanding that the question is of transcending urgency, that it represents the one overarching global civilizational challenge that humans have ever faced.

In the U.S., there are all manner of fights to stop or delay every imaginable low-carbon technology. Wind, solar, run-of-river hydro – these are precisely the kinds of renewable energy that every Earth Day speech since 1970 has trumpeted. But now they are finally here – now that we’re talking about particular projects in particular places – people aren’t so keen.

Opponents of renewable energy projects point out (correctly) that they have impacts – there are (overstated) risks to birds from wind turbines, to fish from run-of-river hydro, that the projects mean “development” somewhere there was none and transmission lines where there were none before.

They point out (again correctly) that the developers are private interests, rushing to develop a resource that, in fact, they do not own, and without waiting for the government to come up with a set of rules and processes for siting such installations.

The critics also insist that there’s a “better” site somewhere – and again they’re probably right. There’s almost always a better site for anything. The whole business is messy, imperfect.

If we had decades to burn, then perhaps the opponents would be right that there’s a better site, and a nicer developer. There’s always a better site and a nicer developer. But in the real world, we have at most 10 years to reverse the fossil fuel economy. Which means we have to do everything quickly – conservation and plug-in cars and solar panels and compact fluorescents and 100-mile food and tree planting. And windmills, windmills everywhere there is wind, just like off the shores of Europe.

Whatever natural endowments a region is blessed to have, these are the basis for your green economy: solar in the deserts, wind where it’s windy, hydro where water’s falling, geothermal if you’ve got it. Do it all, and do it quickly.

In the ideal world, we’d do everything slowly and carefully – but this planet is rapidly becoming the worst of all possible worlds, a place that before my daughter dies may well see temperatures exceeding anything since before the dawn of primate evolution. A planet facing hundreds of millions of environmental refugees as a result of rising seas, with heat waves like the one that killed 35,000 in Europe becoming commonplace occurrences.

The evidence gets worse by the day: already whole nations are evacuating, the Arctic is melting and we have begun to release the massive storehouse of carbon trapped under the polar ice. Scientists figure the “safe” level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 350 parts per million. This is the most important number in the world. Go beyond it for very long and we will trigger “feedbacks” that will result in runaway warming spiralling out of any human control and resulting in a largely inhospitable planet.

We are already well beyond 350 and accelerating rapidly in the wrong direction.

So when local efforts to delay or stop low-carbon energy projects come into conflict with the imperative to act urgently on global warming, they have to take second place. Because even if we win every other battle, if we lose 350, it won’t make any difference at all. You can “keep” every river and bay and lake and mountain and wilderness, but if the temperature goes up 3 degrees globally, it won’t matter. The fish that live there won’t be able to survive, the trees that anchor the landscape will die, the coral reefs will bleach and crumble. Whatever the particular part of the world that we’re each working on, it’s still a part of the world. Global warming is the whole thing.

Believe me that I understand how difficult this is. I have spent a lifetime loving and fighting for the Adirondacks and other treasured areas. Perhaps you’ve spent your life fighting for birds, and I understand how wrenching it must be to acknowledge that “some birds may die from this wind farm.” But what 350 forces us to say is: every bird, every fish, and everything else that we know, is fundamentally at risk in the next few decades.

In the name of birds, I want that windmill on my ridge. In the name of rivers, I want run-of-river hydro. In the name of wild beauty, I want that windmill out my window.

350 means it is too late to be arguing for theories or cool ideas. In the real world, the one where CO2 inconveniently traps solar radiation, you don’t get to argue for perfection.

You can say, as opponents of clean energy projects have said, that we’d do more to fight global warming by improving gas mileage in our cars. You can say that we should insulate our homes and build better refrigerators. You can say that we should plant more trees and have fewer kids.

And you would be right, just as every Earth Day speech is “right.” I’ve given my share of Earth Day speeches. And if we’re to have any chance of heading off catastrophic temperature increase, we have to do everything we can imagine, all at once. Hybrid cars and planting trees, windmills, energy conservation, carbon taxes, emissions caps, closing the coal plants and pressuring our leaders.

I understand the opposition to clean energy projects. And I would have supported the opponents years ago – before climate science became clear. I live in the mountains above Lake Champlain, where the wind blows strong along the ridgelines. I’ll battle to keep windmills out of designated wilderness if that ever comes up, but right now I’m joining those who are battling to get them built on the ridgeline nearest our home. And battling to see them not as industrial eyesores, but as part of a new aesthetic. The wind made visible.

The slow, steady turning that blows us into a future less hopeless than the future we’re steaming toward now.

[Bill McKibben is co-founder of www.zerocarboncanada.ca.]

Source / Toronto Star

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Sometimes People Know Better Than Governments

Posted on March 26, 2009 by RagBlog


Palestinian children sing for Holocaust survivors
March 25, 2009

The Palestinian youths from a tough West Bank refugee camp stood facing the elderly Holocaust survivors on Wednesday, appearing somewhat defiant in a teenage sort of way. Then they began to sing.

The choir burst into songs for peace, bringing surprised smiles from the audience. But the event had another twist: Most of the Holocaust survivors did not know the youths were Palestinians from the West Bank, a rare sight in Israel these days. And the youths had no idea they were performing for people who lived through Nazi genocide – or even what the Holocaust was.

“I feel sympathy for them,” said Ali Zeid, an 18-year-old keyboard player, who added that he was shocked by what he learned about the Holocaust, in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews in their campaign to wipe out European Jewry.

“Only people who have been through suffering understand each other,” said Zeid, who said his grandparents were Palestinian refugees forced to flee the northern city of Haifa during the war that followed Israel’s creation in 1948.

The 13 musicians, aged 11 to 18, belong to Strings of Freedom, a modest orchestra from the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, the scene of a deadly 2002 battle between Palestinian militants and Israeli soldiers.

The event, held at the Holocaust Survivors Center in this tree-lined central Israeli town, was part of Good Deeds Day, an annual event run by an organization connected to billionaire Shari Arison, Israel’s richest woman.

The two-hour meeting starkly highlighted how distant Palestinians and Israelis have become after more than eight years of bloody Palestinian militant attacks and deadly Israeli military reprisals.

Most of the Palestinian youths had not seen an Israeli civilian before – only gun-toting soldiers in military uniforms manning checkpoints, conducting arrest raids of wanted Palestinians or during army operations.

“They don’t look like us,” said Ahed Salameh, 12, who wore a black head scarf woven with silver.

Most of the elderly Israelis wore pants and T-shirts, with women sporting a smear of lipstick.

“Old people look different where we come from,” Salameh said.

She said she was shocked to hear about the Nazi genocide against Jews. Ignorance and even denial of the Holocaust is widespread in Palestinian society.

Amnon Beeri of the Abraham Fund, which supports coexistence between Jews and Arabs, said most of the region’s residents have no real idea about the other.

The youths said their feisty conductor, Wafa Younis, 50, tried to explain to them who the elderly people were, but chaos on the bus prevented them from listening.

The elderly audience said they assumed Arab children were from a nearby village – not from the refugee camp where 23 Israeli soldiers were killed, alongside 53 Palestinian militants and civilians, in several days of battle in April 2002.

Some 30 elderly survivors gathered in the center’s hall as teenage boys and girls filed in 30 minutes late – delayed at an Israeli military checkpoint outside their town, they later explained.

Some of the young women wore Muslim head scarves – but also sunglasses and school ties.

As a host announced in Hebrew that the youths were from the Jenin refugee camp, there were gasps and muttering from the crowd. “Jenin?” one woman asked in jaw-dropped surprise.

Younis, from the Arab village of Ara in Israel, then explained in fluent Hebrew that the youths would sing for peace, prompting the audience to burst into applause.

“Inshallah,” said Sarah Glickman, 68, using the Arabic term for God willing.

The encounter began with an Arabic song, “We sing for peace,” and was followed by two musical pieces with violins and Arabic drums, as well as an impromptu song in Hebrew by two in the audience.

Glickman, whose family moved to the newly created Jewish state in 1949 after fleeing to Siberia to escape the Nazis, said she had no illusions the encounter would make the children understand the Holocaust. But she said it might make a small difference.

“They think we are strangers, because we came from abroad,” Glickman said. “I agree: It’s their land, also. But there was no other option for us after the Holocaust.”

Later, she tapped her feet in tune as the teenagers played a catchy Mideast drum beat. After the event, some of the elderly Israelis chatted with students and took pictures together.

The encounter was not absent of politics. Younis dedicated a song to an Israeli soldier held captive by Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip – and also criticized Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

But she said the main mission of the orchestra, formed seven years ago to help Palestinian children overcome war trauma, was to bring people together.

“I’m here to raise spirits,” Younis said. “These are poor, old people.”

Source / AP / Haaretz

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US Financial Institutions: Corrupt to the Core?

Posted on March 26, 2009 by RagBlog

This graphic shows Bank of America’s loans to directors, executives and other insiders since 2001. Graphic by David Puckett, Research by Stella Hopkins.

Secrecy shrouds insider loans
By Stella M.Hopkins / March 23, 2009

Experts see potential conflicts of interest in banks’ $41 billion in insider lending, some during credit crunch and bailout.

Banks nationwide hold $41 billion in loans to directors, top executives and other insiders, a portfolio that experts say should be stripped of secrecy.

Insider lending to directors is particularly troublesome because it could cloud the judgment of people charged with protecting shareholders and overseeing bank management, the experts say.

Charlotte’s two big banking names are among the biggest insider lenders.

At Bank of America, those loans more than doubled last year, to $624 million – the biggest dollar jump in the country. The largest of them likely went to three directors or their companies. The surge came during the third quarter as credit markets froze, the government prepared to infuse banks with billions in tax dollars and the board approved the purchase of troubled Merrill Lynch.

Wachovia ended 2008 with $747 million of insider loans, second only to the much larger JPMorgan. All of the loans were held by Wachovia directors or their companies, with just five holding the largest. Last year, the company had to sell itself amid staggering losses in part due to a 2006 deal.

Insider loans, ranging from home mortgages to multi-million-dollar lines of credit for big companies, are legal but largely shrouded from public scrutiny.

Banks don’t have to explain increased insider lending. They don’t have to disclose individual loan amounts or terms for any insiders, including executives. Directors and their businesses, often the largest insider borrowers, are completely shielded. Directors must approve insider loans greater than $500,000, so they sometimes vote on loans for each other or the executives they oversee.

Insider favoritism is against the law. Bankers and regulators say the loans are subject to greater scrutiny to ensure insiders aren’t getting better terms and are creditworthy.

But top corporate governance experts contend that insider lending carries serious potential for conflict of interest among bank officials and must be stripped of secrecy. They argue that lending to directors, the watchdogs of management, must be revealed so shareholders can gauge their independence. And disclosure should be paramount for banks receiving government aid, said Ed Lawrence, a University of Missouri-St. Louis finance professor and co-author of a 1989 study that was a rare look at insider lending.

Seven of the 10 banks with the largest insider loans received a total of more than $50 billion in the banking bailout late last year, according to an Observer analysis of banks’ federal filings.

“It’s good for the public to know…where the money is going,” Lawrence said. “When you start taking public money, we hold them to a much higher standard.”

Terms of loans a key issue

The majority of the nation’s 8,000-plus banks make insider loans, some very small. At the end of last year, banks had $41billion of insider loans, up 5.7 percent from a year earlier, according to the Observer’s analysis.

Insider loans accounted for less than 2 percent of the banks’ assets, amounts that are generally unlikely to seriously damage banks if the loans go sour. The loans tend to make up a larger percentage of business for smaller banks.

Not all large banks are big insider lenders. Wells Fargo, for example, was about the size of Wachovia before the San Francisco bank swooped up the wounded Charlotte institution late last year. Wells ended last year with $20 million of insider loans, a fraction of Wachovia’s $747 million. Neither bank would discuss the disparity.

Most publicly traded companies were banned from making insider loans in 2002, part of the regulatory rush following the collapse of Enron and other accounting scandals.

But banks were excluded from the ban, partly because they’re in the business of lending and also because the loans have been subject to extensive regulation for more than 25 years.

The loans were blamed for bank problems during the nation’s S&L crisis. Lawrence and others have linked insider lending to bank failures. In December, the chairman of a large Irish bank resigned after revelations he had $109 million of secretive insider loans. In January, the government seized the Dublin bank.

“Studies of bank failures have found that insider abuse, including excessive or poor quality loans made, … is often a contributing factor to the failure,” says the “Insider Activities” handbook from the Comptroller of the Currency, the lead regulator for big national banks.

Banks can be hurt by even the perception of insider favoritism, the guide says.

“We don’t have a difficulty with insider loans when they’re properly written and extended,” said Ray Grace, the N.C. deputy banking commissioner who heads bank supervision for state-chartered firms. “It makes a certain amount of sense that a director or bank officer take that business to their own bank rather than shop it to a competitor.”

A key requirement is that insider loans be on the same terms as those to similar outsiders.

“This is a highly scrutinized area, so usually any problems would be caught early,” said Mindy West, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chief whose job includes crafting instructions for bank examiners.

Large banks, such as Bank of America, have regulatory officials on site. Smaller banks are typically examined every 12 to 18 months. Regulatory officials request insider loan details for review prior to their regular bank examinations, West said. The FDIC has regulatory authority over about 5,100 banks.

New loans and increases in existing loans are especially likely to be scrutinized, West said. And a loan balance that doubled would probably trigger a second look.

Objectivity may be at risk

Longtime governance expert Charles Elson doesn’t advocate banning insider loans, although he was startled the loans can run into hundreds of millions. But, he said, banks need to make full disclosure, revealing names, amounts and terms. He is especially concerned about disclosure for loans to directors and their interests.

“Management, who can dictate the terms of the loan, are being overseen by the director who is a beneficiary,” said Elson, director of the University of Delaware’s Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance. “It compromises the director’s ability to be objective.”

As borrowers, directors might be less rigorous when evaluating the CEO or other executives, he said. They might be unwilling to buck management when approving deals.

Wachovia’s board approved its 2006 acquisition of mortgage lender Golden West Financial, a vote that ultimately helped push the bank near collapse. Shortly before that approval, the bank had $1.47 billion in insider lending. Fifteen borrowers held the largest loans. Banks aren’t required to disclose details of past lending, so there’s no way to identify those borrowers.

At the end of 2008, all of the bank’s $747 million in insider loans was held by directors or their companies, said Julia Bernard, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo, which bought Wachovia last year. Five borrowers held the largest loans. Bernard said most of the loans were made before 2008.

Wachovia’s former chairman and longtime director, Lanty Smith, did not respond to two calls for comment.

Nell Minow, co-founder of The Corporate Library, said directors should take their business elsewhere if they aren’t comfortable with disclosure.

“Do you want them as directors or do you want them as customers?” she said. “To the extent there’s even the perception of conflict of interest, it’s very important for them to be very transparent.”

TOP 10 INSIDER LENDERS

JPMorgan Chase, New York, $1.48 billion

Wachovia, Charlotte, N.C., $747 million

M&I Marshall & Ilsley, Milwaukee, $644.4 million

Bank of America, Charlotte, $624.2 million

Northern Trust, Chicago, $523.5 million

Union Bank, San Francisco, $499.3 million

BB&T, Winston-Salem, N.C., $493.8 million

Commerce Bank, Kansas City, Mo., $467.9 million

Regions Bank, Birmingham, Ala., $444.3 million

Comerica Bank, Dallas, $391.5 million

(Note: Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco, bought Wachovia on Dec. 31.)

Source / Charlotte Observer

Thanks to Mike Woods and Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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The War on Drugs: Humiliating 13-Year-Olds

Posted on March 25, 2009 by RagBlog

Savana Redding, 19, was strip searched six years ago when teachers suspected she had brought prescription pills to school. Phtot: Chris Hinkle for The New York Times.

Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
By Adam Liptak / March 23, 2009

SAFFORD, Ariz. — Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.

The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.

In Ms. Redding’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”

“More than that,” Judge Wardlaw added, “it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways “a close call,” given the “humiliation and degradation” involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, “I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students.”

Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.

“Do we really want to encourage cases,” Professor Arum asked, “where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”

The Supreme Court’s last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion — as opposed to systematic drug testing programs — was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student’s purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.

In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding’s case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was “carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal.”

The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.

Sitting in her aunt’s house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. “There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types,” she said. “I was in between nerdy and preppy.”

One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. “She started acting weird and wearing black,” Ms. Redding said. “She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy.”

When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court papers.

Kerry Wilson, the assistant principal, ordered the two school employees to search both students. The searches turned up no more pills.

Mr. Wilson declined a request for an interview and referred a reporter to the superintendent of schools, Mark R. Tregaskes. Mr. Tregaskes did not respond to a message left with his assistant.

Lawyers for the school district said in a brief that it was “on the front lines of a decades-long struggle against drug abuse among students.” Abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medications is on the rise among 12- and 13-year-olds, the brief said, citing data from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Given that, the school district said, the search was “not excessively intrusive in light of Redding’s age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.”

Adam B. Wolf, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Ms. Redding, said her experience was “the worst nightmare for any parent.”

“When you send your child off to school every day, you expect them to be in math class or in the choir,” Mr. Wolf said. “You never imagine their being forced to strip naked and expose their genitalia and breasts to their school officials.”

In a sworn statement submitted in the case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, No. 08-479, Mr. Wilson said he had good reason to suspect Ms. Redding. She and other students had been unusually rowdy at a school dance a couple of months before, and members of the school staff thought they had smelled alcohol. A student also accused Ms. Redding of having served alcohol at a party before the dance, Mr. Wilson said.

Ms. Redding said she had served only soda at the party, adding that her accuser was not there. At the dance, she said, school administrators had confused adolescent rambunctiousness with inebriation. “We’re kids,” she said. “We’re goofy.”

The search was conducted by Peggy Schwallier, the school nurse, and Helen Romero, a secretary. Ms. Redding “never appeared apprehensive or embarrassed,” Ms. Schwallier said in a sworn statement. Ms. Redding said she had kept her head down so the women could not see that she was about to cry.

Ms. Redding said she was never asked if she had pills with her before she was searched. Mr. Wolf, her lawyer, said that was unsurprising.

“They strip-search first and ask questions later,” Mr. Wolf said of school officials here.

Ms. Redding did not return to school for months after the search, studying at home. “I never wanted to see the secretary or the nurse ever again,” she said.

In the end, she transferred to another school. The experience left her wary, nervous and distrustful, she said, and she developed stomach ulcers. She is now studying psychology at Eastern Arizona College and hopes to become a counselor.

Ms. Redding said school officials should have taken her background into account before searching her.

“They didn’t even look at my records,” she said. “They didn’t even know I was a good kid.”

The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”

Ms. Redding grew emotional as she reflected on what she would have done if she had been told as an adult to strip-search a student. Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she said she would have refused.

“Why would I want to do that to a little girl and ruin her life like that?” Ms. Redding asked.

Source / New York Times

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Stop Drug Violence? End Prohibition. Simple as That.

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

This is the most cogent argument against drug prohibition that I have read. And it couldn’t be more timely.

The logic here is so clear that one wonders how so many have been so blind for so long. Or might it have something to do with the established economic interests served by maintaining the status quo and the political cowardice that has stood in the way of change?

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / March 24, 2009

The face of the drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border.

‘The only way to reduce violence… is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.’

By Jeffrey A. Miron / March 24, 2009

[Jeffrey A. Miron, is senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University.]

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Over the past two years, drug violence in Mexico has become a fixture of the daily news. Some of this violence pits drug cartels against one another; some involves confrontations between law enforcement and traffickers.

Recent estimates suggest thousands have lost their lives in this “war on drugs.”

The U.S. and Mexican responses to this violence have been predictable: more troops and police, greater border controls and expanded enforcement of every kind. Escalation is the wrong response, however; drug prohibition is the cause of the violence.

Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.

Violence is the norm in illicit gambling markets but not in legal ones. Violence is routine when prostitution is banned but not when it’s permitted. Violence results from policies that create black markets, not from the characteristics of the good or activity in question.

The only way to reduce violence, therefore, is to legalize drugs. Fortuitously, legalization is the right policy for a slew of other reasons.

Prohibition of drugs corrupts politicians and law enforcement by putting police, prosecutors, judges and politicians in the position to threaten the profits of an illicit trade. This is why bribery, threats and kidnapping are common for prohibited industries but rare otherwise. Mexico’s recent history illustrates this dramatically.

Prohibition erodes protections against unreasonable search and seizure because neither party to a drug transaction has an incentive to report the activity to the police. Thus, enforcement requires intrusive tactics such as warrantless searches or undercover buys. The victimless nature of this so-called crime also encourages police to engage in racial profiling.

Prohibition has disastrous implications for national security. By eradicating coca plants in Colombia or poppy fields in Afghanistan, prohibition breeds resentment of the United States. By enriching those who produce and supply drugs, prohibition supports terrorists who sell protection services to drug traffickers.

Prohibition harms the public health. Patients suffering from cancer, glaucoma and other conditions cannot use marijuana under the laws of most states or the federal government despite abundant evidence of its efficacy. Terminally ill patients cannot always get adequate pain medication because doctors may fear prosecution by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Drug users face restrictions on clean syringes that cause them to share contaminated needles, thereby spreading HIV, hepatitis and other blood-borne diseases.

Prohibitions breed disrespect for the law because despite draconian penalties and extensive enforcement, huge numbers of people still violate prohibition. This means those who break the law, and those who do not, learn that obeying laws is for suckers.

Prohibition is a drain on the public purse. Federal, state and local governments spend roughly $44 billion per year to enforce drug prohibition. These same governments forego roughly $33 billion per year in tax revenue they could collect from legalized drugs, assuming these were taxed at rates similar to those on alcohol and tobacco. Under prohibition, these revenues accrue to traffickers as increased profits.

The right policy, therefore, is to legalize drugs while using regulation and taxation to dampen irresponsible behavior related to drug use, such as driving under the influence. This makes more sense than prohibition because it avoids creation of a black market. This approach also allows those who believe they benefit from drug use to do so, as long as they do not harm others.

Legalization is desirable for all drugs, not just marijuana. The health risks of marijuana are lower than those of many other drugs, but that is not the crucial issue. Much of the traffic from Mexico or Colombia is for cocaine, heroin and other drugs, while marijuana production is increasingly domestic. Legalizing only marijuana would therefore fail to achieve many benefits of broader legalization.

It is impossible to reconcile respect for individual liberty with drug prohibition. The U.S. has been at the forefront of this puritanical policy for almost a century, with disastrous consequences at home and abroad.

The U.S. repealed Prohibition of alcohol at the height of the Great Depression, in part because of increasing violence and in part because of diminishing tax revenues. Similar concerns apply today, and Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent announcement that the Drug Enforcement Administration will not raid medical marijuana distributors in California suggests an openness in the Obama administration to rethinking current practice.

Perhaps history will repeat itself, and the U.S. will abandon one of its most most disastrous policy experiments.

Source / CNNPolitics.com

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

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Did Bush Administration Have ‘Executive Assassination Ring?’

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Investigative reporter Sy Hersh dropped a bombshell at the University of Minnesota, March 11, 2009.

The Bush administration held that, as commander in chief, the president could authorize almost anything.

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / March 24, 2009

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh revealed in a speech at the University of Minnesota on March 11, that a hit squad — an “executive assassination ring” in his words — that reported to Vice President Richard Cheney, was plying its trade throughout the world during the administration of George W. Bush. Task Force 121 was especially active in Afghanistan. Even the Joint Chiefs of Staff could not hold them answerable. These executioners were not required to report to station chiefs or ambassadors.

In addition the CIA, after 9/11, was spying on American citizens within the United States. This was a violation of the agency’s charter. There was no legal basis for what they were doing, but they saw their targets as enemies of the state. These people were under the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). It is likely that there was no presidential “finding,” authorizing these activities. The Bush administration held that, as commander in chief, the president could authorize almost anything.

Hersh lamented that the members of the execution squads were idealistic and very capable people, some of whom are now agonizing over what they have been doing. He made these remarks in answer to a question and had not intended to discuss these matters until he had completed his research. Hersh referred to a New York Times article that cited a Lebanese source to the effect that Lebanese Christian leader Elie Hobeika was car bombed in 2002 as part of an Israeli-US effort to prevent him from testifying in Brussels against Ariel Sharon. He later said these matters were “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”

But to be fair to the US operatives, there is some evidence that rogue Syrian intelligence people were hired to kill Hobeika in 2002 and, later, Elie Hobeika. Some intelligence people think Eliot Abrams and Karl Rove handled the high level foreign assassinations. We’ll have to wait for Hersh’s promised book for better information.

Some find a precedent in the deaths of investigative reporter Danny Caselaro and his NSA source in 1991. Caselero’s death was made to look like a suicide, and there is no evidence that the George H. W. Bush administration was involved. Later, a successor to Caselero was clearly “suicided” after he tried to give evidence of wrong-doing to Attorney General Janet Reno. None of this is evidence of an executive branch assassination team.

The matter of spying on American citizens has a long pedigree. In the Reagan administration, there was an extensive operation to intimidate press people and to keep track of folks who opposed the not-so-secret war in Central America. It is said that Oliver North had something to do with this and that Vice President George H. Walker Bush supervised all of it.

Before that, there was Operation Chaos, begun under Lyndon Johnson and greatly expanded by Richard Nixon. It used the FBI and CIA to spy on dissidents. It became so large that both the FBI and CIA eventually balked.

One would suppose that Hersh’s forthcoming book would deal with software used to spy on dissidents and keep track of various financial transactions. The Reagan administration managed to seize a very sophisticated software program called PROMIS. There was a great deal of litigation initiated by a firm called Inslaw to obtain compensation. Despite the services of ace attorney Eliot Richardson, the firm obtained no relief in federal courts. The software was modified and used and sold by the US and Israel — at least according to a repentant Israeli intelligence officer. This software was repeatedly modified and now exists as what is called Main Frame, which was probably the subject of the famous drama in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room.

In addition to that, we now know that the NSA has the facilities, equipment and software to scoop up millions of domestic communications on a daily basis. A former NSA officer says that the NSA is mainly interested in the communications of journalists. There is no second source to verify this, but there is enough evidence to demonstrate they have the capabilities to do this. Whether any of this goes on under the Obama administration, is an open question. We hope not.

The Rag Blog

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Oh Goody : Texas to Offer Masters Degree in Creationism?

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Creationist Texas State Rep. Leo Berman has a bill for you! Berman is shown during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., Sept. 3, 2008. Photo by AP.

Oh goody doody gumdrops, I think I shall apply to open a branch of Hogwarts here, if this nonsense passes, and start certifying wizards!!!!!

(And you can quote me on that.)

Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / March 24, 2009

Bill in Texas would allow creationists to grant Masters of Science degrees

By Joe Byrne / March 21, 2009

If a private college doesn’t receive funds from any governmental organization, should they have to be held to any standards or requirements when they award degrees? No, one Texan lawmaker is insisting.

Texas State Representative Leo Berman has proposed House Bill 2800, which would exempt any private non-profit institution that requires students to complete “substantive course work” from having to acquire a certificate of authority from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board(THECB). “If you don’t take any federal funds, if you don’t take any state funds, you can do a lot more than some business that does take state funding or federal funding,” Berman says. “Why should you be regulated if you don’t take any state or federal funding?”

Because creationism isn’t science, critics argue.

Berman admits that his ‘inspiration’ for the bill was the Institute for Creation Research Graduate School, a Young Earth Creationism institution that has been trying to achieve certification in Texas for two years. Young Earth Creationism, much more popular than the recent Intelligent Design Creationism, is essentially Biblical literalism –- Earth is 10,000 years old, Noah’s Flood occurred, Adam and Eve were real people. ICRGS insists that they teach more than just “Biblical Creationism,” which is based only on the word of the Bible; they also have incorporated tenets of “Scientific Creationism” into their bylaws.

Most of these relate to origins of Earth and the evolution of species. Originally the creationist research branch of Christian Heritage College in San Diego, the ICRGS was forced to split from that college when California regulators threatened to take away its certification. Now, the ICRGS operates mostly online, and its Masters of Science Degree is recognized by California and federal law. According to its website, however, Texas residents cannot receive a degree.

Degree-granting colleges and universities in Texas currently must be issued a certificate of authority by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The certificate allows the holder to grant a degree that a graduate would need to apply for a teaching position in a Texas public school. If House Bill 2800 was made into law, only state-funded colleges and universities would have to report to THECB; everyone else would be free to design their curriculums without any regulation.

Critics of Berman’s bill are enraged, claiming that it will de-legitimize any degree coming out of Texas. Eugenie Scott, executive director for the National Center for Science Education, told Foxnews.com that “all you have to do…is start a non-profit organization, don’t take any federal or state money, and then offer degrees in any fool subject you want. Teaching that the Earth is only 10,000 years old is a little irregular in modern science.”

In June 2006, the Institute for Creation Research established the Henry M. Morris Center for Christian Leadership in Dallas, Texas. ICR said that the move to Texas occurred because of a more central national location, proximity to a major airport, and a greater suitable population for their ministry. However, accreditation for their graduate program is still not recognized under Texas law. According to their website, “ICR is currently examining its legal options regarding how it can best serve the educational ‘gaps’ of Texas residents.”

An extensive article by Steven Schafersman of Texas Citizens for Science detailing the long history of ICRGS and its quest for certification can be found here.

Source / The Raw Story

Thanks to Dr. S. R. Keister / The Rag Blog

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Alice Embree : Remembering Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Mural at the National University of El Salvador depicting the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, assassinated in March 24, 1980. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Liberation theologian and advocate for the poor, El Salvador’s Romero was assassinated 30 years ago today.

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / March 24, 2009

[This article is part of a series on El Salvador being written by Alice Embree. Embree was an official observer during the recent presidential elections there and sent dispatches to The Rag Blog using the byline “Al.”]

Twenty-nine years ago today, on March 24, 1980, Archibishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated in El Salvador. He was celebrating mass in a small chapel. As he raised the communion chalice a bullet tore through his heart.

Romero was an advocate for the poor, a defender of human rights and a proponent of liberation theology. His funeral on March 30th drew mourners from around the world. A crowd estimated at 250,000 packed the plaza in front of the Cathedral. During the funeral, the military fired shots into the crowd from the buildings above, killing more than thirty mourners.

Major Roberto D’Aubisson was identified as the man who ordered Romero’s assassination. D’Aubisson organized El Salvador’s infamous death squads, targeting political activists and carrying out civilian massacres. D’Aubisson also founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance Party, ARENA.

A memorial wall in San Salvador bears the names of nearly 30,000 of the dead and disappeared –- names gathered as part of a Truth Commission at the end of El Salvador’s civil war. Romero’s name is there as are those of the four U.S. churchwomen raped and murdered in December 1980. An entire panel lists the places where civilian massacres took place.

1980 was a turning point for El Salvador. Romero’s assassination brought the small Central American country to the attention of the world. It was also the year that the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) was founded. The five largest guerrilla movements in El Salvador united to form the FMLN as a single political-military force in October of 1980. With the signing of the U.N. Peace Accords in 1992, the FMLN was legalized as a political party.

October 1980 also saw the founding of the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador (CISPES) in the United States. For nearly three decades CISPES has promoted solidarity with El Salvador and mounted opposition to the U.S. military aid and training, propping up El Salvador’s death squad government. During the 1980s, El Salvador became a Reagan experiment in “low-intensity conflict.”

The ARENA party has held the presidency of El Salvador since 1989, presiding over the signing of CAFTA and economic policies that concentrated wealth and privatized public services. On March 15th the FMLN won the national election. Mauricio Funes was elected president and Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a former guerrilla combatant, was elected vice-president. In his acceptance speech, Funes dedicated his victory to the memory of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

The Rag Blog

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FILM / Saint Misbehavin’ : The Wavy Gravy Movie

Posted on March 24, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie, directed by Michelle Esrick was screened in Austin at SXSW.

The Saints Go Marching in Downtown Austin

Wavy Gravy’s evolving persona as poet, storyteller, merry prankster, jester and clown reveals a deeply spiritual and resourceful man who has used his gifts of humor and wit in dangerously charged situations to defuse tension, prevent violence, turn the tables and achieve positive, constructive outcomes.

By Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / March 23, 2009

This spring break week in Austin, the SXSW music, interactive and film festivals converged to make Austin an absolute epicenter of the creative arts. What a fabulous week! The city literally hummed.

My partner and I gravitated to the documentary films and took in as many of the offerings as we could at the festival. Notable among them was the premiere screening of “Saint Misbehavin’, The Wavy Gravy Movie,” produced and directed by Californian, Michelle Esrick. Making the film was a 10-year project for Esrick, and her commitment has achieved a first-rate visual biography of the 60’s icon, interspersing recent interviews with footage from Wavy Gravy’s Woodstock and Hog Farm bus tour days, including remarkable scenes from the group’s trek across Europe through the Middle East and Asia in 1970.

Wavy Gravy’s evolving persona as poet, storyteller, merry prankster, jester and clown reveals a deeply spiritual and resourceful man who has used his gifts of humor and wit in dangerously charged situations to defuse tension, prevent violence, turn the tables and achieve positive, constructive outcomes. Through his own stories, recollections from his closest family and friends and accompanying film vignettes that show Wavy Gravy in action, we are shown how nonviolence actually works. And, in typical Wavy Gravy fashion, he transforms even this kind of work into play. His long-time projects involve teaching children nonviolence, meditation and performance techniques (at his legendary Camp Winnarainbow in Northern California), and supplying medical services to restore vision to cataract patients in underserved parts of the world (through the SEVA Foundation he co-founded 30 years ago with several colleagues, including his wife, Jahanara Romney and his good friends, Ram Dass and Dr. Larry Brilliant, who are also featured in the film).

My partner and I attended the Saint Misbehavin’ premiere on the first Saturday of the SXSW film festival and were so taken with the story that we returned for the final showing the following Saturday with a friend who was in town to visit. Wavy Gravy was present at each venue, answering questions with characteristic aplomb.

And the compassionate clown gave Austin even more. Earlier in the day of his final film showing, Wavy Gravy became the somewhat impromptu grand marshal of the Million Musician March for Peace that marked the 6th anniversary of the beginning of the invasion of Iraq. Organized by the local musicians’ group, Instruments for Peace, the march was a colorful, family-oriented New Orleans-style parade led by musicians through downtown Austin, past SXSW venues, beginning at the Texas state capitol and winding up at Austin’s City Hall plaza for a concert where some of Austin’s finest musicians performed for the marchers.

At the head of the parade, Wavy Gravy and Michelle Esrick were ensconced in a festively decorated pedicab, the perfect peace convoy, leading us in tye-dyed, bubble-blowing style.

We CodePink folks were also on hand with eye-catching fuzzy peace signs made by our own Heidi Turpin. Heidi presented Wavy Gravy with one of the multi-colored peace signs that matched his attire to a T.

I hope Michelle Esrick’s fine film is distributed and reaches a wide audience. If its warm reception in Austin is an indication, the film will indeed carry the Wavy Gravy message forward: Put your good where it will do the most. Then, you will have fun doing it!

[Susan Van Haitsma also blogs as makingpeace at Statesman.com and at makingpeace.]

Aso see Thorne Dreyer : Wavy Gravy Leads Austin Musicians in March for Peace by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / March 23, 2009

The Rag Blog

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Colonial Afghanistan to Receive New Leader

Posted on March 24, 2009 by RagBlog

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a joint press conference at the Presidential Palace in Kabul. Photo: Shah Marai/AFP.

US will appoint Afghan ‘prime minister’ to bypass Hamid Karzai
By Julian Borger in Brussels and Ewen MacAskill / March 22, 2009

White House plans new executive role to challenge corrupt government in Kabul

WASHINGTON — The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, the Guardian has learned.

The creation of a new chief executive or prime ministerial role is aimed at bypassing Karzai. In a further dilution of his power, it is proposed that money be diverted from the Kabul government to the provinces. Many US and European officials have become disillusioned with the extent of the corruption and incompetence in the Karzai government, but most now believe there are no credible alternatives, and predict the Afghan president will win re-election in August.
President Karzai has failed to root out corruption and government incompetence Link to this audio

A revised role for Karzai has emerged from the White House review of Afghanistan and Pakistan ordered by Barack Obama when he became president. It isto be unveiled at a special conference on Afghanistan at The Hague on March 31.

As well as watering down Karzai’s personal authority by installing a senior official at the president’s side capable of playing a more efficient executive role, the US and Europeans are seeking to channel resources to the provinces rather than to central government in Kabul.

A diplomat with knowledge of the review said: “Karzai is not delivering. If we are going to support his government, it has to be run properly to ensure the levels of corruption decrease, not increase. The levels of corruption are frightening.”

Another diplomat said alternatives to Karzai had been explored and discarded: “No one could be sure that someone else would not turn out to be 10 times worse. It is not a great position.”

The idea of a more dependable figure working alongside Karzai is one of the proposals to emerge from the White House review, completed last week. Obama, locked away at the presidental retreat Camp David, was due to make a final decision this weekend.

Obama is expected to focus in public on overall strategy rather than the details, and, given its sensitivity, to skate over ­Karzai’s new role. The main recommendation is for the Afghanistan objectives to be scaled back, and for Obama to sell the war to the US public as one to ensure the country cannot again be a base for al-Qaida and the Taliban, rather than the more ambitious aim of the Bush administration of trying to create a European-style democracy in Central Asia.

Other recommendations include: increasing the number of Afghan troops from 65,000 to 230,000 as well as expanding the 80,000-strong police force; ­sending more US and European civilians to build up Afghanistan’s infrastructure; and increased aid to Pakistan as part of a policy of trying to persuade it to tackle al-Qaida and Taliban elements.

The proposal for an alternative chief executive, which originated with the US, is backed by Europeans. “There needs to be a deconcentration of power,” said one senior European official. “We need someone next to Karzai, a sort of chief executive, who can get things done, who will be reliable for us and accountable to the Afghan people.”

Money and power will flow less to the ministries in Kabul and far more to the officials who run Afghanistan outside the capital – the 34 provincial governors and 396 district governors. “The point on which we insist is that the time is now for a new division of responsibilities, between central power and local power,” the senior European official said.

No names have emerged for the new role but the US holds in high regard the reformist interior minister appointed in October, Mohammed Hanif Atmar.

The risk for the US is that the imposition of a technocrat alongside Karzai would be viewed as colonialism, even though that figure would be an Afghan. Karzai declared his intention last week to resist a dilution of his power. Last week he accused an unnamed foreign government of trying to weaken central government in Kabul.

“That is not their job,” the Afghan president said. “Afghanistan will never be a puppet state.”

The UK government has since 2007 advocated dropping plans to turn Afghanistan into a model, European-style state.

Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who will implement the new policy, said it would represent a “vastly restructured effort”. At the weekend in Brussels, he was scathing about the Bush administration’s conduct of the counter-insurgency. “The failures in the civilian side … are so enormous we can at least hope that if we get our act together … we can do a lot better,” he said.

Source / The Guardian

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