Women Know When They’re Being Hit On

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Angry Clinton Women ♥ McCain?
By Frank Rich / June 15, 2008

Ten years ago John McCain had to apologize for regaling a Republican audience with a crude sexual joke about Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno. Last year he had to explain why he didn’t so much as flinch when a supporter asked him on camera, “How do we beat the bitch?” But these days Mr. McCain just loves the women.

In his televised address on Barack Obama’s victory night of June 3, he dismissed Mr. Obama in a single patronizing line but devoted four fulsome sentences to praising Mrs. Clinton for “inspiring millions of women.” The McCain Web site is showcasing a new blogger who crooned of the “genuine affection” for Mrs. Clinton “here at McCain HQ” after she lost. One of the few visible women in the McCain campaign hierarchy, Carly Fiorina, has declared herself “enormously proud” of Mrs. Clinton and is barnstorming to win over Democratic women to her guy’s cause.

How heartwarming. You’d never guess that Mr. McCain is a fierce foe of abortion rights or that he voted to terminate the federal family-planning program that provides breast-cancer screenings. You’d never know that his new campaign blogger, recruited from The Weekly Standard, had shown his genuine affection for Mrs. Clinton earlier this year by portraying her as a liar and whiner and by piling on with a locker-room jeer after she’d been called a monster. “Tell us something we don’t know,” he wrote.

But while the McCain campaign apparently believes that women are easy marks for its latent feminist cross-dressing, a reality check suggests that most women can instantly identify any man who’s hitting on them for selfish ends. New polls show Mr. Obama opening up a huge lead among female voters — beating Mr. McCain by 13 percentage points in the Gallup and Rasmussen polls and by 19 points in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey.

How huge is a 13- to 19-percentage-point lead? John Kerry won women by only 3 points, Al Gore by 11.

The real question is how Mr. McCain and his press enablers could seriously assert that he will pick up disaffected female voters in the aftermath of the brutal Obama-Clinton nomination battle. Even among Democrats, Mr. Obama lost only the oldest female voters to Mrs. Clinton.

But as we know from our Groundhog Days of 2008, a fictional campaign narrative, once set in the concrete of Beltway bloviation, must be recited incessantly, especially on cable television, no matter what facts stand in the way. Only an earthquake — the Iowa results, for instance — could shatter such previously immutable story lines as the Clinton campaign’s invincibility and the innate hostility of white voters to a black candidate.

Our new bogus narrative rose from the ashes of Mrs. Clinton’s concession to Mr. Obama, amid the raucous debate over what role misogyny played in her defeat. A few female Clinton supporters — or so they identified themselves — appeared on YouTube and Fox News to say they were so infuriated by sexism that they would vote for Mr. McCain.

Now, there’s no question that men played a big role in Mrs. Clinton’s narrow loss, starting with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Mark Penn. And the evidence of misogyny in the press and elsewhere is irrefutable, even if it was not the determinative factor in the race. But the notion that all female Clinton supporters became “angry white women” once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype. That’s why some of the same talking heads and Republican operatives who gleefully insulted Mrs. Clinton are now peddling this fable on such flimsy anecdotal evidence.

The fictional scenario of mobs of crazed women defecting to Mr. McCain is just one subplot of the master narrative that has consumed our politics for months. The larger plot has it that the Democratic Party is hopelessly divided, and that only a ticket containing Mrs. Clinton in either slot could retain the loyalty of white male bowlers and other constituencies who tended to prefer her to Mr. Obama in the primaries.

This is reality turned upside down. It’s the Democrats who are largely united and the Republicans who are at one another’s throats.

Yet the myth of Democratic disarray is so pervasive that when “NBC Nightly News” and The Wall Street Journal presented their new poll results last week (Obama, 47 percent; McCain, 41 percent) they ignored their own survey’s findings to stick to the clichéd script. Both news organizations (and NBC’s sibling, MSNBC) dwelled darkly on Mr. Obama’s “problems with two key groups” (as NBC put it): white men, where he is behind 20 percentage points to Mr. McCain, and white suburban women, where he is behind 6 points.

Since that poll gives Mr. Obama not just a 19-point lead among all women but also a 7-point lead among white women, a 6-point deficit in one sliver of the female pie is hardly a heart-stopper. Nor is Mr. Obama’s showing among white men shocking news. No Democratic presidential candidate, including Bill Clinton, has won a majority of that declining demographic since 1964. Mr. Kerry lost white men by 25 points, and Mr. Gore did by 24 points (even as he won the popular vote).

“NBC Nightly News” was so focused on these supposedly devastating Obama shortfalls that there was no mention that the Democrat beat Mr. McCain (and outperformed Mr. Kerry) in every other group that had been in doubt: independents, Catholics, blue-collar workers and Hispanics. Indeed, the evidence that pro-Clinton Hispanics are flocking to Mr. McCain is as nonexistent as the evidence of a female stampede. Mr. Obama swamps Mr. McCain by 62 percent to 28 percent — a disastrous G.O.P. setback, given that President Bush took 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, according to exit polls. No wonder the McCain campaign no longer lists its candidate’s home state of Arizona as safe this fall.

There are many ways that Mr. Obama can lose this election. But his 6-percentage-point lead in the Journal-NBC poll is higher than Mr. Bush’s biggest lead (4 points) over Mr. Kerry at any point in that same poll in 2004. So far, despite all the chatter to the contrary, Mr. Obama is not only holding on to Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic constituencies but expanding others (like African-Americans). The same cannot be said of Mr. McCain and the G.O.P. base.

That story is minimized or ignored in part because an unshakable McCain fan club lingers in some press quarters and in part because it’s an embarrassing refutation of the Democrats-in-meltdown narrative that so many have invested in. Understating the splintering of the Republican base also keeps hope alive for a tight race. As the Clinton-Obama marathon proved conclusively, a photo finish is essential to the dramatic and Nielsen imperatives of 24/7 television coverage.

The conservative hostility toward McCain heralded by the early attacks of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and James Dobson is proliferating. Bay Buchanan, the party activist who endorsed Mitt Romney, wrote this month that Mr. McCain is “incapable of energizing his party, brings no new people to the polls” and “has a personality that is best kept under wraps.” When Mr. McCain ditched the preachers John Hagee and Rod Parsley after learning that their endorsements antagonized Catholics, Muslims and Jews, he ended up getting a whole new flock of evangelical Christians furious at him too.

The revolt is not limited to the usual cranky right-wing suspects. The antiwar acolytes of Ron Paul are planning a large rally for convention week in Minneapolis. The conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec has endorsed Mr. Obama, as have both the economic adviser to Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America,” Lawrence Hunter, and the neocon historian Francis Fukuyama. Rupert Murdoch is publicly flirting with the Democrat as well. Even Dick Cheney emerged from his bunker this month to gratuitously dismiss Mr. McCain’s gas-tax holiday proposal as “a false notion” before the National Press Club.

These are not anomalies. Last week The Hill reported that at least 14 Republican members of Congress have refused to endorse or publicly support Mr. McCain. Congressional Quarterly found that of the 62,800 donors who maxed out to Mr. Bush’s campaign in 2004, only about 5,000 (some 8 percent) have contributed to his putative successor.

It was just this toxic stew of inadequate fund-raising and hostility from the base — along with incompetent management — that capsized the McCain campaign last summer. Now the management, at least, is said to be new and improved, but the press is still so distracted by the “divided Democrats” it has yet to uncover how that brilliant McCain team spent weeks choreographing the candidate’s slapstick collision with a green backdrop and self-immolating speech in prime time two weeks ago.

The only figure in the McCain camp who has candidly acknowledged any glitches is his mother, the marvelous 96-year-old Roberta McCain. Back in January she said that she didn’t think her son had any support in the G.O.P. base and that those voters would only take him if “holding their nose.”

The ludicrous idea that votes from Clinton supporters would somehow make up for McCain defectors is merely the latest fairy tale brought to you by those same Washington soothsayers who said Fred Thompson was the man to beat and that young people don’t turn up to vote.

Source. / New York Times

The Rag Blog

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

It Is Time the Wishful-Thinkers Grew Up Politically

Posted on June 15, 2008 by RagBlog


In The Great Tradition: Obama Is A Hawk
By John Pilger / June 14, 2008

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger reaches back into the history of the Democratic Party and describes the tradition of war-making and expansionism that Barack Obama has now left little doubt he will honour.

In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.” What has changed? The terror of the rich is greater than ever, and the poor have passed on their delusion to those who believe that when George W Bush finally steps down next January, his numerous threats to the rest of humanity will diminish.

The foregone nomination of Barack Obama, which, according to one breathless commentator, “marks a truly exciting and historic moment in US history”, is a product of the new delusion. Actually, it just seems new. Truly exciting and historic moments have been fabricated around US presidential campaigns for as long as I can recall, generating what can only be described as bullshit on a grand scale. Race, gender, appearance, body language, rictal spouses and offspring, even bursts of tragic grandeur, are all subsumed by marketing and “image-making”, now magnified by “virtual” technology. Thanks to an undemocratic electoral college system (or, in Bush’s case, tampered voting machines) only those who both control and obey the system can win. This has been the case since the truly historic and exciting victory of Harry Truman, the liberal Democrat said to be a humble man of the people, who went on to show how tough he was by obliterating two cities with the atomic bomb.

Understanding Obama as a likely president of the United States is not possible without understanding the demands of an essentially unchanged system of power: in effect a great media game. For example, since I compared Obama with Robert Kennedy in these pages, he has made two important statements, the implications of which have not been allowed to intrude on the celebrations. The first was at the conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the Zionist lobby, which, as Ian Williams has pointed out, “will get you accused of anti-Semitism if you quote its own website about its power”. Obama had already offered his genuflection, but on 4 June went further. He promised to support an “undivided Jerusalem” as Israel’s capital. Not a single government on earth supports the Israeli annexation of all of Jerusalem, including the Bush regime, which recognises the UN resolution designating Jerusalem an international city.

His second statement, largely ignored, was made in Miami on 23 May. Speaking to the expatriate Cuban community – which over the years has faithfully produced terrorists, assassins and drug runners for US administrations – Obama promised to continue a 47-year crippling embargo on Cuba that has been declared illegal by the UN year after year.

Again, Obama went further than Bush. He said the United States had “lost Latin America”. He described the democratically elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua as a “vacuum” to be filled. He raised the nonsense of Iranian influence in Latin America, and he endorsed Colombia’s “right to strike terrorists who seek safe-havens across its borders”. Translated, this means the “right” of a regime, whose president and leading politicians are linked to death squads, to invade its neighbours on behalf of Washington. He also endorsed the so-called Merida Initiative, which Amnesty International and others have condemned as the US bringing the “Colombian solution” to Mexico. He did not stop there. “We must press further south as well,” he said. Not even Bush has said that.

It is time the wishful-thinkers grew up politically and debated the world of great power as it is, not as they hope it will be. Like all serious presidential candidates, past and present, Obama is a hawk and an expansionist. He comes from an unbroken Democratic tradition, as the war-making of presidents Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter and Clinton demonstrates. Obama’s difference may be that he feels an even greater need to show how tough he is. However much the colour of his skin draws out both racists and supporters, it is otherwise irrelevant to the great power game. The “truly exciting and historic moment in US history” will only occur when the game itself is challenged.

http://www.johnpilger.com/

Source / Information Clearing House

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

We, the People, Have Been Ambushed

Posted on June 15, 2008 by RagBlog


When Will the People Fight Back? Oil and Racism
By Reza Fiyouzat / June 15, 2008

It is customary to run into brazenly racist commentary coming out of the U.S. liberals and right-wingers alike, especially when it comes to the question of oil. Besides the occasional surreal headlines about congressional members suing OPEC, it is normal to read headlines urging OPEC member countries to increase production. It is as if we were at a restaurant, trying to get more service. ‘Hey waiter! More drinks over here!’

The more liberal ones, of course, take it to another level. In the context of ‘oil shortages’, when the right wingers assert that more internal exploration/extraction is needed, the inevitable liberal knee-jerk reaction is, ‘Of course not! Leave our wildlife alone!’

Shocking bulletin to Western ‘environmentalists’: ‘Oil Producing’ countries too have environments.

As it relates to the issue of oil, there is proliferation of a language and mentality that is racist to the core. The two variations, militarism and capitalistically defined ‘environmentalism’, are espoused by the right and the liberal wings respectively. The line of thinking starts out with something like this: Those damned Ay-rabs (say, Saudis) are holding us hostage (or, insert any other OPEC member the State Dept and media lackeys are bullying that day); and concludes with: So, we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil (with the adjective ‘foreign’ intoning a four-letter word). By all means, do!

But … Hostage to what? Hostage to our needs, hostage to our way of life. That’s about the gist of it. The attitude is as narcissistic as it is racist.

Is There a Shortage?

A component of the liberal racist argument is the quantitative comparisons of proven worldwide oil reserves. In an inverse pissing game, they paint a picture of an abundance of oil those, say, Saudis are ‘sitting on’ (260 billion barrels), compared to the measly sum available underneath the U.S. (a mere 21 billion; weep, weep!). This ’21 billion barrels’ is the figure usually given for the amount of oil available in the U.S.; Wikipedia gives this number, as do numerous mainstream and even some leftist journalists and writers. However, this is an erroneous figure.

According to a report prepared by the Dept of Interior, for the U.S. Congress, dated February 2006, the amount of actually recoverable oil available to the U.S. exploiters is more than five times the ‘official’ 21 billion barrels. “The total endowment of technically recoverable oil and gas on the [U.S. Outer Continental Shelf] is comprised of known resources—i.e., cumulative production, and estimates of remaining proved and unproved reserves and reserves appreciation—plus estimates of undiscovered resources. The estimate of the total hydrocarbon endowment … is 115.4 billion barrels of oil (Bbo) and 633.6 trillion cubic feet of gas,” (from the Executive Summary, p. vi-vii, emphasis added).

For comparison, the current proven reserves the Iraqis are ‘sitting on’ is likewise 115 Bbo.

Additionally, according to a 2004 report prepared by the Dept of Energy’s Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves, “The vast extent of U.S. oil shale resources, amounting to more than 2 trillion barrels, has been known for a century. […] The huge resource base has stimulated several prior commercial attempts to produce oil from oil shale, but these attempts have failed primarily because of the historically modest cost of petroleum with which it competed. With the expected future decline in petroleum production historic market forces are poised to change and this change will improve the economic viability of oil shale,” (emphasis added). The market forces clearly are a-changing, so shale oil is no longer such an uneconomic energy source after all.

There are therefore vast amounts of available oil that consumers in the U.S. can start tapping into, thereby cutting their urge to wage wars of possession for energy resources of others. As you see, you do have your own oil, and lots of it, too. Just dig it up!

So, why is all this oil kept underground? As relates to oil, what are the strategic interests of the U.S. ruling classes? The view from the Third World is not complicated. The good singer once sang: God blessed the child who’s got his own. Well, the U.S. ruling classes sure have got their own, but what they really want is to keep their own. And the reason for that is: If the resources of other societies in the periphery are depleted first, the center can continue to hold its central place, strategically. It is really very simple.

Other understated facts:

1) Non-OPEC countries produce 60% of the oil available on the world market. Canada, for example, is the biggest exporter of oil to the U.S. Yet, do you ever read any headlines demanding the Canadians increase their oil production, or threatening to sue Canada for withholding higher levels of oil production and driving up the prices? Not very likely!

2) The real demand for oil has not increased at the same rate (or, in proportional percentages) as the increases in oil prices. Even given the increased demand (due to ‘insatiable appetites’ of the economies of India and China), surely the global gross output of products cannot have jumped by so much as to explain the rate of the increases in oil prices. The world aggregate production is the key, not merely the Chinese and Indian GNP growth. The production sites for specific commodities may have changed locations, hence the increase in demand for oil in some locations, but the world capitalist system as a whole has not increased its production levels by an amount that can explain the rise in energy costs.

3) Most oil companies secure their inventories through long-term contracts, such as five, ten- to thirty-year contracts, and at set prices. This means that the handful of monopolies that control about 70-80% or more of the distribution networks (the key element in control of oil prices) are getting their supplies mostly at prices set ten, twenty or even thirty years ago.

From the above, you can easily guess what shall be concluded: the oil price rises are a classic, right out of the playbook, gigantic scam.

Smile for the cameras, you’ve been had!

Read all of this remarkable analysis here. / CounterPunch

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Serving Time As a Profit Center for Our Economy

Posted on June 15, 2008 by RagBlog


“I’m a Goddamned Magnet for Bad Luck”:
Old Dogs and Hard Time
By Joe Bageant / June 13, 2008

Late at night through my window by the computer I can see my neighbor Stokes bicycling at 10 pm to the local convenience store to buy groceries. Not only is that an expensive way to feed one’s self, but it is the only way for old Stokes to cop some grubs without getting thrown in jail. Seriously. As a convicted sex offender, he is not allowed to come in proximity with young women in a supermarket checkout line. Nor is he allowed to visit a park, or even his own grandchild, even though he is not a child molester by the court’s own admission. He is not allowed to drink a beer. In fact, he is not even allowed to read Playboy Magazine.

A dozen or so years ago Stokes, now 66 with a gray ponytail, an altogether gentle soul who labors under the illusion he looks like Willie Nelson, (and even has a framed photo of Willie on his wall to invite comparison). Got caught by police in a, shall we say, “a vehicular sexual incident” with a married woman. They were both drunk, big deal. That happens in beer joints. To make a long story short, by the time they got to court the lady’s testimony was that it was all against her will, which being a married woman, solved a lot of problems for her. That resulted in Stokes being convicted as a sex offender while his public defender all but slept through the trial.

To make matters worse, Stokes had an unregistered handgun stashed in his car. Stupid, I know, but rednecks are often like that, and I’d be willing to bet there are more unregistered handguns guns than registered ones around here. This may horrify urban liberals, but legal or not, it is the common practice of tens of thousands of people down here in the southern climes of our great nation. Not to mention common nationwide to many thousands more cab drivers, night clerks, hotel parking valets, bill collectors, repo men, single women and god only knows how many others. At any rate, thanks to the gun which he never touched, Stokes was prosecuted for armed abduction for sexual purposes, and did ten years.

He’s been out for years now. But he was released into an entirely different world than he left — one which seems scripted by Adam Smith and Hanging Judge Roy Bean. As a convicted felon, he has been released from prison to serve a new sentence … to serve time as a profit center for our economy. In truth, he has been one from the day he was charged.

First off, he was a profit center for the prison where he served his time. Now it is fairly common knowledge that America’s burgeoning system of privatized prisons, “super jails,” and related services has been a boon for corporations such as Corrections Corporation of America, Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections Corp.) and their investors. Prisoner leasing programs such as Florida’s which rents out prison labor for less than 50 cents an hour to private industry in the name of “job training,” make building more prisons an attractive option for state governments and investors. It also makes recidivism desirable, since it assures the prison labor pool. Somewhere between 1% and 2% of Americans are behind bars, locked up at any given time, and as many more on probation or under state monitoring, obviously capitalist style punishment is a solid financial investment.

Now I am not about to screech here that our prison system is anywhere near that created by Uncle Joe Stalin. We do not have nine million people in it and we do not get sent there for being late for work at the factory, our factories having been outsourced. However, after 1929 Stalin’s prison camps were transformed to an economic machine. And in order to fulfill the camps’ economic goals, more and more prisoners were required, just as more prisoners are required to fulfill the investor goals of Corrections Corporation of America, Geo Group. In any case, convictions are profitable and the more of them there are the more money both private interests and the state take in.

That in itself is way the hell past just being strange. But throw in the term sex offender and get on the registered sex offender list (which seems to be mostly filled with Johns who solicited prostitutes, though you’d never know it by the way they name the offense) and it all gets really weird. Chilling even. This is partly because of the taboo and stigma associated, but mostly for the bizarre monitoring rules, and the money involved in enforcement. For example Stokes, must pay a couple hundred a month for counseling, group therapy and so on, until they tell him he can stop doing so. This therapy mainly amounts to listening to the stories of more serious offenders such as child molesters even though he is not one, but being treated by law as if he were. Such is the fate of being legally shackled to any of dozens of types of “certified sex offender treatment providers,” an ever expanding industry they tell me.

He also must pay for registration as an offender, blood, saliva, fingerprints, palm prints, police registration of his internet address (within 30 minutes of obtaining it) and so on with the Department of State Police and the Sex Offenders Registry, providing a new photo, address, etc., for 10 years, effectively the rest of Stokes’ life, not to mention registering with the local cops wherever he lives. After five years he may petition the court for relief from having to re-register monthly. He cannot leave the state. He is supposed to inform employers of his status as a sex offender. So he cannot get a normal job and subsists on handyman work. In the end he generates about $400 a month for one post-incarceration entity or another, whether he has a job or not.

Stokes’s designated handlers tell him that the system would smile upon him if he would get more formal 8-5 employment, something that could be more easily tracked and taxed. Would that it were so easy for a 66-year-old man in this country. So he replies, “I’m retired dammit. I got the same right to live on my social security, if I can manage to, as anyone else.”

Yes, but it’s not much of a life for someone who once worked a skilled job setting up lights and stage gear in large arenas and performance venues. Now he lives in a basement workshop of an overcrowded apartment building/rooming house, in a space that is supposed to pass for an apartment but doesn’t even come close. For that privilege he pays $600 a month, and is allowed to work off part of it off by the landlord as a handyman.

Stokes tells me he could get out from under much of this by, and here’s the legal wording, “satisfying the court’s criteria for clear and convincing evidence that due to his physical condition the person no longer poses a menace to the health and safety of others.”

“You could cut your dick off,” I suggested.

“Sometimes I wish I had,” he sighs.

In any case, I am pretty dammed convinced parole is a racket, just like incarceration has become a racket, just as everything in this whole goddamned country is a racket in disguise, from home mortgages to health care. If it is vital to ordinary citizens, it’s a racket. But fear is the biggest racket of all. Even our rightful fear of sex offenders gets harnessed to the objectives of the corporate and political elites, woven into the weft and warp of the national delusion we call “the fabric of our society.” The freedom loving one that currently has 2.2 million of its own citizens locked up and another 2 million walking around under strict post-incarceration supervision and monitoring.

At this writing there are supposed to be 117 registered sex offenders in this burg of 24,000 from which I write, Winchester, Virginia, yet only 61 in the surrounding county which has a population of 73,000. Let me make a wild speculation here and say there may be a difference in the way justice is administered in the two localities.

As if Stokes’ needed to catch any more bad breaks, Stokes’ situation got worse. It seems he had the outrageous gall to get himself a dog. Stokes came upon a rather large black female mutt recently, who looked like she had a little retriever in her, according to Stokes, though I could never see it. She was bone skinny, partially blind and being neglected and abused by an old alcoholic woman down the street.

That dog, named Beulah, just loved Stokes. He lovingly fed her, and she stayed by his side constantly and obediently. But she kept getting skinnier and skinnier no matter how much he fed her. For a while we speculated it was worms, but I’ve seen enough dogs to know something worse was at work. Stokes spent money he didn’t have on expensive worm medicine. But he surely did not have $150 for a vet and tests and in a nation where uninsured folks are let to die slowly because they cannot pay cash, there was damned sure no more mercy for dogs.

Mercy too has been privatized and costs money. Meanwhile old Beulah is hanging out in the back yard in a friendly fashion, wreak and sick as he is, sniffing and getting petted by all who come her way. Dogs are like that. Uncomplaining and decent unto death. I’ve had several who passed that way. She was old and getting ready to die, sure as god made little green apples. Broke as Stokes is, this certainly was not going to be a veterinarian administered death, with a canine Kevorkian attending. And being a paroled felon, for damned sure Stokes was not going to produce a gun and shoot her, which is the way old dogs such as we saw animals put out of misery back in our day.

A situation like that is bound to draw the animal control officer’s attention and rightfully so given the outward appearance of the situation. So Stokes was busted. An examination showed that Beulah had diabetes. Seems they’ll get a vet to examine a dog to get a conviction but not to save a dog’s life. Whereupon Stokes was charged with animal abuse by the animal control office of our city police department. “You should never have let that dog get in this condition; you should have taken her to a veterinarian!” Now Stokes has a court appearance on the docket for animal cruelty. And of course no money for a lawyer. That’s where the compassion of a lonely old man for another sentient being will get you. Smack dab in the jaws of our justice system.

I hold middle class America responsible for this deformed thing we now call justice. And I’ve wanted to write an article about the sex abuse crime industry scam in this country, and proposed it to several magazines. Every one of them said that sex abusers are too unsympathetic as characters for them to publish. I pointed out that these are real people, not characters in a fictional work. The editors added that they were afraid the public might mistake such a story as being supportive of real sex offenders.

Governments and states exist to control people, and for no other reason. If justice is achieved somewhere in the process, it’s an added bonus. But control above all else is necessary for modern civilization to exist. Population grows by the minute, increasing social pressure on humanity.

More rules and more control are required to keep order. Order is defined as the way we think others should behave – or imagine them to misbehave. We support the state’s police machinery and massive incarceration of our fellow citizens, so long as they are being imprisoned for the right reasons. They should pay. Every action in a capitalist world must produce money. So they should pay in cash.

Last week I was in Minneapolis, and spent a couple of nights getting drunk with a friend, an apartment building owner, who in his younger years did hard time for burglary. Things were somewhat different then, he avowed. In the fifties and sixties a prisoner may or may not have worked off his “debt to society.” But in these times, he says, “The system demands that you just deliver payment in cash. It’s more efficient. But not fundamentally different. Back then, the rich still profited for our crimes more than we did. We stole $10,000 worth of stuff. Next day in the paper we found that the guy we burglarized claimed it $30,000 worth for insurance purposes. Getting robbed was a winning situation for him. He made 20-K on us.”

It’s also is a winning situation for the 20 percent of Americans in what we call the middle class – those actually living the middle class life as advertised by the commercial and financial state’s marketing department. It works well for Stokes’ psychologist, his piss tester, his lie detector service contractor, the people with the sex offender website contract, and all good citizens with investments on Wall Street. The psychologist needs money to send his kid on the private school trip to Italy this summer. The contractor providing the sex abuser services just built a summer down on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The state police officer running the sex abuser monitoring program will retire in six years – his investments need to earn another $50,000 in that time.

But hold on!

Honest to God, as I conclude writing this — and I swear on a stack of friggin Bibles — a police prowl car and two of the department’s animal control officers in a police truck just parked in front of Stokes’ place across my driveway. They get out after rifling through some papers on a clipboard and talking on cell phones.

Now they have walked over to Stokes’ back door. He comes out and they sit him down in a lawn chair while they stand over him, hands on hips, lips moving under dark sunglasses. And the neighbors are all peeking out their blinds, watching the cops accost the registered sex offender (once he was on the internet registry, word got around here fast). They are probably looking at the animal control officers’ truck and thinking: “Oh my gawd! Bestiality too?)

Anyway you look at it, this cannot be good. Not for Stokes, not for you or me or anyone else less than enamored with the idea of a police state.

And Stokes? As he told me only yesterday, “I’m a goddamned magnet for bad luck.”

No he’s not. He’s just one more anonymous human profit center to be squeezed, one more grape to be crushed in a grotesque blood and money press that has no mercy.

Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War. (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland (AK Press). A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on ColdType and Joe Bageant’s website, joebageant.com.

Source. / CounterPunch

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , | 2 Comments

William Michael Hanks : BEYOND COINTELPRO

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

J. Edgar Hoover served as founding director of the FBI from 1924 until his death in 1972. Hoover may be best remembered today for civil liberties abuses such as the COINTELPRO program. Photo from Library of Congress.

Brief Reflections:

Intelligence and Counter Intelligence
in the Electronic Age
by William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog / June 15, 2008

William Michael Hanks, a veteran of Austin SDS and of sixties iconoclastic community the Ghetto, worked as Writer-Producer for NASA, the U.S. Information Agency, and Public Broadcasting. His film “The Apollo File” won the Gold Medal at the Tenth Festival of the Americas and was cited in Norman Corwin’s “Trivializing America”. He is a descendant of the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, and of John Adams, the first President to live in the White House. He is currently working on a historical novel set during the Shelby County regulator-moderator War, and on memories of his adventures in 60’s Austin.

His observations will continue to grace The Rag Blog in the future.

Advances in government organization, funding, resources and technology since COINTELPRO have changed the landscape of information gathering and dissemination – the landscape of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence. As is asked of the I Ching, the Book of Changes, “What would the wise man do? This brief reflection on the changes which have happened over the years since the FBI’s discredited spying and misinformation campaign suggest places we may stand together in opposition to the misuse of government power in the present day.

Because of our commitment to democracy we are the beacon of hope, we have respect for law and we follow the rules. If we abuse that balance, our system will correct it. There were abuses in the ‘70s. My community was asked to spy on Americans. That resulted in very strenuous hearings that created new rules and laws about how we govern the community. There are congressional oversight committees that are very intrusively watching what I do and what my community does, and that’s the right thing.

Mr. Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, Address to George Washington University, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, Graduation, May 17, 2008

The Director of National Intelligence coordinates 17 intelligence communities within the Federal Government:

• Central Intelligence Agency
• Defense Intelligence Agency
• Department of Energy (Office of Intelligence & Counterintelligence)
• Department of Homeland Security (Office of Intelligence & Analysis)
• Department of State (Bureau of Intelligence & Research)
• Department of Treasury (Office of Intelligence & Analysis)
• Drug Enforcement Administration (Office of National Security Intelligence)
• Federal Bureau of Investigation (National Security Branch)
• National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
• National Reconnaissance Office
• National Security Agency/Central Security Service
• United States Air Force
• United States Army
• United States Coast Guard
• United States Marine Corps
• United States Navy
• National Security Agency/Central Security Service.

These are listed to emphasize the enormous power encompassed and wielded by the intelligence community. The sophistication in organization, resources, and technology developed in recent years make the methods of the FBI COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) look like schoolyard pranks.

The developments that, through abuse of power, most threaten free speech and freedom of association are (1) the Internet which has become the primary medium of expression independent of corporate media, and (2) the development of extensive database files made possible by computer technology. Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld remarked on the desirability of “harmonizing” databases. We can only speculate what he meant by that.

My own experience with the Federal Government through working as a Writer-Producer of films for NASA and the U. S. Information Agency and having some contact with the intelligence community has led me to believe that most Federal employees are pretty much like everyone else. They care for their family and friends, love this country, and try to do their duty in a way consistent with the ideals we all hold dear. Most just try to stay out of sight until retirement. Many are hard working conscientious individuals who try to make a positive contribution. Not the devil.

However, just like the rest of us, all are subject to the frailties, flaws, and dangerous pitfalls of human nature. Who has not thought ill of another because we believed that person guilty of some offence that later proved to be untrue? What about the “good” people in churches who judge and condemn others because they differ in belief? And how about corporate executives who ignore the damage to persons in order to meet material goals? None of us are immune to these faults including those who we pay to protect us by wielding the terrible and awesome power that we the people have created.


Since COINTELPRO in the 60’s the power to achieve the aims of that program have increased exponentially. One, the gathering of intelligence may be unseen … more difficult to detect. Gone are the days when informants could be tentatively identified by their behavior. No longer can we suspect the person who was at all the meetings asking personal questions and who never seemed to know what was really going on. Now personal assets are rarely squandered on the likes of us. There’s a reason for that.

New tools for intelligence gathering such as data mining and interception of telecommunications; voice; text messaging; e-mail; web sites; and yes, even web logs may be easily recorded for future analysis. The blurry pictures and scribbled notes exposed in Thorne Dreyer’s Spies of Texas have given way to more exact, extensive, and far more readable records of the exercise of our free speech and assembly rights as Americans.

New tools have become available for the other side of the COINTELPRO coin – counter intelligence. This is the distribution of misinformation to influence public opinion, to discredit individuals, and to disrupt organizations. Examples include the use of pentagon surrogates to misinform media establishments. The efforts to discredit Jean Seberg, an anti-war sympathizer, are echoed in the flurry of charges about Barack Obama’s associates and his faith. Misinformation no longer depends on gullible reporters. The very media we use to communicate our, hopefully, well-informed ideas can be used for ill. Email campaigns, web sites, text message broadcasts, and spurious blogs may all be instruments of mischief.

As King Theodin asks in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” “What can mere men do against this evil?” It is important to recognize the threats to freedom are not peculiar to the present age. The truth is that history is a record of the struggle between oppression of the individual and the human rights of mankind. Citizens of Greece and Rome wrestled with the same forces. The Magna Carta was a significant if imperfect milestone in the recognition of inalienable human rights. And the U. S. Constitution forms the basis of all powers of the government reserving all powers, not enumerated, to the people. It is the greatest advance of human rights encoded into law in the present age.

But how do we make it work? In the end it is an instrument – nothing more. We can no more expect the words to leap from the page and subdue the forces of oppression than we could expect a hammer to drive a spike on it’s own. We the people must use the instrument as it was intended – by uniting in solidarity and common cause and by taking responsibility for the actions of our elected representatives.

Organizations now exist that are working to realistically balance the powers that need to be provided to our government with those that must be retained by the people. The focus of the organizations listed below is to protect the rights of the people against corporate, institutional, and government infringement. They are all concerned with the gathering and distribution of information – Intelligence and Counter Intelligence. We would do well to become familiar with and, when possible, support these efforts. No single person can be effective alone. But by standing together we can change the world we live in.

• Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

• Electronic Frontier Foundation

• Electronic Privacy Information Center

• Center for Media and Democracy

• Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting

• Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

• Free Press

• Media Alliance

• National Security Archive

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Supremes Restore Hope : Habeas Corpus Ruling

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Boumediene v. Bush:
The Supreme Court Takes a Stand
By David Van Os / Jun 13, 2008

David Van Os is a Texas attorney and a populist democrat.

In the case of Boumediene v. Bush, issued on June 12, 2008, holding that the Guantanamo Bay detainees have a Constitutional right to file habeas corpus petitions in the courts of the United States to question the legality of their detentions, the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have done what we expect them to do in times of crisis for our Constitutional rule of law.

This decision will go down as one of those decisive moments in American history when a majority of the Justices realized they had to take stern action to preserve the Constitutional framework of the republic from an aberrant course. The decision is a dramatic repudiation of the whole purported legal edifice of the neocons. Under this ruling, neither George Bush nor any other American president may use threats to national security, either real or imagined, as an excuse to override the Constitution.

Under this ruling, neither George Bush nor any other American president may decide for himself or herself what the president’s powers are without the constraint of our Constitutional checks and balances. Under this decision, the Magna Charta is rescued from the Bushite/neocon jackboot.

This decision dispels clouds of gloom. To all of us who have experienced so many discouraging moments during the awful neocon nightmare of recent years, this action of our nation’s highest court is the kind of thing that tells us our system may still be capable of protecting us from tyranny. It is the kind of thing that says perhaps the neocon thugs will indeed all get their come-uppance before it’s all said and done. It is the kind of transcendental event that restores hope and renders great cheer for all who love the promise of democracy and freedom that our national forebears proclaimed to a waiting world on July 4, 1776.

For a moment, we can allow ourselves to feel genuinely optimistic about how it is all going to finally turn out in the matter of the people vs. the neocons and Bushites. For just a moment, though. The Constitution survived a very close call by a very close margin, a 5-4 vote of the Justices. John Bush III McCain was quick to express disagreement with the decision. Senator Barack Obama agrees with the decision. Senator Obama is already on public record opposing the neocons’ bankrupt theories of Constitutional law as expressed by the four dissenters, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito.

For the sake of my country and all it stands for, for the sake of all that its patriot sons and daughters have sacrificed down through the centuries and decades and years, for the sake of my children’s right to grow up as free citizens of a Constitutional democracy, I want Barack Obama, not Bush III McCain, filling the next vacancies on the United States Supreme Court. I am going to put every possible effort I can into making that happen by winning the electoral votes of my state of Texas. I hope you all do the same.

Source. / Burnt Orange Report

David Van Os website.

The Rag Blog

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

Snoop Dogg Salutes Johnny Cash

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Somehow, Snoop Dogg’s repertoire gets weirder (and, consequently, more awesome) with this country-inspired ode to Johnny Cash. At this rate, Snoop’s entrance into experimental territory might make him the next Bjork. With braids. And weed. And songs about ladies’ butts.

BuzzFeed

Snoop Dogg’s “My Medicine”

Source. / BuzzFeed

Thanks to Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog / Posted June 14, 2008

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

The Japanese Use Less Energy, No Doubt

Posted on June 15, 2008 by RagBlog

It is a rarity to see all the lights ablaze at Kiminobu Kimura’s home in Tokyo, where a fuel cell turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot. The Kimura family heats very few rooms, and recycles its bath water. Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

The Land of Rising Conservation
By Martin Fackler

Rag Blogger Mariann Wizard passed this piece along and we decided to post it even though it’s from January of 2007. Fact is, that makes it even more remarkable.

TOKYO — In many countries, higher oil prices have hurt pocketbooks and led to worries about economic slowdowns. But here in Japan, Kiminobu Kimura, an architect, says he has not felt the pinch. In fact, his monthly energy bill is lower than a year ago.

A reason is his new home fuel cell, a machine as large and quiet as a filing cabinet that sits in front of his house and turns hydrogen into electricity and cold water into hot — at a fraction of regular utility costs. But even with the futuristic device, which is available for now only in Japan, Mr. Kimura has not let up on the other shortcuts that leave him unscathed by last year’s oil squeeze.

Energy-efficient appliances abound in the many corners of his cramped home. There is the refrigerator that beeps when left open and the dishwasher that is compact enough to sit on the kitchen counter. In some homes, room heaters have a sensor that directs heat only toward occupants; there are “energy navigators” that track a home’s energy use.

And then Mr. Kimura, 48, says there are the little things that his family of four does to squeeze fuel bills, like reusing warm bath water to wash laundry and bicycling to buy groceries.

“It’s not just technology, it’s a whole mind-set,” said Hitoshi Ikuma, a specialist in energy issues at the Japan Research Institute. “Energy conservation is almost an obsession here among government, companies, regular citizens, everyone.”

Japan is the most energy-efficient developed country on earth, according to most specialists, who say it is much better prepared than the United States to prosper in an era of higher global energy prices. And if there is any lesson that Japan can offer to Americans, they say, it is that there is no one fix-all solution to living with oil above $50 a barrel.

Rather, as Mr. Kimura shows, it is a combination of many things, from the most advanced technologies to the simplest frugality in everyday life — and an obsession with saving energy that keeps his family huddled in a single heated room during winter.

Japan tops most global comparisons of energy efficiency in wealthy nations. Its population and economy are each about 40 percent as large as that of the United States, yet in 2004 it consumed less than a quarter as much energy as America did, according to the International Energy Agency, which is based in Paris.

Japan’s obsession with conservation stems from an acute sense of insecurity in a resource-poor nation that imports most its energy from the volatile Middle East, a fact driven home here by the 1970s shocks. The guiding hand of government has also played a role, forcing households and companies to conserve by raising the cost of gasoline and electricity far above global levels. Taxes and price controls make a gallon of gasoline in Japan currently cost about $5.20, twice America’s more market-based prices.

The government in turn has used these tax revenues to help Japan seize the lead in renewable energies like solar power, and more recently home fuel cells. One way has been a subsidy of about $51,000 for each home fuel cell. This allowed Mr. Kimura to buy his cell last year for about $9,000, far below production cost. His cell, which generates one kilowatt-hour of energy per hour, provides just under half of his household’s electricity, and has cut his electricity bill by the same amount, he said.

The device works by converting natural gas into hydrogen, which the fuel cell then uses to generate electricity. Heat released by the process is used to warm water.

The first two fuel cells were installed in the prime minister’s residence in April 2005. Since then, some 1,300 have been sold, according to the trade ministry. The ministry forecasts that as sales pick up, production cost will fall to about $5,000 by decade’s end. Experts say that Japan is far more willing to embrace new technologies than the United States, where opposition to hydrogen storage tanks in Tarrytown, N.Y., forced General Motors to scrap an experimental filling station for fuel-cell cars last year.

Higher energy prices have also created strong domestic demand in Japan for more conventional and new energy-saving products of all sorts. That has spurred the invention and development of things like low-energy washing machines and televisions and high-mileage cars and hybrid vehicles, experts say. Japanese factories also learned how to cut energy use and become among the most efficient in the world.

Companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now reaping the benefits in booming overseas sales of their highly efficient electric turbines, steel blast furnaces and other industrial machinery, particularly in the United States. The environment ministry forecasts that exports will help turn energy conservation into a $7.9 billion industry in Japan by 2020, about 10 times its size in 2000.

Read all of it here. / The New York Times / Jan. 6, 2007

Thanks to Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Making an Impact by Stopping the Train

Posted on June 15, 2008 by RagBlog


Climate Change Protesters Hijack Coal Train
by Martin Wainwright / June 12, 2008

Climate change campaigners hijacked a train carrying coal to Britain’s biggest power station this morning, swarming on to the roof of its 20 huge trucks.

The 40 protesters stopped the regular delivery service to Drax in Yorkshire disguised as railway workers in yellow warning jackets and waving red flags, having read up on standard railway safety rules.

See the video.
Hear the audio.

The ambush took place at an iron girder bridge over the river Aire between the villages of Gowdall and Hirst Courteney at 8am GMT. One group then used the bridge girders and climbing equipment to scale the 12ft high trucks.They hoisted a huge banner reading “Leave it in the ground” – referring to the coal destined for the power station’s furnaces. The protesters carried food, water and even a portable lavatory with the intention of being able to remain on board for several days.

As the driver of the EWS train radioed for advice, a second group of protesters used shovels which they had also brought with them to start emptying the gravel-like power station coal on to the track. Police arrived half-an-hour later and sealed off the area, after calls from motorists stuck at a level crossing which was closed as a safety precaution.

A lone police constable was initially instructed to stay at the level crossing 500 yards from the train, but he was soon reinforced by other North Yorkshire officers. They sealed off the bridge from both sides, while the driver stayed in his cab.

“We are ready to stay here for as long as Gordon Brown and the government keep burning polluting fuel in these power stations,” said one of the protesters before clipping climbing ropes to the train’s wheels and the bridge girders. Although flimsy, the web would risk damage to the train or bridge if any attempt was made to drive off.

The raiders initially lay concealed on the edge of track as two earlier trains took supplies into Drax, whose eight vast cooling towers are guarded by coils of barbed wire. The power station was the scene of a spectacular but unsuccessful siege two years ago by Climate Camp, the group behind today’s action.

The rooftop group included one woman protester dressed as a canary – the traditional warning of dangerous pollution down a coal mine. She said: “The government and the country needs a warning,” before fixing on an orange cardboard beak to go with her bright yellow feather coat.

Commuters in the early morning rush hour included an engineer at Drax who was cycling to work and had to stop at the Hirst Courteney level crossing. He said: “There are interesting arguments to be had, but at the end of the day, these people use electricity like the rest of us, don’t they.”

The Drax line is likely to be closed until the protesters leave, and safety checks including the removal of the shovelled coal are expected to disrupt supplies to the power station for several days afterwards.

Drax responded to the hijacking by defending their record, setting out details of emission cuts of an estimated 3m tonnes a year at a cost of £180m. The plant, which supplies 7% of Britain’s electricity, is improving burning efficiency, says the company, and increasingly using renewable biofuels.

Melanie Wedgbury, head of external affairs at the plant, said: “We are the largest power station but also the cleanest and most efficient. It’s only because we are the biggest that we produce the most CO2. For every unit of electricity we generate, we generate less CO2 than any other of the coal-fired stations.”

The campaigners promised more protests later this summer, when another power station will face an attempt to close it down, similar to the Drax Climate Camp in 2006. One of the coal-shovellers on top of a freight wagon said: “Last year was Heathrow, this year it’ll be a coal-fired power station because those are the two big things, aviation fuel and burning coal.”

© 2008 The Guardian

Source / The Guardian UK / Common Dreams

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , | Leave a comment

With Which They Will Be Forever Tainted

Posted on June 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Do these men look like they’re worth $2 million a month?

Rewards For The Bush Faithful
by Christopher Brauchli / June 14, 2008

I am against government by crony.

Harold Ickes, resigning as Secretary of the Interior, February 1946

It was a longer hill to climb than the one climbed by John Ashcroft, but Tommy Thompson has reason to be happy with the rewards he received upon arriving at the summit. So do the 9/11 responders who were feeling forgotten.

John Ashcroft’s entrée into the world of private enterprise was announced in January 2008. It was then we learned of the procedure that the Justice Department adopted when dealing with corporations that in a perfect world might be charged with criminal conduct but in a Bush world are permitted to avoid prosecution. Culpable corporations enter into deferred prosecution agreements pursuant to which they are not criminally indicted but instead agree to have their conduct monitored for a set period by the Justice Department or someone hired by the Justice Department. Corporations like this arrangement since they avoid trial on criminal charges and the Justice Department likes it because it is full of Bush appointees who like corporations and know that they are run by good people, many of whom paid good money to help Mr. Bush get elected and don’t deserve to have their reputations sullied by criminal charges. The price corporations pay for not being prosecuted (which is not the same thing as a bribe) is that the corporation that is not being prosecuted pays a fine and has to also pay the cost of the monitor. Here is one example of how that worked in practice.

In 2005 the Justice Department began investigating five companies that make almost all the replacement hips and knees used in the United States. They were accused of paying kickbacks to surgeons. Criminal complaints were filed charging the companies with conspiracy to violate the anti-kickback laws One of the companies investigated was Zimmer Holdings, a medical supply company in Indiana. After completing its investigation the government agreed to defer prosecution of Zimmer in exchange for its agreeing to pay a fine of $169.5 million and agreeing to pay John Ashcroft for serving as monitor. Mr. Ashcroft was to be paid between $28 and $52 million for the 18 months of monitoring.

The latest crony to benefit from his friendship with George Bush is Tommy Thompson.

Tommy Thompson was the Health and Human Services Secretary from 2001 to 2005. During that time he was criticized for his failure to aggressively track and treat health problems arising out of the events of 9/11. Like Mr. Thompson, George Bush was criticized for refusing to adequately fund 9/11 notwithstanding repeated promises to the public and the victims of 9/11 that that was one of his first priorities. His 9/11-budget request for FY 2009 cut funding for those programs by 77 percent from what was appropriated in the FY 2008 budget. The 2008 budget appropriated $108 million and the 2009 budget $24 million. Commenting on the $24 million a White House spokesman said the reduced amount reflected Mr. Bush’s “continued commitment to World Trade Center Workers.” Hillary Clinton, by contrast, said: “With the announcement of his final budget, the President had one last opportunity to demonstrate that he would not forget the sacrifices made by those who responded to 9/11 and are now sick from the toxins released during those attacks. I am disappointed and saddened to see that the President chose not to acknowledge the clear health care needs of these heroes. ” Estimates of the cost of monitoring and treating Ground Zero workers are about $218 million a year.

The disappointment Senator Clinton expressed has been ameliorated by the great news that notwithstanding the cuts in the budget, the administration has generously handed an $11 million contract to Logistics Health, Inc. of which Mr. Thompson is president. He didn’t have it as easy as Mr. Ashcroft since three other companies were considered and there was always the outside chance cronyism would not prevail. It did.

Under the contract the company will be paid $11 million. It will give annual physicals to World Trade Center responders, diagnose and treat their illnesses and provide a pharmacy benefit to the injured workers. It’s not the many hundreds of millions that a concerned president might have provided. But it’s a little something and, best of all, it helps out yet another one of George Bush’s old friends. As his administration winds down it is safe to say that lots of his friends will find lucrative employment in the private sector. That’s the least he can do for those who have willingly worked for a man described by some as the worst president in history. There have to be rewards other than the guilt by association with which they will be forever tainted.

Christopher Brauchli brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see my web page humanraceandothersports.com.

Source / Common Dreams

The Rag Blog

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

Resolved that George W. Bush be impeached…

Posted on June 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. Photo/Charlie Neibergall / AP.

Dennis Kucinich’s 35 Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush

On June 9, 2008, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, (D.,Ohio) made a remarkable presentation before the Congress of the United States calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush. Below are Kucinich’s 35 articles of impeachment, followed by the full text of Article I. In the ensuing days, The Rag Blog will present further texts from Kucinich’s impeachment resolution.

These articles of impeachment were introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Congressman Dennis Kucinich on June 9, 2008, as H. Res. 1258

Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio
In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008
A Resolution

Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and misdemeanors.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power.

Article I
Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case for War Against Iraq.

Article II
Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression.

Article III
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War.

Article IV
Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.

Article V
Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.

Article VI
Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.

Article VII
Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII
Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN Charter.

Article IX
Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor.

Article X
Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political Purposes.

Article XI
Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq.

Article XII
Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation’s Natural Resources.

Article XIIII
Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries.

Article XIV
Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Article XV
Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in Iraq.

Article XVI
Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection With Iraq and US Contractors.

Article XVII
Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives.

Article XVIII
Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter of Official Policy.

Article XIX
Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture.

Article XX
Imprisoning Children.

Article XXI
Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of Overthrowing the Iranian Government.

Article XXII
Creating Secret Laws.

Article XXIII
Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Article XXIV
Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant, in Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment.

Article XXV
Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of American Citizens.

Article XXVI
Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements.

Article XXVII
Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing Former Employees Not to Comply.

Article XXVIII
Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the Administration of Justice.

Article XXIX
Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Article XXX
Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to Destroy Medicare.

Article XXXI
Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency.

Article XXXII
Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change.

Article XXXIII
Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article XXXIV
Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001.

Article XXXV
Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders.

Bush Article of Impeachment I

George W. Bush and Karl Rove.

ARTICLE I
CREATING A SECRET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE FOR WAR AGAINST IRAQ

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed”, has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President, illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda program to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has engaged in a years-long secret domestic propaganda campaign to promote the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This secret program was defended by the White House Press Secretary following its exposure. This program follows the pattern of crimes detailed in Article I, II, IV and VIII.. The mission of this program placed it within the field controlled by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a White House task-force formed in August 2002 to market an invasion of Iraq to the American people. The group included Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley, Nicholas E. Calio, and James R. Wilkinson.

The WHIG produced white papers detailing so-called intelligence of Iraq’s nuclear threat that later proved to be false. This supposed intelligence included the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger as well as the claim that the high strength aluminum tubes Iraq purchased from China were to be used for the sole purpose of building centrifuges to enrich uranium. Unlike the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, the WHIG’s white papers provided “gripping images and stories” and used “literary license” with intelligence. The WHIG’s white papers were written at the same time and by the same people as speeches and talking points prepared for President Bush and some of his top officials.

The WHIG also organized a media blitz in which, between September 7-8, 2002, President Bush and his top advisers appeared on numerous interviews and all provided similarly gripping images about the possibility of nuclear attack by Iraq. The timing was no coincidence, as Andrew Card explained in an interview regarding waiting until after Labor Day to try to sell the American people on military action against Iraq, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

September 7-8, 2002:

NBC’s “Meet the Press: Vice President Cheney accused Saddam of moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.

CNN: Then-National Security Adviser Rice said, regarding the likelihood of Iraq obtaining a nuclear weapon, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

CBS: President Bush declared that Saddam was “six months away from developing a weapon,” and cited satellite photos of construction in Iraq where weapons inspectors once visited as evidence that Saddam was trying to develop nuclear arms.

The Pentagon military analyst propaganda program was revealed in an April 20, 2002, New York Times article. The program illegally involved “covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recruited 75 retired military officers and gave them talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and MSNBC, and according to the New York Times report, which has not been disputed by the Pentagon or the White House, “Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.”

According to the Pentagon’s own internal documents, the military analysts were considered “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who would deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.” In fact, they did deliver the themes and the messages but did not reveal that the Pentagon had provided them with their talking points. Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and Fox News military analyst described this as follows: “It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.'”

Congress has restricted annual appropriations bills since 1951 with this language: “No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.”

A March 21, 2005, report by the Congressional Research Service states that “publicity or propaganda” is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2) purely partisan activity, or (3) “covert propaganda.”

These concerns about “covert propaganda” were also the basis for the GAO’s standard for determining when government-funded video news releases are illegal:

“The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual — the essential fact of attribution is missing.”

The White House’s own Office of Legal Council stated in a memorandum written in 2005 following the controversy over the Armstrong Williams scandal:

“Over the years, GAO has interpreted ‘publicity or propaganda’ restrictions to preclude use of appropriated funds for, among other things, so-called ‘covert propaganda.’ … Consistent with that view, the OLC determined in 1988 that a statutory prohibition on using appropriated funds for ‘publicity or propaganda’ precluded undisclosed agency funding of advocacy by third-party groups. We stated that ‘covert attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties’ would run afoul of restrictions on using appropriated funds for ‘propaganda.'”

Asked about the Pentagon’s propaganda program at White House press briefing in April 2008, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino defended it, not by arguing that it was legal but by suggesting that it “should” be: “Look, I didn’t know look, I think that you guys should take a step back and look at this look, DOD has made a decision, they’ve decided to stop this program. But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the administration is get information out to a variety of people so that everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I don’t think that that should be against the law. And I think that it’s absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and are going to be providing their opinions on it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t talk to people.”

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Documentation:

David Barstow, Behind TV Analysts: Pentagon’s Hidden Hand, New York Times, April 20, 2008.

Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law, the Center for Media and Democracy.

Joshua Bolton, Memorandum For Heads of Departments and Agencies: Use of Government funds for Video News Releases, March 11, 2005.

Steven G. Bradbury, Memorandum For The General Counsels of the Executive Branch, March 1, 2005.

Carl Levin’s Letter to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, April 22, 2008.

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro’s letter to major news outlets asking them to disclose Ethics Standards for Military Analysts, April 24, 2008.

NBC Meet the Press, Interview with Dick Cheney, September 8, 2002.

New York Times, Parts of the Message Machine: Excerpts from Documents, April 19, 2008.

Rep. Paul Hodes, Congressman Hodes Calls for Hearing on Bush Administration Manipulation of Iraq War News Analysts, April 24, 2008.

David Barstow, Two Inquiries Set on Pentagon Publicity Effort, May 24, 2008.

Source. / AfterDowningStreet.org. With links to all the articles in full..

Go here for a PDF chart listing and summarizing the articles, by Elizabeth de la Vega.

Read all of the articles in a PDF.

Also see The Crimes of George W. Bush. / Next Left Notes

And, to pressure Congress to take up the Articles of Impeachment, go to 35 Reasons To Call (202) 225-5126 / CommonDreams

Thanks to CodePink/Austin / The Rag Blog

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

Some Ideological Housecleaning of His Own to Do

Posted on June 14, 2008 by RagBlog


Obama’s Chicago Boys
by Naomi Klein / June 12, 2008

Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, “Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market.”

Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart’s most prominent defenders, anointing the company a “progressive success story.” On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, “I won’t shop there.” For Furman, however, it’s Wal-Mart’s critics who are the real threat: the “efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits” are creating “collateral damage” that is “way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing ‘Kum-Ba-Ya’ in the interests of progressive harmony.”

Obama’s love of markets and his desire for “change” are not inherently incompatible. “The market has gotten out of balance,” he says, and it most certainly has. Many trace this profound imbalance back to the ideas of Milton Friedman, who launched a counterrevolution against the New Deal from his perch at the University of Chicago economics department. And here there are more problems, because Obama–who taught law at the University of Chicago for a decade–is thoroughly embedded in the mind-set known as the Chicago School.

He chose as his chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago economist on the left side of a spectrum that stops at the center-right. Goolsbee, unlike his more Friedmanite colleagues, sees inequality as a problem. His primary solution, however, is more education–a line you can also get from Alan Greenspan. In their hometown, Goolsbee has been eager to link Obama to the Chicago School. “If you look at his platform, at his advisers, at his temperament, the guy’s got a healthy respect for markets,” he told Chicago magazine. “It’s in the ethos of the [University of Chicago], which is something different from saying he is laissez-faire.”

Another of Obama’s Chicago fans is 39-year-old billionaire Kenneth Griffin, CEO of the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group. Griffin, who gave the maximum allowable donation to Obama, is something of a poster boy for an unbalanced economy. He got married at Versailles and had the after-party at Marie Antoinette’s vacation spot (Cirque du Soleil performed)–and he is one of the staunchest opponents of closing the hedge-fund tax loophole. While Obama talks about toughening trade rules with China, Griffin has been bending the few barriers that do exist. Despite sanctions prohibiting the sale of police equipment to China, Citadel has been pouring money into controversial China-based security companies that are putting the local population under unprecedented levels of surveillance.

Now is the time to worry about Obama’s Chicago Boys and their commitment to fending off serious attempts at regulation. It was in the two and a half months between winning the 1992 election and being sworn into office that Bill Clinton did a U-turn on the economy. He had campaigned promising to revise NAFTA, adding labor and environmental provisions and to invest in social programs. But two weeks before his inauguration, he met with then-Goldman Sachs chief Robert Rubin, who convinced him of the urgency of embracing austerity and more liberalization. Rubin told PBS, “President Clinton actually made the decision before he stepped into the Oval Office, during the transition, on what was a dramatic change in economic policy.”

Furman, a leading disciple of Rubin, was chosen to head the Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, the think tank Rubin helped found to argue for reforming, rather than abandoning, the free-trade agenda. Add to that Goolsbee’s February meeting with Canadian consulate officials, who left with the distinct impression that they had been instructed not to take Obama’s anti-NAFTA campaigning seriously, and there is every reason for concern about a replay of 1993.

The irony is that there is absolutely no reason for this backsliding. The movement launched by Friedman, introduced by Ronald Reagan and entrenched under Clinton, faces a profound legitimacy crisis around the world. Nowhere is this more evident than at the University of Chicago itself. In mid-May, when university president Robert Zimmer announced the creation of a $200 million Milton Friedman Institute, an economic research center devoted to continuing and augmenting the Friedman legacy, a controversy erupted. More than 100 faculty members signed a letter of protest. “The effects of the neoliberal global order that has been put in place in recent decades, strongly buttressed by the Chicago School of Economics, have by no means been unequivocally positive,” the letter states. “Many would argue that they have been negative for much of the world’s population.”

When Friedman died in 2006, such bold critiques of his legacy were largely absent. The adoring memorials spoke only of grand achievement, with one of the more prominent appreciations appearing in the New York Times–written by Austan Goolsbee. Yet now, just two years later, Friedman’s name is seen as a liability even at his own alma mater. So why has Obama chosen this moment, when all illusions of a consensus have dropped away, to go Chicago retro?

The news is not all bad. Furman claims he will be drawing on the expertise of two Keynesian economists: Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute and James Galbraith, son of Friedman’s nemesis John Kenneth Galbraith. Our “current economic crisis,” Obama recently said, did not come from nowhere. It is “the logical conclusion of a tired and misguided philosophy that has dominated Washington for far too long.”

True enough. But before Obama can purge Washington of the scourge of Friedmanism, he has some ideological housecleaning of his own to do.

Source / The Nation

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged , , | Leave a comment