A Video Series on World Agriculture: Monsanto, Part 6

Posted on August 17, 2008 by RagBlog

The World According to Monsanto (Part 6 of 8)

Right now, there is probably no other company that is doing more to endanger the health of this planet, and it’s inhabitants, than Monsanto. With Nazi-like attitude, they are leading the world in shear destructive evil greed. First they were a drug company, and then they expanded to become a drugs and genetic engineering company, and now Monsanto is attempting to acquire water rights in countries with water shortages in a move to control the people’s basic means of survival, and production of the global food supply. Giant transnational corporations like Monsanto, in collusion with the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, seek to commodify and privatize the world’s water and put it on the open market for sale to the highest bidder. Millions of the world’s citizens are being deprived of this fundamental human right, and vast ecological damage is being wrought as massive industry claims water once used to sustain communities and replenish nature.

Click here for more information.

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Tom Hayden : Same Social Expectations Amid a Very Different War

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

‘The similarities between the movements for RFK and Barack Obama (the fervor and the interracial character) have been often noted. If anything, the Obama constituency is larger because of the mobilization of so many more young people’
By Tom Hayden / August 15, 2008

As the Democratic National Convention approaches, people inevitably think about the parallels between 1968 and 2008.

The times are different. True, there were unpopular wars raging in those days, but the American casualties in Vietnam were 15 times more than in Iraq today. Every young man faced the draft. Those under the age of 21, like the college students for Eugene McCarthy, could not vote.

The demonstrations of the ’60s finally opened the institutional channels that were closed to my generation of protesters.

Today, anti-war sentiment is occasionally expressed in the streets: There have been 11 protests over the war in Iraq with more than 100,000 participants — but it is diffused less visibly across the mainstream.

It is difficult to call for law and order or speak for a “silent majority” (as Richard Nixon did) against 55 percent of American voters who favor a one-year withdrawal, and impossible to indict the likes of Michael Moore, the Dixie Chicks or Cindy Sheehan.

If anyone should be indicted for urging riots at the Democratic National Convention, it would be Rush Limbaugh, who in April told listeners that he was “dreaming” of riots at the DNC. (U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar called Limbaugh’s comments “incendiary.”)

In 1968, the Democratic establishment was carrying out and defending the Vietnam War against rebellions in the ghettos, on campuses, and among its own rank and file. The Democratic delegate-selection system was rigged from within.

In that situation there arose a movement of African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and a “conscience” constituency on campuses around the candidacy of Robert Kennedy — who, shortly after Martin Luther King’s assassination, was murdered at a moment when our history was beginning to turn around.

The similarities between the movements for RFK and Barack Obama (the fervor and the interracial character) have been often noted. If anything, the Obama constituency is larger because of the mobilization of so many more young people.

In both instances, the movements were more progressive on issues than the candidates themselves. Kennedy campaigned on a general anti-war pledge without proposing complete withdrawal. But onlookers had to be clueless not to know that Kennedy intended to end that war. The tide of anti-war feeling that first made Obama a viable candidate and now holds him to a timetable for withdrawal will continue to rise if he becomes bogged down in future quagmires.

Since the death of Robert Kennedy, I have never been inspired by an electoral movement like that for Obama. There are no certainties, however. He may not win because of the Electoral College’s twisted logic, ironically rooted in our founding compromise over slavery. Many of my generation are haunted by the knowledge that there are killers out there in the shadowlands, making us admire Obama’s audacity all the more.

If Obama does win, experience suggests that his victory might stimulate a new social movement like the one connected to another Kennedy in the early ’60s, which was based on rising expectations after the dreary years of suspicious elections, fabricated wars, environmental denial, spreading inequality, Gilded Age corruption and Katrina-type disasters.

John F. Kennedy was at first cautious in the face of that movement. He disastrously invaded Cuba and sent Green Berets to Vietnam. He resisted the 1963 March on Washington but then embraced it fully. After the Cuban fiasco, he began to rethink the Cold War worldview and move along a path of domestic reform. Then came his murder, followed by the worst years of the ’60s, which his brother Robert, in one brief moment, tried to reverse.

Our global generation revolted against the constrictions of the Cold War on all sides. We lived with the terror of atomic weapons, being told as children to crawl under our school desks and that our world might be incinerated over the Cuban missile crisis. We opposed a two-dimensional world, which made every country a satellite and every individual a dependent on two nation-states competing with the indescribable threat of nuclear weapons. The more the nuclear arms race grew, the more proxy wars were fought, the more the possibilities of dissent and democracy seemed to shrink.

It is forgotten that our generation knew terrorism, too. We struggled not only for human rights and peace in Vietnam, but for the end of the Cold War-approach of mutually assured nuclear destruction.

The long-term challenge for the Obama generation is not only to end the present wars and deal with new crises like global warming, but also to challenge the framework of the war on terror and the shadow it casts over the future.

A President Obama may have to go through a Bay of Pigs in Pakistan or Afghanistan before he begins, like the Kennedy brothers, to reconsider the assumptions of the war on terror. But the parallels are identical.

During the Cold War, the enemy threat was defined as a conspiracy in Moscow, carried out through hidden guerrilla armies across the world. Vietnam was only a pawn of Moscow and, it was added, perhaps China. To combat this menace, trillions of dollars were spent on the nuclear arsenal, conventional armed forces and secret operations from Iran to Guatemala. Expenditures on anti-poverty programs simply dried up, because it wasn’t possible to afford both guns and butter. Anyone who protested the Vietnam War in the streets was considered by Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover to be an instrument of this internationally based conspiracy.

The recent conflict between Russia and Georgia reveals that the Cold War is not entirely over. A faction of neoconservatives, along with John McCain, have supported sending U.S. advisers and funds to support the fledgling state of Georgia in its efforts to dominate several breakaway areas on the Russian border. This policy of supporting Georgia’s designs on South Ossetia, and promoting Georgia in an expanded NATO alliance, has been shaped by McCain and his foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, a lobbyist who has been on the payroll of Georgia for several years, according to a Washington Post story last week.

Scheunemann previously led the “Iraq lobby” as head of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and as a director of the Project for a New American Century. McCain and Scheunemann now are reviving a Cold War with Russia while at the same time pursuing multiple fronts in the war on terror. Their hardline ideological commitment, combined with lucrative lobbying contracts, fuels a dangerous and costly thrust toward a war until the last Communists and Islamic militants surrender.

If Vietnam was the focal point of the Cold War, Iraq and now Afghanistan are focal points in the new war on terror. The conspiratorial center, we are told, is an al-Qaeda headquartered in places like North and South Waziristan. Its agents are secretly feeding money and weapons to insurgents loyal to a global jihad. They must be annihilated by military force, at whatever expense to domestic programs and civil liberties. Our country will be devastated by nuclear suitcase bombs unless we crush al-Qaeda in its cave.

This is the same crackpot realism that passed for common sense in the ’60s. It overemphasizes organizational targets while underestimating the forces of nationalism and religious hatred ignited by the nature of our policies toward Muslim countries. When we bomb wedding parties in Afghanistan, we give birth to hundreds of raging new jihadists. When we fail to act on the knowledge that Afghanistan is the 122nd-poorest country on the United Nations’ development index of 127 nations, we set in motion the possible attacks on our country that we claim to fear.

If the Obama generation does not find a way to avoid this treadmill to death, there will never be more than token resources for economic development in our inner cities or a new green economy, to cite two urgent domestic priorities. Our young men and women will die in ambiguous quagmires. Most of the world will be hostile to our plight. If the only change is that a black man will be running our empire, is that change worth fighting for?

Obama himself cannot make this larger change. It will be difficult enough to withdraw from Iraq and eventually reach compromise on Afghanistan and Pakistan. As commander in chief and the person in charge of our superpower reputation, he will feel compelled toward military action even if his visionary instincts have to be set aside. It will take the movement, which is stirring now, to lead him in the direction of his dreams, as the movements of the ’60s helped bring forth the greatness in the Kennedys.

Tom Hayden, a founder of Students for a Democratic Society (sds) in the sixties, is a retired California state senator, author, and political and social activist. His latest book, with Ron Sossi and Frank Condon, is “Voices of the Chicago Eight: A Generation on Trial” (City Lights, July 2008).

Source / Denver Post

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Jerry Wexler: Invented Rhythm & Blues, Boosted Austin Artists Like Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Jerry Wexler with Willie Nelon in the late 1970s.

Aretha Franklin producer, Atlantic Records co-chief and music business pioneer dies at age 91
By Ashley Kahn / August 15, 2008

See ‘Wexler worked with Austin musicians like Willie Nelson…’ below.

Jerry Wexler, the legendary record man, music producer and ageless hipster, died at 3:45 a.m. August 15 at the age of 91. Wexler was one of the great music business pioneers of the 20th century: as co-head of Atlantic Records from 1953 to ’75, he and his partner Ahmet Ertegun grew the small independent R&B label into the major record company that it is today.

Wexler was much more than a top executive — he was a national tastemaker and a prophet of roots and rhythm. The impact of his deeds matched his larger-than-life personality. Because of him, we use the term “rhythm and blues” and we hail Ray Charles as “Genius” and Aretha Franklin as “Queen.” We came to know of a record label called Stax and a small town called Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We witnessed the rise of Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers, and we care about a thing called soul.

In the ’50s, Wexler’s studio work helped introduce white ears to the royalty of R&B: Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner, the Drifters, LaVern Baker, Chuck Willis. In the ’60s as the age of R&B gave way to the rock and soul era, Wexler and Ertegun steered Atlantic into a lead position among labels, releasing music by Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, Cream and Led Zeppelin, Solomon Burke and Wilson Pickett, Duane Allman, and Willie Nelson. In the ’70s, Wexler departed Atlantic and went freelance, producing soundtracks for films by Louis Malle and Richard Pryor, and recording albums with Bob Dylan, Dire Straits, and Etta James and others.

Wexler was a throwback to a time when record men could be found in the studio and the office, producing the music and running the company. Blessed with big ears — they really were large — his productions generated a staggering number of gold and platinum records. The collective impact of the music he personally produced or somehow ushered into being won him nearly every lifetime honor in the music world.

In 1987, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, one of the first non-performers to receive the honor. Tuxedoed and hale, he summed up his work at Atlantic: “We were making rhythm and blues music — black music by black musicians for black adult buyers perpetrated by white Jewish and Turkish entrepreneurs.”

Laughing, Wexler added, “Incidentally, two weeks ago I hit three score and 10 — the Biblical allotment. So this is my first posthumous award.”

He was born Gerald Wexler in 1917 to a working class family, and grew up during the Depression in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. His youth was marked by poolrooms and truancy, until the mid-1930s when he was distracted by a music called jazz. Wexler became part of a loosely knit group of record collectors and streetwise intellectuals, praising trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen and quoting Spinoza. Many members of this circle eventually became captains of the music industry: John Hammond and George Avakian at Columbia Records, Milt Gabler and Bob Thiele at Decca, Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff at Blue Note, and Wexler’s future partners at Atlantic, Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun.

“If somebody asked me who I was,” Wexler said, “an aspiring journalist, a stick ball player from Washington Heights, the son of a window cleaner? No, I was a record collector. And we all felt that way.

“We were absolutely a cult. It was ‘we happy few’ as the English say. We used to hang out at the Commodore Record Shop, this little in-group, and get together in the evening. We loved McSorley’s Ale and maybe we’d smoke a cigarette without any name on it. People would bring their favorite records and we’d be listening to Louis and his Hot Five, Hot Seven, whatever.”

A mother who was convinced she had birthed the next Faulkner, and a Stateside stint in the Army during WWII (spent partly in Miami) helped steer Wexler down a more accomplished path. He attended college in Kansas upon being discharged, and in 1946 returned to New York to pursue a career in journalism and the music business. In a day when music publishers held more power than record companies, he first worked as a song-plugger, and then as a Billboard reporter. In 1949, he coined the term “Rhythm and Blues” for the magazine’s black music chart to replace the term “Race Music.”

Wexler was the wordsmith, and revered and respected his favorite authors — Hemingway, Fitzgerald, James M. Cain and John O’Hara — as he did his favorite jazz and bluesmen. Praising a Big Joe Turner big band album, he wrote that it had been created sub specie aeternitatis. Look it up — the Latin and the album.

Ertegun thought and felt the same way. They became friends and in 1953, when he asked Wexler to join Atlantic Records, partners as well. It was a gesture Wexler never forgot. “In a way,” he said after Ertegun’s death in 2006, “he handed me a life.”

Wexler’s first years at Atlantic found him recording the music that built the foundation of rock — songs about partying, romancing and one about shaking, rattling and rolling, that really had more to do with what happened in car backseats than in the kitchen. Some went further: Clyde McPhatter’s “Honey Love” (banned by some radio stations for indecency) and the Clovers’ “Down in the Alley” (“I’ll plant you now and dig you later/Because you’re my sweet potato”) were a refreshing poke at the propriety of the ’50s.

For Wexler, it was on-the-job training: “No one really knew how to make a record when I started. You simply went into the studio, turned on the mike and said play.” Atlantic’s forte was a sound that was clear, precise, and heavy on the groove — the label was one of the first to mike the rhythm section separately. “My rubric [for the sound] was ‘Immaculate Funk,’ ” he wrote in his autobiography Rhythm and the Blues (a must-read for anyone seeking a handle on how American music came to be).

When most radio stations were playing Perry Como and Doris Day, Wexler pleaded, cajoled, bullied and even paid to get airplay for the latest Atlantic singles.

Everyone — black and white — was listening. As Ertegun once put it, “they could segregate everything else, but they couldn’t segregate the radio dial.”

With Ertegun sitting one desk away in their small office on Manhattan’s West 56th Street, Wexler fought a righteous fight: hassling distributors for payment, battling other labels for market share, at times getting what was needed by sheer force of personality. He was no angel — he could be imperious and had a reputation for unusually erudite, red-faced rants.

Working together, the two made a formidable pair, balancing their love of music and music-makers with their will to survive. “Wexler and Ertegun could be ruthless opportunists on one hand and enormously generous on the other,” says Jerry Leiber, who would know. He was one half of Leiber and Stoller, the famous songwriting/production team that provided Atlantic an unbroken string of hit recordings by the Coasters, the Drifters and Ben E. King.

Wexler increased Atlantic’s fortune by forging innovative contracts with songwriters, producers, labels and studios — many have since become common practice in the industry. In 1957, he brought Leiber and Stoller to New York from the West Coast and structured a distribution deal allowing them to work as independent A&R men for the label. Similar arrangements with upstart producers Phil Spector and Bert Berns followed.

Wexler initiated another specialty in the early ’60s: launching subsidiary labels under the Atlantic umbrella (Rolling Stone Records, and Led Zeppelin’s Swan Song, Capricorn Records, home to the Allman Brothers, were three hugely profitable imprints made possible by his innovation). At the close of the decade, Wexler flew British songbird Dusty Springfield to Memphis to record an album that stands as her career best. To secure her signing with Atlantic, Wexler agreed to personally produce the session: a precursor to the ubiquitous “key-man” clause in today’s contracts.

In Memphis, Wexler discovered Stax Records and developed a distribution deal that brought to Atlantic the brightest stars of Southern soul: Rufus and Carla Thomas, Booker T. & the MGs, Otis Redding. At Stax, and in a few studios in nearby Muscle Shoals, Wexler learned a new way of making records: more organic and improvised than the pressured, pre-written approach typical of New York City studios. He was soon bringing Atlantic artists south to record; Wilson Pickett, Don Covay and Sam & Dave were among the many to benefit from Wexler’s change of venue.

The stage was set for what today stands as Wexler’s greatest single triumph. In 1966, he signed a singer whose Columbia Records contract had lapsed, and whose potential had yet to be realized. Wexler asked Aretha Franklin to drop the Judy Garland cabaret act, play the piano herself and focus on her natural, church-trained way of singing. Before one could spell “respect,” a legend was born, and a new way of singing became the standard — it’s impossible to imagine Whitney, Mariah or Christina today without Aretha. More significantly, Franklin’s ascendancy marked a seismic cultural shift: What black America was listening to — in its full unbleached form — became a significant and permanent part of the popular playlist.

By the late ’60s, Atlantic’s legacy proved to be a dividend as many British rock groups chose to be on the same label as their R&B and soul heroes. Cream, Yes, King Crimson, the Bee Gees, Emerson, Lake and Palmer all signed to Atlantic. On a tip from Dusty, Wexler signed Led Zeppelin, crafting a contract that allowed the band to produce themselves. Blown away by a young electric slide guitar player in Muscle Shoals, he bought out Duane Allman’s studio contract, effectively releasing him to form the Allman Brothers. He signed Southern gospel-tinged rockers Delaney and Bonnie, and the proto-metal band Vanilla Fudge.

Not every move was a good one. In 1968, Wexler convinced the Ertegun brothers to sell Atlantic to Warner Brothers (then known as Warner Seven Arts) but left major money on the table. Wexler regretted the decision the rest of his life. “What a mistake. Worst thing we ever did. It was because of my own insecurity when I saw all these other independent record companies going out of existence. We were sort of done in by the broker who was supposed to be representing us. He undersold us.”

Generous contracts notwithstanding, the three partners became employees for the first time, answering to a board of directors. For Wexler it was a rough fit. The irony is that Ertegun, who resisted going corporate, eventually thrived in that environment, his diplomatic pedigree helping him navigate boardroom culture.

The move did liberate Wexler from the overriding concern with the company’s bottom line. As he had when he first arrived at Atlantic, he focused on the music he wanted to hear. Noticing a new blend of Southern rock, country and R&B he dubbed “Swamp,” he produced sessions for the likes of Ronnie Hawkins, Donnie Fritts and Tony Joe White. Some soul productions — like Donny Hathaway — fared well saleswise; others did not. “The two albums I’m proudest of are Dr. John’s Gumbo and Doug Sahm and Band. And they both tanked. Two of Atlantic’s worst sellers.”

In 1974, Wexler led a failed attempt to establish Atlantic in Nashville; two classic albums that paired him with Willie Nelson were the most that came from the effort.

In 1975, Wexler departed Atlantic and — save for a brief run heading East Coast A&R for Warner Bros. where he signed the B-52s and the Gang of Four — he freelanced for the remainder of his career, producing albums for Bob Dylan, Dire Straits, Etta James, Allen Toussaint, the Staple Singers, George Michael, Jose Feliciano, Linda Ronstadt and Carlos Santana.

In the late ’90s, Wexler retired to his Florida home and canceled his Billboard subscription, disengaging himself from the music business. While Ertegun remained an industry fixture atop Atlantic, Wexler was visited by a steady stream of journalists and TV crews wanting to talk about the past. He could be irascible at times, but he wasn’t turning them away.

“They keep coming time and again and I do them and sometimes they’re good. Well they’re never really bad because they’re dealing with state of the art here in an interview — not everybody can deliver a paragraph extemporaneously,” Wexler laughed. “More hubris.”

This reporter visited Wexler in his Sarasota, Florida home over a year ago: We spent a long afternoon in his living room, surrounded by photographs of him smiling with Ray, Willie, Bob, Aretha and the Muscle Shoals rhythm section. At 89, he was energetic and totally unenthused at the idea of turning 90. He was happy to speak of the Atlantic years, and dismissive of his and Ahmet’s portrayal in the Ray movie (“Two stick figures, empty suits? That’s not who we were. But it had to be seen for two reasons — the music and Jamie Foxx.”). He lit up when talking of early jazz heroes like trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen and saxophonist Bud Freeman, and at one point broke into a verse from an obscure 1926 song: “I want a big butter and egg man/Don’t some butter and egg man want me?”

Jerry Wexler died peacefully, and leaves behind his wife, the novelist Jean Arnold, his children Paul and Lisa, and an undying legacy. Less than two weeks before he died, he was still taking calls. “Always answer the phone,” was a personal motto of his. “You never know if it’s a hit calling.”

Source / Rollingstone.com

An arrangement was needed for ‘Bubbles in My Beer,’ and Mardin (r), Wexler (l), Willie, and Sahm talked about it . Photo By David Gahr / Austin Chronicle.

Wexler worked with Austin musicians like Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm, Marcia Ball and Lou Ann Barton

In the studio, Wexler “knew what he wanted, and he got what he wanted,” Augie Meyers, who was [Doug] Sahm’s keyboard player, said Friday. Wexler picked up Sahm’s contract from Mercury Records, producing and releasing the Texas music landmark album “Doug Sahm and Band” in 1973. …

In the 1970s, he welcomed Willie Nelson to Atlantic, where he released “Shotgun Willie” in 1973 and “Phases and Stages” in ’74, the albums that began what we now think of as Nelson’s classic “outlaw” period (most of which was recorded for Columbia).

Nelson’s publicist said he had not commented on Wexler’s passing.

In 1972, Wexler produced an album by Austin’s Freda & the Firedogs, a band that included Bobby Earl Smith and a young Marcia Ball. A mix of country, folk and blues, the record was shelved when the band balked at signing with Atlantic.

“Meeting Wexler was one of those events that really made a huge difference in my life,” Smith said Friday. “He stuck his neck way out for what was happening in Austin.”

In 1999, when Smith and Ball decided to issue the Firedogs record themselves, Smith was forced to call Wexler for the masters.

“He said the masters burned in a fire,” Smith said. “But he gave us his personal copy. His generosity in just giving me the tapes when we had strung him along when he was sticking his neck out for us was just a boon. I really didn’t have words to thank him.”

In 1980, Wexler offered to produce a record by Fort Worth native Lou Ann Barton after seeing her in a New York club. The result, “Old Enough,” was released on Asylum in 1982 and launched her onto the national stage. Wexler visited Austin to help promote her when she was a frequent act at Antone’s.

Joe Gross / Austin American- Statesman / Austin360

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Houston : Few Cops Disciplined for Taser Abuse

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Houston cop with Taser drawn. Photo by Dylan / Houston Independent Media.

No wrongdoing found in 1,700 incidents where HPD officers intentionally fired a Taser
By Roma Khanna / August 17, 2008

The Houston Police Department has found no wrongdoing in some 1,700 incidents in which its officers intentionally fired a Taser, despite investigating about 70 complaints — including one officer who shocked his own stepson and another who discharged his stun gun on a 59-year-old woman during a dispute over laundry.

Over the last four years, only five officers have been disciplined for misusing their Tasers, although not one of the five actually shocked a suspect, according to records obtained by the Houston Chronicle. Instead, HPD reprimanded officers for threatening people with their stun guns, repeatedly discharging them while off duty and brandishing the weapon in a dispute in an elementary school carpool line.

“If that is how they deal with family problems, how are they dealing with the public?” asked Shirley Baker, whose grandson was shocked by his officer stepfather.

Use of Tasers, sold as an alternative to the deadly force of firearms, has been controversial since HPD first purchased hundreds of them late in 2004. The weapon quickly triggered public criticism with findings that officers often used them on unarmed people who committed no crime and that the vast majority were black.

Houston Mayor Bill White in November 2006 called for an independent analysis, overseen by Controller Annise Parker’s office, which is expected to be made public Sept. 8. Parker has been publicly critical, saying last year that HPD’s system for tracking Taser use is insufficient and despite claims that each deployment is reviewed, it “can’t (be proven) with a paper trail.”

Police officials maintain the Taser is a useful tool that has reduced injuries to both officers and suspects. Each incident, they say, is closely scrutinized.

“To have (69) complaints and only a few sustained — that is reflective of successful use,” said Assistant Chief Brian Lumpkin, who oversees the HPD internal affairs division. “The numbers show that we have used Tasers responsibly.”

HPD officers deployed their Tasers 1,724 times between December 2004 and May 2008, triggering 69 internal affairs investigations. More than half began after citizens filed complaints. Five probes remain open, but investigators found no wrongdoing in 56 others.

Among the people who filed complaints were Thoang Do, 59, a woman shocked during an altercation at her laundromat.

Do and her husband, Van Chau, 72, crossed paths with officer Troy Triplett on April 19, 2007, after a customer, attempting to pick up clothes without a ticket, summoned police. An effort to sort out the confusion escalated into a struggle between Triplett and the 5-foot-4-inch Chau, according to witness statements obtained by the family’s attorney, Michael Nguyen.

No criminal charges

The store’s glass door shattered. Chau lay on his stomach in jagged glass and blood. He would later require 28 stitches. Triplett, with a knee on Chau’s back, attempted to restrain him.

“His wife ran outside screaming ‘Nooo, Nooooo,’ seeing her husband bleeding and rolling in the glass as the officer continued to manhandle him,” a customer, Aaron Greenlee, said in a statement.

Triplett told Do to back away and, when she continued to reach out, he used his Taser.

Prosecutors charged Chau with felony assault of a public servant and Do with misdemeanor resisting arrest. A grand jury declined to indict Chau; Do’s case was dismissed.

The couple filed a formal complaint with HPD’s internal affairs division but no discipline has followed. Triplett directed questions to HPD’s media relations officials, who did not comment.

“It makes me wonder whether they really looked at what happened,” said the couple’s daughter Linh Chau, 29. “If they had, how could they do nothing?”

It is not uncommon for people shocked with Tasers to face no criminal charges.

A Houston Chronicle analysis of the first 900 incidents in which officers deployed their Tasers, published in January 2007, found that more than one-third of the people whom officers shocked faced no charges. In about 50 other cases, charges were filed but dropped by prosecutors or dismissed by judges and juries.

The Chronicle found that the majority of Taser incidents escalated from common police calls including traffic stops, nuisance calls and reports of suspicious people.

HPD officials have said they do not track those criminal cases and that their outcomes do not affect whether officers’ actions are ruled justified. None of the five Taser incidents in which Chief Harold Hurtt called for disciplinary action involve an officer shocking a suspect.

Hurtt suspended officer Douglas Randall Boyer for discharging five-second “spark tests” of his Taser 30 times while off-duty at home or while working an extra job. Internal affairs investigators found Boyer violated HPD protocols, which require officers to test their Tasers in front of a supervisor before each shift.

For that, Boyer received a one-day suspension. But, investigators found no problem with Boyer’s actions in a December 2005 domestic dispute in which Boyer shocked his stepson.

Boyer, who has a long disciplinary history including a 10-day suspension after a domestic violence incident with his then-wife, was at home and off-duty when he got into an argument with his 17-year-old stepson. Tensions escalated and the 27-year veteran officer turned to his Taser and shocked the teen.

Officers from the Harris County Sheriff’s Department and HPD came to his home, reported Boyer’s action to internal affairs and took the boy to his grandmother’s home, according to HPD documents.

“I can’t believe that this is how they want officers to use their Taser,” the grandmother, Shirley Baker said. “At home, on their kids?”

Boyer, who retired from HPD, declined to comment.

Hurtt also authorized discipline against officer Nichole P. Medrano, accused of threatening to use her Taser during a dispute in front of her children’s elementary school.

Medrano was off-duty but wearing her uniform Jan. 26, 2006, waiting in her children’s carpool line, when she confronted a woman who the officer said drove recklessly as she pulled up to the school.

According to police records, Medrano confronted the woman, who got angry.

“Officer Medrano took the woman’s keys and returned to her (Medrano’s) car,” said Lumpkin, the assistant chief over internal affairs.

Medrano used her cell phone to call for police and, while waiting, the officer threatened the woman with her Taser and her firearm, Lumpkin said.

Several suspensions

Dispatch tapes captured Medrano warning the woman that “I will shoot your ass.”

The officer received a written reprimand.

“At the time of the incident, (the woman) was unarmed, and you used unsound judgment by threatening to use deadly force without sufficient cause to believe you were in danger of serious bodily injury or death,” reads the disciplinary letter.

Medrano did not respond to queries for a comment.

Three other officers have been suspended over Taser use.

Officer John B. Woods received a one-day suspension for mistakenly using his Taser while handcuffing a theft suspect in June 2007. Officer Song Kim received a five-day suspension for taunting a shoplifter with his Taser while working an off-duty job. A third officer, Dong Hoang, received a three-day suspension in 2005 for test-firing his Taser but not documenting the incidents.

Officer Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers Union, defended HPD’s investigations of Taser use.

“Short of deadly force, Tasers are the most scrutinized tool in the department,” he said.

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Source / Houston Chronicle

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Charges Likely Against Blackwater Guards in Shooting of Iraqi Citizens

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

An Iraqi policeman inspects a car that was destroyed when Blackwater security guards opened fire in Baghdad, killing 17 civilians. Photo by Khalid Mohammed / AP.

‘An Iraqi government investigation concluded that the security contractors fired without provocation’
By Del Quentin Wilber and Karen DeYoung / August 17, 2008

Federal prosecutors have sent target letters to six Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a September shooting that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead, indicating a high likelihood the Justice Department will seek to indict at least some of the men, according to three sources close to the case.

The guards, all former U.S. military personnel, were working as security contractors for the State Department, assigned to protect U.S. diplomats and other non-military officials in Iraq. The shooting occurred when their convoy arrived at a busy square in central Baghdad and guards tried to stop traffic.

Blackwater has said its personnel acted in self-defense.

The sources said that any charges against the guards would likely be brought under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which has previously been used to prosecute only the cases referred to the Justice Department by the Defense Department for crimes committed by military personnel and contractors overseas. Legal experts have questioned whether contractors working for the State Department can be prosecuted under its provisions.

The sources cautioned that prosecutors are still weighing evidence gathered in a 10-month investigation that began shortly after the shootings. A federal grand jury has heard testimony from about three dozen witnesses since November, including U.S. and Blackwater officials and Iraqis, according to two of the sources.

Target letters, often considered a prelude to indictment, offer suspects the opportunity to contest evidence brought before the grand jury and give their own version of events. The letters were sent this summer, although the sources, who agreed to discuss the case only on the condition of anonymity because of its sensitivity, said a final decision on whether to indict may not be made until October, about a year after the incident.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Washington and the Justice Department’s National Security Division are leading the investigation. Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, declined to comment, as did Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd. A spokeswoman for the FBI’s Washington field office, which investigated the shooting on the ground in Iraq in the weeks after the incident, also declined to comment.

Anne E. Tyrell, a spokeswoman for North Carolina-based Blackwater, said that the company believes the guards fired their weapons “in response to a hostile threat” and is monitoring the investigation closely.

“If it is determined that an individual acted improperly, Blackwater would support holding that person accountable,” Tyrell said in a statement. “But at this stage, without being able to review evidence collected in an ongoing investigation, we will not prejudge the actions of any individual. The company is cooperating fully with ongoing investigations and believes that accountability is important.”

Earlier reports on the investigation indicated that the FBI had focused on three Blackwater guards among a larger but unknown number present at the time of the Sept. 16 incident in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. None has been publicly identified, and authorities did not say which six received the target letters.

The shooting, and the perceived failure to hold anyone accountable for it, has fueled congressional dissatisfaction with the government’s use of private security contractors in a combat zone. Contractors working for the Defense Department are now explicitly liable for crimes under laws covering the military, but several efforts in Congress to extend that jurisdiction to State Department contractors have failed.

The incident also angered Iraqi political leaders. U.S. contractors have been exempt from Iraqi law under a decree imposed by the U.S. occupation administration in 2003.

Seeking to respond to widespread fury among Iraqis over the Nisoor Square incident, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted in negotiations over a new bilateral security agreement with the United States that all contractors come under Iraqi legal jurisdiction. Facing pressure to finalize an agreement by the end of the year, the Bush administration agreed to meet the Iraqi demand, according to officials close to the discussions. But the administration continues to insist on immunity from Iraqi law for military and official Defense Department personnel, the officials said.

Blackwater is one of three U.S. security firms under contract with the State Department to provide personal security in Iraq. The State Department in May extended Blackwater’s contract for another year, saying that while the case was still under investigation it had no enforceable cause to cancel it.

Lawyers for the Blackwater guards have argued in ongoing discussions with prosecutors that the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, known as MEJA, can be applied only to contractors working for the Defense Department, two sources said. That position appeared to be buttressed by the Congressional Budget Office, which said in a report on contractors in Iraq released last week that MEJA “does not apply to civilians working . . . for federal departments or agencies other than DOD [the Department of Defense].”

Legislative proposals to extend MEJA’s provisions beyond the Defense Department — which have been repeatedly opposed by the White House — have made the same point.

But the question has never been tested in court. Some outside legal experts said that prosecutors would be able to make a compelling argument that MEJA covers Blackwater guards involved in the shooting under a 2005 amendment that expanded MEJA’s provisions to include contractors “supporting the mission of the Department of Defense.”

“You are dealing with a military environment,” said Scott Silliman, a law professor at Duke University who specializes in national security matters. “If the contractors were not there, those State Department folks would be guarded by the military. Prosecutors could argue to the judge that those facts fit within the definition of furthering the [Defense Department] mission in Iraq.”

Among other possible complications in potential legal action against the Blackwater contractors are interviews some of the guards gave to officials from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security immediately after the incident. The interviews were conducted under legal protections against self-incrimination granted to government employees, and the guards were informed that they could not be used by FBI investigators or in a potential prosecution.

Several former prosecutors and defense attorneys said that the government would have a difficult time proving the case even if it overcame the jurisdictional question. They noted the hurdles facing prosecutors in domestic police shooting cases, adding that such cases are exceedingly hard to win.

Trying to convince jurors that guards committed a crime by opening fire in a war zone “makes it an exponentially tougher case to prove” than a bad police shooting, said George Parry, a former federal and state prosecutor in Pennsylvania who handled law enforcement shootings as a prosecutor and defense attorney. Parry does not represent anyone in the Blackwater matter.

The former prosecutors and defense attorneys said defense lawyers would work hard to put jurors inside the war zone and portray the guards as having to make split-second decisions in an environment where insurgents dress like civilians and attacks could occur anywhere, at any moment. Witnesses in such situations also often contradict each other, and evidence gathered in Baghdad may not meet the same forensic standards that jurors are used to seeing in the United States, the lawyers said.

The Nisoor Square incident took place on a Tuesday afternoon. A Blackwater team arrived in several vehicles at the intersection — accounts differ as to why they were there — and tried to stop traffic. Shooting erupted, leaving numerous Iraqis dead and wounded. Blackwater officials have said the guards came under fire; investigations by the U.S. military and the Iraqi government — and initial findings by the FBI — concluded that no one fired except the contractors.

Source / Washington Post

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Two Wolves : You Are What You Feed

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, ‘My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all.

One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, gossip, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.’

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’

The old Cherokee simply replied, ‘The one you feed.’

Thanks to Wayne Smith / The Rag Blog / Posted August 17, 2008

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Swingin’ on Sunday – the East West Jazz Alliance

Posted on August 17, 2008 by RagBlog

East West Jazz Alliance – In A Hurry / I Do Hope


Musicians: John Hansen, Phil Sparks, Daisuke Kurata, Atsushi Ikeda, Yasuhiro Kohama, Jay Thomas. Recorded: 2006 in Seattle, WA. [I’m quite sure this is Tula’s on 2nd Street in Belltown, downtown Seattle.]

Source / Kelley Johnson

Many thanks to Kelley for sharing this with me / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Texas Ethics Commission : Proposal to Regulate Blogs

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘Regulating Texas blogs would be regulation with out representation. Regulation that doesn’t protect the rights of citizens is not good government’
By Vince Liebowitz / August 15, 2008

The statement below is issued in response to a document that has been circulating around the state today. The document (.pdf) is a memorandum of recommendations by a Texas Ethics Commission task force for potential recommendations the agency may elect to make to the Texas Legislature.

Vince Leibowitz, Chair of the Texas Progressive Alliance, issued the following statement concerning the Texas Ethics Commission’s recently distributed recommendation concerning blogs.

For a state agency that twice ruled it was appropriate for a trustee of the Texas Employee Retirement System to disclose a monetary gift from swiftboater Bob Perry as simply a “check,” to suggest that blogs should be subject to regulation is absurd.

Blogs are a form of political communication that should, by and large, remain unregulated. Independent citizen journalists and bloggers perform a valuable function in the political arena by prompting and promoting political discourse–on both sides of the aisle.

It is my hope that the Texas Legislature, in addressing this issue, will determine it is in the best interest of free speech to leave blogs alone. Blogs and bloggers should not be subject to political advertising regulations. Blogs clearly operated by political campaigns on campaign websites, or the blogs of political action committees, would be the singular exceptions to this rule.

One concern, however, with regard to encouraging the Legislature to adopt regulations similar to the FEC rules on blogs, does arise. Bloggers and citizen journalists in Texas do not yet have protection under the Privileged Matters Clause of the Texas Civil Practices and Remedies Code, and currently aren’t treated on equal footing with the traditional media by Texas Law.

The “Privileged Matters” clause of Chapter 73 of the Texas Civil Practices & Remedies Code (found at Sec. 73.002) protects newspapers and other forms of media from, among other things, libel lawsuits when it comes to “reasonable and fair comment on or criticism of an official act or public official or other matter of public concern published for general information.” Under a strict interpretation of this section, bloggers and citizen journalists operating on their own aren’t protected.

In addition, any bill the Legislature may consider as a result of this TEC recommendation must be carefully drafted to avoid a couple of pitfalls. Number one, because an independent citizen journalist or blogger accepts advertising on their site, they shouldn’t be subject to any different set of rules than a blogger who doesn’t accept paid advertising. Number two, the Texas Legislature should consider appropriate action to ensure that responsible bloggers operating under the protection of a pseudonym are adequately protected. One Texas appeals court has already noted just how important allowing bloggers to keep their anonymity is to the “exchange of ideas and robust debate on matters of public concern.”

If the legislature wants to consider regulating us–in any form–then they need to protect us. The Legislature considering, based on the TEC proposal, regulating blogs while not giving us statutory protection under the Privileged Matters Clause is putting the cart before the horse.”

The Texas Progressive Alliance (TexRoots.org) is the largest coalition of state-level political bloggers in America, representing more than 50 of Texas most widely read and highly respected political bloggers and citizen journalists.

Source / Burnt Orange Report

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Big, Bland John : Republican Senator from Texas Can Be Beaten

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

The Hon. John Cornyn of Texas. Illustration courtest of the Texas Observer.

How a dull exterior masks one of the most conservative records in the U.S. Senate
By Dave Mann

Democratic strategists in Texas have been telling anyone who will listen for the past year that they can defeat John Cornyn, the state’s junior U.S. senator, in November. This is big talk for a party that hasn’t won a statewide race since 1994 and hasn’t held Cornyn’s senate seat in 47 years. But they have some fancy polling data to back it up. More than a third of Texans wouldn’t know their junior senator if he fell on them. They call this “name ID” (or lack thereof) in the political consulting business. Cornyn’s is abysmal for a politician who’s served as a Texas Supreme Court justice, state attorney general, and, for the past six years, U.S. senator. Of those who do know Cornyn, fewer than 50 percent view him favorably—dangerous territory for an incumbent seeking re-election. Some of those same polls show him running closely with Democratic opponent Rick Noriega.

But you don’t need polling data to know that Cornyn can be beaten. Just watch him give a speech. “Dull” is an understatement.

When Cornyn spoke at the Republican state convention on June 13, for instance, the excitement level—even among the 5,000 ardent Republicans assembled in a downtown Houston convention center—resembled a chamber music recital more than a rock concert. They offered Cornyn polite applause, but nothing near the standing ovations for the state’s senior senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, or for former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

Cornyn looks like a senator: He’s tall and lanky, with wispy white hair over the kind of broad, distinguished face that makes him look deliberative all the time. He’s also blessed with the bearing and charisma of a tax attorney. He doesn’t connect with audiences; he talks at them. In Houston in June, his deadpan delivery rendered the convention speech instantly forgettable.

The most memorable moment of Cornyn’s convention appearance was the “Big John” video that introduced him—an over-the-top spoof showing the lawyerly Cornyn in cowboy attire on a horse. A Jimmy Dean imitator crooned in the background about the exploits of Big John: “He rose to the top in just one term, kept Texas in power, made lesser states squirm—big John … big, bad John.” Cornyn looked ridiculous, an irony given that he actually spent a lot of time on a ranch as a child and regularly hunts and rides horses. Nonetheless, the video was universally mocked in newspapers and blogs, and, predictably, on the Daily Show.

Cornyn seemed to sense the ridicule to come. “I hope you got a smile out of that video,” he told the crowd. “My staff convinced me it would be a good idea. Maybe I need a new staff.” It was his best line of the day. He immediately turned once more to stone. “It was an attempt to bring a little humor to a subject I take very seriously.” He went on to detail his record in the Senate. Perhaps his speech deserved more attention. The record he must defend is so conservative that few Texas political observers—many of whom viewed Cornyn as a Republican moderate during his time in state government—would have foreseen it six years ago. With his bland style and senatorial looks, Cornyn doesn’t strike you as a right-wing ideologue. His record suggests just that.

“My policy on the war on terror is similar to Ronald Reagan: We win, they lose,” Cornyn told the assembled GOP faithful. (Indeed, he has voted consistently in the Senate to cede power to the executive branch. He voted to strip terrorism detainees of their habeas corpus rights and against congressional oversight of the CIA’s terrorist detention facilities. He backed the president’s secret wiretapping program and once remarked, in a debate over the PATRIOT Act, “None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead.”)

“I have protected the sanctity of human life,” Cornyn told the crowd. (He voted to strip funding from abortion and family planning services, and against increased access to birth control.) “I’ve opposed immoral experimentation done in the name of science.” (He’s opposed federal funding for stem cell research.)

“I have supported judges who respect the Constitution.” (He backed the nominations of both Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts, and a host of controversial judicial nominees, including Texas’ own Priscilla Owen.)

“I have supported the traditional family.” (He was a main proponent of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.)

When he finished, Cornyn didn’t linger on stage to bask in the crowd’s muted applause. He offered two quick, perfunctory waves to the crowd and ducked backstage.

One major aspect of Cornyn’s first term in the Senate that he didn’t mention: George W. Bush. No one has done more to propel Cornyn’s career than Bush. In turn, Cornyn has offered near complete fealty to the president. No other U.S. senator has voted so reliably with the White House in the past six years.

Now that Bush is one of the most unpopular presidents in American history, Cornyn is trying to distance himself. Even in Texas, Bush polls below 50 percent. Add to that a dissatisfied electorate—polls show about 80 percent of Americans say the country is on the “wrong track.” The historic candidacy of Barack Obama has energized Democrats, who seem poised to make big gains in Congress. This would seem a disastrous year for an incumbent senator who doesn’t excite even members of his own party.

Yet the Democrats seem wholly unprepared to take advantage. Republicans still hold an edge in Texas, and Cornyn has raised nearly 10 times more campaign money than his Democratic opponent. Despite his blandness and a record that borders on too conservative even for Texas, Cornyn may sneak into a second term.

Read all of this story here / Texas Observer / Posted August 8, 2008

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Austin : Cyclist Lance Armstrong Now Champion Water Guzzler

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Lance Armstrong’s Austin home, with a swimming pool and an acre of gardens, used 330,000 gallons of water in July. Photo by Jay Janner / Austin American-Statesman.

‘In July, Mr. Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times, used a whopping 330,000 gallons of water at his lush Spanish-colonial home’
By James C. McKinley Jr / August 15, 2008

HOUSTON — Lance Armstrong is one of the favorite sons of Texas and a model citizen known as much for his social conscience as his cycling. So it came as a surprise when it was revealed this week that he is one of the biggest individual users of water in Austin, where he lives.

Say it ain’t so, Lance.

In July, Mr. Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times, used a whopping 330,000 gallons of water at his lush Spanish-colonial home, with an acre of gardens and a swimming pool, city water authority officials said.

This tremendous flow of H2O, which is 38 times what the average household in the city uses in the summer, comes as Texas is going through a dry spell and officials are asking people to cut back on watering their lawns. “We are definitely short on rain,” Lisa Rhodes, a spokeswoman for the authority, said with a sigh.

Mr. Armstrong declined to be interviewed. He has been in Colorado and California all summer and only noticed the surge in water use when he saw his bills go up, his spokesman, Mark Higgins, said in an e-mail message. (The bill for July was $2,460.) “Lance and all the folks involved are looking into it and will for sure get it under control,” Mr. Higgins wrote.

The Austin American-Statesman, which broke the story on Friday, quoted Mr. Armstrong as saying he was unaware his water use was so high. “I’m a little shocked,” he told The Statesman. “There’s no justification for that much water.” He added, “I need to fix this.”

But city water records suggested that his home has long been a guzzler of water, using an average of 158,000 gallons a month since January 2007. Then, in June, the cyclist shot ahead of the pack, topping the city’s list of residential water users for the first time, officials said. That month his house and garden drank up 222,900 gallons.

Daryl Slusher, an assistant director of the Austin City Water Authority in charge of conservation, said the city had ruled out a leak. Mr. Slusher offered to scrutinize Mr. Armstrong’s irrigation system and perhaps recommend native species that require less water.

Getting Mr. Armstrong on board with water conservation would be a public-relations boon, Mr. Slusher said, although it was a disappointment that Mr. Armstrong had ended up on the top of the city’s water-gluttons list.

“I was surprised he was No. 1,” Mr. Slusher said. “But his response is very encouraging.”

Source / New York Times

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

We Should All Follow Our Hearts and Minds

Posted on August 17, 2008 by RagBlog


The old future’s gone: Progressive strategy amid cascading crises
by Robert Jensen / August 15, 2008

“The old future’s gone,” John Gorka sings. “We can’t get to there from here.”1

That insight from Gorka,2 one of my favorite singer/songwriters chronicling the complexity of our times, deserves serious reflection. Tonight I want to argue that the way in which we humans have long imagined the future must be rethought, as the scope and depth of the cascading crises we face become painfully clearer day by day.

Put simply: We’re in trouble, on all fronts, and the trouble is wider and deeper than most of us have been willing to acknowledge. We should struggle to build a road on which we can walk through those troubles — if such a road is possible — but I doubt it’s going to look like any path we had previously envisioned, nor is it likely to lead anywhere close to where most of us thought we were going.

Whatever our individual conception of the future, we all should re-evaluate the assumptions on which those conceptions have been based. This is a moment in which we should abandon any political certainties to which we may want to cling. Given humans’ failure to predict the place we find ourselves today, I don’t think that’s such a radical statement. As we stand at the edge of the end of the ability of the ecosystem in which we live to sustain human life as we know it, what kind of hubris would it take to make claims that we can know the future?

It takes the hubris of folks such as biologist Richard Dawkins, who once wrote that “our brains … are big enough to see into the future and plot long-term consequences.”3 Such a statement is a reminder that human egos are typically larger than brains, which emphasizes the dramatic need for a drastic humility.

I read that essay by Dawkins after hearing the sentence quoted by Wes Jackson, an important contemporary scientist and philosopher working at The Land Institute. Jackson’s work has most helped me recognize an obvious and important truth that is too often ignored: For all our cleverness, we human beings are far more ignorant than knowledgeable. Human accomplishments — skyscrapers, the internet, the mapping of the human genome — seduce us into believing the illusion that we can control a world that is complex beyond our ability to understand. Jackson suggests that we would be wise to recognize this and commit to “an ignorance-based worldview” that would anchor us in the intellectual humility we will need if we are to survive the often toxic effects of our own cleverness.4

Let’s review a few of the clever political and theological claims made about the future. Are there any folks here who accept the neoliberal claim that the triumph of so-called “free market” capitalism in electoral democracies is the “end of history”5 and that there is left for us only tweaking that system to solve any remaining problems? Would anyone like to defend the idea that “scientific socialism” not only explains history but can lay out before us the blueprint for a glorious future? Would someone like to offer an explanation of how the pending return of the messiah is going to secure for believers first-class tickets to the New Jerusalem?

To reject these desperate attempts to secure the future is not to suggest there is no value in any aspect of these schools of thought, nor is my argument that there’s nothing possible for us to know or that the knowledge shouldn’t guide our action. Instead, I simply want to emphasize the limits of human intelligence and suggest that we be realistic. By realistic, all I mean is that we should avoid the instinct to make plans based on the world we wish existed and instead pay attention to the world that exists. Such realistic thinking demands that we get radical.

Realistically radical

Imagine that you are riding comfortably on a sleek train. You look out the window and see that not too far ahead the tracks end abruptly and that the train will derail if it continues moving ahead. You suggest that the train stop immediately and that the passengers go forward on foot. This will require a major shift in everyone’s way of traveling, of course, but it appears to you to be the only realistic option; to continue barreling forward is to court catastrophic consequences. But when you propose this course of action, others who have grown comfortable riding on the train say, “Well we like the train and arguing that we should get off is not realistic.”

In the contemporary United States, we are trapped in a similar delusion. We are told that it is “realistic” to capitulate to the absurd idea that the systems in which we live are the only systems possible or acceptable because some people like them and wish them to continue. But what if our current level of First-World consumption is exhausting the ecological basis for life? Too bad; the only “realistic” options are those that take that lifestyle as non-negotiable. What if real democracy is not possible in a nation-state with 300 million people? Too bad; the only “realistic” options are those that take this way of organizing a polity as immutable. What if the hierarchies on which our lives are based are producing extreme material deprivation for the oppressed and a kind of dull misery among the privileged? Too bad; the only “realistic” options are those that accept hierarchy as inevitable.

Let me offer a different view of reality: (1) We live in a system that, taken as a whole, is unsustainable, not only over the long haul but in the near term, and (2) unsustainable systems can’t be sustained.

How’s that for a profound theoretical insight? Unsustainable systems can’t be sustained. It’s hard to argue with that; the important question is whether or not we live in a system that is truly unsustainable. There’s no way to prove definitively such a sweeping statement, but look around at what we’ve built and ask yourself whether you really believe this world can go forward indefinitely, or even for more than a few decades? Take a minute to ponder the end of the era of cheap fossil energy, the lack of viable large-scale replacements for that energy, and the ecological consequences of burning what remains of it. Consider the indicators of the health of the planet — groundwater contamination, topsoil loss, levels of toxicity. Factor in the widening inequality in the world, the intensity of the violence, and the desperation that so many feel at every level of society.

Based on what you know about these trends, do you think this is a sustainable system? When you take a moment to let all this wash over you, does it feel to you that this is a sustainable system? If you were to let go of your attachment to this world, is there any way to imagine that this is a sustainable system? Consider all the ways you have to understand the world: Is there anything in your field of perception that tells you that we’re on the right track?

To be radically realistic in the face of all this is to recognize the failure of basic systems and to abandon the notion that all we need do is recalibrate the institutions that structure our lives today. The old future — the way we thought things would work out — truly is gone. The nation-state and capitalism are at the core of this unsustainable system, giving rise to the high-energy/mass-consumption configuration of privileged societies that has left us saddled with what James Howard Kunstler calls “a living arrangement with no future.”6 The future we have been dreaming of was based on a dream, not on reality. Most of the world that doesn’t live with our privilege has no choice but to face this reality. It’s time for us to come to terms with it.

The revolutions of the past

To think about a new future, we need to understand the present. To do that, I want to suggest a way of thinking about the past that highlights the three major revolutions in human history — the agricultural, industrial, and delusional revolutions.

The agricultural revolution started about 10,000 years ago when a gathering-hunting species discovered how to cultivate plants for food. Two crucial things resulted from that, one ecological and one political. Ecologically, the invention of agriculture kicked off an intensive human assault on natural systems. By that I don’t mean that gathering-hunting humans never did damage to a local ecosystem, but only that the large-scale destruction we cope with today has its origins in agriculture, in the way humans have exhausted the energy-rich carbon of the soil, what Jackson would call the first step in the entrenchment of an extractive economy. Human agricultural practices vary from place to place but have never been sustainable over the long term. Politically, the ability to stockpile food made possible concentrations of power and resulting hierarchies that were foreign to gathering-hunting societies. Again, this is not to say that humans were not capable of doing bad things to each other prior to agriculture, but only that what we understand as large-scale institutionalized oppression has its roots in agriculture. We need not romanticize pre-agricultural life to recognize the ways in which agriculture made possible dramatically different levels of unsustainability and injustice.

The industrial revolution that began in the last half of the 18th century in Great Britain intensified the magnitude of the human assault on ecosystems and on each other. Unleashing the concentrated energy of coal, oil, and natural gas to run a machine-based world has produced unparalleled material comfort for some. Whatever one thinks of the effect of such comforts on human psychology (and, in my view, the effect has been mixed), the processes that produce the comfort are destroying the capacity of the ecosystem to sustain human life as we know it into the future, and in the present those comforts are not distributed in a fashion that is consistent with any meaningful conception of justice. In short, the way we live is in direct conflict with common sense and the ethical principles on which we claim to base our lives. How is that possible?

The delusional revolution is my term for the development of sophisticated propaganda techniques in the 20th century (especially a highly emotive, image-based advertising system) that have produced in the bulk of the population (especially in First World societies) a distinctly delusional state of being. Even those of us who try to resist it often can’t help but be drawn into parts of the delusion. As a culture, we collectively end up acting as if unsustainable systems can be sustained because we want them to be. Much of the culture’s story-telling — particularly through the dominant story-telling institutions, the mass media — remains committed to maintaining this delusional state. In such a culture, it becomes hard to extract oneself from that story.

So, in summary: The agricultural revolution set us on a road to destruction. The industrial revolution ramped up our speed. The delusional revolution has prevented us from coming to terms with the reality of where we are and where we are heading. That’s the bad news. The worse news is that there’s still overwhelming resistance in the dominant culture to acknowledging that these kinds of discussions are necessary. This should not be surprising because, to quote Wes Jackson, we are living as “a species out of context.” Jackson likes to remind audiences that the modern human — animals like us, with our brain capacity — have been on the planet about 200,000 years, which means these revolutions constitute only about 5 percent of human history. We are living today trapped by systems in which we did not evolve as a species over the long term and to which we are still struggling to adapt in the short term.

Realistically, we need to get on a new road if we want there to be a future. The old future, the road we imagined we could travel, is gone — it is part of the delusion. Unless one accepts an irrational technological fundamentalism (the idea that we will always be able to find high-energy/advanced-technology fixes for problems),7 there are no easy solutions to these ecological and human problems. The solutions, if there are to be any, will come through a significant shift in how we live and a dramatic down-scaling of the level at which we live. I say “if” because there is no guarantee that there are solutions. History does not owe us a chance to correct our mistakes just because we may want such a chance.

I think this argues for a joyful embrace of the truly awful place we find ourselves. That may seem counter-intuitive, perhaps even a bit psychotic. Invoking joy in response to awful circumstances? For me, this is simply to recognize who I am and where I live. I am part of that species out of context, saddled with the mistakes of human history and no small number of my own tragic errors, but still alive in the world. I am aware of my limits but eager to test them. I try to retain an intellectual humility, the awareness that I may be wrong, while knowing I must act in the world even though I can’t be certain. Whatever the case and whatever is possible, I want to be as fully alive as possible, which means struggling joyfully as part of movements that search for the road to a more just and sustainable world.

In this quest, I am often tired and afraid. To borrow a phrase from my friend Jim Koplin, I live daily with “a profound sense of grief.” And yet every day that I can remember in recent years — in the period during which I have come to this analysis — I have experienced some kind of joy. Often that joy comes with the awareness that I live in a Creation that I can never comprehend, that the complexity of the world dwarfs me. That does not lead me to fear my insignificance, but sends me off in an endlessly fascinating search for the significant.

To put it in a bumper-sticker phrase for contemporary pop culture, “The world sucks/it’s great to be alive.”

Read all of it here, including footnotes. / Dissident Voice

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Bill Moyers and Prof. Andrew J. Bacevich on The Limits of Power

Posted on August 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Andrew J. Bacevich, retired Army colonel and Boston University professor, is interviewed by Bill Moyers.

Former Army colonel Bacevich urges us ‘to take a step back and connect the dots between U.S. foreign policy, consumerism, politics, and militarism’
August 15, 2008

See video of interview on Bill Moyers’ Journal, below.

As campaign ads urge voters to consider who will be a better “Commander in Chief,” Andrew J. Bacevich — Professor of International Relations at Boston University, retired Army colonel, and West Point graduate — joins Bill Moyers on the JOURNAL to encourage viewers to take a step back and connect the dots between U.S. foreign policy, consumerism, politics, and militarism.

Bacevich begins his new book, THE LIMITS OF POWER: THE END OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM, with an epigraph taken from the Bible: “Put thine house in order.” Bacevich explained his choice to Bill Moyers:

I’ve been troubled by the course of U.S. foreign policy for a long, long time. And I wrote the book in order to sort out my own thinking about where our basic problems lay. And I really reached the conclusion that our biggest problems are within.

I think there’s a tendency in the part of policy makers — and probably a tendency in the part of many Americans — to think that the problems we face are problems that are out there somewhere beyond our borders, and that if we can fix those problems, then we’ll be able to continue the American way of life as it has long existed. I think it’s fundamentally wrong. Our major problems are here at home.

Bacevich sees three crises looming in the United States today, as he explains in the introduction to THE LIMITS OF POWER.

The United States today finds itself threatened by three interlocking crises. The first of these crises is economic and cultural, the second political, and the third military. All three share this characteristic: They are of our own making. In assessing the predicament that results from these crises, THE LIMITS OF POWER employs what might be called a Niebuhrean perspective. Writing decades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr anticipated that predicament with uncanny accuracy and astonishing prescience. As such, perhaps more than any other figure in our recent history, he may help us discern a way out.

Reinhold Niebuhr

Reinhold Niebuhr, whose 20th century work related theology to modern society and politics, is important in Bacevich’s analysis, and in a university lecture at Boston University, Bacevich presented Niebuhr as a prophet with stern warnings for modern America:

As prophet, Niebuhr warned that what he called “our dreams of managing history” — dreams borne out of a peculiar combination of arrogance, hypocrisy, and self-delusion — posed a large and potentially mortal threat to the United States. Today we ignore that warning at our peril.

Since the end of the Cold War the management of history has emerged as the all but explicitly stated purpose of American statecraft. In Washington, politicians speak knowingly about history’s clearly discerned purpose and about the responsibility of the United States, at the zenith of its power, to guide history to its intended destination.

A key message Bacevich takes from Niebuhr is one of humility. Not only must we understand the limits of what a government — and its military — can accomplish, but we must resist the temptation to guide history towards some perceived purpose or end:

In Niebuhr’s view, although history may be purposeful, it is also opaque, a drama in which both the story line and the dénouement remain hidden from view. The twists and turns that the plot has already taken suggest the need for a certain modesty in forecasting what is still to come. Yet as Niebuhr writes, “modern man lacks the humility to accept the fact that the whole drama of history is enacted in a frame of meaning too large for human comprehension or management.”

Such humility is in particularly short supply in present-day Washington. There, especially among neoconservatives and neoliberals, the conviction persists that Americans are called up on to serve, in Niebuhr’s most memorable phrase, “as tutors of mankind in its pilgrimage to perfection.”

And so, Bacevich concludes, we cannot solve our problems by simply electing a new president, or removing a beligerant foreign regime. To address our triplet crises, we must first confront our core misconceptions. Which we do, Bacevich explains, by confronting our consumerism and

…giving up our Messianic dreams and ceasing our efforts to coerce history in a particular direction. This does not imply a policy of isolationism. It does imply attending less to the world outside of our borders and more to the circumstances within. It means ratcheting down our expectations. Americans need what Niebuhr described as “a sense of modesty about the virtue, wisdom and power available to us for the resolution of [history’s] perplexities.”

Andrew J. Bacevich

[Andrew J. Bacevich is Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. A graduate of the U. S. Military Academy, he received his Ph. D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University. Before joining the faculty of Boston University in 1998, he taught at West Point and at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Bacevich is the author of THE LIMITS OF POWER: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM (2008). His previous books include AMERICAN EMPIRE: THE REALITIES AND CONSEQUENCES OF U. S. DIPLOMACY (2002), THE IMPERIAL TENSE: PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTS OF AMERICAN EMPIRE (2003) (editor), THE NEW AMERICAN MILITARISM: HOW AMERICANS ARE SEDUCED BY WAR (2005), and THE LONG WAR: A NEW HISTORY OF US NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY SINCE WORLD WAR II (2007) (editor).

His essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of scholarly and general interest publications including THE WILSON QUARTERLY, THE NATIONAL INTEREST, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, FOREIGN POLICY, THE NATION, THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, AND THE NEW REPUBLIC . His op-eds have appeared in the NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, WALL STREET JOURNAL, FINANCIAL TIMES, BOSTON GLOBE, LOS ANGELES TIMES, and USA TODAY, among other newspapers.]

Source / Bill Moyers Journal

The Common Good, Andrew J. Bacevich interviewed by Bill Moyers

Read the full introduction to The Limits of Power.

Read or watch Bacevich’s lecture on Niebuhr, ILLUSIONS OF MANAGING HISTORY.

Thanks to Thomas Cleaver / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments