Obama Presidency : What the Left Should Expect

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘Obama won the presidency with the support of the American left. The antiwar movement was his first national constituency.’
By David P. Hamilton / The Rag Blog / November 8, 2008

What the left should expect from Obama’s first term.

We’re all talking about our expectations for the Obama presidency. Given what he has said he supported during his campaign, what exactly should be our principal expectations?

Obama won the presidency with the support of the American left. The antiwar movement was his first national constituency. A year ago, conventional wisdom was that Hillary Clinton was the most likely Democratic Party candidate. However, she was unacceptable to most to the antiwar movement. There followed a winnowing process in which the other Democratic primary candidates were considered for support by the antiwar movement. Obama eventually won that support, his first national constituency.

In the election, Obama won by a margin of roughly eight million votes, many times more than Nader and McKinney combined. Obviously, most of those who consider themselves members of the antiwar movement supported him. Hence, we have justifiable expectations and obviously, what we want has to do primarily with withdrawal from Iraq.

However, now we have a situation where the Iraqi government is on the verge of throwing US troops out of the country anyway by refusing to agree to a status of forces agreement with the US after the UN mandate authorizing US troops there runs out onDecember 31st. Hence, merely pulling US troops out of Iraq is too easy and insufficient and we should demand more.

1.) We want a definitive diminution of American militarism. This should be exemplified by: a.) a much greater reliance on diplomatic negotiations, international organizations and treaties to resolve conflicts between nations (starting with support for the current negotiations between the Karzai government of Afghanistan and the Taliban); b.) the worldwide reduction of US military forces stationed abroad; and c.) a significant reduction of the “defense” budget.

2.) Partial nationalization of the health care industry in order to provide health care as a right to all US citizens.

3.) A very high level of government investment in safe, renewable energy and conservation programs as an alternative to carbon based fuels. This would also be a very large jobs program.

4.) A more progressive system of taxation, i.e., higher taxes on capital gains and upper income brackets, removal of the cap on Social Security taxes, maintenance of estate taxes, a stock transaction tax, closure of offshore tax shelters, etc.

5.) Partial public ownership of “rescued” corporations. If the public bails them out from impending bankruptcy, we should collectively own a corresponding stake in them.

6.) Strong pro-choice/right to privacy appointments to federal courts.

7.) Revocation of the proto-fascist measures taken by the Bush administration, such as the Patriot Act and other domestic surveillance measures. This should include the closing of the prison facility at Guantanamo.

This list could be expanded, but the above demands have all been to some degree endorsed by Obama during his campaign. Basically, we want the expansion of the commons, that which belongs to all of us collectively.

The Rag Blog

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Mike Hanks Takes a Shot at the Missile Defense Question

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Mike Hanks’remarks below on missile defense systems in eastern Europe will surely prove controversial with many of The Rag Blog’s readers. Let the rumble begin. Please note the “comments” link at the end of the article.

‘It is important to understand that the missiles proposed for deployment in Poland do not pose a threat.’
By William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / November 7, 2008

I hope I’ll be forgiven for making presentments, assertions and forwarding opinions without the usual citing of precedent, quoting significant sources, and utilizing much in the way of irrefutable argument – it’s late.

With that optimism, I’m forwarding the following thoughts in the way of being self-evident. I am prepared to sustain the hazards of such a course and, if pressed, to offer proof of whatever I may opine, but for now …

We are approaching the first test of solidarity in the new administration. The challenges that President Obama will face upon assuming office will be, to state the obvious, almost overwhelming. One of the dynamics that will create unity (power) or disunity (weakness) is the expectations of his constituency. Let’s look at a current issue.

One of the crises already being seen is in regard to the deployment of missile defense systems in Poland. The leadership in Russia has stated, in response to defensive systems, that offensive missile systems will be deployed which directly threaten Europe. Much of the progressive community has opposed the Missile Defense System known as “Star Wars”. These thoughts are presented to open a dialog among those who may hold that position.

It is important to understand that the missiles proposed for deployment in Poland do not pose a threat. They don’t even carry explosives. They are completely ballistic in the sense that they are designed to simply collide with an incoming missile and break it up prior to reaching its target.

Why would this pose such a risk to any one? Why would the Russian administration be so exercised over that? Are they concerned that one of these lumps of steel might drop on a little old lady crossing the street? No, it is because the threat posed by gigatons of nuclear weapons owned by Russia is rendered less harmful and therefore the coercive power of the Russian war machine is greatly reduced.

Most of the discussion I have heard in the past two days seems to assume that placing missiles in Poland threatens Russia in some way. As if those missiles could be used to destroy Russian cities or military installations. And then the old cold war mentality sets in which might suggest we should not deploy those missiles because it would be provocative – and we’d get what we deserved when Russia deploys their missiles.

That is not the case. The systems are not equivalent. The defensive missiles proposed for Poland make the world a safer place. If this system is widely deployed the threat of nuclear holocaust could be reduced to near zero. Why would that worry Russian leadership? Because if you have a gun to the world’s head you don’t want it putting on a bullet proof helmet. Rendering nuclear weapons useless is a good start in eliminating them.

The Rag Blog

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Violence in Gaza Breaks the Ceasefire

Posted on November 8, 2008 by RagBlog

wednesday, mourners carry the body of a hamas fighter killed by israeli forces during ground incursions on the previous day

Israel Breaches Gaza Ceasefire: Invades, Kills 7, Seizes Many
By Michael / November 6, 2008

yesterday, while i worked alongside politicos; while americans voted and watched the votes get counted; while the media was consumed with barak obama, the israeli army used its time to commit horrific acts in the gaza strip. by the end of three days, israel will have killed SEVEN palestinians, seized many more and injured dozens.

after a 5 month ceasefire, began by hamas and held despite difficult circumstances, on tuesday the israeli army boldly violated the calm with a series of invasions and air strikes on the gaza strip. palestinian resistance fighters thus responded in kind and launched a series of projectile attacks. this is the first such air strike during the ceasefire.

so what happened on tuesday? israeli military forces, including tanks, invaded deir al-balah, in the central the gaza strip. initial reports indicate that israeli forces were attempting to destroy a tunnel they claim was to be used to abduct an israeli soldier.

while attempting to resist the israeli military advance, six members of hamas’ armed wing, the al-qassam brigades, were killed. the gaza government has named the dead as:

Mazin Sa’da, 32
Mamhoud Ba’lusha, 21
Omar Al-Alami, 20
Muhammad Awad, 26
Wajd Muharib, 19
Ammar Sailhiyya, 21

the bodies of several palestinians killed in israeli invasions are carried by mourners near khan younis refugee camp in central gaza

additionally, several other palestinians, including a woman, were injured. some of the injuries were sustained as israeli tanks fired on civilians homes in the deir al-balah area, while others were injured as the results of missiles launched from israeli war planes. these missiles struck in various areas in deir al-balah. during these operations, four israeli occupation soldiers were reportedly injured.

armored israeli bulldozers demolished two palestinian homes belonging to the al-hamaydi family, in central gaza’s al-quarara neighborhood. additionally, israeli forces in this area seized at least seven palestinians from the same family, including three women.

occupation soldiers “escort” three captured palestinian women to the kissufim army base. these women were among those seized from the al-Humeidi family.

some of those taken were named as: Sharihan al-Humeidi, a 22 year old female, her sister, Hanan Hassan, 26, their two brothers Radwan and Nu’man, and the wives of the brothers, Samar Abu Shabab, 19 and Hanin al-Lih, 19.

Source / From Occupied Palestine, with Love

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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Let’s Bring Culture Not Only to the White House, But to All of American Government

Posted on November 7, 2008 by RagBlog

My only question is why would we not desire a Ministry of Culture? Such a government department or agency is commonplace in other nations; why would we not want one in the US?

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog

Robert Frost recites a poem at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration

Rejuvenate Public Diplomacy! Bring Culture Back to the White House
By John Brown / November 7, 2008

The many reports that have appeared on the failures of American public diplomacy during the Bush years have stressed its limitations in the area of information and educational programs. What some call the third pillar of public diplomacy — cultural programs — has, however, been little mentioned.

This is not surprising. As I pointed out, not very originally, in a long essay, “Arts Diplomacy: The Neglected Aspect of Cultural Diplomacy,” and in a recent book review on the arts and democracy, Americans are uneasy not only with federal government support for the arts, but with the very notion of “culture” (high culture with a “capital K”) itself. Our Puritan roots — and they are still alive and well — underscore that overcoming the all-encompassing fear of predestined eternal damnation can be achieved (but not with certitude, which makes us work even harder) through “busy-ness” (business), not the “dangerously” hedonistic pursuit of pleasure (See, of course, Max Weber).

When we Americans do allow ourselves time for lassitude, we do so, as a rule, in a very planned, business-like manner (or totally “drop out” through drugs). Las Vegas, “sin city,” is the best example of this pleasureless, high-strung “fun-fun-fun,” which has little to do with the dolce far niente, a key — frivolous “art for art’s sake” types would say — to savoring life in an aesthetic (meaningful?) way.

We Americans are known worldwide for our power to “entertain” (and Hollywood-style entertainment, it could be argued, is essentially about biological “relaxation” — comparable to a satisfying bowel movement or “pigging-out” on junk food). Mindless blockbuster movies and vulgar pop “music” are among our most profitable exports.

Based on my experience in the Foreign Service (and, needless to say, personal biases), however, I have found that many foreigners, no matter what social class or education, don’t understand why our official diplomatic missions show so little interest in presenting “serious” American culture to them (and course “serious” depends on whom you’re talking with).

Non-Americans are aware that the U.S. does have splendid orchestras, theaters, museums. (I don’t want to suggest, mind you, that America is without culture; I simply want to say that “culture” does not play the central role in American life that it plays in other countries in continental Europe, Asia, and parts of the Middle East. An Italian government official said at a White House conference that her country’s Ministry of Culture was as important in Italy as is the Petroleum Ministry in Saudi Arabia. What she said about the Saudis/Italy could apply to the U.S. Let’s face it: we’d rather have oil than culture).

Foreigners are struck by how little the world’s most powerful nation does — in an “official” way — to display its art to interested persons. Interestingly but not surprisingly, when the USG does — all too rarely — fund cultural activities overseas, it likes to call them “workshops.” That, of course, spares the State Department of being accused of frivolity by Congresspersons claiming to represent the hard-working taxpayer; artists are working, so everything’s ok, no money is being wasted. Another favorite Foggy Bottom “cultural” program, by the way, is “arts management” — and yes, that’s very important business. Again, let’s get ’em artists working — i.e., producing as if in a corporation — right.

During the past eight years, many abroad have considered America hostage to a crude & rude “cowboy president.” Bush, despite his Yale and Harvard “education,” has been seen as uncivilized (a word all too often used by critics of America, which is far too busy reinventing itself to be “civilized”), not only because of his barbaric, scorched-earth “shock and awe” policies (for which Americans will pay a price for many years) but also, I would suggest, because of the little respect he showed toward the fine arts (in Russia, there was a rumor that Bush, in a St. Petersburg palace, stuck chewing gum underneath the table at which he was sitting).

The favorite form of relaxation for this preppy cheerleader reformed alcoholic is physical rather than aesthetic. He loves exercise (of course, nothing wrong with that), an activity also much favored by his football-crazy Secretary of State (it was reported that a preferred topic of their discussions is sports — as Americans were dying in Iraq?, some may ask).

Among the many not-so-subliminal “W” messages to the homeland (let us hope that word will disappear from the American language) was the following: “I, your mission-accomplished commander in chief — while engaging in my ‘free time’ in communications with the Almighty — work (and “work out”) too hard during the day to listen to music or read a book” (I personally wonder if he’s ever really read the Bible, one of the great literary masterpieces). Say a “prayer” and in bed by 10 pm. No nonsense.

Under Bush, the presidency was totally divorced from culture; how many persons in the world associate “Dubya” with an exhibit or concert (or an experimental artistic project on the Internet)? Very few, if any; indeed one of Bush’s “pleasures” was to show Saddam Hussein’s handgun to White House visitors. In all fairness to the Bushes, First Lady Laura the Librarian showed an interest in books; and a picture of Bush that will always be remembered is his holding a book — yes, Bush with a book!: The Pet Goat, in front of students at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, on September 11, 2001, as flames ravaged the World Trade Center in New York.

Given that Americans are reluctant to support their culture overseas — Hey, why should we? We’ve got Hollywood doing that! Get real! We’re in the middle of a hell of a recession! First things first! — it cannot be expected that public diplomacy will receive the funding to significantly increase its cultural programs overseas under the new administration (but then one never knows; miracles do happen).

Meanwhile, however, instead of waiting for miracles, Americans with an appreciation for the arts — and such Americans, many of them, do exist — should encourage the new president, Barack Obama, to make the White House a more culture-friendly place. As was the case during the Kennedy years, the residence of our Chief Executive should be a venue for cultural activities of all types, ranging from concerts to poetry readings, to which foreigners (including, needless to say, visiting heads of state and other official representatives, including in the field of culture) would be invited.

Non-Americans felt that the Kennedys were “one of them” because of the presidential interest in the arts. No reason why the articulate Barack and his elegant spouse cannot show the same interest in the enchanting sides of life while they serve in the White House (and they do not necessarily have to be culture-vultures to do so; after all Ian Fleming was one of JFK’s favorite authors).

Bringing culture to the White House would do much to demonstrate to the world that Americans can, indeed, value the arts — in our own way. True, we’ll never have a Ministry of Culture (nor should we), but if our new president (a published author who has a literary bent) takes the arts seriously (and I do not mean solemnly) and shares this appreciation publicly with his fellow citizens and other inhabitants of Mother Earth, it will help show our small planet that the cowboy presidency is indeed over and that after eight xenophobic years we Americans are again trying to connect with the rest humankind — a humankind defined, in many ways, by its greatest cultural achievements, of infinite variety throughout the world.

And, finally, how about starting off the new administration on the right cultural footing, by having a poet (say the Library of Congress’s Poet Laureate, Kay Ryan, who has written about the “idle maunderings poets feed upon”) read at the Obama inauguration, just as Robert Frost (ironically, something of a Puritan himself) did when John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency?

John Brown, a former Foreign Service officer, compiles the Public Diplomacy Press and Blog Review.

Source / Common Dreams

The Rag Blog

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Ayers Seems Relieved That the Election Is Over

Posted on November 7, 2008 by RagBlog


What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been: Looking back on a surreal campaign season
By Bill Ayers / November 7, 2008

Whew! What was all that mess? I’m still in a daze, sorting it all out, decompressing.

Pass the Vitamin C.

On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.

For the past few years, I have gone about my business, hanging out with my kids and, now, my grandchildren, taking care of our elders (they moved in as the kids moved out), going to work, teaching and writing. And every day, I participate in the never-ending effort to build a powerful and irresistible movement for peace and social justice.

In years past, I would now and then—often unpredictably—appear in the newspapers or on TV, sometimes with a reference to Fugitive Days, my 2001 memoir of the exhilarating and difficult years of resistance against the American war in Vietnam. It was a time when the world was in flames, revolution was in the air, and the serial assassinations of black leaders disrupted our utopian dreams.

These media episodes of fleeting notoriety always led to some extravagant and fantastic assertions about what I did, what I might have said and what I probably believe now.

It was always a bit surreal. Then came this political season.

During the primary, the blogosphere was full of chatter about my relationship with President-elect Barack Obama. We had served together on the board of the Woods Foundation and knew one another as neighbors in Chicago’s Hyde Park. In 1996, at a coffee gathering that my wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and I held for him, I made a donation to his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

Obama’s political rivals and enemies thought they saw an opportunity to deepen a dishonest perception that he is somehow un-American, alien, linked to radical ideas, a closet terrorist who sympathizes with extremism—and they pounced.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) campaign provided the script, which included guilt by association, demonization of people Obama knew (or might have known), creepy questions about his background and dark hints about hidden secrets yet to be uncovered.

On March 13, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), apparently in an attempt to reassure the “base,” sat down for an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News. McCain was not yet aware of the narrative Hannity had been spinning for months, and so Hannity filled him in: Ayers is an unrepentant “terrorist,” he explained, “On 9/11, of all days, he had an article where he bragged about bombing our Pentagon, bombing the Capitol and bombing New York City police headquarters. … He said, ‘I regret not doing more.’ “

McCain couldn’t believe it.


Neither could I.

On the campaign trail, McCain immediately got on message. I became a prop, a cartoon character created to be pummeled.

When Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin got hold of it, the attack went viral. At a now-famous Oct. 4 rally, she said Obama was “pallin’ around with terrorists.” (I pictured us sharing a milkshake with two straws.)

The crowd began chanting, “Kill him!” “Kill him!” It was downhill from there.

My voicemail filled up with hate messages. They were mostly from men, all venting and sweating and breathing heavily. A few threats: “Watch out!” and “You deserve to be shot.” And some e-mails, like this one I got from satan@hell.com: “I’m coming to get you and when I do, I’ll water-board you.”

The police lieutenant who came to copy down those threats deadpanned that he hoped the guy who was going to shoot me got there before the guy who was going to water-board me, since it would be most foul to be tortured and then shot. (We have been pals ever since he was first assigned to investigate threats made against me in 1987, after I was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.)

The good news was that every time McCain or Palin mentioned my name, they lost a point or two in the polls. The cartoon invented to hurt Obama was now poking holes in the rapidly sinking McCain-Palin ship.

That ’60s show

On Aug. 28, Stephen Colbert, the faux right-wing commentator from Comedy Central who channels Bill O’Reilly on steroids, observed:

To this day, when our country holds a presidential election, we judge the candidates through the lens of the 1960s. … We all know Obama is cozy with William Ayers a ’60s radical who planted a bomb in the capital building and then later went on to even more heinous crimes by becoming a college professor. … Let us keep fighting the culture wars of our grandparents. The ’60s are a political gift that keeps on giving.

It was inevitable. McCain would bet the house on a dishonest and largely discredited vision of the ’60s, which was the defining decade for him. He built his political career on being a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

The ’60s—as myth and symbol—is much abused: the downfall of civilization in one account, a time of defeat and humiliation in a second, and a perfect moment of righteous opposition, peace and love in a third.

The idea that the 2008 election may be the last time in American political life that the ’60s plays any role whatsoever is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, let’s get over the nostalgia and move on. On the other, the lessons we might have learned from the black freedom movement and from the resistance against the Vietnam War have never been learned. To achieve this would require that we face history fully and honestly, something this nation has never done.

The war in Vietnam was an illegal invasion and occupation, much of it conducted as a war of terror against the civilian population. The U.S. military killed millions of Vietnamese in air raids—like the one conducted by McCain—and entire areas of the country were designated free-fire zones, where American pilots indiscriminately dropped surplus ordinance—an immoral enterprise by any measure.

What is really important

McCain and Palin — or as our late friend Studs Terkel put it, “Joe McCarthy in drag” — would like to bury the ’60s. The ’60s, after all, was a time of rejecting obedience and conformity in favor of initiative and courage. The ’60s pushed us to a deeper appreciation of the humanity of every human being. And that is the threat it poses to the right wing, hence the attacks and all the guilt by association.

McCain and Palin demanded to “know the full extent” of the Obama-Ayers “relationship” so that they can know if Obama, as Palin put it, “is telling the truth to the American people or not.”

This is just plain stupid.

Obama has continually been asked to defend something that ought to be at democracy’s heart: the importance of talking to as many people as possible in this complicated and wildly diverse society, of listening with the possibility of learning something new, and of speaking with the possibility of persuading or influencing others.

The McCain-Palin attacks not only involved guilt by association, they also assumed that one must apply a political litmus test to begin a conversation.

On Oct. 4, Palin described her supporters as those who “see America as the greatest force for good in this world” and as a “beacon of light and hope for others who seek freedom and democracy.” But Obama, she said, “Is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America.” In other words, there are “real” Americans — and then there are the rest of us.

In a robust and sophisticated democracy, political leaders—and all of us—ought to seek ways to talk with many people who hold dissenting, or even radical, ideas. Lacking that simple and yet essential capacity to question authority, we might still be burning witches and enslaving our fellow human beings today.

Maybe we could welcome our current situation—torn by another illegal war, as it was in the ’60s—as an opportunity to search for the new.


Perhaps we might think of ourselves not as passive consumers of politics but as fully mobilized political actors. Perhaps we might think of our various efforts now, as we did then, as more than a single campaign, but rather as our movement-in-the-making.

We might find hope in the growth of opposition to war and occupation worldwide. Or we might be inspired by the growing movements for reparations and prison abolition, or the rising immigrant rights movement and the stirrings of working people everywhere, or by gay and lesbian and transgender people courageously pressing for full recognition.

Yet hope—my hope, our hope—resides in a simple self-evident truth: the future is unknown, and it is also entirely unknowable.

History is always in the making. It’s up to us. It is up to me and to you. Nothing is predetermined. That makes our moment on this earth both hopeful and all the more urgent—we must find ways to become real actors, to become authentic subjects in our own history.

We may not be able to will a movement into being, but neither can we sit idly for a movement to spring full-grown, as from the head of Zeus.

We have to agitate for democracy and egalitarianism, press harder for human rights, learn to build a new society through our self-transformations and our limited everyday struggles.

At the turn of the last century, Eugene Debs, the great Socialist Party leader from Terre Haute, Ind., told a group of workers in Chicago, “If I could lead you into the Promised Land, I would not do it, because someone else would come along and lead you out.”

In this time of new beginnings and rising expectations, it is even more urgent that we figure out how to become the people we have been waiting to be.

© All Rights Reserved

[Bill Ayers is a Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of Fugitive Days (Beacon) and co-author, with Bernardine Dohrn, of Race Course: Against White Supremacy (Third World Press). ]

Source / In These Times

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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US Says Iraq SOFA* Discussions Are Complete

Posted on November 7, 2008 by RagBlog

From whence does this arrogance arise? Why do citizens and, more especially, the government of the United States believe that they can dictate to anyone else around the world the conditions of discussion? Why has the humility so necessary for human existence vanished?

What is key to understand is that the United States invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq in March 2003 without provocation, without reason, without any justification whatsoever, in contravention of International Law, in contravention of the Nuremburg Principles, the Geneva Conventions, other international treaties, and moral belief. There is no basis or foundation on which to rest the arrogance of this government.

Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog


Iraqis seek more ‘withdrawal’ talks; U.S. says they’re over
By Leila Fadel, Nancy A. Youssef and Warren P. Strobel / November 6, 2008

BAGHDAD — The United States delivered Thursday what it said was the final text of the controversial accord on the stationing of U.S. forces in Iraq, but Iraq said more talks are needed before the government can accept it.

“We have gotten back to the Iraqi government with a final text. Through this step, we have concluded the process on the U.S. side,” said Susan Ziadeh, the U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Baghdad. “Iraq will now need to take it forward through their own process.”

The accord, which calls for complete withdrawal of U.S. forces by the end of 2011, has been the subject of tense negotiations for the past seven months.

According to State Department officials, the United States yielded to several important Iraqi demands, including Baghdad’s proposal to inspect mail and cargo for U.S. forces in Iraq. One official said he did not know the details of how those inspections would be carried out, adding, “I don’t think it’s going to be overly intrusive.”

He and other officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because the details of the American response were not being made public.

Bush also accepted Iraq’s request for firmer language in its call for U.S. troops to withdraw by the end of 2011, two defense officials said, although they did not know the details of the wording.

While the U.S. government signaled that it will not engage in further negotiations over the pact, which has been repeatedly delayed, the government spokesman, Ali al Dabbagh, indicated that Iraq expects further discussions with the United States before the process is completed.

“These amendments need meetings with the American side to reach the bilateral understanding, and the environment is positive,” Dabbagh said in a statement on a government-funded television channel. “The Iraqi side needs time to give the main blocs to have their opinions, suggestions and notes on the amendments suggested by the American side.”

Many Iraqi officials are now calling the status-of-forces accord, or SOFA, “the withdrawal agreement,” possibly as a way of marketing it to a wary public.

The accord is controversial in Washington as well. The White House has pushed aggressively to reach the deal, but some Pentagon officials expressed concern that the concessions will set a precedent for current and future status-of-forces agreements with other countries. The United States is not believed to have agreed to another nation monitoring mail in status agreements with more than 80 other countries, for example.

Earlier this week, a senior Pentagon official who requested anonymity to speak candidly said he found it “hard to believe we could find aspects there that are acceptable” in the Iraqi proposal to search mail and cargo, adding: “What kind of precedents would we be setting?”

Administration officials said President Bush sees the agreement as key to shaping his legacy on Iraq. They said Bush wanted to leave the presidency with a solidified relationship between the United States and an indisputably sovereign Iraq.

To the White House, “SOFA is a sign of success,” a second U.S. defense official, who also requested anonymity to speak candidly, told McClatchy.

That said, the Bush administration refused to accept one major Iraqi proposal, which would have given Iraq expanded legal jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers alleged to commit wrongdoing while in the country. U.S. officials have called that a “non-starter.”

The agreement has to be completed by the end of this year in order to replace a U.N. mandate that provides the legal basis for the U.S. presence in Iraq.

Iraqi officials were tight-lipped Thursday about whether the changes were acceptable. The changes first must be presented to the cabinet. If the cabinet agrees, the draft will be presented to the Iraqi parliament. One of the main sticking points for Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s government has been the issue of jurisdiction over U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Shiite Muslim officials who raised new demands when the accord was completed two weeks ago have been accused of succumbing to Iranian influence not to sign the agreement. At the time, Iraqi officials openly predicted that the government would be forced to extend the United Nations mandate. In recent days, officials have sounded more positive about the outcome.

“The next step is for the cabinet to meet to look at the responses,” Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, told McClatchy. “I hope it will be very soon.”

The latest draft calls for U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by June 2009 and withdraw from Iraq by 2011. It also lifts immunity for private U.S. contractors such as Blackwater, whose security guards were accused of uncontrolled shooting while on patrol duty, resulting in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

It also allows for a joint U.S. and Iraqi committee to decide whether a U.S. soldier who’s committed a crime outside a U.S. base was off-duty and where he should be tried. Iraqi officials wanted to make that decision on their own, but the Bush administration has apparently rejected the demand.

President-elect Barack Obama has long advocated a U.S. withdrawal by the summer of 2010, a date that Maliki originally demanded in the agreement.

U.S. officials are pushing to get the deal done before the end of the month. If it’s not done by the beginning of December, the government will have to begin the process to renew the U.N. mandate, one U.S. official in Iraq said. The parliament must approve the agreement when it’s back in session next week and before it adjourns just before the end of the month for the Hajj season, when millions of Muslims make the holy pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

“Look, the government of Iraq has debated this agreement thoroughly. … They forwarded to us their suggested amendments. We got back to them,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Thursday. “Now the negotiating process has come to an end.”

(Fadel reported from Baghdad, Youssef and Strobel from Washington.)

Source / McClatchy Washington

The Rag Blog

* SOFA = Status of Forces Agreement

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Ron Ridenour on Obama : Conditional Hope from Across the Seas

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Lazane Tyler (center) celebrates Barack Obama’s victory in Grant Park, Chicago, on Nov. 4, 2008. Photo by Kuni Takahashi / Chicago Tribune.

‘I must confess that I feel a vague hope that he — this black man who was three years old when I fought alongside his people in Mississippi for the right to simply vote — might just remember the 106-year old black woman of whom he spoke in his victory speech.’

By Ron Ridenour / The Rag Blog / November 6, 2008

DENMARK — Danish television news broadcasted the historic news in the dark of early morning: the first African-American president of the United States of America—military emperor of nearly the entire planet—Barack Obama!

Feelings! What do they feel?

Suppressed joy. Repressed victory. Freedom Songs of struggle and jubilation. Justice won, justice denied. On-going pain of war, mass murder, torture, unnecessary starvation, unnecessary sickness and early death. Disappointment at not being able to cry with unrestrained gladness: at long last, after endless years of excruciatingly painful castrations, lynchings, eye-gougings, rapings,…my people in kinship have achieved a political and a personal victory of such gigantic proportions. The knowledge that the joyful feeling exists for many makes me feel good in it self. The knowledge of why I can’t cry out of pure joy is most disheartening, though. The permanent war age will continue.

“Yet I must confess that I feel a vague hope that he — this black man who was three years old when I fought alongside his people in Mississippi for the right to simply vote — might just remember the 106-year old black woman of whom he spoke in his victory speech, a woman who lives to see one of her own people win the biggest prize. Obama took her with him, and therewith took with him, and for the benefit of his white audience too, the history of slavery, brutal racism and the long hard struggles against it. No other Democratic party candidate could have embraced her and her history in such an intimate way. And certainly the warmongering, racist McCain plus crypto-christian-fascist Palin could not, even in their nightmares, imagine such a warm and enlightened communication.

We can hold Obama to that intimate understanding of the true history of oppressed peoples if we organize and grow in determination, and therewith in strength. Even though Obama will do the bidding of the capitalist-imperialist system, he might just be a significantly bit different and for the benefit of many people whom we abide, like this great great grandmother. And, if that is so, it means we have a greater chance to organize all the more and place on the agenda the absolute need to substitute the current economic foundation with one based upon cooperative production and decision-making, and with cooperative distribution of goods, services, and natural resources, and with an absolute end to all aggressive war-making.

Obama’s inevitable failure to even propose such an agenda let alone fight for it could well drive many people, including sectors of the working class, into an understanding that it is not the person — not the color of the skin, the gender nor the sexual preference — that is the determining factor but the very economic system itself.

Still, I wish to dwell a bit on the victory — the victory of our historical struggles against racism and for racial equality. Let us recall that the United States as a nation was built upon the genocidal racial wars against the aborigine peoples, and upon the slavery of black Africans. Mulato Obama as president of the US of Amerikkka has taken the KKK out of America, at least officially. And that is a victory, and one that can be more readily built upon, which could take the KKK out of America everywhere, if we unite all we can and demand real radical change.

[Ron Ridenour, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, now lives in Denmark. A noted journalist, author and editor, and an expert on Latin American affairs, Ron cut his teeth with the sixties underground press. He will be sending us dispatches from Cuba in coming weeks.]

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Belafonte : Colin Powell in the Master’s House, and the Promise of Obama

Posted on November 7, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Actor/activist Harry Belafonte.

Obama has a much better starting point than Colin Powell. Powell helped cover up the My Lai massacre and ended up his career supporting the lies that got us into Iraq.
By Alan Pogue / The Rag Blog / November 6, 2008

Harry Belafonte on Colin Powell.

Jump to the last sentence about Pakistan. Harry called it. We should be out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, and leave Pakistan alone. What excuse will the Democratic leadership have now for not doing that? One hopes they will have none and do the right thing, get our military the hell out of the Middle East. How many more Afghan wedding parties will we blow up? Smell the napalm. I am sure the Afghans have stronger words for the U.S. leadership than “Uncle Tom”. One can only hope Obama was not telling the truth when he said he wanted U.S. troops out of Iraq so he could send them to Afghanistan. One hopes the Democrats can now bring all of our soldiers and mercenaries back from Iraq and Afghanistan and keep them here.

I am very, very happy that Obama won. I agree with Chomsky, as I usually do, that even though Obama is another shade of the Ruling Class he will make a large positive difference in the lives of many and it would be small minded and foolish to discount that in the name of ideological purity. Nader ate some sour grapes, for sure, but if he were darker (and not a candidate himself) he could have said what he said without too much trouble. Let us see Obama prove him wrong. Let us see Obama, and the other Dems, repeal the Patriot Act, lift the embargo on Cuba, get our foot off Haiti’s neck, make nice with Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, junk Star Wars and all that sort of thing as Putin has asked. The list goes on.

Obama has a much, much better starting point than Colin Powell. Powell helped cover up the My Lai massacre and ended up his career supporting the lies that got us into the invasion of Iraq.

“Barack Obama is only a promise,” Belafonte told the crowd—and by extension the entire country–“we are the fulfillment of that promise.”

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, not the exact quote, “When your house is on fire you must become the fireman”.

In other words, we got Obama elected and now it is also up to us to see he does and can do the rights things. No matter what he wants to do he can’t do it without our active support and perhaps our active push. We already must stop him from giving the green light to more nuclear power plants and more killing in Afghanistan.

Colin Powell, shown during an interview with CNN’s Larry King.

HARRY BELAFONTE, Activist: There’s an old saying in the days of slavery. There are those slaves who lived on the plantation, and there were those slaves who lived in the house. You got the privilege of living in the house if you served the master. Colin Powell was permitted to come into the house of the master.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

KING: All right, Harry, what did you mean?

BELAFONTE: First of all, let me hasten to say, Larry, that this was never meant to be a personal attack on Colin Powell’s character.

What it was meant, however, to be was an attack on policy, and the reference and the metaphor used about slavery — it is my personal feeling that plantations exist all over America. If you walk into South Central Los Angeles, into Watts, or you walk into Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati, you’ll find people who live lives that are as degrading as anything that slavery had ever produced. They live in economic oppression, they live in a disenfranchised way. In the hearts and minds of those people, and millions of others, you’re always looking for hope, and whenever somebody within our tribe, within our group, emerges that has the position of authority and power to make a difference in the way business is done, our expectations run high. Many times, those expectations are not fulfilled. But when such an individual is in the service of those who not only perpetuate the oppression, but sometimes design the way in which it is applied, it then becomes very, very, very, very critical that we raise our voices and be heard. And…

KING: I’m sorry, I don’t mean — isn’t it possible, Harry, one, that Colin Powell, who has stood up for his country, fought for his country, may have disagreed in counsel, but supports his president in a tough time of need — why compare that to being — as a slave?

BELAFONTE: Because, I think, to a great degree, that which governs us is really the extent to which we are permitted by the forces of power in this country to do what it is we can do to make a difference.

The civil rights movement was a huge struggle against an enormous opposition. You know, many people who lived under that tenet and what we had to do to try to position people in high places to make a difference so we could change the way in which our democracy functioned was part of the game.

And Colin Powell is in that position. And I do believe that the policies that have been expressed by the administration he serves are less than honorable. It is not just about what I say.

Last year, in South Africa, the United Nations under Kofi Annan gave us an excellent opportunity in convening the International Conference on Racism directed by a woman of remarkable credentials, the former president of Ireland, Mary Robinson. There was a place where the United States should have been in attendance, and given us the benefit of thought on a very grievous set of conditions that affect the human family — the issue of race.

And in that instance, the United States government sought to turn its back on the thousands of people who were gathered there to make a difference. And Colin Powell was the point person on that distancing of our country. You know…

KING: What did you want him to do? What do you want him to do?

BELAFONTE: I would like him to live up to a higher moral standard. You know, Jeffords doesn’t have to be the only one who sits in disagreement with the policies of this country and this government and acts upon it out of conscience.

Where is Colin Powell’s conscience? In a time when the world is getting ready to go up in flames in a war that’s hugely ill-advised, you know. Today we are going to go after Iraq. You know, where do we go next? After Iran? And then, when our present friends fall out of favor with us, do we go after Pakistan?

Larry King Live / CNN.com / Oct. 15, 2002

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Much Work to Do to Bring Peace to the Middle East

Posted on November 6, 2008 by RagBlog


MIDEAST: For Peace, the U.S. Will Have to Change
By Cherrie Heywood / November 5, 2008

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Barack Obama has been elected U.S. President at a time when the number of extremists has risen dramatically since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, going by the resistance to Western forces in the region. The U.S.-led ‘war on terror’ has itself now become a threat to peace.

A combination of despotic Arab regimes propped up by the West, neo-colonialism, religious intolerance, educational stagnation, a clash of cultures and religious ideology, and a U.S. foreign policy biased in favour of Israel has further helped build this situation.

Given the possibility of an attack on Iran, the near future appears even more ominous. But all hope is not lost, according to both an Israeli and a Palestinian analyst.

“There is still a possibility for the relationship between the U.S. and the Middle East to be repaired, but it will require a quantum change in the attitude of the U.S. administration towards Arabs and Muslims if this is to occur,” Dr Ahmed Yousef, political advisor to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh told IPS from his office in Gaza city.

But Dr. Moshe Maoz, Israeli professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, and senior fellow at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, told IPS that “significant self-reflection and hard work too has to be done by the Arab governments and extremist Islamic leaders themselves if there is to be any hope of a political breakthrough.”

Several years ago, following a peak of death and destruction in Iraq, the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a U.S. think-tank, held a conference which examined what went wrong between the West and the Muslim world, and why.

Milton Viorst, author of ‘Storm from the East’ and an expert on the region, said there is indeed a clash of civilisations here.

“I really do believe that we have two civilisations here which we have to understand, and I also believe that the war in Iraq is simply the latest eruption in a conflict that has lasted since the time of Prophet Muhammad nearly 1400 years ago. Neither the Christian nor the Muslim civilisation is necessarily superior, but both are profoundly different.”

The bloody massacres during the Christian Crusades since the first of them in the 11th century, led up to the confrontation with the Ottoman Empire that finally folded up in the early 20th century.

“Britain and France, the two great imperial powers, decided what they were going to do because the Ottoman Empire stood in the way of their conquest of the region. And when the Ottomans fell in World War I, the whole region was opened up once again to the Christian West,” said Viorst.

Shibley Telhami from the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, says clashes of civilisations have occurred throughout history, and that this in itself does not explain the intra-civilisational clashes such as those between moderate and hard line Muslims in the Middle East.

“During the Second Lebanon War (with Israel in 2006) the majority of the Arab public was sympathetic to Hezbollah even though the Lebanese government is pro-Western,” said Shibley.

Dr. Anthony Cordesman from the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said “the struggle is religious, cultural, intellectual, political and ideological, not military nor driven by secular values. As such, the real war on terrorism can only be partially won within Islam and at a religious and ideological level.”

Many of the poor and disaffected in the Middle East are attracted to religious extremism as an answer to what they see as a limited future and a lack of personal hope.

Furthermore, many Arabs say the current U.S. strategy of military force is counterproductive if the desire is to win the hearts and minds of the majority of moderate Arabs and Muslims in the Arab street.

“There are too many memories of colonialism, and there is too much anger against U.S. ties to Israel for Western forces to succeed,” said Cordesman. “The United States needs to understand that it can only use its influence and its counter-terrorism and military capabilities if it changes its image in the Islamic world.”

“This is the core of the issue,” said Yousef. “Arabs and Muslims are fed up with America’s one-sided approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This has caused immense resentment and bitterness. If this conflict is resolved, then it will have a domino effect on peace in the rest of the region,” he told IPS.

Cordesman said efforts to change the U.S. image would require efforts to support genuine reform and not just pay lip service to it. Job creation, stabilisation of economies, respect for human rights and improving education would all be necessary.

Moaz told IPS that in order to truly defeat extremism and terrorism, it was also necessary for corrupt Arab governments to work towards establishing democracy and a more equitable distribution of wealth away from the ruling cronies and elite, as most Arabs were more concerned with day-to-day issues of survival above Western concerns for human rights.

But forcing democratic elections prematurely before these societies have established political systems which incorporate sound legal checks and balances to tackle political demagoguery would be counterproductive, he said.

“It is a catch-22 situation. How can free, democratic governments be established if the short-sightedness of the West is aimed at its own short-term geopolitical and economic interests which involve supporting despotic and dictatorial regimes as long as they are pro-Western.”

Shibley said the problem was that neither the unelected Arab governments nor their Western benefactors cared much about Arab public opinion and their needs as long as their own interests were being served.

But despite the bitterness towards the U.S. there still remains substantial goodwill. Yousef, who lived in the U.S. for years, said he had grown up with the Islamic movement in the sixties and seventies and that they had been great admirers of the U.S.

“We respected the technology and the traditions of democracy and human rights. We were all with America when it fought the Communists, alongside the Mujahideen, in Afghanistan.

“We don’t hate the ordinary American people and we have no sympathy whatsoever for the criminals who perpetrated 9/11. But these people are going to win even more support from extremist elements if the U.S. continues to be so partisan and to display what appears to be a clearly anti-Islamic and anti-Arab agenda.”

Source / IPS News

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Zwarich Responds to Tim Wise’s Optimism

Posted on November 6, 2008 by RagBlog

Tim Wise

Dancing Toward Danger?
By Zwarich / The Rag Blog / November 6, 2008

In an article ironically entitled ‘Avoiding Overconfidence and Cynicism in the Age of Obama,’ an article that is being widely circulated on the Left, Tim Wise goes well ‘over the top’ in issuing highly counterproductive and inflammatory categorical denunciations of anyone who has severe misgivings about the irrational jubilation being expressed by progressives over the election of Barack Obama, most of whose major stated policy positions as a candidate were decidedly UN-progressive.

In vindictive and self-centered denunciation of legitimate progressive viewpoints that do not happen to conform with his own, Mr. Wise graces us with such edifying thoughts as “those who cannot appreciate what has just transpired are so eaten up with nihilistic rage and hopelessness that I cannot but think that they are a waste of carbon, and actively thieving oxygen that could be put to better use by others”, and he actually directly addresses these people, whom he has so narrow-mindedly pigeonholed, according to his own narrow and self-centric perspective, with the crude epithet, “Screw You”. With all due respect to Mr. Wise, and the overwrought jubilation he is obviously feeling, this kind of self-important, self-serving rhetoric can only be divisive, and will only serve to inhibit our efforts, as progressives, to find the means to create ongoing organizational unity.

It is no surprise that Mr. Wise, who is identified in the brief bio that accompanies his article as an “anti-racist activist”, would offer a largely race-based perspective. There is certainly no harm in that, in and of itself. I hold a great deal of respect for that perspective. But Mr. Wise feels compelled to go far beyond expressing his jubilation, to include a vindictive denunciation of anyone who is looking past this one narrow aspect of the implications of Obama’s election.

If we look at what is happening from the post-racial perspective that Barack Obama himself promoted, we might see that beyond the ‘victory’ that some feel, in that a mixed-race African American has been elected president, Barack Obama has not represented himself as ‘progressive’ in the most important and defining major policy positions he has established.

In an election cycle that was almost totally focused on ‘narrative’, and ‘character’, rather than substance, Mr. Wise categorically denounces, (as nihilists, and with other inflammatory epithets, as well as his provocative “screw you”), those who have looked past the foolishly short-sighted bamboozlement of ‘narrative over substance’. Anyone who is willing to maintain Reason in the face of the widespread irrational jubilation we are witnessing, anyone who is willing to look beyond narrative to the actual issues themselves, has every reason to be alarmed, and the irrational exuberance being expressed by so many comprises a significant area of concern in itself. Mr. Wise even goes so far as to castigate anyone who is not participating enthusiastically in this foolish exercise in willfully ignoring reality with his inflammatory denunciations.

To listen to Mr. Wise’s divisive rhetoric now, one wonders if he celebrated the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court simply because he is African American? While Barack Obama is certainly more palatable to the progressive viewpoint, by a quantum leap, than Clarence Thomas, his stated policy positions are indeed extremely problematic for anyone who hopes that the nation will move in a progressive direction.

Barack Obama deliberately, and many would say cynically, wrapped himself in the ‘narrative’ he defined by his soaring rhetoric, while at the same time he established major policy positions that are in complete conflict with the heroic rhetoric itself, and with the carefully packaged narrative it promoted. Beneath his inspiring rhetoric, he has offered up only minor proposals to placate progressives, while he adheres closely to major policies that serve the staus quo power structure, while packaging the whole shebang as “change”.

He is NOT, and never was, an anti-war candidate. He merely opposed the Iraq war before it started for pragmatic reasons. He does NOT intend to end the war. He only intends, as he has stated clearly, to reduce troop strength in Iraq to about 40% of its current level, and to redeploy troops to the huge permanent bases that Haliburton has built in commanding positions over the oil fields.

He avidly supports the US Imperial Mission. He has endorsed the major tenets of the Bush Doctrine, including military incursions into sovereign nations whenever it suits our unilaterally determined self-interest.

He is an unabashed and enthusiastic supporter of the criminally cruel apartheid Zionist project. He has agreed to pretend that the cruel military occupation that Israel has maintained over an entire nation of people for over 40 years simply is not taking place.

He ignores Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons, while he pledges to use “any means necessary” to prevent Iran from developing even its independent peaceful nuclear capacity.

He has promised to “beef up” the US military budget, when we already spend more than the rest of the world combined on weapons and military capacity.

His FIRST significant act as President-elect has been to appoint an avowed Zionist as his chief of staff.

On the domestic front he has received massive financial support from Wall Street investment bankers, and has already rewarded them in return with his assistance in ramming the disgraceful ‘bail out’ of obscenely wealthy Wall Street bankers by reaching into the pockets of the common citizens, while they kicked and screamed and shouted out in outrage. He avidly helped stampede this historically disgraceful travesty past Congress, without hearings, without consideration of alternatives that might benefit the nation’s citizens rather than wealthy financiers. He did this with completely insulting contempt for the ‘will of the people’, directly ‘in the face’ of the VAST majority of the citizenry that was crying out in protest against this bailout of the rich by their victims.

His health care proposal carefully preserves our universal need and desire to be healthy as a lucrative profit opportunity for the insurance and health care industries. In order not to anger some of his major backers, he has carefully avoided any suggestion of a ‘medicare for all’ one-payer system that virtually every other country in the developed world has adopted as the only sane way to deliver the highest quality health care at the most reasonable cost.

How or why could anyone possibly consider this man a ‘progressive’? Are we such ‘rubes’ that all it takes is some gilded rhetoric, some smoothly silver-tongued sweet talk, to make us swoon helplessly into a pliant willingness to ignore the very facts of reality that we can see and hear with our own eyes and ears?

Mr. Wise, with his nonsensical contention that we should ignore Obama’s clearly stated policy positions in our jubilation over the fact that an African American has been elected president, only contributes to the atmosphere of irrational exuberance that is going to do harm to the progressive cause. It is certainly going to delay, and it even might possibly deliver a significant blow to, the necessary organizational steps we need to resolve ourselves to take in order to advance a progressive agenda.

But I feel like I am shouting into the roaring winds. Not that I am by any means alone. But those of us who realize that the progressive cause was NOT represented in this election, are now finding ourselves directly subjected to insulting epithets by those who insist that all progressives should be dancing in unbridled jubilation because a charismatic African American ‘centrist’ who has declared himself a supporter of US militarism, apartheid Zionism, free market economics, and the socialization of investment risk backing up the privatization of profit, has been elected president.

The willful ignorance of reality that is at the root of this jubilant celebration of ‘narrative over substance’, is a sort of ‘social madness’, a willful abandonment of Reason, that obviously must run its course. Any who are apart from it, any who are in control of their faculties of Reason in the face of this exercise in mass irrationality, must surely be watching in awe as we witness this stark example of the power of mass media to ‘sell’ any narrative at all, even when that narrative stands in direct contravention to the actual known facts.

It is certainly sobering to witness that even progressives who talk a great deal about the power of media to bamboozle the people, are not in any way immune to this power ourselves.

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Thousands Protest Gay Marriage Vote in SF Vigil

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Coy Abellano is comforted by Erwin Barron as he cries outside City Hall where hundreds of people gather for a candlelight vigil in response to Proposition 8 in San Francisco, Calif., on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2008. Photo by Lacy Atkins / SF Chronicle.

Chanting ‘Marriage, Equality, U.S.A.,’ rally participants said they will not be discouraged – and they will not back down.
By Elizabeth Fernandez / November 6, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO — Carrying signs and candles and unbreakable optimism, several thousand supporters of same-sex marriage gathered outside San Francisco City Hall Wednesday night to buoy spirits and to declare that the fight for equality would continue.

Despite the passage of Proposition 8, which alters the state constitution to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying, many of those attending the vigil said they were heartened by the vast show of support from the electorate – nearly 5 million people cast ballots opposing the measure.

“We are not sending up a white flag,” said outgoing state Senator Carole Migden (D-San Francisco). “It’s a tough state, a conservative state, it’s a big mother of a state – and we did brilliantly.”

Chanting “Marriage, equality, U.S.A.,” rally participants said they will not be discouraged – and they will not back down.

But in the wake of a heartfelt defeat, it was impossible “not to feel like second class citizens,” said Vandi Linstrot, standing with her spouse, Jami Matanky. The couple married in Oakland on June 17 – they’ve been together 24 years and have raised twin sons.

“California is saying that it is legal to disciminate against gays and lesbians,” said Linstrot, 53, a business analyst. “Marriage is safe now? From what? I don’t know why people feel threatened by us. Many thousands of gays and lesbians have gotten married in the last few months and what happened? Straight marriage continued. There was no great upheaval.”

The rally began in somber, quiet fashion – hundreds of early arrivals stood in silence on the steps of City Hall, breaking the twilight quiet only when a passing car honked in support.

By 6:30, the gathering had swelled to approximately 2,000, according to San Francisco police, and Grove Street was closed to traffic.

Standing at the podium, Kate Kendall, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, exhorted the crowd to pay heed to history: gay rights have steadily gained ground.

“It is a shameful day and it is a day the state will live to regret,” she said.

The moment to many was bittersweet – their joy in the presidential selection of Barack Obama was diluted by California’s passage of Prop. 8.

“We won our country back but we lost a fundamental civil right,” said Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin. “We took two steps forward and one step back. It’s disappointing and sad. Now I put my hope and trust in the Supreme Court of California.”

Many at the vigil brought dogs and video cameras. San Francisco residents Natalie Naylor and Erika Linden brought their baby daughter, Ruby, a sweet-faced, wide-eyed symbol of the battle at hand.

“I’m hopeful that in five years, we will have full legal rights as a married couple,” said Linden. “Hopefully by the time our daughter is of legal age, all this will be a distant memory. And for her it will seem ridiculous that there was once a time when gay people could not get married.”

Source / SFGate

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Call to Action: Stop the Criminals on Television

Posted on November 6, 2008 by RagBlog


Monsters on Television
By Juan Cole / November 6, 2008

Paul Krugman, among my favorite political commentators, has spoken forthrightly of how during the past few years we have had “monsters” in office, naming Tom Delay, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. He complains that until recently, if an observer simply called them what they are, he or she was termed “shrill.” (h/t Daily Kos).

I could not agree more. But I’d like to take this discussion out of the realm of commentary and into that of action.

It is unacceptable that television news brings Tom Delay and Karl Rove on as bona fide political commentators, when both are criminals. The same thing goes for Oliver North. Delay has been indicted on corruption charges and had to step down from his seat in Congress. Rove led a campaign to have the press out a covert CIA operative who was attempting to stop Iranian nuclear proliferation, essentially blowing her cover and that of her contacts to Tehran (i.e. he is a traitor).

There was a time when individuals so tainted with crime made themselves unacceptable in polite society, including on television.

Instead, these monsters are being given air time. CNN brought Delay on to accuse Barack Obama of being a “Marxist.” To have that shameless embezzler given a platform to smear an honorable man just made my blood boil.

Folks, we need an organization that can blanket the corporate media with emails of complaint every time they bring on a criminal and parade him as a legitimate commentator. If they blow us off, it would be time to get up some advertiser boycotts.

This rehabilitation-by-media of criminals is one way the country keeps being shifted to the right every time the people find their voice. The Right gives a comfy perch on television to looney embezzlers and burglars and then wages campaigns with big money behind them to discredit even centrist leaders not in their back pockets.

I do not advocate criminalizing politics. I am not saying anything glib, such that all Bush administration figures are ipso facto criminals and should be denied a public voice. The United States government is a large bureaucracy and lots of civil servants and military have to serve whatever administration the public votes in. There are and were people on Bush’s National Security Council, e.g., who are honorable and trying to do their best by the United States.

All that I am saying is that where someone has to resign in disgrace and is actually indicted on serious corruption charges, like Delay, that should make that individual poison to television news! The Rove case is a little trickier, since he has not been indicted. But the Fitzgerald investigation showed that he tried to do something that was technically illegal. Presidential pardons also muddy these waters. Elliot Abrams lied to Congress over the Iran-Contra affair, but was pardoned by Bush senior and then actually let onto the National Security Council by W.! But a responsible citizen watchdog group could surely come up with a fair gauge of gross criminal or ethics violations that should put the individual out of the business of commenting on daily politics to millions of viewers.

Note that corporate media is much more careful about sexual scandal than it is about other kinds of crime. A politician or public figure so much as accused of sexual impropriety is often considered off limits (CNN’s Aaron Brown once sidelined Scott Ritter that way, over a date gone bad). Presumably this caution derives in part from fear of the emails they would get, and threats of advertiser boycotts, from the relgious Right.

Liberals have let themselves be walked all over by the Right, which is mostly much better funded and organized than the American Left, for too long. In part, it is because we are tolerant of a wide range of speech in a way that the Right is not. But I am not arguing for restricting the range of speech. People with Delay’s or Rove’s views deserve a hearing in the public sphere. It is just that we have no obligation to give a soapbox to monsters and criminals.

So the next time you see CNN or ABC, e.g., interview Tom Delay with a straight face, send a protest email and scream bloody murder and notice which corporation paid for Delay to be on the public airwaves. But better yet, can’t we form a facebook page for this with alerts, and get organized about it?

Source / Informed Comment

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