EDUCATION : Texas Fiction Science

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Image © Austin Cline, Licensed to About; Original Poster: Library of Congress

The State Board of Education does its part to fantasize biology
By Andrea Grimes

There’s nothing the evil overlords of the fictional future like more than a nice, healthy round of brainwashing. Whether it’s George Orwell’s totalitarian government of Oceania thwarting rebellious citizens in 1984, the “conditioning” of children in Brave New World, or the large-scale human reprogramming in The Matrix, mind control is all the rage for governments looking to cultivate a herd of submissive subjects. And it’s so simple, too! All that’s necessary are a few moldable minds and a strict party line.

But here’s a bit of nonfiction: The Texas State Board of Education has just those two things. Moldable minds, in the form of Texas schoolchildren, and a party line that favors teaching the “weaknesses” of biological evolutionary theory and, by implication, the strengths of the latest pseudo-scholarly variation on creationism: “intelligent design.” Last fall, in the latest episode of that eternal Texas struggle, the Texas Education Agency, which is regulated by the SBOE, fired its science director for distributing information about a pro-evolution seminar. And now, the SBOE is beginning hearings on updated science curricula that teaches the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolutionary theory.

It’s the latest in an ever-evolving effort by religious conservatives to discredit evolution after efforts to explicitly incorporate intelligent design have repeatedly failed. Lessons in Weak Evolution could be coming to a Texas public school near you by March 2009.

McLeroy vs. Biology

The first of several hearings on the science curricula updates occurred July 17 and 18, with this first meeting dedicated only to the delicate bureaucratic process of planning on how to plan those updates. According to SBOE chair and College Station dentist Dr. Don McLeroy, this year’s “battle is to bring in some of the weaknesses of evolution,” to ninth- and 10th-grade biology classrooms, retaining language requiring that teachers instruct students in the “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories. But according to the Texas Freedom Network, a statewide organization that works to mitigate the influence of fundamentalism on state policy, it’s really just one singular theory that gets the critical treatment.

“The only theory they attack is evolution,” said Dan Quinn, Texas Freedom Network’s communications director. Heliocentricity, gravitational theory, and atomic structure all get the SBOE thumbs-up. Indeed, despite clearly worded endorsements of evolution’s validity as scientific fact from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Science Teachers Association of Texas, and countless other scientific groups, McLeroy and six other conservative members of the 15-member SBOE remain unconvinced.

“I don’t think the evidence supports [evolution],” said McLeroy, a self-described creationist who believes that because “science is always trying to find problems with stuff,” evolution should not be presented as absolute fact. In McLeroy’s opinion, there are three major weaknesses of evolutionary theory that schoolchildren should be made aware of. He arrived at these conclusions by “reading everything [he] could get [his] hands on” and listening to podcasts.

First weakness: the fossil record. “There are gaps,” said McLeroy, that do not include enough transitional forms of life to support evolution. Second, McLeroy says there has simply not been enough time on Earth for the minute changes required by evolution to have taken place. Thirdly, McLeroy says the incredible complexity of cells proves divine design. Information contained in the genetic code is just too mind-blowing to have come from anywhere but an intelligent creator. “Where did this information come from?” McLeroy mused. McLeroy would like to see these assertions and more taught in Texas biology classrooms.

I asked University of Texas integrative biology professor David Hillis, a member of the National Academy of

Sciences, about McLeroy’s list of “weaknesses.” In an e-mail exchange, Hillis said McLeroy was simply denying facts. “There is indeed a vast record of transitional fossils,” wrote Hillis, saying McLeroy’s fossil record claims are “completely at odds with the experts in the entire field of paleontology.”

As for McLeroy’s second assertion regarding length of time required for evolution to have taken place, Hillis wrote that the position “demonstrates an extraordinary ignorance of biology,” since rates of evolution observed in laboratory tests have been “more than sufficient” to prove natural rates of genetic change that coincide with the fossil record.

Finally, McLeroy’s cell-complexity argument does not even belong in a scientific discussion, wrote Hillis: “The argument that ‘It is too complicated, so God must have done it’ is not a scientific argument.”

And yet it appears that, all evidence to the contrary, evolution may still soon be taught in Texas as a weak theory. Since the SBOE has a near majority of anti-evolution members, the small problem of evolution actually being demonstrable scientific knowledge is only a political challenge to those who want schoolchildren taught otherwise.

Forward Into the Past

McLeroy says he and his board allies can persuade the swing votes necessary to give the board a good chance of advancing a weak-evolution curricula. Indeed, the persuasion skills of the conservative seven have already been demonstrated earlier this year, when Texas’ English standards were revised. In May, the SBOE rejected the recommendations of an $85,000, two-year study conducted by English teachers and curriculum experts in favor of a group of standards favored by McLeroy and his fellow conservatives. It was submitted just prior to adoption, without time for board or public review, yet passed with a contentious 9-6 vote.

The board’s dominance by anti-evolution sentiment, coupled with conservative Republican rule at the Capitol, has had a direct effect on agency policy. Last November, TEA Director of Science Chris Comer was forced to resign after she forwarded an e-mail to academic groups containing information about an anti-creationism seminar. The e-mail, which contained a one-line “FYI” from Comer and a forwarded event listing, was considered an inappropriate endorsement of evolution by TEA officials. They insist Comer’s effective termination was simply a personnel matter involving an employee unwilling to follow agency policy and that evolution has nothing to do with it.

Earlier this month, Comer filed a federal lawsuit against the TEA and its official policy of “neutrality” on the subject of creationism. Comer alleges that the agency policy is a violation of the First Amendment. Because creationism is a religious belief, her pleadings state, “The [TEA’s] ‘neutrality’ policy has the purpose or effect of endorsing religion.” In the lawsuit, Comer asks to be reinstated to her position as the TEA science director.

It’s worth noting that part of the TEA and SBOE’s duty statement includes a goal to “prepare today’s schoolchildren for a successful future.” If the weak-evolution curricula passes, Texas schoolchildren will be able to achieve that success in one of two ways: fly out of state for biology class and be back in time for lunch or set their sights on excelling at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.

Texas Freedom Network’s Dan Quinn believes weak-evolution curricula will set back the education of Texas schoolchildren. He says Texas will have a hard time getting its high school graduates admitted to top universities, or attracting science-oriented businesses, if it develops an anti-science reputation.

“Are we going to give our kids a 19th century education in the 21st century?” Quinn asked. If the SBOE has its way, the answer is likely to be yes.

Source / Austin Chronicle / Posted July 25, 2008

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Mariann Wizard : ‘I Have No Nostalgia for the 60s’

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Updated July 30, 2008

Sixties anti-war demonstration in Austin.

‘We glimpsed, briefly, the power people can wield when mutual interests are clarified by adversity’
By Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog / July 29, 2008

“When we attacked the Moncada, none of us dreamed of being here today; we didn’t have such dreams even when following the Commander in Chief’s orders. We entered this fortress victoriously on January 1st, 1959, exactly five year, five months and five days later. Most of us were twenty or thirty some years old, some were even younger, and half a century seemed to us an eternity. But if there is something we have learned well it is that time flies, therefore, to waste it away out of inertia or hesitation is an unforgivable negligence. We must take advantage of every minute and learn fast from every experience, even from our mistakes, since they always teach a lesson if they are seriously analyzed.”

From Cuban President Raul Castro’s speech on the 55th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Barracks, July 26, 2008.

Dear Friends,

I have no nostalgia for the 60s. They weren’t generally happy times, although as young people we made our own happiness. Objectively, they were years of war, injustice, death, fear, persecution, and frustration. Those of us who fought together for peace, justice, self-confidence, and freedom, and who survived, formed bonds that go beyond friendship, and in fact often have little to do with close personal association. We glimpsed, briefly, the power people can wield when mutual interests are clarified by adversity. Many of us believe we are approaching a similar time.

Those who were “revolutionaries” then, and who are honest now, know that we all made mistakes. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing most of the time. We were cut off from earlier rebel generations by brutal repression, intensive propaganda, and our own arrogance. We had only books to learn from, and our own scrapes and bruises. We know we have unfinished business: we still have no peace; we still have no justice; we still have no freedom; and we still too often mistake arrogance for leadership. This is why, I think, so many of us return to the unresolved discussions and debates of our shared, misspent youth; not because we miss it — goddess save us from a re-run! — but because we want to at last get it right.

Have we learned from our experiences, not only of the 60s, but of all the intervening years, how to work effectively for social change? Or are we still clueless? How much longer do we have for the serious analysis that is needed?

Comments from Pat Cuney:

This is a reply to the response posted on the Rag to Mariann’s piece on nostalgia [see below].

I would want to say that I didn’t think there was anything bitter about the article at all.

And I did want to say that I continued my activities in community organizing after finding myself caught up in our own version of a disapora. I feel I learned a lot, and much of it built on the work I did with y’all.

One thing that was so dramatically presented to me that I will never forget, was a scene from the video documenting “The Dinner Party” featuring the artists and the process Judy Chicago and her co-creators used to develop the project. (If you don’t know who she is, I think it well worth your time to look her up.) She was sitting in a dinner party with the group and a feminist neophyte asked why women had to look up their herstory almost every generation, or some such. I thought Judy was going to come unglued as she pulled herself up to the whole of her height at about 5′, and launched into a lecture in which she practically shrieked something along the lines of, “Because they are too fucking lazy to read and research their own history. Do you think the Chinese peasants just one day picked up their pitchforks and seized state power? No, they read, they formed study groups, they learned their history and they studied economics.’

So one of the things I feel really great about was our work in study groups with the New Left Education Project, with the Rag, with the class i presented on women’s history in Labor before there was a Women’s Studies Department, and I feel especially wonderful when I reflect on the Women’s Liberation Front “consciousness raising” sessions and the many classes we gave in university classrooms on sexism, and the actions we took on sexist assaults in the community. (Who will ever forget the spray painting we did on the “Bust ’em Bevo” “spirit sign” that would certainly have led to a bloody riot if Judy Smith hadn’t coolly stepped up to the plate, and if we hadn’t had the loving support of Paul, Henry, David R and Wayne, who, bless them always, spent the rest of their day on the West Mall talking with men about sexism.

I love that I saw the paradigm shift from sitting in a meeting in a theater style to sitting in a circle. That single action continued since in all places and times probably did more to undermine the hierarchy construct that is so fundamental to the maintenance of patriarchy in this culture as anything else we’ve done.

So, I’ve got it. I make an effort to know my herstory, I currently participate in a reading/discussion group focused on what I’m interested in now, feminist spirituality, and I promote educational seminars in local, state and national groups of women, and generate intense experiences I refer to now as “consciousness deepening weekends for women,” and upset everyone by raising issues around class and race.

My movement associates were unable to get me to separate myself from what Jeff and David used to snortingly refer to as “petit-bourgeosie mysticism” and my current spiritual feminist sisters just wish I would shut up about the issues of class and race, if I would just drop any kind of analysis and grok out, their lives would be more pleasant, they think. But I have come to find that my truth is that I do have Tarot cards in one hand and an analysis of patriarchal oppression in the other in which Marx is not forgotten, Lenin is understood, and the multinationals are not invisible, and I, like the Hindu goddess Durga, have more than two hands, thus more than the binary reality we think of as true, and this is increasing in the culture of the computer. While I am mindful of Mao’s commentary, “True power comes out of the barrel of a gun,” I have also moved through so many corridors of power within and without that I feel I can stand in and on my own power at any moment — and that was surely one of the great of the journeys of my lifetime. Empowerment has been a central challenge of our generation, particularly for my generation of women.

Another little piece of my pie is my understanding that consciousness is changed pretty much one person at a time, although there may be moments in which the common experience is so intense that a paradigm shifts for the whole collective mass gathered there. We certainly saw that in our marches, demonstrations, music and theater. If we had had more time, there is no telling how many lives we would have affected — we affected enough to put 100,000 people in DC intent on shutting it down, and that’s when they stopped lest they have to shot their children.

I am pretty clear by now that my work will remain with women, and so I continue to seek ways and spaces in which to generate a collective consciousness shift while continually trying to introduce a consciousness of the continuing oppressions of classism, racism, and sexism. In this, theater is important, as is the work in general of the poets, writers and artists, visual and performance, who are the heart and soul of any revolution. In the bigger picture of politics I am not seeing the kind of contribution we supported from the likes of Bob Dylan today. I am willing to be corrected.

Anyway, I think Mariann’s observation was valuable. I have and continue to reflect on constructs of strategy and tactics we learned together in my various activities, and I think we would be well-served not to just warmly reflect, but to also name what we did well and give it some thought about what we maybe ought to be doing again.

Pat Cuney / July 30, 2008

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Jennifer Viegas :
Sotten Treeshrew On Non-Stop Bender

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer
photo of treeshrew

Heavy Drinker: A pen-tailed treeshrew is shown wearing a radio collar. The clawed, big-eyed treeshrews were observed slurping up a beer-like brew from flowers of the bertam palm in the West Malaysian rainforest. The natural brew contains up to 3.8 percent alcohol, which is very close to the alcohol content of most human-manufactured beers. Photo by Annette Zitzmann.

Furry critters thrive on fermented nectar…

By Jennifer Viegas / July 28, 2008

Even the most ardent beer fans would have trouble subsisting on their favorite brew day in and out, but scientists have just discovered that the pentailed treeshrew lives off a frothy, fermented nectar that smells like beer and has its same alcohol content.

Humans previously were thought to be the only animals that regularly imbibed alcohol, but the soft-furred, slender treeshrews drink far more than most humans ever could for their body weight, and have been doing so for up to 55 million years.

But are the treeshrews forever tipsy?

“They show no obvious signs of drunkenness when observed from only 9.8 feet away away,” lead author Frank Wiens told Discovery News. “However we do not rule out psychopharmacological effects induced by alcohol.”

“On the contrary, I believe that some psychological effects induced by alcohol, such as effects on the brain, mood and learning, are crucial in this system,” added Wiens, a researcher in the Department of Animal Physiology at the University of Bayreuth in Germany.

Wiens and his team made the discovery, outlined in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, after first detecting a “strong alcoholic smell reminiscent of a brewery” from flowers of the bertam palm in the West Malaysian rainforest Segari Melintang Forest Reserve in the State of Parak. Nectar from this plant frequently frothed up and out of the palm’s long, tubular flowers.

The researchers conducted video surveillance of visitors to the plant and determined that many species bellied up to the bar-like scene, particularly at night, when the number of visits more than doubled. Nocturnal imbibers included the gray tree rat, the Malayan wood rat, the chestnut rat, the slow loris and the pentailed treeshrew.

The latter two animals spent far more time than the others did moving up and down the palm flowers and licking off the available nectar and pollen. The shrews stayed an average of 138 minutes per night, while the lorises fed for an average of 86 minutes each night.

The natural brew contains up to 3.8 percent alcohol, which is very close to the alcohol content of most human-manufactured beers. Given variations in alcohol content and amounts consumed, Wiens and his team say the clawed, big-eyed treeshrews would have a 36 percent chance of being drunk, by human standards, on any given night.

Wiens said there are even “reports of Malaysian indigenous people harvesting the nectar in former times,” with these people getting “a buzz from the nectar.”

While he suggested the treeshrews might also experience some kind of pleasant sensation, they appear to handle their alcoholic diet well. Analysis of hair plucked from the creatures revealed extremely high concentrations of a compound known as ethyl glucuronide. This is the end product of a chemical process that gets rid of alcohol and other toxic things from the body.

“In humans, only a negligible amount of the consumed alcohol is detoxified via this pathway,” Wiens said.

The process explains why a small amount of alcohol can help reduce anxiety and stress in people, while conferring certain other medical properties, but larger amounts can often lead to health problems and alcohol addiction.

Since the pentailed treeshrew is believed to be ecologically and behaviorally close to extinct, ancestral primates that lived over 55 million years ago, the researchers theorize early shrews and primates were exposed to potentially harmful alcohol levels early in their development, but that humans and most other modern primates either weren’t exposed to it as much, or lost the beer-guzzling adaptations as the years went on.

Webb Miller, a Penn State University professor of biology, computer science and engineering, has also studied treeshrews, along with flying lemurs. Miller and his team found that, despite their diminutive size and physical differences, the rainforest dwellers are closely related to us.

Miller said “now that we know their relationship to primates,” treeshrews and flying lemurs, in particular, “are going to be much more important species to study.”

In the future, Wiens and his team hope additional studies on pentailed treeshrews and their favorite food might help to explain how alcohol consumption emerged in humans and why certain groups possess different levels of tolerance. Asian individuals, for example, possess a low metabolic tolerance for alcohol that protects against alcoholism. Wiens said evolved adaptations to toxins found in rice could have resulted in that ability.

Source / Discovery News

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Existential Threats to the Larger National Body

Posted on July 29, 2008 by RagBlog


Death as a Way of Life
by Joseph Nevins / July 28th, 2008

Esequiel Hernández Jr. was only 18-years-old when Clemente Manuel Banuelos, a U.S. Marine corporal, shot and killed him in Redford, Texas in May 1998. Hernández, a high school student, was the first civilian killed by U.S. troops within national territory since the Kent State massacre of May 1970.

Hernández’s and Banuelos’s paths crossed in the context of the “War on Drugs.” Banuelos was a member of four-person surveillance unit, part of the first armed U.S. military mission to the Mexican border region since 1914. The mission took place under the auspices of Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6), the inter-branch command unit that provided operational, training, and intelligence support from the Pentagon to federal, regional, state, and local law enforcement counter-drug efforts within the United States.1

Banuelos and his fellow Marines had been deployed to Redford, Hernández’s tiny hometown (with a population at the time of a little more than 100 people) to monitor individuals smuggling drugs from Mexico across the Rio Grande. No one in Redford, apart from Border Patrol agents in the area, knew that the Marines were there.

On May 19, 1997, Hernández, whose post-high-school plan was to join the Marines, took out his goats near his family home, which lay about 200 yards north of the US-Mexico divide. He carried a .22 caliber rifle to ward off wild dogs. According to the soldiers, Hernández fired at them twice. Twenty minutes later, the young man was dead, Banuelos having fired a single shot.

The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández2, a compelling documentary which aired throughout the United States on July 8 on PBS’ Point of View (POV), sheds important light on the tragedy. Employing interviews with members of the Hernández family, the three other marines who were members of the JTF-6 unit (Banuelos declined to be interviewed), law enforcement officials, lawyers involved in the case, and members of the Redford community, the film provides a comprehensive view of the murder.

It also makes a clear statement that Esequiel Hernández was the victim of a soldier who acted inappropriately and — most likely — criminally. Hernández, it seems, never threatened the Marine unit as Banuelos claimed. Because the soldiers were camouflaged and hiding amidst vegetation at a distance of more than 200 yards from where Hernández allegedly fired his rifle, it would have been impossible for him to see them, no less to know that they were Marines. More importantly, Banuelos and the unit he led pursued Hernández after the high school student fired his rifle, closing the gap between them and their alleged assailant to about 100 yards. If Hernández were a threat as Banuelos alleged, why pursue him — especially given that he was walking away from them and the soldiers’ rules of engagement limited pursuit to when necessary for self-defense? Moreover, while Banuelos fired upon Hernández, he said, because the 18-year-old was about to shoot Lance Corporal James Blood, one of the other members of the unit, Blood rejects the claim in the film. As Jane Kelly (among others), an FBI agent interviewed in the film points out, Banuelos’s bullet penetrated Hernández’s right side under his arm, a point of entry inconsistent for someone supposedly positioned to shoot at Blood; indeed, it appears that Hernández was facing away from the Marine unit when he was shot.3

While such matters were central to Hernández’s untimely demise, so, too was the effective criminalization of the impoverished farming town’s population. Redford, so went the intelligence JTF-6 and the Border Patrol provided to the Marines, was a center of drug traffickers: 70-75 percent of the population was allegedly involved in the illicit trade. As the notes of the staff sergeant who briefed the soldiers before they were deployed to the town read, “Redford is not a friendly town.” Through such cartoon-like depictions, Redford became an enemy locale — as have so many other places across the country and throughout the world in the ever-expanding and never-ending “war on drugs.” Given the information they received, Banuelos and his unit were fully expecting some “action,” but they did not observe any drug-trafficking-related activity, leading Ronald Wieler, one of the unit members, to conclude that “In a way, it was like we were there for nothing.”

The fact that the Marines were in Redford, and that the federal government had sent them there says a lot about how important segments of the ruling class perceive the border region and its residents. As Enrique Madrid, a local historian in Redford, asserts in the film, “Presidio County is one of the poorest in the State of Texas, one of the poorest in the nation, and South County is the poorest part of that poor county. And yet they send us Marines instead of educators. They send us Border Patrolmen instead of doctors.” Seen from Washington, the border region—Redford included — is first and foremost an area of existential threats to the larger national body, an area that needs to be secured — whether it’s against “illegal” migrants crossing the boundary to “steal” jobs, or against would-be terrorists.4

The shooting death in Redford is also just one of many tragic illustrations of the ludicrous lengths to which the drug war and the border war have been taken and how they continue independent of their effectiveness in combating the “threats” from without they purport to eliminate. In the case of the war on drugs, for example, the federal government has spent many hundreds of billions of dollars over the last three decades. Nonetheless, the street price of drugs has steadily declined during that period — an indication of just how little impact Washington’s “war” has had on transboundary smuggling.

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

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Iraq : Poised to Explode

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘Iraqis are tired of this war’
By Charlie Jackson / The Rag Blog / July 28, 2008

See ‘Iraq: Poised to Explode’ by Robert Dreyfuss below

Robert Dreyfuss knows a bit about Iraq, but bases much of his analysis on secondary resources. Here is a bit from primary sources:

Iraqis are tired of this war and want to return to something equated to the “normalcy” of pre-2003.

However, Dreyfuss is right that a “time bomb” is ticking and much of it is due to pent up frustration and uncertainty about the future. Iraqis have had enough of dictators, sanctions, war and occupation.

Violence will likely only increase nominally (for Iraq levels) until after the U.S. presidential elections. If the U.S. President-elect is clear that the America will not remain in Iraq, even the Mahdi Army will joyfully bring flowers and offer to help load up trucks. If not, then all Hell will break out. (P.S. I met with both Moqtada al-Sadr at his compound and the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars [sic] at their fortress, during my last trip).

There continues to be sharp divisions between various political parties, in advance of regional elections, and these animosities will continue whether or not the U.S. is there. However, the great “middle” of Iraq will begin to have hope – and not join the insurgency – if they see significant economic progress and signs of a sincere withdrawal (even if it takes until 2010).

[Charlie Jackson is founder of Texans for Peace]

Iraq: Poised to Explode
By Robert Dreyfuss / July 27, 2008

While everyone’s looking at Iraq’s effect on American politics — and whether or not John McCain and Barack Obama are converging on a policy that combines a flexible timetable with a vague, and long-lasting, residual force — let’s take a look instead at Iraqi politics. The picture isn’t pretty.

Despite the Optimism of the Neocons, which has pushed mainstream media coverage to be increasingly flowery about Iraq’s political progress, in fact the country is poised to explode. Even before the November election. And for McCain and Obama, the problem is that Iran has many of the cards in its hands. Depending on its choosing, between now and November Iran can help stabilize the war in Iraq — mostly by urging the Iraqi Shiites to behave themselves — or it can make things a lot more violent.

There are at least three flashpoints for an explosion, any or all of which could blow up over the next couple of months. (Way to go, Surgin’ Generals!) The first is the brewing crisis over Kirkuk, where the pushy Kurds are demanding control and Iraq’s Arabs are resisting. The second is in the west, and Anbar, where the US-backed Sons of Iraq sahwa (“Awakening”) movement is moving to take power against the Iraqi Islamic Party, a fundamentalist Sunni bloc. And third is the restive Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, which is chafing at gains made by its Iranian-backed rival, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI).

Perhaps the issue of KIrkuk and the Kurds is most dangerous. Last week, the Kurds walked out of parliament to protest a law passed by parliament to govern the provincial elections. The law passed 127-13, but it was vetoed by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd. Juan Cole, the astute observer, says : “The conflict between Kurds and Arabs over Kirkuk is a crisis waiting to happen.” He cites Al-Hayat, an Iraqi newspaper, as claiming that not only do the Kurds want to control Kirkuk, an oil-rich province in Iraq’s north, but they plan to annex three other provinces where Kurds live: Diyala, Salahuddin, and Ninewa. That’s not likely, but they do want Kirkuk, and the vetoed election law would have limited the Kurds’ ability to press their gains there.

The election law was supported by Sadr’s bloc and backed by former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his Iraq National List. Another nationalist party, the National Dialogue Council, has demanded the ouster of President Talabani over his veto of the law. Other Iraqi parties are backing the now-vetoed law, too, which also restricts the use of Islamic religious symbols by political parties seeking to corral illiterate, religious voters.

Because of all this, it now looks like there won’t be provincial elections this year at all. The ruling bloc of Shiite religious parties and Kurdish warlords is split over the crisis, weakening Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and members of the ruling coalition are trying to patch things up. I don’t think they’ll succeed. Many Shiites in the ruling bloc, including ISCI, have criticized the law as divisive, but as Arabs it’s hard for them to endorse a Kurdish takeover of Kirkuk. ISCI and the Badr Brigade, its armed wing, are holding parlays to decide what to do. Interestingly, all three members of the ruling presidential council, including Talabani, the IIP’s Hashemi, and ISCI’s Adel Abdel Mahdi, voted to veto the law, putting ISCI and the IIP on record as supporting the Kurds. Bad for them politically.

The IIP says that it wants to mediate the crisis. But the IIP is in a very, very weak position. Having just rejoined the Maliki government, it is under siege at home in its base in Anbar province, where the Awakening is flexing its muscle. This could be the second explosion. The Sunni Arabs are still seething over the divisive Iraqi Constitution and their continuing exclusion from political power, and the Awakening movement sees the IIP (correctly) as wildly unrepresentative. So the Awakening, representing Sunni tribal powers and former resistance fighters, wants in, at the expense of the IIP. That time bomb is ticking, too.

The final crisis-to-be is the Sadr vs. Badr one. The Times today suggests that Sadr is weakening:

The militia that was once the biggest defender of poor Shiites in Iraq, the Mahdi Army, has been profoundly weakened in a number of neighborhoods across Baghdad, in an important, if tentative, milestone for stability in Iraq.

Don’t believe it. Sadr’s rivals, ISCI, don’t have anything like the popular base that Sadr has. And underneath Sadr is a volatile mix of neighborhood, local and regional militias, mosques, and economic fiefdoms that won’t yield easily to ISCI and Maliki. Because Sadr’s forces are dependent on Iran, however, for arms and cash, Iran may be in the driver’s seat. Just the other day, the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps crowed that the United States has failed to install an anti-Iranian regime in Baghdad, and he’s completely right.

So Iraq is still poised to explode, and Iran may be in control. McCain’s solution: provoke a showdown with Iran. Obama’s solution: try to make a deal with Iran to stabilize Iraq. I’m not sure either “plan” will work.

Source / The Nation

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Worth a Thousand Words Dept.

Posted on July 29, 2008 by RagBlog

A young soldier displays a tattoo reading “Walk Peacefully on Heavens Streets, You’ve Done You’re Time in Hell.” Baghdad, Iraq – July, 2007.

Source / Zoriah Photojournalist

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makingpeace : Netroots in Fertile Ground

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

T-Shirt Humor.

The Rag Blog’s Dreyer and Organic Consumers’ Cummins
By makingpeace / July 28, 2008

Following another computer crash and a friend’s valiant attempt to fix it, we headed out yesterday to buy a new machine. Now we’re getting used to the new set-up and hoping the machine’s memory outlives that of its predecessor (if not its owners.) I admit to feeling generally uneasy using too many things that I don’t know how to fix. Wood and paper are mediums that I understand – and under the right conditions, their longevity is greater than wired circuits. Maybe Austin’s supercomputer, “Ranger,” knows more than a forest worth of trees — but I doubt its memory is longer, nor are its roots as deep. But, maybe the forest and the ranger can yet develop a relationship as symbiotic as their natural counterparts.

For some insight in these matters, I spoke by phone Friday morning with a couple of other attendees of the Netroots convention: Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association (www.organicconsumers.org), who had just returned to his home state of Minnesota after driving back with his family in their camper van, and Thorne Dreyer, who is a local blogger (and happened to have a letter in yesterday’s AAS about Netroots).

On his way to Austin, Ronnie had attended the Green Party Convention in Chicago. He said he’d like to see more interaction between those who blog about electoral politics and those who are involved in public interest campaigns. He said that there were only a few folks who attended both the Green Party and the Netroots conventions, even though he feels their “world views are almost identical.”

Ronnie appreciated all the networking opportunities at both conventions, and he is passionate about making connections between people and issues — war funding and the environment, consumers and farmers, green builders and peace builders. “I think for the first time since 1970, people are seeing the whole picture,” he says. He hopes the US is moving toward a “New Green Deal” or a “New Peace and Green Deal.” He is optimistic, but also stresses the urgency of our global crises. “We don’t have unlimited time left to turn things around.”

Ronnie is still active with the Organic Consumers Association that he co-founded 10 years ago and is editor of the group’s online newsletter, Organic Bytes. The network has grown to about a million people who are connected online. A new lobby arm at www.grassrootsnetroots.org aims to further green awareness throughout political campaigns, especially in local elections.

I learned that Ronnie grew up in Port Arthur, Texas, where “from an early age, I saw the power of the oil companies and how they bought off politicians.” He attended Rice University and also spent a brief time in Austin in the early 1970’s. He has worked in peace and justice efforts since those years. He is committed, energized and hopeful. “The Rainbow Coalition we hoped for did not come about, but now we have a real chance to make it happen,” he says.

I sensed similar optimism from Thorne Dreyer, another long-time writer and social justice advocate who, like Ronnie, grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast. Thorne edits The Rag Blog (www.theragblog.com), an online revival of the underground newspaper that flourished in Austin in the 1960’s and ’70’s. Thorne edited The Rag then, saw the paper influence the explosive growth of underground publications around the country and is delighted to see the parallels with the burgeoning alternative press now. He likens the internet to the technology of the offset press in the 1960’s that allowed more people to contribute to the media. The Rag Blog is doubling its readership every month, and Thorne is pleased with the feedback he and the other blog contributors have been getting.

Like Ronnie, Thorne expressed enthusiasm about the opportunities he had to meet folks and learn from the speakers and panelists at the Netroots Convention. “It was like the old days — it gave you a sense of the immensity of the movement. I didn’t think there was a weak moment in the convention,” he said. He was glad that Netroots attendees could come to Austin to see that a spirit of populism survives and that “Texas is fertile ground for maverick thinking.”

Embracing the internet hasn’t diminished Thorne’s passion for the printed page. He’s a long-time journalist and a book collector whose father was a reporter and editor at the Houston Chronicle. He remembers three daily Houston newspapers when he was young, and not that long ago was able to have the Houston Chronicle delivered to his doorstep in Austin. Now it’s not even available at most news stands here. He’s not sure what the future holds for the major dailies, but he sees a real problem with their concentration of ownership.

“I still love hard copy,” he says. “Something I can spill coffee on, read in bed — I’m still old school in that sense. I don’t think the internet can ever take the place of the print media. We need both.”

[Susan Van Haitsma posts as makingpeace, news and commentary about nonviolence in action / statesman.com.]

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Everything Is Always Hunky-Dory

Posted on July 29, 2008 by RagBlog


Thar She Blows: The Last Hurrah for the Banking System
By Mike Whitney / July 28, 2008

The Bush administration will be mailing out another batch of “stimulus” checks in the very near future. There’s no way around it. The Fed is in a pickle and can’t lower interest rates for fear that food and energy prices will shoot to stratosphere. At the same time, the economy is shrinking faster than anyone thought possible with no sign of a rebound. That leaves stimulus checks as the only way to “prime the pump” and keep consumer spending chugging along. Otherwise business activity will slow to a crawl and the economy will tank. There’s no other choice.

The daily barrage of bad news is really starting to get on people’s nerves. Most of the TV chatterboxes have already cut-out the cheery stock market predictions and no one is praising the “impressive powers of the free market” anymore. They know things are bad, real bad. A pervasive sense of gloom has crept into the television studios just like it has into the stock exchanges and the luxury penthouses on Manhattan’s West End. That same sense of foreboding is creeping like a noxious cloud to every town and city across the country. Everyone is cutting back on non-essentials and trimming the fat from the family budget. The days of extravagant impulse-spending at the mall are over. So are the “big ticket” purchases and the “go-for-broke” trips to Europe. Consumer confidence is at historic lows, disposal income is a thing of the past, and all the credit cards are at their limit. The country is drowning in red ink.

Something has gone terribly wrong with the economy, but no one knows what it is? In the last three months bank credit has shrunk faster than any time since 1948. The banks aren’t lending and people aren’t borrowing; that’s a lethal combo. When credit-creation slows, the economy falters, unemployment rises and the misery index soars. That’s why Bush will have to mail out more stimulus checks whether he wants to or not; his back is against the wall. He’ll try to make it look like the economy is still breathing on its own and just needs a spell on the respirator before resuming its normal activities. But Bush is wrong; we’ve reached Peak credit and the blood-transfusions won’t work anymore. The vital signs have shut down and rigamortis is already setting in. Our goose is cooked.

MORE BANK RUNS

On Friday, after the market had closed, the FDIC shut down two more banks, First Heritage Bank and First National Bank. Two weeks earlier, regulators seized Indymac Bancorp following a run by depositors. The FDIC now operates like a stealth paramilitary unit, deploying its shock troops on the weekends to do their dirty work out of the public eye and at times when it will least effect the stock market. The reasons for this are obvious; there’s only one thing the government hates more than seeing flag-draped coffins on the evening news, and that’s seeing long lines of frantic soccer moms and blue-collar working guys waiting impatiently to get what’s left of their savings out of their now-deceased bank. After all, flag-draped coffins merely indicate that we’re losing a war, but lines at the bank prove that the system is broken. And the system is broken, that’s why people are depressed and confidence is waning.

Banks-runs are a shock to the collective psyche; they demonstrate that the stewards of the system are imcompetent and have made a mess of things. When depositors see a bank run they realize that their hard-earned money is not safe. That’s why they get edgy and cut back on their spending. When their confidence wanes, it extends to the whole system. Suddenly they start questioning everything they once took for granted. They become skeptical of the institutions which, just days earlier, seemed rock-solid. That’s why bankers surround themselves with marble columns, vaulted ceilings and lofty-sounding titles; to maintain the illusion of security while masking the truth, that fractional banking is the biggest scam in history. It relies on the “greater fools” theory which assumes that bankers can be trusted to only create credit when it is backed by sufficient capital. But it is not true. The banks have put us all at risk.

Bank runs are a direct hit on the foundation of the free market system. Unchecked, the tremors can ripple through the entire society and trigger violent political upheaval, even revolution. The public may not grasp their significance, but everyone in Washington is paying attention. They take it seriously, very seriously. It is a sign that the system is disintegrating and it may be irreversible.

SABER-RATTLING AT THE FDIC

An article in the San Francisco Business Times said that the FDIC is worried about the reporting on Internet blogs. They’d rather keep banking system’s troubles out of the news. The publicity just further undermines the publics confidence and spreads fear. Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., summed it up like this after the run on Indymac:

“The blogs were a bit out of control. We’re very mindful of the media coverage and blogs in controlling misinformation. All I can say is were going to continue to stay on top of it. The misinformation that came out over the weekend fed a lot of depositors’ fears.”

Is that a threat? The cure for a failed banking system is adequate capital and prudent oversight not threats to critics of the system. That’s balderdash. Commissar Blair apparently believes that bloggers should be treated the same way as journalists in Iraq, who, if they veer ever so slightly from the Pentagon’s “the surge is a great triumph” script, find themselves on the smoky end of an M-16 at some unmarked checkpoint outside Baquba.

If Blair wants people to take her seriously, she should stop the paramilitary-type mothballing operations to shut down banks and tell the American people the truth about what is going on. The banking system is busted; Blair knows that as well as anyone. Now its time for someone to accept the mantle of leadership, step up to the microphone and tell the public what they really need to know:

“My fellow citizens, we are embroiled in the greatest financial crisis our nation has ever faced and we will have to take emergency action to keep the entire system from melting down.”

How hard is that? But it won’t happen, because everyone in the administration has an aversion to telling the truth; it’s like the Devil and Holy Water. Besides, its easier to blame the bloggers, that harmless subspecies that spend long hours pecking away at their keyboards in their windowless 5′ by 7′ hovels.

Bloggers aren’t the problem; the problem is a system that’s collapsing from decades of abusive credit expansion creation and insufficient capital. Now everyone is going to pay for the excesses of the few.

As the bank-runs increase, the FDIC will be forced to admit the truth, that they don’t have the resources to deal with a problem this big. Currently, the FDIC has only $53 billion in reserves to guarantee $4 trillion in total bank deposits. The entire system has a mere $267 billion cash in the vaults. What a shabby way to run a banking system. Where’s the money going to come from when depositors start withdrawing their savings? How will the FDIC deal with the ongoing deleveraging in the market which is forcing more and more investors move into cash?

No one knows. All we get is more prevaricating; more smoke and mirrors, Bush assures us that “Our capital markets are functioning efficiently and effectively.” Nonsense. The markets are cratering and the banks are toast. A blind man can see it. The FDIC is listing and Blair knows it. Bush needs to cut the gibberish and tell the American people the truth so they can prepare for the hard times ahead.

P.T. PAULSON: “The the banking system is sound… This is a very manageable situation.”

Last Sunday, sought Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson tried to reassure the public that the banking system is sound, while bracing people for more trouble ahead:

“I think it’s going to be months that we’re working our way through this period — clearly months. But again, it’s a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation.”

Paulson is like a broken record. Everything is always hunky-dory. He is the consummate Wall Street investment sharpie; a bright guy who could charm a hungry dog off a meat-wagon. But when it comes to telling the truth; forget about it. You’d be better off listening to Bush, which isn’t saying much. The banking system is not sound nor is it well capitalized. It is a corpse that’s been propped up in the office hallway next to the water-cooler so that everyone who passes bye gets a stifling whiff of the decaying flesh. Still, the charade goes on. Still the lies persist.

If the rate of bank closures continues at the present pace, by the middle of 2009 their will be restrictions on withdrawals. Even now, if you go to your bank and try to withdraw $9,000 or $10,000, it sends waves of panic through the entire building like a 5-alarm fire that quickly engulfs the main exits. It’s crazy. Tellers go scampering around helter-skelter, and bank managers suddenly appear at the window grimacing in pain and wringing the sweat from their brows.

“Did you say $10,000, sir?” which is usually followed by low moaning sounds and heavy wheezing.

Journalist Bill Sardi summed it up nicely in an article last week on lewrockwell.com titled “Could Your Bail Fail?”:

“The banking industry is walking on pins and needles, hoping the bad news doesn’t become a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives bank depositors to demand withdrawal of funds en masse…….. There is a high likelihood the American banking system will fail, and you will likely be the last to know. The more panicked you get, and withdraw funds, the worse the implosion. In an effort to avert runs on the banks, will the news media delay informing the public of the current dire situation, which appears to be an inevitable system-wide banking collapse?

What to do?

So, while your bank still has money and can process your checks, it may be time to pay down debts, pay quarterly taxes and mortgage payments in advance, and think of having money outside of banks (gold, foreign currencies), etc., before your money is inaccessible or even evaporates! Don’t think all your investments outside of banks are immune from all this turmoil. For example, money market mutual funds, where Americans have invested $3 trillion, are not covered by FDIC insurance (however, money market accounts offered by banks are covered). Recent losses in some of these money market mutual funds have caused some companies to rush to plug the losses. For example, Legg Mason Inc. and SunTrust Banks Inc., recently pumped $1.4 billion each into its money market funds. Bank of America Corp. has injected $600 million.

As for your checking and savings accounts, recognize you may have five different accounts in the same bank, but the FDIC only insures individuals, not each account, up to $100,000. Putting your money in different accounts in the same bank does not necessarily provide better insurance for your deposits. (Bill Sardi, “Could Your Bail Fail?”, lewrockwell.com)

Good advice, but if the whole system blows; we’re all in trouble. It’s probably wise to have a back-up plan; like plenty of ammo and a couple hundred pounds of seed potatoes. It could get hairy.

FANNIE BAILOUT: “If they dumped these securities on the market today, their value would go straight to 0.”

Most people are unaware of the fact that the new Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout package that was passed into law on Saturday, provides Paulson with $300 billion of taxpayer dollars to shore up the faltering mortgage behemoths. In order to accomplish this, the congress increased the national debt by a whopping $800 billion sending it over the $10 trillion mark for the first time in history. Naturally the congress buried this little tidbit of information deep in the 600 pages of legislation. It’s clear that the administration is lying about Fannie and Freddie. They’ll need much more than the $25 billion infusion that Paulson is predicting. That’s why the national debt is ballooning. This is the biggest boondoggle of all time and it’s spearheaded by the “dueling windbags”, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank; both Democrats. Dodd’s lengthly oratory on the floor of the House on Friday nearly earned him a citation from the EPA for releasing massive levels of toxic gas into the jet-stream and accelerating the rate of global warming.

So it’s not just the Fed and the Treasury that are ruining the system; the politicos are busy bankrupting the country, too. In fact, the Fannie bailout could quite possibly be the last straw.

It now looks like Obama has been anointed by Wall Street (who are his biggest contributors) to revive the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC)–a morgue for dead banks—so that the investment giants can off-load hundreds of billions in bad paper in one fell swoop and purge the system. That will be the big “post election” surprise; another bone for investment giants.

The path ahead has never looked so uncertain. Still, niether Paulson nor Bernanke seem at all upset by the riskiness of their strategy or by the fact that the nation’s economic future has been reduced to a crap-shoot. The Fed has already spent more than $300 billion to prop up the teetering banking system in the last year alone, plus another $29 (that was never approved by congress) to buy the toxic bonds from Bear Stearns in the JP Morgan acquisition. Now, the Treasury has been authorized by congress to buy an “unlimited amount” of Fannie and Freddie shares at their own discretion. They are presently exchanging Fannie and Freddie securities for US Treasurys, which means that the dollar is now backed by dodgy mortgage-backed sludge for which there is no market. According to Rep Ron Paul, “This is the asset (MBS) which now backs up our currency. An asset that no one else wants. If they were to dump these securities on the market today, the value of these stocks would go straight to 0. But that is literally the asset that is behind our currency. It is a very serious situation.”

None of congress’s back-room maneuvering has anything to do with “providing a lifeline for the struggling homeowner”, as Senator Dodd claims. That’s all bunkum. The homeowner won’t get a lick of help from this bill. Its just another handout for the brokerage fraternity. The country is putting its AAA credit rating on the line for same clatter of carpetbaggers who created the mammoth equity bubble in the first place. Now they are being rewarded for their criminal conduct. Also, Bloomberg News notes that, “Sensible people are starting to question whether the U.S. can hang on to its AAA credit rating. The prospect of an extra $5 trillion or thereabouts leaking onto the U.S. government’s tab from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has spooked investors.”

America’s AAA rating will vanish in a year. It should be zero anyway. No one really believes the US will repay its debts. The US bond market is just a glitzy imitation of casino roulette only the odds are considerably worse.

Our political leaders have engineered this whole farce and are now speeding up the process by savaging the dollar. How long before foreign creditors see through this ruse and dump their dollar-backed assets on the open market? The hoax can’t go on forever.

Of course, some market analysts think the banking system will make it through this rough patch, even though it is likely to take a real pasting. Economics guru, Gary North, for example, expects a slightly different outcome which he details in his latest article on Lew Rockwell’s web site “Ben Bernanke’s Hush Money”:

“There is an enormous difference – a literally life-and-death difference – between individual bank failures and a systemic banking failure. I do NOT believe we are facing a systemic banking failure. But we are facing more individual bank failures…

Beginning in December 2007, the Federal Reserve System has sold Treasury debt whenever it has increased its purchase of questionable assets that it has bought from banks and large financial institutions. It has unloaded about 40% of its holdings of liquid Treasury debt. This has kept it from inflating the money supply at a dramatic rate. At some point, it will run out of Treasury debt to sell to the general public in order to offset the increase of its purchase of questionable assets held by the financial system. At that point, the great inflation will begin. This could be a year away. This could be a month away. All we know is this: when the Federal Reserve system runs out of Treasury debt to sell, its purchase of all assets will be inflationary. The banking system as a whole is protected. What is not protected is the purchasing power of the dollar.” (“Ben Bernanke’s Hush Money”, Gary North, lewrockwell.com)

North makes a good point; when the Fed runs out of US Treasuries, they’ll have to rev-up the printing presses and monetize the debt. That’ll be doomsday for the dollar. When foreign central banks see the greenbacks a-gushing like the blood from a harpooned whale; they’ll have to sell off their dollar stockpiles and take the loss. That will trigger a period of hyper-inflation in the US. Everyone will pay for the excesses of the few.

The whole system has been rejiggered to serve the needs of a few greedy bankers on top of the food chain. They could care less whether the whole country blows up or not as long as they get their slice of the pie. That’s all that matters. Congress is just as bad. They abdicated their most important responsibility by giving Paulson the authority to take whatever money he needs to do whatever he wants. If that’s their attitude, then what do we need congress for? Let’s just board up the House of Representatives and send them all home. It would be a lot cheaper.

The truth is, the big money guys have taken a wrecking-ball to the financial system and have now moved on to the real economy. By the time their done, we’ll all be picking through the wreckage just to feed our families.

Source / Information Clearing House

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BOOKS : Dreams and Everyday Life by Penelope Rosemont

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

No revolution ever disappears…
by Len Wallace / The Rag Blog / July 28, 2008

Penelope Rosemont, Dreams & Everyday Life: Andre Breton, Surrealism, sds & the Seven Cities of Cibola, Charles H. Kerr Publishing. Co., Chicago, 2008,ISBN 978-0-88286-234-2.

Despite an era made for modern day state and corporate Metternichs there are stirrings, movement, growing discontent. In the words of Buffalo Springfield’s song, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” It’s difficult to define it, but it’s there and it has some folks worried. Today’s sparks are being compared to the sixties New Left.

I recently saw a televised panel discussion making just such comparisons. The pundits argued that the sixties youth were a spoiled generation of a consumerist society who never experienced economic depression and political oppression. Left “leaderless” because of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. the movement spiraled off into excessive radicalism and violence. Of course, what other “insight” could one expect from the defenders of the status quo?

I was fourteen in that tumultuous year of 1968 when student youth congregated in protest at the Democratic Party National convention in Chicago and were brutally clubbed, tear gassed, jailed by the riot of the forces of law and order. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, students and workers rallied in the streets against Red Army tanks of the Soviet Union sent in to crush attempts of democratization. In Paris, students spurred on with the slogans of surrealists and situationists occupied universities and, allied with workers, erected barricades in the streets as the country advanced to a general strike that almost toppled the DeGuallist government order. Worldwide protest against the Vietnam War raised consciousness against colonial order. Black Power, the Black Panther Party of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale openly confronted institutionalized and systematic racism of the state. Women’s Liberation challenged male privilege and white men in suits.

The following years were for me a passage of discovery grappling with and absorbing wide ranging radical thought, ideas, symbols and images so different from those I obtained through osmosis from the elders of Windsor’s left-wing working class Ukrainian-Russian community.

By the time I reached university the New Left train had departed and left the station on the way to derailment. The student rebels had exited the campus and broke into factionalism. Some went off to the factories to join the proletariat and hopefully ferment revolution. Others were swallowed up by increasingly commodified counter-culture. A few would eventually make their peace with capitalism, seeking gain in publicly funded institutions, amused at their youthful endeavors and only speak about their “left-wing principles” in very hushed tones. And by the 1980s the corporate counter-revolution under the various names of Reaganism, Thatcherism, neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism with the correlative growth of state authoritarianism was in full swing.

The actors and activists of that sixties movement have attempted to define and redefine what it was all about. Was there anything here worth preserving? Has any program for dissidence, rebellion and revolution been snuffed out? Is there any hope of resurrection? Paul Buhle and Harvey Pekar’s Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History tries to tell some of the stories. One of the chapters focuses on the role of Penelope Rosemont.

Rosemont was at the center of the whirlstorm as an activist in SDS, on its national staff and editor of its theoretical journal Radical America. In Dreams & Everyday Life she recounts her journey to becoming a revolutionary from the first moments she stepped onto the campus of Chicago’s Roosevelt University in 1964.

Writing forty years later her account is a retelling of that personal journey still with the fresh eyes of youth. Artist, writer, editor, surrealist, she remains a revolutionary still captivated with the vision that freedom is worth fighting for.

The philosopher Hegel once asserted that “nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion.” Rosemont’s book is a passionate remembering. In an era when we are taught that there is no real history because nothing ever changes, that today’s society is the way it has always been and will always be, amen!, remembering becomes a useful and subversive tool.

If one is seeking an analytical and historical text about the rise and fall of the New Left, this is not the book. There are no judgments of people, parties and programs here. No second thoughts or justifications. This is a personal history of a history unfolding — at once a personal diary and the potent weapon of cultural critique against conformity and the mindless drudge of imposed wage work. Rosemont takes us along a journey and trajectory opening dreams and possibilities. In the conscious surrealist activity of aimlessly walking the streets of Chicago directed by chance she discovers the thousands of instances of daily life that exist far beyond the pale of commodity capitalism, those small rebellions, free spaces of action, art, poetry, music and culture, real human relationships that have not been devalued by the cold exchange of cash. The discoveries on the streets are also discoveries of the links to a revolutionary past that reaches back to the Haymarket strikes of 1886, the birth of the IWW, the street corner soapboxing of old socialists and anarchists. History is indeed an unfolding and the past does not simply disappear.

Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Emma Goldman, Sigmund Freud, Herbert Marcuse are part of the journey that accompany her to meetings with the old rebel Wobblies, to London’s anarchists and the profound influences of Andre Breton and the surrealists of Paris. This very personal account recaptures the youthful sense of marvel, excitement and desire that are too often pushed aside and buried under the dead weight of life’s daily drudgeries. She takes aim at today’s spirit-sucking new world corporate Disney Wal-Mart order of ipods, internet, text messaging, commercial bombardment, official government lies and doublespeak that numb us.

André Breton announced in an early surrealist manifesto that imagination balks at being stifled. As we bend to the vicissitudes of capitalist utilitarianism it will abandon us to a “lustreless life.” Fast approaching the age of 54 I’ll be damned that such a fate lays in store for me. Rosemont’s book provides a good reminder never to let go of radical and revolutionary youthful élan.

Go to Charles H. Kerr Publishing

Find No Revolution Ever Disappears by Penelope Rosemont at Amazon.com

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Report : Gonzales Aides Broke Laws in Hiring

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, 2004. Photo by Doug Mills / The New York Times.

Politics guided decisions in systematic way
By Eric Lichtblau / July 29, 2008

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility and independence, an internal report concluded Monday.

The report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general and its internal ethics office, singles out for particular criticism Monica Goodling, a young lawyer from the Republican National Committee who rose quickly through the ranks of the department to become a top aide to Mr. Gonzales.

Ms. Goodling, who testified before Congress in May 2007 at the height of the scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys, introduced politics into the hiring process in a systematic way that constituted illegal misconduct, the report found.

Last month, the inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, released a separate report that found a similar pattern of politicized hiring at the Justice Department in reviewing applications from young lawyers for the honors and intern programs. The new report released Monday goes much further, however, in documenting pervasive evidence of political hiring for some of the department’s most senior career, apolitical positions, including immigration judges and assistant United States attorneys.

The inspector general’s investigation found that Ms. Goodling and a handful of other senior aides to Mr. Gonzales developed a system of using in-person interviews and Internet searches to screen out candidates who might be too liberal and to identify candidates seen as pro-Republican and supportive of President Bush.

When interviewed by the inspector general, Mr. Gonzales said he was not aware that Ms. Goodling and other aides were using political criteria in their decisions for career positions. Mr. Gonzales resigned last summer in the face of mounting accusations from congressional Democrats that politics had corrupted the department.

His successor, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said in a statement Monday after the report’s release that he was disturbed by their findings that improper political considerations were used in hiring decisions relating to some career employees.

“I have said many times, both to members of the public and to Department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career Department employees,” he said. “And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the Department.”

He said that over the course of the last year and a half, the Justice Department has made institutional changes to remedy the problems discussed in today’s report.

“It is crucial that the American people have confidence in the propriety of what we do and how we do it,” he said, “and I will continue my efforts to make certain they can have such confidence.”

An attorney for Ms. Goodling, John Dowd, did not return a phone message Monday.

In her position as White House liaison for the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling was involved in hiring lawyers for both political appointments and non-political, career positions. Regardless of the type of position, the report said, Ms. Goodling would run through the same batch of questions, asking candidates about their political philosophies, why they wanted to serve President Bush, and who, aside from Mr. Bush, they admired as public servants. Sometimes, Ms. Goodling would ask: “Why are you a Republican?”

Such questioning was allowed for candidates to political appointments, but was clearly banned under both civil service law and the Justice Department’s own internal policies, the inspector general said. Ms. Goodling’s questioning also generated complaints from one senior official who believed it was improper, long before the issue became a public controversy following the firings of nine United States attorneys. The inspector general concluded that Ms. Goodling knew that questioning applicants to career positions about their political beliefs was improper.

In one case, for instance, Ms. Goodling slowed the hiring of a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a vacancy because she said she was concerned that he was a “liberal Democrat.” After the United States attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, complained to her supervisors, he was allowed to hire the candidate anyway.

And in another case, colleagues said that Ms. Goodling refused to extend the appointment of a female prosecutor because she believed the lawyer was involved in a lesbian relationship with her supervisor, according to the report.

And in another case cited by the inspector general, Ms. Goodling blocked the hiring of an experienced prosecutor for a senior counter-terrorism position because his wife was active in Democratic politics. The candidate was regarded as “head and shoulders above the other candidates” in the view of officials in the executive office of United States attorneys, but they were forced to take a candidate with much less experience because he was deemed acceptable to Ms. Goodling.

In forwarding a résumé in 2006 from a lawyer who was working for the Federalist Society, Ms. Goodling sent an e-mail message to the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Bradbury, saying: “Am attaching a résumé for a young, conservative female lawyer.”

Ms. Goodling interviewed the woman herself for possible positions and wrote in her notes such phrases as “pro-God in public life,” and “pro-marriage, anti-civil union.” She was eventually hired as a career prosecutor.

Ms. Goodling also conducted extensive searches on the Internet to glean the political or ideological leanings of candidates for career positions, the report found. She and other Justice Department supervisors would look for key phrases like “abortion,” “homosexual,” “guns,” or “Florida re-count” to get information on a candidate’s political leanings.

Source / New York Times

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INTERVIEW : Barbara Streisand on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


‘There is too much at stake right now to elect another George W. Bush to the White House’
By: Jeffrey Ressner / July 28, 2008

“She sometimes answers questions by e-mail,” said one of Barbra Streisand’s trusted confidants, when asked if the star would consent to an interview with Politico. Streisand, who occasionally posts political statements on her own website, rarely does print Q&As and gave her last TV interview back in 2005 with Ellen DeGeneres.

So a month ago a dozen e-mail questions were sent off, nearly all regarding the presidential race. Late last week, we received her answers on shifting her support from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama (“immediate”), racism (“naïve to think [it] won’t be a factor”), how things might play out this year (“close”), and much more.

Here are our questions and her answers in full, minus one exchange that substantially overlapped with another.

You strongly supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Was switching to Sen. Barack Obama difficult?

We had a very deep bench of Democratic Presidential candidates in the primary, and we were very lucky to finally have two capable, dynamic and intelligent candidates vying to be the nominee. Supporting Sen. Obama for President was an immediate decision for me after Sen. Clinton ended her bid for the Democratic nomination. Throughout this process, they challenged each other to be better. It was a historical race, with Hillary breaking through that glass ceiling for all women and Barack inspiring young kids that they can overcome their circumstances to reach greatness.

Will you be doing any concerts to support Obama and the Democrats before the election?

I would absolutely consider performing for Sen. Obama and for the Democratic Party.

What do you say to Hillary’s fans that might be moving to vote for McCain — a figure that’s been estimated to be as high as 15 percent of her supporters?

I would urge those voters to take a step back and realize that our country is at an extremely serious crossroad . . . . There is too much at stake right now to elect another George W. Bush to the White House. And John McCain is just that. He has stated that the issue of economics is not something he’s understood as well as he should. He does not support reproductive rights for women, increased veteran’s benefits and ending the war in Iraq. There is just no reason for Sen. Clinton’s supporters not to back Sen. Obama.

Have you spoken with Obama? If so, what did you talk about?

I have met and spoken to Sen. Obama, but I don’t discuss my personal conversations with the media.

Which Clinton policies do you think Obama should embrace, and what role would you like to see her have in his administration should he be elected?

I would like to see him embrace her universal healthcare policy. But it is ultimately up to the two of them to decide whether she will be more effective as a leader in the Senate or if she should work in the Administration. She has years of experience in public service and her work serving the needs of children and poor and working class Americans is incredibly admirable.

A lot of folks object to “Hollywood celebrities” participating in political discourse. Aside from pure disagreement over certain issues, why do you think there’s such a backlash when you or other well-known performers speak your mind?

On a very basic level, many people think celebrities have too much already so we shouldn’t be entitled to our political opinions. Also, the other side objects to the fact that we might be listened to. But, I see myself first and foremost as a citizen of this country. And I am outspoken about the issues I care about like healthcare, global warming, the war in Iraq, energy independence, education, poverty and so on.

I think we are all lucky to live in a country where people have the constitutional right to voice their opinion and speak their mind without punishment or penalty. Everyone should exercise that right, because it engages people in the political process and forces our candidates to be clear about their stances on important issues affecting all Americans.

Do you have any friends or family members who are conservative and/or Republican?

I do have friends that are Republicans and we have very spirited conversations on a whole range of issues. I am often baffled by why they are Republicans, but I enjoy the dialogue and can move beyond politics to find common ground in my personal relationships.

How do you think the election will play itself out over the next four months? Do you think the subject of race will continue to be a factor?

As we head toward November, I think the race will continue to be close — although I hope I am wrong. But this country likes tight races and I am afraid it will ultimately come down to which campaign turns out the most voters on Election Day.

I want to believe that our country can see beyond race as a factor in voting for a Presidential candidate…that instead, a candidate’s intellect, vision, political values and policies override any consideration of his skin color. But on some level, it would be naive to think that race will not be a factor. I do believe, however, that there is much less racism, sexism and homophobia among the younger generation and that we have come a very long way.

There’s been a lot of discussion about Israel during this race so far. Should this issue have a major place in this year’s election?

Issues of foreign policy have a place in every election for President. As a woman, a Jew, and a strong supporter of Israel, I am confident Sen. Obama is committed to Israel’s safety and security.

Aside from the presidential contest, are there any other races around the country that you’re following?

Yes, Yes, Yes! I am closely following the Senate races. We need to reach a 60-seat majority in the Senate. There are 35 Senate races, of which 5 are open challenges. Democratic strategists believe with varying degrees of probability that the following states are at least a possibility for turnover: Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon and Virginia.

If the Democrats win the Presidency, we will need a strong mandate in the Senate to break the gridlock of filibustering that the Republicans have used over the past four years. For that to happen, Democrats need to capitalize on picking up key seats in states where Republican support is waning. I can’t imagine a Supreme Court with another judicial appointment like Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.

Source / Politico

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Obama’s Mariachi Ad : What Were They Thinking?

Posted on July 28, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Manny Ramirez: The great guapón as Obama spokesman?

Obamarama, Latin Style
By Lisa Sanchez Gonzalez / July 26, 2008

Have you seen the Barack Obama mariachi ad?

It’s on YouTube if you want to check it out. [See it below.]

In a word? Ay fao.

Really, it begs the question: What on earth is his campaign’s brain trust thinking about Latino voters?

Now, first I have to say I admire the Senator from Illinois. I thought his speech on race in the United States was the finest political speech I’ve heard in my lifetime. A big part of what I admire about him is that sometimes his ideas are complicated, which is unusual for a político. No tidy 3-second monosyllabic sound bytes here. No “read my lips,” no “just say no,” no “I’ll be back.” Though his syntax is simple, he still expects a lot of sophistication from his audience. I even have one friend who is convinced that, if Obama wins the election, Americans will start reading more; he interprets the mass’s toleration (and admiration) of such eloquence as a sign that Obama will help the publishing industry rally.

Hmm…

There was another Democratic candidate this campaign season who also has sophistication and a whopping vocabulary, Senator Chris Dodd. But I knew he wouldn’t get far in his campaign. His syntax is too complex, which I appreciate, but most don’t. And on top of that he speaks English the way a Cuban speaks Spanish, wicked fast. I don’t mind that either. I’ve actually heard Senator Dodd speak Spanish with the same speed and fluency. Amazing. But most people have no patience with language woven into an elaborate web at warp speed, especially when the speaker is very articulate. I think it makes them somehow feel stupid.

Of course, that was probably the appeal of a certain ex-Governor of Texas. No one on the planet could feel stupid listening to him speak. Just maybe a little perplexed. What language does he speak anyway?

Which brings me to this mariachi ad. It’s stupid dope tacky, mega rasquache. Zip zero nada in the way of production values. There’s this group of musicians, donned in full mariachi regalia, walking down a street in a run down neighborhood, singing a praise song about Obama. Spliced between close-ups of the musicians in action (well, as close-up as the camera can get without clipping their enormous sombreros) are still photos of Senator Obama. The final photo has our hero wearing a ten-gallon hat!

Watching this video, I thought about Jessie Jackson’s frustration with the timbre of Senator Obama’s approach to some Black audiences, which he considered condescending. I don’t know how Senator Obama plays to Black audiences, but if his performance in those venues resembles the mariachi ad’s in low expectations about the audience’s intelligence and aesthetic tastes, then I think the Reverend Jackson may have a point.

The whole thing is fascinating, really. The core issue, for me at least, is how the Obama camp is conceptualizing discrete audiences. Ultimately, their aim is to “sell” the idea of a President Obama to voters, kind of like convincing people to place a bet on their horse in a race. So they craft different messages to inspire different groups of people to think he can and should win. In the process, it seems to me, they’ve given the Presidential hopeful a split personality. In English, talking to the “mainstream,” he is a sleek Harvard-trained thoroughbred with immense potential. In Spanish, he is a humble little brown burro from TJ.

Please don’t get me wrong. I adore burros. Eeyore is my all-time favorite character in the books I read as a child. But I would never ever bet on him to win a race against Seabiscuit.

There is the possibility though that I’m appalled by that ad because I am as much an elitist as any ivory tower academic. But I want to believe that, if the rest of the country is going to move on up the intellectual evolutionary ladder on the heels of Senator Obama’s lofty rhetoric and even loftier aspirations for the future, as I cautiously hope it does, Latinos will also be part of it.

Or perhaps this merely points to a bad translation, a failed effort to make a visual and cultural statement that would make this imaginary Latino audience feel good about Obama. Though I think the better strategy would be to find an ally from the ranks of Latin celebrities to speak to this audience, nationally, in Spanish, on his behalf. An ally like Oprah; outrageously popular among all sorts of people, at the top of her own game professionally, whose credentials as the best of the best and perhaps the best ever in a quintessentially American field is beyond a shadow of a doubt.

How to translate Obama into Spanish in precisely that way? That’s difficult given the huge diversity within this demographic. But there are heroes in this community whose popularity transcends ethnic, racial, cultural, linguistic and even national borders.

How about Manny Ramírez? The great guapón himself. Everyone loves him, no? He’s ever-so-easy on the eyes, and charismatic, and part of the magic that made it possible for the Red Sox to win the world series. He’s an all-American hero, Latin style. A trigueño, like Obama, like a lot of us, who represents, like Obama, unlike most of us, an unlikely team triumph for the least likely to succeed.

That’s it. Dump the mariachis. Go Little Papi instead! But please, please, please make the ad eloquent, sleek, and hopeful.

Source / Lisa’s Blog

VIVA OBAMA 2008

Thanks to Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte / The Rag Blog

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