Greenwald: More Reasons to Prosecute the War Criminals and Other Corrupt Politicians

Posted on December 21, 2008 by RagBlog

These folks are Irish, but they’re saying it for the rest of us. Photo source.

If criminal penalties are removed, what will deter lawbreaking by political officials?
By Glenn Greenwald / December 20, 2008

The Washington Post‘s Ruth Marcus today perfectly expresses the consensus view of establishment Washington regarding the exemption which political elites should and do enjoy from the rule of law, and, in doing so, she unintentionally highlights — as vividly as possible — the glaring flaw in this mentality. Marcus reviews the life of Mark Felt, the number 2 FBI official under J. Edgar Hoover who died this week. Felt is most famous for having been Bob Woodward’s “Deep Throat” source in the Watergate investigation but, as Marcus details, he was also convicted in a 1980 criminal trial for having ordered illegal, warrantless physical searches of the homes of various friends and relatives of 1960s radicals.

Less than 24 hours after Felt was convicted, he (along with an FBI co-defendant) was pardoned by Ronald Reagan, who justified the pardon by citing Jimmy Carter’s pardon of Vietnam War draft evaders and then saying, in words obviously relevant now to growing demands for prosecution of Bush officials:

We can be no less generous to two men who acted on high principle to bring an end to the terrorism that was threatening our nation. . . .

[The men’s convictions] grew out of their good-faith belief that their actions were necessary to preserve the security interests of our country. The record demonstrates that they acted not with criminal intent, but in the belief that they had grants of authority reaching to the highest levels of government.

Marcus quotes Felt’s Special Prosecutor, John Nields, as angrily protesting Reagan’s pardon, pointing out that central to our form of Government is the proposition that our highest political leaders are constrained by the Constitution and the rule of law — a principle Reagan subverted by protecting these criminals.

Like the good, representative establishment Washingtonian that she is, Marcus announces that — when it comes to the growing controversy over whether Bush officials should be investigated and prosecuted for their crimes — she “find[s herself] more in the camp of Reagan than Nields.” Her reasoning is a perfect distillation of conventional Washington wisdom on this topic:

I understand — I even share — Nields’s anger over the insult to the rule of law. Yet I’m coming to the conclusion that what’s most crucial here is ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated. In the end, that may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right.

Leave aside Marcus’ revealing description of government crimes as “mistakes.” Even on its own terms, even if one accepts her premise that Bush officials broke the law “in pursuit of what they thought was right,” this argument makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it is as internally contradictory as an idea can be.

Along with the desire for just retribution, one of the two principal reasons we impose penalties for violations of the criminal law is deterrence — to provide an incentive for potential lawbreakers to refrain from breaking our laws, rather than deciding that it is beneficial to do so. Though there is debate about how best to accomplish it and how effective it ultimately is, deterrence of future crimes has been, and remains, a core purpose of the criminal law. That is about as basic as it gets. From Paul Robinson, University of Pennsylvania Law Professor, and John Darley, Psychology Professor at Princeton, in “The Role of Deterrence in the Criminal Law“:

For the past several decades, the deterrence of crime has been a centerpiece of criminal law reform. Law-givers have sought to optimize the control of crime by devising a penalty-setting system that assigns criminal punishments of a magnitude sufficient to deter a thinking individual from committing a crime.

Punishment for lawbreaking is precisely how we try to ensure that crimes “never happen again.” If instead — as Marcus and so many other urge — we hold political leaders harmless when they break the law, if we exempt them from punishment under the criminal law, then what possible reason would they have from refraining from breaking the law in the future? A principal reason for imposing punishment on lawbreakers is exactly what Marcus says she wants to achieve: “ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated.” By telling political leaders that they will not be punished when they break the law, the exact opposite outcome is achieved: ensuring that this conduct will be repeated.

* * * * *

Just contemplate how stupid and irrational everyone would think a person was being if they wrote an article advancing this argument:

Much more important than punishing murderers or getting caught up in protracted disputes about prior murders is the need to prevent murders from occurring in the future. Therefore, we ought to abandon our quest to impose punishments on people who get caught having murdered someone. To expend resources trying to punish murderers is to squander vital resources on the past, to waste energies that could instead be more productively devoted to preventing future murders.

There are too many important challenges we face to waste time bogged down litigating past murders. Let’s allow murderers to go unpunished so that we can move beyond the past and concentrate instead on the more important priority of minimizing the number of murders in the future.

The argument, of course, is self-refuting. If we adopt a policy of not punishing murderers, we will obviously not be preventing future murders. We will be doing the opposite: ensuring and even encouraging a massive increase in murders, since people will know that they are now free to do it with impunity. The prime barrier to most crimes — the main deterrent — is the threat of criminal punishment, of a lengthy prison term. That’s not true of all crimes (the criminal law has had a negligible effect, for instance, on drug usage, and may not deter poverty-motivated crimes), but it’s certainly true of most serious crimes, especially by those with power. If you abolish that punishment, then you inevitably ensure many more crimes in the future, no matter how many noble efforts you devote towards “making sure it never happens again” — whatever that might mean.

The evidence demonstrating that this is an exact analogy to what Marcus is advocating, an exact analogy to what we’ve generally been doing with political leaders and are doing now, is equally self-evident. A central observation in Marcus’ column is that the controversies that have now arisen over Bush lawbreaking in the areas of interrogation and surveillance are not new. As she points out, these are the very same controversies that we’ve been confronting for decades.

That’s exactly right. The same controversies over government lawbreaking arise over and over. And why is that? Because our political leaders keep breaking the law — chronically and deliberately. And why do they keep doing that? Because there is no deterrent against it. Every time they get caught breaking the law, the Ronald Reagans and Ruth Marcuses of the world step in to insist that they should not be punished, that the criminal law is not for elite leaders in political office, that those involved in the noble function of ruling America are too intrinsically well-intentioned to warrant punishment even when they commit crimes, that it’s more important to look forward than back.

Every time we immunize political leaders from the consequences of their crimes, it’s manipulatively justified in the name of “ensuring that it never happens again.” And every time, we do exactly the opposite: we make sure it will happen again. And it does: Richard Nixon is pardoned. J. Edgar Hoover’s lawbreakers are protected. The Iran-contra criminals are set free and put back into government. Lewis Libby is spared having to serve even a single day in prison despite multiple felony convictions. And now it’s time to immunize even those who tortured detainees and spied on Americans in violation of numerous treaties, domestic laws, and the most basic precepts of civilized Western justice.

* * * * *

If someone wants to argue that America is too good and our Washington elite too important to allow our powerful political leaders to be subjected to the indignity of a criminal proceeding, let alone prison, they should argue that. As warped as that idea is, at least it’s candid and coherent. It’s the actual animating principle driving most of this.

But this claim that we have to immunize political leaders from the consequences of their lawbreaking in order to — as Marcus wrote — “ensure that these mistakes are not repeated” is manipulative and Orwellian in the extreme. It’s contradictory on its face. It’s just a Beltway buzzphrase, a platitude, completely devoid of specific meaning and designed to do nothing but obfuscate what is really going on.

Whenever you hear that claim being made — that what matters is not punishment, but ensuring that it never happens again — notice that none of the Serious guardians who advocate it ever, ever answer or even acknowledge this question: other than punishing people for breaking the law, how is it even theoretically possible to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future? We already have unambiguous laws in place with substantial penalties for violations. We already impose disclosure obligations, and substantial oversight duties on the Congress and courts.

All of these laws and safeguards were blithely disregarded and violated. Other than making sure that leaders know they will be punished — like all Americans are — when they break the law, how and why does anyone imagine that we can ensure this “never happens again,” especially as we simultaneously affirm — yet again — that political leaders will be exempted from the rule of law if they do it? What’s the answer to that?

UPDATE: The opening address of Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg Trials is undoubtedly one of the most important speeches of the last century. It established the basic precepts of Western Justice. War crimes, Jackson observed, are such that “civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.” And, contrary to the blatantly self-contradictory claims from today’s Washington elite, he pointed out that the only way to ensure they don’t happen again is through real accountability and punishment:

The common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power . . . .

It’s irrelevant whether crimes rise to that same level or are of the same magnitude. These were principles of justice that were supposed to endure and govern how we conducted ourselves generally, beyond that specific case. In fact, Justice Louis Brandeis, 20 years earlier, observed that it’s probably more important — not less — to enforce the rule of law when government leaders commit crimes than when ordinary Americans commit them:

In a government of law, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.

We haven’t just forgotten these principles. We’re deliberately — consciously — choosing to renounce them.

UPDATE II: At Talk Left, Armando points out one other towering, destructive flaw in Marcus’ “logic” — logic which, I want to re-iterate, is worth examining only because it’s the predominant mentality in the Washington establishment. As Armando writes:

[Marcus] claims her ambivalence stems from “How much can and should government infringe on personal privacy and individual liberties in the name of guarding against risks to public safety? What should be the role of criminal law when government officials overstep permissible bounds in the name of national security?”

The answers to these questions are so obvious that it strikes me again that Ms. Marcus is providing us the question ‘is she an idiot or a malevolent dissembler?’ Those questions are answered by the laws we make. This is called democracy Ms. Marcus. The permitted level of government infringement on liberty is that which our laws and Constitution allow. No more. If we wish to give away our freedoms, we do it by lawful means. To grant the Executive Branch the power to determine which laws to follow is precisely what the Founders fought against.

Why does that even need to be pointed out? We already weighed the competing considerations between freedom and security and then enacted laws which authorized certain behaviors and criminalized others. If that balance should be altered, the solution — in a society that lives under the rule of law — is for the laws to be changed democratically, not for political leaders to decide at will and in secret that they will break those laws and then argue after the fact that the laws they broke were bad ones. Political leaders aren’t vested with lawbreaking power. To the contrary, the Constitution explicitly requires that they “faithfully execute” those laws, not violate them at will.

Isn’t this all so painfully basic? When the predominant Beltway argument is stripped of euphemisms, it amounts to nothing less than the claim that our political leaders should be — and are — free to break our laws. And that’s the system we’ve adopted. It’s why Dick Cheney feels free to smugly admit in public that he authorized these war crimes. He knows that the Ruth Marcuses of the world will intervene to defend him. Still, it’s one thing to argue that American political leaders should have the power to commit crimes. It’s another thing entirely to advance the insultingly deceitful and Orwellian claim that doing so is necessary so we can focus on preventing similar lawbreaking in the future.

UPDATE III: This Kos diarist makes a good case that the most effective way Obama could ensure meaningful investigations and prosecutions is to appoint someone like Patrick Fitzgerald — or, even better, Fitzgerald himself — to the role of Special Prosecutor, and vest him with all the power he needs to undertake a real investigation, wherever it might lead. That’s the same recommendation I made several times with Bill Moyers last week, in this clip.

That option has the advantage of insulating Obama from responsibility for overseeing any investigations and ensuring that it is treated purely as a criminal, not a political, matter. As a practical reality, the largest barrier to any route to prosecution — including this one — is that the Congressional Democratic leadership was complicit, to varying degrees, in the illegal programs. But of all the various ways investigations could be pursued, the appointment of a fearless prosecutor with a proven record of independence (and who is a Republican to boot) would be the most effective.

Source / Salon.com

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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A Legal Opinion About Bush and Cheney’s Culpability for War Crimes

Posted on December 21, 2008 by RagBlog


Cheney Throws Down Gauntlet, Defies Prosecution for War Crimes
By Marjorie Cohn / December 19, 2008

Dick Cheney has publicly confessed to ordering war crimes. Asked about waterboarding in an ABC News interview, Cheney replied, “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.” He also said he still believes waterboarding was an appropriate method to use on terrorism suspects. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the agency waterboarded three Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

U.S. courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone’s nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in U.S. law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it.

Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal? Because he’s confident that either President Bush will preemptively pardon him or President-elect Obama won’t prosecute him.

Both of those courses of action would be illegal. [emphasis added]

First, a president cannot immunize himself or his subordinates for committing crimes that he himself authorized. On February 7, 2002, Bush signed a memo erroneously stating that the Geneva Conventions, which require humane treatment, did not apply to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But the Supreme Court made clear that Geneva protects all prisoners. Bush also admitted that he approved of high level meetings where waterboarding was authorized by Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and George Tenet.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey says there’s no need for Bush to issue blanket pardons since there is no evidence that anyone developed the policies “for any reason other than to protect the security in the country and in the belief that he or she was doing something lawful.” But noble motives are not defenses to the commission of crimes.

Lt. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, said, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Second, the Constitution requires President Obama to faithfully execute the laws. That means prosecuting lawbreakers. When the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, thereby making them part of U.S. law, we agreed to prosecute those who violate their prohibitions.

The bipartisan December 11 report of the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Lawyers who wrote the memos that purported to immunize government officials from war crimes liability include John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, David Addington and Alberto Gonzales. There is precedent in our law for holding lawyers criminally liable for participating in a common plan to violate the law.

Committee chairman Senator Carl Levin told Rachel Maddow that you cannot legalize what’s illegal by having a lawyer write an opinion.

The committee’s report also found that “Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantánamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.” Those techniques migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan, where prisoners in U.S. custody were also tortured.

Pardons or failures to prosecute the officials who planned and authorized torture would also be immoral. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq – as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat – are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”

During the campaign, Obama promised to promptly review actions by Bush officials to determine whether “genuine crimes” were committed. He said, “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” but “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.”

Two Obama advisors told the Associated Press that “there’s little-if any – chance that the incoming president’s Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.”

When he takes office, Obama should order his new attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who ordered and authorized the commission of war crimes.

Obama has promised to bring real change. This must be legal and moral change, where those at the highest levels of government are held accountable for their heinous crimes. The new president should move swiftly to set an important precedent that you can’t authorize war crimes and get away with it.

[Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and President of the National Lawyers Guild. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd), which will be published this winter by PoliPointPress. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com. (The views expressed in this article are solely those of the writer; she is not acting on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild or Thomas Jefferson School of Law.)]

Source / Common Dreams

Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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UN Resolution 242: Sowing the Seeds of Future Catastrophe in 1967

Posted on December 21, 2008 by RagBlog

A senior Palestinian holds an old key as he marches during a rally marking the Al-Nakba (Catastrophe) Day in Gaza City.

Robert Fisk’s World: One missing word sowed the seeds of catastrophe
By Robert Fisk / December 20, 2008

No one in 1967 thought the Arab-Israeli conflict would still be in progress 41 years later

A nit-picker this week. And given the fact that we’re all remembering human rights, the Palestinians come to mind since they have precious few of them, and the Israelis because they have the luxury of a lot of them.

And Lord Blair, since he’ll be communing with God next week, might also reflect that he still – to his shame – hasn’t visited Gaza. But the nit-picking has got to be our old friend United Nations Security Council Resolution 242. This, you’ll recall, was supposed to be the resolution that would guide all future peace efforts in the Middle East; Oslo was supposed to have been founded on it and all sorts of other processes and summits and road maps.

It was passed in November 1967, after Israel had occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai and Golan, and it emphasises “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war” and calls for “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”.

Readers who know the problem here will be joined by those who will immediately pick it up. The Israelis say that they are not required to withdraw from all the territories – because the word “all” is missing and since the definite article “the” is missing before the word “territories”, its up to Israel to decide which bits of the occupied territories it gives up and which bits it keeps.

Hence Israel can say it gave up Sinai in accordance with 242 but is going to keep East Jerusalem and much of the West Bank for its settlers. Golan depends on negotiations with Syria. And Gaza? Well, 242 doesn’t say anything about imprisoning one and a half million civilians because they voted for the wrong people. No one in 1967 dreamed that the Israeli-Arab conflict would still be in ferocious progress 41 years later. And as an Independent reader pointed out a couple of years ago, the Security Council clearly never intended the absence of a definite article to give Israel an excuse to stay in the West Bank. Alas, our reader was wrong.

I’ve been going back through my files on 242 and discovered a most elucidating paper by John McHugo, who was a visiting fellow at the Scottish Centre for International Law at Edinburgh University. He points out that pro-Israeli lawyers have been saying for some years that “Resolution 242 unanimously called for withdrawal from ‘territories’ rather than withdrawal from ‘all the territories’. Its choice of words was deliberate… they signify that withdrawal if required from some but not all the territories”.

McHugo is, so far as I know, the only man to re-examine the actual UN debates on 242 and they make very unhappy reading. The French and Spanish versions of the text actually use the definite article. But the Brits – apparently following a bit of strong-arm tactics from the Americans – did not use “the”. Lord Caradon, our man at the UN, insisted on putting in the phrase about the “inadmissability of the acquisition of territory by war” in order to stop the Israelis claiming that they could cherry-pick which lands to return and which to hand on to. Britain accepted Jordan’s rule over the West Back – the PLO were still shunned as super-terrorists at the time – but it did no good. Abba Eban, Israel’s man on the East River, did his best to persuade Caradon to delete both “the” and the bit about the inadmissability of territory through war. He won the first battle, but not the second.

That great American statesman George Ball was to recount how, when the Arabs negotiated over 242 in early November of 1967 – at the Waldorf Astoria (these guys knew how to pick the swankiest hotels for political betrayal) – the US ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg, told King Hussein that America “could not guarantee that everything would be returned by Israel”. The Arabs distrusted Goldberg because he was known to be pro-Zionist, but Hussein was much comforted when US Secretary of State Dean Rusk assured him in Washington that the US “did not approve of Israeli retention of the West Bank”. Hussein was further encouraged when he met President Johnson who told him that Israeli withdrawal might take place in “six months”. Goldberg further boosted his confidence. “Don’t worry. They’re on board,” he said of the Israelis. Ho ho.

It’s intriguing to note that several other nations at the UN were troubled by the absence of “the”. The Indian delegate, for example, pointed out that the resolution referred to “all the territories – I repeat all the territories – occupied by Israel…” while the Soviet Union (which knew all about occupying other people’s countries) stated that “we understand the decision to mean the withdrawal of Israeli forces from all, and we repeat, all territories belonging to Arab states and seized by Israel…”. President Johnson rebuffed the Soviets and bluntly refused to put the word “all” in the resolution. Bulgaria, not surprisingly, said much the same as the Soviets. Brazil expressed reservations – rightly so – about “the clarity of the wording”. The Argentinians “would have preferred a clearer text”. In other words, the future tragedy was spotted at the time. But we did nothing. The Americans had stitched it up and the Brits went along with it. The Arabs were not happy but foolishly – and typically – relied on Caradon’s assurances that “all” the territories was what 242 meant, even if it didn’t say so. Israel still fought hard to get rid of the “inadmissability” bit, even when it had got “the” out.

Ye gods! Talk about sewing the seeds of future catastrophe. Well, Colin Powell, when he was George W Bush’s secretary of state, gutlessly told US diplomats to call the West Bank “disputed” rather than “occupied” – which suited the Israelis just fine although, as McHugo pointed out, the Israelis might like to consider what would happen if the Arabs talked about those bits of Israel which were not included in the original UN partition plan as “disputed” as well. Besides, George W’s infamous letter to Ariel Sharon, saying he could, in effect, keep large bits of the West Bank, set the seal on Johnson’s deception.

McHugo mischievously adds that a mandatory warning in a city that says “dogs must be kept on the lead near ponds in the park” clearly means that “all” dogs and “all” ponds are intended. These days, of course, we use walls to keep dogs out. Palestinians, too.

Source / The Independent

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Juan Cole’s Take on Rick Warren

Posted on December 21, 2008 by RagBlog


Rick Warren: “I love Muslims . . . I happen to love Gays and Straights”
By Juan Cole / December 21, 2008

I was in Long Beach, California on Saturday for the annual conference of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, where Pastor Rick Warren and I were both headliners.

Also appearing on the stage Saturday evening were Melissa Etheridge and Salman Ahmad, singing Ring the Bells.

Before I go further, I just want to praise MPAC as the most wonderful people. This is the American Muslim community at its best– socially and spiritually active, deeply interested in civil rights, and insisting on reclaiming their religion from extremists. Many of them are religious and social liberals who dislike fundamentalism. Anyone looking for a worthy charity to donate to in this season of giving should seriously consider MPAC. It is an American organization and only accepts money from Americans, and Homeland Security presented there, so it has all the bona fides.

Back to the conference. There are two stories here of wider interest. One is Rick Warren addressing a Muslim audience. The other is his being at the same event with Etheridge, who is gay.

Warren will read the invocation at President-Elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, a choice that angered the gay community. Warren supported Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage (and forcibly divorced or ‘de-married’ 18,000 gay couples already married in California). Warren also has compared legalizing gay marriage to legalizing incest, pedophilia and polygamy.

I was told that Warren’s friends among the MPAC Muslim community had urged him to call Melissa Etheridge Friday night in the run-up to their being (serially) on the same stage Saturday night, and that he did so and they talked for half an hour. During his address, Warren mentioned also seeing Etheridge backstage on Saturday.

Local television in Los Angeles showed a short clip of Etheridge after the event asking gay leaders to reach out to Warren, just as they wanted him to reach out to them.

This stance was big of her, since she and her partner had planned to marry but were prevented from doing so by the same Proposition 8 that Warren worked for, and she was so upset she suggested she would refuse to pay California taxes since she is obviously not considered a full citizen by her fellow Californians.

Warren took the stage, friendly and ebullient, and implicitly complained about the bad press he has gotten since Obama announced he would read the invocation. He said that the media likes conflict, and where there is harmony there is nothing for them to report. When there is no conflict, he said, the media will create one.

Warren said, “Let me just get this over very quickly. I love Muslims. And for the media’s purpose, I happen to love gays and straights.”

He explicitly mentioned meeting Etheridge, and explained that he has been a long time fan of hers, beginning with her self-titled first album of 1988. “I’m enough of a groupie,” he said, “that I got her autograph on the Christmas album.”

Warren also talked about the increasing rudeness and rancor of public life in the United States, and urged greater civility and willingness to work with people across the spectrum of opinion. He said, “We can disagree without being disagreeable.” He also made a point of saying that al-Qaeda is no more representative of Islam than the KKK is of Christianity. Contrast that to the sorts of things Mike Huckabee or Rudi Giuliani said during the presidential campaign.

But just a gentle reminder to Warren that saying for Melissa Etheridge to be married to Tammy Lynn Michaels is equivalent to pedophilia or incest is not actually very civil or nice or humane. [emphasis added]

Since I knew both of us would be at MPAC, I bought Warren’s book, “The Purpose-Driven Life,” and read it on the plane. I was a religion major, so I’ve read a lot of theology in various religions. It is mostly just standard evangelical talking points.

Warren’s book does have some strengths. I was struck that Warren’s section early in the book on the notion of “surrender” to God is the best explication I have seen in English of what Muslims mean by Islam. Since he was talking about Christianity, these passages are an unwitting argument for the unity of religions.

So imagine my surprise when I heard Warren talk at MPAC and found that he is a genuine, likeable man. And more than likeable, he seems admirable. A lot of pastors would tell the story of building their congregations and saving souls as the pinnacle of their lives. For Warren, that was only the beginning. He and his wife had an epiphany six years ago when she read an article about there being 12 million children in Africa who had been orphaned by AIDS. They started going to southern Africa, and Warren became devoted to helping those orphans.

But then he began thinking bigger. He has identified 5 major problems he wants to address: Spiritual emptiness, corrupt leadership, disease pandemics, dire poverty, and illiteracy. He wants to do job creation and job training. He wants to wipe out malaria in the areas where it is still active. He is convinced that religious congregations are the only set of organizations on earth that can successfully combat these ills. And he is entirely willing actively and directly to cooperate with mosques to get the job done.

Warren, in short, is a representative of the turn of some evangelicals to a social gospel. Since evangelicalism is a global movement and very interested in mission, his social gospel not surprisingly becomes a global social gospel. He is active in South Africa, Rwanda and more recently Uganda.

In opinion polls, evangelicals are by far the most bigoted Americans versus Muslims. But that sentiment derives from theological competition (and competition for souls). Once a pastor turns, as Warren did, to a social gospel, then he has social goals to accomplish, and he needs all the help he can get. A social gospel creates a field of practical ecumenism.

Warren’s sincere friendship with MPAC founding father, Maher Hathout, was obvious from their body language.

So you begin to see why Obama is reaching out to this man. (In fact, Warren reached out to Obama 3 years ago and had him to his Saddleback Church despite it being a Republican bastion, and says he took heat from his congregants for that step). If Warren is the future of the American evangelical movement, then many more evangelicals might end up Democrats, since it is Democrats who care about poor people, illiteracy, and AIDS victims. And if any significant proportion of evangelicals can be turned into consistent Democrats, the party would more regularly win elections in some parts of the country and even nationally.

Moreover, Warren’s work to improve the lives of Africans probably means something to Obama.

I came away liking and looking up to Warren. In fact, I wonder whether with some work he could not be gotten to back off some of the hurtful things he has said about gays and rethink his support for Proposition 8.

Maybe Melissa Etheridge, who is otherwise very angry about Prop 8, saw the same thing in him.

So, then on to Melissa Etheridge. Here is the song that Melissa and Salman sang:

Ring The Bells – Melissa Etheridge and Salman Ahmad

They were introduced by a video of Deepak Chopra talking about their Bells for Peace campaign:

Join Melissa Etheridge, Salman Ahmad, Deepak Chopra in an experience that will reach the world through critical mass. On December 21 at noon, where ever you are: at work, home, or school. Get outside, meditate, intention, pray or wish silently for one minute, and then ring a bell for peace for one minute.

Etheridge said in her remarks before they sang that she started hanging out with Salman about a year ago, and that he had introduced her to Sufism, which accorded with her own spiritual path. They met at the Nobel Peace Prize dinner in December of 2007, and she then invited him to come stay with her in Los Angeles.

I’ve also been a fan of Melissa Etheridge since 1988, and her encounter with Sufi rock is a twist that fascinates me.

So that was my day in Long Beach. It was an eclectic day. It struck me that it was a very American day, and a good day for America.

Source / Informed Comment

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Charlie Loving: Bailing Out Santa

Posted on December 21, 2008 by RagBlog

Cartoon by Charlie Loving / The Rag Blog

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Marilyn Buck from the Greybar: Thoughts on the Recent Election

Posted on December 20, 2008 by RagBlog

Marilyn J. Buck was an activist in Austin, Texas in the late sixties. She was a staffer on The Rag, the underground newspaper that was The Rag Blog’s inspiration. She is also a former editor of the original SDS’ New Left Notes, former member of San Francisco’s movement film project Newsreel, an accomplished poet, and a literacy and AIDS prevention educator. She is also the longest-held woman political prisoner in the US today. To learn more about Marilyn’s history, her incarceration and her creative work, go to her Web page and to her entry on the Rag Authors’ Page.

Behind the walls and fences of Dublin Federal Correctional Institution in California, where she may now begin cautiously to anticipate her release in 2010, Marilyn has a unique perspective on the prospects and reality of social and political change. What follows is her most recent monthly letter to supporters she cannot always write to individually, handwritten and mailed by her, typed and e-mailed by friends in the Bay Area. We think it’s worth passing on here.

Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / December 20, 2008

Kinder and Gentler Empire Maintenance
By Marilyn Buck / The Rag Blog / December 20, 2008

Another year is nearly done, and thank the intelligence of the mass of voters, many who could never stomach the Bush regime, and others whose stomachs are shrinking because of the war and the rapacious neoliberal boondogglers. I wept, along with nearly all the Black women here, as well as some other women here inside prison walls, to see that in this lifetime, from the civil rights and black power movements that were revitalized by black GIs returning from the 2nd world war to now, that a person of African heritage would be elected.

Changes have occurred here in the U.S. Of course there were radical changes when the Black Reconstruction period opened. White supremacy and privilege are still alive and well. As we well know, capitalism accommodates any and all who support its agenda, especially a more centrist agenda. Hopefully in this next period, a more visionary, and materialist, strategy along with movements will emerge or continue to develop with a new resolve. The rest of the world is watching and holding its breath, wondering if the U.S. will reform its bellicosity and greed, or if this might just be a new face, in order to look more like the rest of the world. Kinder and gentler empire maintenance.

I’m sure you have read and heard more, and know more the sentiment in society as a whole. It is always a little strange to know the world through what I read, and hear on KPFA. I sometimes forget that I am plagued with a myopic view and imagine that I know “stuff.” I wonder what I might have missed, because as yet I haven’t heard or read about any vision of what might be done. Thus, I have one imperative question as I look at how the capitalists were so able and ready to replace any socialist economic vestige, at whatever price (despite the view that the fall of the wall and the USSR underwent a peaceful transition to capitalism).

That is: what is a strategy for the peaceful, at least non-declared war, to replace capitalist mode of finance and production? What could be done in such a capitalist crisis as we are now experiencing? What is our plan, those of us who imagine socialism as a possibility? What if there is no “revolution”? I’ve heard and read some tactical suggestions. But tactics don’t automatically marshal into a vision or a strategy! I am woefully underdeveloped in the realm of “alternative” economic systems, so don’t have much of a clue. I would have liked to hear something more than tactical alternatives when the 700 billion “stimulus” package was introduced and with a little tiny bit of foot-dragging was smilingly passed.

Many of the women here in Federal prison are holding their breaths expectantly. The possibility that there will be a forthcoming change in the draconian sentencing laws of 1987 has more than a few glued to the TV and radio news; rumors abound. Those who are foreign national are also holding their breaths, hopeful that they too will be included in any relief, but fearful and resentful that some proposals would not affect their purgatory at all. After more than 20 years of the 1987 “new law”, there may be a change in the number of good days at least, though there hasn’t been mention of shortening sentencing guidelines.

Those who would have voted for McCain were curiously silent, didn’t even watch the election results (some people can’t get past their whiteness, no matter what! Many of these same people here also avidly watch all the prison lock-up and Wanted-type programs. I don’t quite get it, except most are anti-women in more than a few ways. It really is our fault, Eve!!)

This is the expected after the beleaguering storms of the torturer’s war against the world, and the wobbling legs of capitalism! But now the to-be-expected advisors are arriving in order to continue the empire as kinder and gentler, and to look more like the world that feeds its best minds, natural and human resources to the empire. I mean, Rahm Emmanuel!! A Mossadian lout.

And so we march forward into unending war, still believing that war keeps capitalism strong. And besides, isn’t it our natural state of being? Perhaps, one day, cooler heads will prevail. A new conception of leadership. I suspect such leadership will be full of women with a new attitude!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Rag Blog

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Lame Duck Dubya’s Belated Bailout

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

President Bush pauses during a statement on the auto industry at the White House on Friday, December 19, 2008 in Washington. Photo by Evan Vucci / AP.

‘It looks like the feds are going to end up owning and supporting a failed industry that lacks the cheap oil to give it a credible future.’
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / December 20, 2008

See ‘Bush: auto plan only way to stave off collapse’ by Tabassum Zakaria, Below.

The real problem is that keeping a failed and mismanaged industry on life support for a few more months doesn’t do much good. Not unless somebody in charge can think of a smart way forward after that down payment runs out.

“…the carmakers would provide a restructuring plan by March 31 that would show they would survive, or they would be required to repay the loans…”

Is this requirement really serious? How could these companies possibly repay the bridge loans if they need the money so badly right now? Or is it considered acceptable to lie to the public this openly about how our future tax obligations are being handled.

It looks like the feds are going to end up owning and supporting a failed industry that lacks the cheap oil to give it a credible future.

(Gasoline is cheap for the moment, but future fuel affordability is an illusion.)

If Detroit can make cars, they SHOULD be able to make the trains and wind turbines we will really need in the future. But how could the Detroit car companies, given their track record, possibly decide to do something that bold on their own?

It is obviously going to take the feds to tell them they must make such basic changes. We are groping toward socialist management and public control of the unprofitable sectors of US basic industry, all the while being afraid to admit that this is happening.

Bush: auto plan only way to stave off collapse
By Tabassum Zakaria / December 20, 2008

WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush on Saturday said offering government loans to U.S. automakers was the only option left to prevent the industry from collapsing after alternatives were ruled out or failed.

Bush on Friday announced the government would provide $17.4 billion in emergency loans to financially strapped General Motors (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and Chrysler LLC CBS.UL to prevent them from failing. Ford decided it did not immediately need similar loans.

In return, the carmakers would provide a restructuring plan by March 31 that would show they would survive, or they would be required to repay the loans.

Lawmakers from Bush’s own Republican Party criticized the plan, which can be changed by the incoming administration of Democratic President-elect Barack Obama after he takes office Jan. 20.

“We have ended up with an agreement open to interpretation, that eliminates the sense of crisis, where taxpayer dollars are expended and we are left to hope that the next administration has the will to enforce the tough concessions necessary to make these companies viable for the long term,” Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican said.

Bush in a weekly radio address said his economic advisers warned that if the automakers filed for bankruptcy it would lead to a “disorderly collapse” of the industry and send the economy into a “deeper and longer recession.”

After Congress was unable to pass legislation to bail out the auto industry, the only way to stave off a collapse was for his administration to step in, Bush said.

The automakers are capable of demonstrating by the end of March that they can restructure into viable companies, he said. If not, the loans would provide time for the carmakers to prepare for an “orderly” Chapter 11 bankruptcy process that offered a better prospect of long-term success, Bush said.

“This restructuring will require meaningful concessions from all involved in the auto industry — management, labor unions, creditors, bondholders, dealers, and suppliers,” he said.

“The actions I’m taking represent a step that we all wish were not necessary,” Bush said. “But given the situation, it is the most effective and responsible way to address this challenge facing our nation.”

Source / Reuters, UK

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BOOKS / Thoreau’s Worst Nightmare : Self-Denial as Self-Promotion

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Illustration by Maurice Vellekoop / Mother Jones.

The most notorious neo-Thoreauvian might be Colin Beavan, a 45-year-old New Yorker better known as No Impact Man, and even better known as The Man Who Doesn’t Let His Wife Use Toilet Paper.

By Michael Agger

[This article appears in the November/December issue of Mother Jones.]

When Henry David Thoreau retreated to the woods, he famously told his readers that he wanted “to front only the essential facts of life.” What he didn’t say is that he also wanted to front the essential facts of his ambition. It was at Walden Pond where Thoreau, an original slacker, finally became a writer. He finished his account of a canoe ride with his brother, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and wrote the first draft of Walden, the book that made his name.

After 150 years, Walden endures as a monument to frugality, solitude, and sophomore-year backpacking trips. Yet it’s Thoreau’s ulterior motive that has the most influence today. He was one of the first to use lifestyle experimentation as a means to becoming a published author. Going to live by the pond was a philosophical decision, but it was also something of a gimmick. And if you want to land a book deal, you gotta have a gimmick. Recently, with “green living” having grown into a thriving and profitable trend, the sons and daughters of Thoreau are thick on the ground. Not many retreat to the woods anymore, but there are infinite ways to circumscribe your life: eat only at McDonald’s, live biblically, live virtually, spend nothing. Is it still possible to “live deliberately”? What wisdom do we take away from our postmodern cabins?

The most notorious neo-Thoreauvian might be Colin Beavan, a 45-year-old New Yorker better known as No Impact Man, and even better known as The Man Who Doesn’t Let His Wife Use Toilet Paper. That last detail was the highlight of a 2007 New York Times profile of Beavan, which portrayed how he, his wife, and their two-year-old daughter were attempting to live in downtown Manhattan with zero “net impact” on the environment. This goal involves eating only organic food grown within a 250-mile radius, composting inside their small apartment, forgoing paper, carbon-based transportation, dishwashers, TV, and adhering to whatever new austerities Beavan dreams up.

Naturally, Beavan is hoping his no impact experiment has maximum impact. Like Thoreau, who, after all, was living on Emerson’s land, Beavan is well connected. He has a book contract. His wife’s friend has made him the subject of her documentary film, and he has a website, where people praise his boldness and question his motives. One commenter, Naysayer, speaks for the cynical: “Well, you’ve found your ticket to fame and fortune. Just undergo a period of time where you are inconvenienced (but plenty of exceptions) then cash in with book and movie deals, then speaking engagements around the globe.” And then there are those whom Beavan has simply annoyed: “For the next year, I will be your polor [sic] opposite,” writes Full Impact Woman. Unlike his deadly earnest spiritual mentor, though, Beavan views his project with an ironic distance, telling the Times, “Like all writers, I’m a megalomaniac. I’m just trying to put that energy to good use.”

Beavan can be overbearing, but every ascetic choice implies a critique of those who aren’t following the same path: I am giving up my car, therefore you are a selfish, earth-destroying auto addict. Also, extreme conservation—not flushing the toilet, not showering, and the like—can turn people off to conserving at all. Thoreau took it on the chin from Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote of him, “So many negative superiorities begin to smack a little of the prig.” The critique of Beavan is the same. These men have walled themselves off in a little hothouse of their own ego. They are not living courageously and independently in the real world, nor could they if they tried. Fair points, but what’s the alternative? Every decision to try to live differently starts with a little showmanship.

So the self-deprivation author must tread lightly: Bear witness to my extreme example, but realize that I’m just like you. Judith Levine, who charts her Year Without Shopping in Not Buying It, manages this balance gracefully. She goes on a spree before the pledge begins, and keeps in touch with her imperfection throughout. Yes, there is the thrifty virtue in resisting the latest, expensive fashions, but not buying also means becoming a cultural recluse. “An informed person like me needs to see new art, new films,” Levine writes, longing for all the movies passing her by. She and her partner Paul discover that to subsist on free entertainment is to read dusty library books and endure bad performance art. Levine does experience the joyful liberation from stuff, and she temporarily gets off the hedonic treadmill. Yet she also admits that to not consume anything is to become a burden to friends, to feel old, and to develop an unholy craving for Q-tips.

Inspiration for these books can arrive in ridiculous ways. Mary Carlomagno, the author of Give It Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better With Less, launched her self-denying quest this way: “While reaching for my black sling backs, an avalanche of designer shoeboxes hit me squarely on the head.” Gotcha. She spends a month each giving up different things: alcohol, elevators, newspapers, multitasking, cursing, cell phones, and coffee. (Coffee is a common enemy in these books, including Walden.) Carlomagno is a less rigorous self-denier than most—the height of her deprivation is to give up dining out for a month. Yet she arrives at the same destination as do her peers: reading more poetry, taking longer walks.

While most of these authors accessorize their quests with some larger purpose, Sara Bongiorni, the author of A Year Without “Made in China”: One Family’s True Life Adventure in the Global Economy, decides to boycott China simply to “see if it can be done.” (See our own experiment in buying American.) Her book is marred by a faint jingoistic tone and a deadening obviousness. Guess what? A lot of the stuff in your house comes from China! (But not Hungry Hungry Hippos, apparently.) Toward the end of her year, Bongiorni debates whether to extend her pledge, but concludes, “A Christmas without Chinese gifts under the tree looms like a date with the executioner.” Never has an attempt at conscientious consumption so missed the point.

In all of these self-deprivation experiments, there comes a moment when self-denial becomes self-defeating. An Internet entrepreneur from San Diego named Dave Bruno has received a lot of back pats for his “100 Thing Challenge,” a goal to limit his possessions to that magic number. It’s a useful thought experiment, but do shoes count as one thing, or should each shoe count as a separate item? The point—how much crap do you really need?—can quickly get lost in the details. Ascetics often become distracted by the rules or take things too far. Consider the fervent subculture of people who try to live plastic-free lives. Another perfectly worthy goal, but then you stumble upon advice like this on the blog PlasticLess.com: “Get a Vasectomy: Children are the target market for pointless plastic stuff. Most temporary forms of birth control involve some plastic packaging.” (Uh, okay.)

I don’t mean to throw cold water on earnest self-improvement. But maybe we should set about such tasks in a way that doesn’t reek of personal branding. Thoreau, after all, left the cabin behind, which earned the respect of Robert Louis Stevenson: “When he had enough of that kind of life, he showed the same simplicity in giving it up as in beginning it. There are some who could have done one, but, vanity forbidding, not the other; and that is perhaps the story of hermits; but Thoreau made no fetish of his own example.” While that doesn’t mean not writing a book, it may mean not letting the rigor of your experiment get in the way of the lessons.

All of these writers have good advice for our economically perilous and environmentally precarious moment. Not many, however, were permanently changed by their yearlong experiments. The authors of Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally welcome lemons and beer back into their house. Judith Levine is thrilled to buy new socks and starts to consume again, albeit in a more deliberate way. The ultimate lesson of the new Thoreauvians seems to be that change is rarely drastic. We must strive for continuous, daily, incremental improvement toward whatever social, environmental, and economic goals we deem important. That path won’t land you on Morning Edition, but it might just get you to floss, recycle, grow your own food, sit in the dark, air-dry yourself, take daily walks, and read more poetry. Which puts us back where we started: Walden Pond, 1845.

[Michael Agger has yet to write a book on self-sacrifice.]

Source / Mother Jones

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Support for the Shministim : Concientious Objectors in the Israeli Army

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘These are young adults, just out of high school, who have managed to break through all the myths that they have been immersed in and figured out for themselves what the Army actually does.’
By Rebecca Vilkomerson / December 19, 2008

It is hard to convey, and impossible to overstate, just how completely saturated Israeli culture is by the heroic image of the Israeli Army. In school, advertisements, marketing campaigns,store discounts, discussions with neighbors, every way you can imagine, the Army is portrayed as the ultimate form of service to the country. When I took my daughter, who is five, to the doctor recently, the doctor began her explanation of how vaccines worked in this way: “you know how Israel has an Army that protects us? Well the vaccines are your body’s army…”

It is simply everywhere.

That is what makes the shministim all the more remarkable. These are young adults, just out of high school, who have managed to break through all the myths that they have been immersed in and figured out for themselves what the Army actually does. Having reached the conclusion that being in the Army would force them to commit immoral actions, they have taken the next obvious—but in no way easy—step of taking action by refusing to serve. All in the face of family pressure, peer pressure and societal pressure that is absolutely intense. They are willing to pay the price, which can and does include jail time, for standing up for what they know is right.

As far as I am concerned, as a mother who is raising two Israeli daughters, they could not be better role models.

So I invited my daughter to join me at the December 18th Day of Action in Solidarity with the Shministim, and I was thrilled that she even agreed to leave her sister’s Chanukah party early to accompany me.

The Day of Action had already attracted welcome attention: a front page article this morning in Haaretz, a moving statement of solidarity from U.S. Army war resisters, and a strongly worded statement of support from Amnesty International.

When we arrived, the first thing we saw was box after box after box after box lined up on the street. These were the letters and postcards that had been generated by the international campaign, over 20,000 in total.

We were arrayed across the street from the imposing kiriya, the Army headquarters. This was as close as the police would allow us to get. We were a small group, about two hundred people, and this reminded me just how brave and still isolated the refusenik movement in Israel is, and therefore how much the international support really means.

The spirited crowd chanted and yelled support as some of the shministim–Omer Goldman, Sahar Vardi, Raz Bar-David Varon–and the relatives of Yuval Ophir-Auron and Sahar Vardi, took turns bringing the boxes of letters to the locked gates of the kiriya, where eventually two men in suits agreed to take them all inside. They make a nice group, indicative of how a refusenik can come from any part of Israeli society, as Omer’s father made his career high up in the Mossad and Sahar’s family are relentlessly dedicated left-wing activists.

There is a traditional belief in Yiddish culture, which comes from the Jewish mystical tradition, about the lamedvavniks, the thirty six righteous and humble people for whom God saves the world. The shministim are our lamedvavniks-our voice of conscience, our tiny flickering hope of building a society that does not willingly participate in controlling, terrorizing, and killing the Palestinian people-enforcing the checkpoints, demolishing homes, destroying ancient olive groves, building the Wall, confiscating land, enforcing siege and all the other immoral and illegal actions of the occupation.

In the last minutes of the demonstration, I talked briefly with one of the organizers. She said, “you know, there’s a lot more we can do with these letters. We can hand them out on the streets of Tel Aviv. There are all sorts of things we can do.” She was clearly buoyed and excited about building on the movement the Day of Action had generated. And as we got back on our bike to ride home in the still-warm December air, my daughter said to me, “Mama, I never want to be in the Army.”

This is how it can begin. Because what if instead of six, or ten or sixty, six hundred refused? What if 6000 refused? The occupation would be over.

Israeli Conscientious Objectors — Shministim — say why they refuse to serve in the Israeli army that occupies the Palestinians.

For more information, go to Jewish Voice for Peace.

To sign a letter of support, go here.

Thanks to Fran Hanlon / The Rag Blog

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Austin Iraq Vets : ‘Ain’t Gonna Study War No More’

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Casey Porter. Photos by Sandy Carson / Austin Chronicle.

Stop the Loss:
Austin veterans turn away from Iraq and war
By Richard Whittaker / December 19, 2008

Eight years ago, Casey Porter and his father started rebuilding a ’68 Chevrolet Camaro. It was a junker with no paint and no engine, and getting it roadworthy was a family project. But for the last four years, progress has been slow. That’s how long Porter’s been in the Army. For 21 months, he’s been “stop-lossed,” the U.S. Army’s way of keeping soldiers enlisted beyond their original contract. Now Porter is eight months into his second Iraq deployment, engaged in a war that he, like many other soldiers and veterans, no longer believes in.

So now he has a new project: making films about the reality of life in Iraq for U.S. military personnel.

These aren’t rough clips of gory attacks that spark online controversy, and they’re definitely not gung-ho recruitment ads. Nor are they the 30-second casualty reports or the congressional committee coverage that too often pass for “war reporting.” It’s one soldier talking to other soldiers about his or her experiences, then using the Internet to let everyone else know what’s going on. Using a $150 off-the-shelf camcorder, a laptop, some editing software, and a YouTube account, Porter has created short documentaries to show to his viewers the raw, unvarnished truth. “There might be music, and I might have some flair in my videos, but they’re not getting a government-sanctioned version,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Porter’s footage, of life in a war zone, is not brutal. He shows acts of kindness as well, such as sharing rations with children. But there are the roadside bombs and the body parts, the badly maintained military facilities and the wrecked streets, the sandstorms and the fireballs. It’s nothing that hasn’t been talked about – but to see it, five years into the occupation, makes quite a remarkable impact.

Some of Porter’s tales are heartrending. In “The Story of Two Dogs,” the fate of a pair of puppies his unit adopted is a savage indictment of the linear military mindset. In the simpler “Miller’s Story,” a comrade explains what it’s like to survive a mortar attack. Porter’s latest, “Deployment Game: Living FOBulous,” was shot inside the post exchange – imagine a Best Buy crossed with a Wal-Mart and a car dealership, then add incoming mortar rounds – at Camp Taji, north of Baghdad. (“FOB” is Army lingo for “forward operating base,” a secure camp away from the main base.) For Porter, it’s all part of the way troops are being misused. As one soldier tells him in “Deconstructed”: “It’s going to take a lot of stuff to fix this bruise we’ve put on the whole earth.”

Challenge and Disenchantment

Arranging a meeting with Porter, like everything else in his military career, took longer than it should have. First there were phone conversations from Iraq, plagued with a four-second signal delay (“It takes a little time for the CIA to listen in,” he joked in his first call). Then his leave, originally scheduled for Octo­ber, was pushed back to late November. His flight stateside had long layovers in Ireland and Dallas. When he finally made it to Katz’s Deli and ordered a burger (“I eat rare meat. Now you know the worst thing about me,” he grinned as he slathered on some cream cheese), he was greeted by the staff like a regular who had just stepped out for a moment.

Porter doesn’t look like a returning warrior, and he didn’t plan to be one. From age 11, when he first saw Terminator 2, he wanted to make films, but as an adult he tired of surviving on nickel-and-dime jobs. The Army was a change and a challenge. “I think, for a man in Ameri­can society, we question, ‘What can we handle?'” he said. “I had some misgivings about the war, but I didn’t question whether I believed in the fight. I put it on the back burner, like most Americans. But almost immediately I realized, in basic training, I had made a mistake.”

When he was deployed to Iraq for his first tour in December 2005, his disenchantment worsened. “There’s no reconstruction going on at the level they show you,” he explained. “The soldier’s mission is to survive. Not to win the fight, not to fight the enemy that is the main threat to the United States, but to simply survive. You’re sent on these missions that don’t make any sense, you’re patrolling these roads that you don’t care about, and the people on that road really don’t want you there.”

He was away from the Camaro, but as an Army mechanic, he was still fixing vehicles. First it was tanks, then the new mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, designed to survive improvised explosive devices – Iraq’s infamous IEDs. Being the unit film geek also paid off, as his first sergeant made him the company photographer. “What I basically ended up photographing was funeral services,” he says, “and stuff from outside the wire.”

During his first tour, from December 2005 to November 2006, he took footage with no real goal in mind, but when he returned to Texas in November 2006, the filming quickly became part of his anti-war protest. He joined Iraq Veterans Against the War and found he could use the footage he had gathered. “I came back and realized that filmmaking was still in my blood, something I never should have walked away from,” he explained. Through IVAW, he started showing his documentaries at colleges. “I would talk, show a film, talk, show a film, and then there would be these Q&As. What I realized was that these films – while they were [posted] online – in person, they had a strong emotional impact.”

Part of what frustrated him was the media coverage, which he knew was misleading or just wrong. Too often, Porter explained: “There’s a guy reporting live from the streets of Baghdad, and it’s total bullshit. He’s completely inside the [heavily protected] Green Zone.” Not that anyone who doesn’t know Baghdad intimately would know that. “There’s a big disconnect between the military service and civilian populations, and that works to the advantage of the military and the government, because they can pack so much bullshit in that big gap.”

Showing protest movies in Austin and filming them in Iraq are two quite different things. Porter knew he was at risk of being stop-lossed: After his first tour, he’d been transferred out of his unit to one more likely to be deployed. His contract, expiring January 2007, got extended, and under the lesser-known “stop-movement” program, he couldn’t transfer out to another unit less likely to be deployed. Then last December he got confirmation: His second Iraq tour would start in March 2008. This time, Porter was ready, and his decision was simple. “No wife, no kids, no debt. So you know what? I’ll make films about what I see.”

Making his movies, like being a member of IVAW, is completely legal under Army regulations: He has a civilian lawyer to review the films and posts them with all the necessary disclaimers. The problem for Porter is that some military personnel and most Iraqi civilians are nervous about talking on camera. It’s too risky, for their lives or their careers or both. “I need to expose people to what they’re not seeing,” he said, “but my only concerns are soldiers’ safety and the Iraqis’ safety.” The most important thing, he finds, is letting people know what he’s doing, so they have the chance to back out. “You may get someone on camera who just thinks you’re doing it for yourself, and that Iraqi is having to explain to somebody why he’s on YouTube with the Americans,” he said.

Yet while some people are cautious about being on camera, the finished films are popular with the troops. Well, mostly. “Lifers, they’re upset about it,” he explained. “Their whole career in the Army is spent in preparation [for] the mission, a mission, any mission. They say, ‘How dare you question it?’ and I say, ‘Well, why shouldn’t I?'” But among those on short contracts, he said, “I have guys who’ll throw me a peace sign on the sly.” He also doesn’t buy the line that it’s bad for troop morale – because it’s the troops that help him make the films. “When they see the footage they’ve given me, they see it edited and color-treated, they feel a part of something.”

Honoring the Contract

Ronn Cantu.

Porter is not the only Central Texas veteran speaking out. Los Angeles native turned Austin resident Ronn Cantu volunteered for the Army on March 9, 1998, for four years. His contract expired just after the 9/11 attacks. Since there was no stop-loss then, he was out. But he started to reconsider his future on Feb. 5, 2003: The day Secretary of State Colin Powell made his now-infamous presentation on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations Security Council. “I remember watching … and buying into it hook, line, and sinker,” said Cantu. His good memories of the Army helped: “In 1998, in the quote-unquote peacetime, I couldn’t take 10 steps without someone pulling over and offering me a ride to where I needed to go. There was a lot of camaraderie, a lot of esprit de corps and high morale.” So he re-enlisted as a sergeant.

Almost immediately, he knew something was wrong. The camaraderie was gone, the quality of recruits was dropping, and then in 2004, he was deployed to Iraq. “Some of us joked we were only there to test our armor, but none of us could understand why our brothers and sisters were dying,” he said. “I really felt betrayed, because we were not doing what I and the rest of the country were told we were supposed to be doing, and that’s helping the people.”

After his first tour, he returned to Fort Hood. With his unit broken up, he had no one to talk to who had shared his experiences, until finally he found Iraq Veterans Against the War. Then he heard he was going back to Iraq. Like Porter, he tried to make it as palatable as possible, switching from infantry to interrogation. After his second deployment, while publicly criticizing the war, Cantu faced possibly the strangest moment of his military career. “They made me a staff sergeant. No board [interview], no questions asked, just, ‘Here’s your extra rank, here’s your extra money, but by the way … you don’t get anyone below you.'” Automatic promotions above one-stripe privates, he said, are “a sign of how much the military is breaking down and losing leadership.”

While Porter and many others have made clear their opposition to the war, they still have a job to do. Porter explained: “I’m honoring the contract. I work hard; I don’t do shortcuts. One person in the anti-war community suggested I do sabotage. Absolutely not. I’m doing this, obviously for the Iraqis but for the other soldiers, because they’re the ones in the wringer.”

That attitude doesn’t surprise Cantu. “I haven’t seen Casey run from anything,” he said; but he understands why other soldiers are afraid to speak out and instead just keep their heads down. “If you get anything less than an honorable discharge or get jail time, that can really ruin your future,” he said. “The military attracts recruits by selling hope. They tell them: ‘We can make your life better. You need a steady job, and we can give you a steady job, with security.’ Nobody enlists to make their life worse. Nobody holds their hand up to take that oath thinking they’re going to go to jail for something they don’t believe in.” That’s something that radical anti-war activists don’t understand, he said. “The people that tell you to go AWOL aren’t offering you a job at the same time.”

The Chaplain’s Passion

Benjamin Hart Viges.

For others, leaving the military immediately is the only option. Like Cantu, Benjamin Hart Viges isn’t a native Texan, having traveled before joining the Army. That’s what brought him to Austin, where he is now the unofficial chaplain for the local IVAW branch. “I’m building my roots here,” he said. “I’ve given up moving.”

His story almost reads like a recruitment poster. “I joined the Army because of September 11 and went to Iraq in the initial year of the invasion in the 82nd Airborne Division.” For Viges, his Christianity is his bedrock; he was baptized in Baghdad. (“I was pissed when I didn’t get to go to Ur, the birthplace of Abraham,” he half-joked.) After returning, his resistance to the war became an act of religious devotion, but it took time. He said: “I thought that we’d done a good thing. I held on to that string that we’d got rid of Saddam.” It was then that he met his future fiancée, Alejandra, who placed in him what he calls “the burning question of why. In the same period, I saw the film The Passion of the Christ, and it gave me my language to resist.”

Viges applied for conscientious objector status, entering a battle with the Army bureaucracy. First there’s a lengthy form, he said, “Then you go through three interviews: One with a psychiatrist to show you’re not insane, one with a chaplain to verify how sincere you are and when you crystallized your belief, and one with an officer to rip you a new one.” After that, the paperwork went to the Department of the Army where “it has a 50-50 chance of being accepted,” he said. Not only was his accepted, but he went on to get his taxes exempted from being put toward military spending. “I realized that my real tax dollars buy real bullets that kill real people,” he said, “and that violated my conscientious objector status that I legally obtained through the Army.”

Now, in between working in a cafe, writing his memoirs, and planning to return to college to study theology, Viges has become a passionate and well-traveled voice against the war. He has spoken before the French, German, and European Union parliaments. Closer to home, he has spoken all around Texas, as well as taking calls on the GI Rights Hotline. “Sometimes,” he said, “I make a big ‘Jesus Against War’ sign and walk around Downtown Austin.” If kids want to serve, he points them toward organizations such as AmeriCorps, to change the dynamic of the military as the solution to all personal, professional, and international ills. “Doctors and teachers are peacetime reconstruction. When you carry a gun, the intimidation level is there.”

Sucking It Up

For Viges and Cantu, the war is over. In April, Cantu also applied for conscientious objector status. “I had taken a human life, and this is not how human beings are supposed to be treating each other,” he said. In August, he told his battalion executive officer that he would rather go to jail than do a third tour in Iraq. On Nov. 6, with 13 months left on his contract, he was honorably discharged. “I think they didn’t want to look bad, punishing a staff sergeant with 10 years experience who’s been there twice before with no bad marks on his record,” he said. What makes him suspicious is that three other active members of IVAW’s Fort Hood branch also got their walking papers early in the last month – effectively breaking up the branch.

Like Cantu, Porter’s been promoted out of harm’s way. “I’m a sergeant now,” he explained. But again, Porter feels the promotion works to the Army’s advantage, as it moved him away from his friends and comrades. Now he spends his days watching the radio. “They used this to boot me out of the unit,” he said, “and they won’t give me any soldiers to lead. But that’s OK, because they come up to talk to me.”

Porter’s leave was up on Dec. 10. He’s got another seven months left in the Army. “I’m not really worried about getting stop-lossed again,” he said. “I’m worried about being on the active ready reserve list, of being out for a year and getting called back.” As much as he looks forward to being back home, he knows how hard it can be, maybe even harder than just staying in. “There’s a term, ‘suck it up, and drive on,'” he said. “When I’m home, I try to readjust to civilian life. Like today, I’m in a really good mood, because it’s my first day back. But when I was back last time, it was, well, wait a minute, you’ve got to get back to real life again, and there’s that adjustment.”

But there’s one thing waiting for him when he leaves the Army. While he was on this current deployment, his father finished the Camaro. When he last saw it, the hood and the grill were off, and the chrome wasn’t finished. Now it sits off Sixth Street, its metallic paint iridescent in the sun. As he hits the ignition switch, it rumbles to life, and Casey grins.

Source / Austin Chronicle

Casey Porter’s videos can be viewed here.

Also see Austin : Iraq Veterans Speak Out Against the War by Susan Van Haitsma / The Rag Blog / Nov. 13, 2008

And BOOKS: Iraq Occupation Through Eyes of U.S. Soldiers by Dahr Jamail / The Rag Blog / Sept. 17, 2008

And GI’s Voice Dissent : War-Torn Vets Speak Out by Claudia Feldman / The Rag Blog / April 19, 2008

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Jim Hightower : Diminishing the Stench in Congress

Posted on December 20, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: ‘In the summer, because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol.’
By Jim Hightower / December 19, 2008

Perhaps you are as excited as I am that, at long last, our Congress critters have delivered for us!

Health care for all, you ask? No, not that. A real economic recovery program? Uh… no. An end to the Iraq war? No, again. Instead, what the lawmakers have produced for us is (hold on to your hat, now) a new Capitol Visitor Center!

Yes, if you and your family go to Washington to absorb a bit of the majesty of our country’s democratic institutions, a brand spanking new, 580,000-square-foot facility is now open for you and me – America’s hoi polloi. So, instead of standing in line outside the Capitol building to take a tour, we can stand in line inside the center. At least it’s air-conditioned.

And having AC turns out to have been a big selling point to get congressional leaders to spend $621 million for this tourist holding pen. It’s not that they’re concerned about the creature comfort of the 3 million hometown folks who trek through the Capitol each year – it’s that they don’t want to have to smell us.

Smell us? Yes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the center solves one of our country’s most pressing problems: stinky constituents. At the opening ceremony for the facility, Reid offered this homage to the common citizen: “My staff tells me not to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. In the summer, because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. Well, that is no longer going to be necessary.”

It’s good to know that the sweaty masses will no longer be quite so offensive to our finicky salons – but wouldn’t it have been cheaper just to have the guards hose us down as we enter the marble halls? Besides, with all the stench that constantly comes out of Congress, who knew that a senator’s nostrils can even detect BO?

Source /Jim Hightower

Jim’s sources:

Reid: We won’t smell the tourists anymore By Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin / DC Examiner / Dec. 2, 2008.

And Congress Won’t Have to ‘Smell the Tourists’ Anymore by Scott Ross / NBC Washington / Dec. 3, 2008

And Reid: Capitol Visitor Center Will Minimize ‘Smell’ of Tourists / Fox News / Dec. 2, 2008

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Dick Cheney: Forever Through the Looking Glass

Posted on December 20, 2008 by RagBlog

Needless to say, the guy on the right isn’t the gang leader. Photo source.

Dick Cheney’s fantasy world: Despite the facts, the vice-president still insists that Saddam Hussein could have produced weapons of mass destruction
By Scott Ritter / December 16, 2008

In yet another attempt at revisionist history by the outgoing Bush administration, vice-president Dick Cheney, in an exclusive interview with ABC News, took exception to former presidential adviser Karl Rove’s contention that the US would not have gone to war if available intelligence before the invasion had shown Iraq not to possess weapons of mass destruction. Cheney noted that the only thing the US got wrong on Iraq was that there were no stockpiles of WMD at the time of the 2003 invasion. “What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stock.”

The vice-president should re-check both his history and his facts. Just prior to President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq, the UN had teams of weapons inspectors operating inside Iraq, blanketing the totality of Iraq’s industrial infrastructure. They found no evidence of either retained WMD, or efforts undertaken by Iraq to reconstitute a WMD manufacturing capability. Whatever dual-use industrial capability that did exist (so-called because the industrial processes involved to produce legitimate civilian or military items could, if modified, be used to produce materials associated with WMD) had been so degraded as a result of economic sanctions and war that any meaningful WMD production was almost moot. To say that Saddam had the capability or the technology to produce WMD at the time of the US invasion is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.

While one can make the argument that Saddam had the people, insofar as the scientists who had participated in the WMD programmes of the 1980s were still in Iraq and, in many cases, still employed by the government, these human resources were irrelevant without either the industrial infrastructure, the economic base or the political direction needed to produce WMD. None of these existed. The argument Cheney makes on feed stock is even more ludicrous. Precursor chemicals used in the lawful manufacture of chemical pesticides were present in Iraq at the time of the invasion, but these were unable to be used in manufacturing the sarin, tabun or VX chemical nerve agents the Bush administration claimed existed inside Iraq in stockpile quantities prior to the invasion.

The same can be said about Iraqi biological capability. The discovery after the invasion of a few vials of botulinum toxin suitable for botox treatments, but unusable for any weapons purposes, does not constitute a feed stock. And as for the smoking gun that the Bush administration did not want to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, there was no nuclear weapons programme in Iraq in any way shape or form, nor had there been since it was dismantled in 1991. Cheney’s dissimilation of the facts surrounding Iraqi WMD serves as a distraction from the reality of the situation. Not only did the entire Bush administration know that the intelligence data about Iraqi WMD was fundamentally flawed prior to the invasion, but they also knew that it did not matter in the end. Bush was going to invade Iraq no matter what the facts proved.

Cheney defended the invasion and subsequent removal of Saddam from power by noting that “this was a bad actor and the country’s better off, the world’s better off with Saddam gone”. This is the argument of the intellectually feeble. It would be very difficult for anyone to articulate that life today is better in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra or any non-Kurdish city than it was under Saddam. Ask the average Iraqi adult female if she is better off today than she was under Saddam, and outside of a few select areas in Kurdistan, the answer will be a resounding “no”.

The occupation of Iraq by the United States is far more brutal, bloody and destructive than anything Saddam ever did during his reign. When one examines the record of the US military in Iraq in terms of private homes brutally invaded, families torn apart and civilians falsely imprisoned (the prison population in Iraq during the US occupation dwarfs that of Saddam’s regime), what is clear is that the only difference between the reign of terror inflicted on the Iraqi people today and under Saddam is that the US has been far less selective in applying terror than Saddam ever was.

At a time when the US and the world struggle with a resurgent Iran, the Iranian-dominated Dawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki governs Iraq today in name only. The stability enjoyed by Iraq today has been bought with the presence of 150,000 US troops who have overseen the ethnic cleansing of entire neighbourhoods in cities around Iraq, and who have struck temporary alliances with Shia and Sunni alike which cannot be sustained once these forces leave (as they are scheduled to do by 2011).

Invading Iraq and removing Saddam, the glue that held that nation together as a secular entity, was the worst action the US could have undertaken for the people of Iraq, the Middle East as a whole and indeed the entire world. For Cheney to articulate otherwise, regardless of his fundamentally flawed argument on WMD, only demonstrates the level to which fantasy has intruded into the mind of the vice-president.

Source / The Guardian

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