Vets Getting Shaft from Veterans Affairs

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

GI with PTSD. Photo by Nine Berman/Redux

Post-traumatic Stress under-diagnosed, documents reveal
By Maya Schenwar and Matt Renner / May 21, 2008

Recently released documents from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are further proof the VA has failed to adequately address the crisis in veterans’ mental health care, according to a former VA employee turned veterans’ advocate.

In March, Norma J. Perez, the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) coordinator at a VA facility in Temple, Texas, wrote an email (PDF) to her subordinates stating: “Given that we have more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of adjustment disorder, R/O [ruling out] PTSD … we really don’t … have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD.”

In response, VA secretary James Peake said that the VA is “committed to absolute accuracy in a diagnosis and unwavering in providing any and all earned benefits. PTSD and the mental health arena is no exception.” Peake placed the blame on Perez, saying that the memo revealed the mistake of a single employee, not VA policy.

However, the VA has been under fire from Congress and veterans’ rights groups for more than a year for allegedly covering up and underreporting the mental health care crisis among veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. A lawsuit that is currently awaiting a final ruling seeks to force the VA to move quickly in addressing the mental and physical health needs of veterans.

Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense (VCS), the veterans’ rights organization which brought the lawsuit, said the Perez email exemplifies a larger trend. “The bottom line is that VA under the Bush administration has dropped the ball. The email sent by Perez proves our lawsuit was correct – VA is short staffed for mental health care and VA intentionally misdiagnoses veterans in order to save money. VA was illegally and unconscionably turning away suicidal veterans in need of emergency mental health care. We are asking the court to order VA to stop this outrageous practice,” Sullivan said.

New VA documents obtained exclusively by VCS using the Freedom of Information Act indicate the VA is only paying disability benefits for PTSD to 33,247 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, although 67,717 have been diagnosed with PTSD. According to Sullivan, VCS is calling for an investigation into this apparent discrepancy.

A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in September 2007 stated that the VA’s “lack of early identification techniques” led to “inconsistent diagnosis and treatment” of PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury. According to the GAO, early diagnosis is essential in preventing PTSD’s consequences – which could be deadly.

Firsthand Accounts of PTSD Crisis

Kristofer Goldsmith, a former Army sergeant who was forced to stay in the military beyond his contract because of the “stop loss” order given by the president, testified about his experience with mental health care at Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We were told that if we were to seek mental health, we would be locked away and our careers would not advance. If I admitted that I had severe chronic depression, if I thought I had PTSD … my career could have been ruined,” Goldsmith said.

He received an adjustment disorder diagnosis after experiencing a panic attack in March 2007. Because he was not granted the PTSD label – despite displaying many symptoms of the disorder – he was ordered to deploy to Iraq for a second tour.

What Goldsmith described as a “sharp downward spiral” came to a head the day before he was scheduled to ship back to Iraq with his unit.

“The day before I was supposed to deploy, Memorial Day, I went out onto a field in Fort Stewart and tried to take my own life … I took pills and drank vodka until I couldn’t drink anymore. The next thing I knew I was handcuffed to a gurney in the hospital. The cops had found me and literally dragged my body into an ambulance,” Goldsmith said in his testimony.

Finally, in October 2007, months after his suicide attempt, Goldsmith received a PTSD diagnosis from the VA.

According to Goldsmith, his experience was far from unique.

“While undergoing psychiatric treatment, I heard of many people being diagnosed with personality disorder and adjustment disorder instead of PTSD,” Goldsmith told Truthout. “I believe this is a way for the Army to hide the levels of PTSD among its ranks, through the usage of misdiagnoses.”

Suspicions about the VA’s motives for misdiagnoses flared up over a year ago, when a series of news reports revealed many of the 22,500 soldiers diagnosed with “personality disorder” since 2001 were actually suffering from PTSD. Taken in conjunction with a rising suicide rate among veterans, the reports sparked a flurry of investigations and Congressional hearings.

“My concern is that this country is regressing and again ignoring legitimate claims of PTSD in favor of the time and money saving diagnosis of personality disorder,” said Congressman Bob Filner, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, at a July 27 hearing. “I want to know how the VA deals with veterans who have been labeled with a personality disorder. Does the burden fall on the veteran to prove that he or she doesn’t have a personality disorder? Will such a diagnosis prevent the veteran from receiving health care once initial VA coverage ends? What extra barriers does this veteran face?”

Misdiagnosed vets are not only often deprived of proper treatment, Filner noted; they also miss out on condition-related benefits and subsidies. PTSD has attracted a lot of legislative attention over the past year, and new funding may soon become available for veterans with that diagnosis. Moreover, special programs geared toward PTSD are already in motion at many VA facilities, and vets without an official diagnosis are not eligible for those treatments.

For Iraq veteran Joe Wheeler, a delayed VA diagnosis meant two years of paying for his psychotropic medications out of pocket, at a time when his tenuous mental health made it tough to hold a job. Wheeler’s doctors immediately diagnosed him with PTSD, but without an official VA acknowledgment of his condition, he was left without benefits.

“I was never told why my diagnosis was delayed,” Wheeler said. “It’s a faceless bureaucracy; most people within the VA don’t understand the system themselves. And it’s designed to be adversarial. They make it hard so that it costs them less money.”

Wheeler no longer seeks treatment at the VA, preferring the financial strain of private treatment to the psychological strain he endured under VA care. With a different doctor – and along with the switch, a new medication – every few months, his experience at the VA was a saga of fits and starts; not exactly a recipe for recovery.

Recent studies back up Goldsmith’s and Wheeler’s charges of VA negligence in PTSD diagnosis. According to Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka, the committee has uncovered “widespread inadequate evaluation of veterans claiming service-connection for PTSD due to combat exposure and military sexual trauma.”

“Veterans often report to the Committee that during exams they were not asked about their military experience and received superficial evaluations,” Akaka wrote in a letter to VA Secretary Peak last week. “Veterans’ advocates report the reluctance of some VA examiners to provide a diagnosis of PTSD, even for veterans previously diagnosed with PTSD.”

Akaka added that while the VA’s own “Best Practice Manual for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Compensation and Pension Examinations” recommends a three-hour evaluation session for every potential PTSD sufferer, average exams clock in at 30 to 35 minutes.

Following the release of the Temple VA memo last week, Akaka requested the Office of the Inspector General begin an investigation into the PTSD diagnosis methods at Temple.

“This incident is both disturbing and disappointing, and provides further evidence that VA’s mental health program requires significant attention,” Akaka said in a statement on Friday. “Psychological war wounds are difficult to diagnose and harder still to heal, but they are no less real than any other service-connected injury. I continue to be concerned that VA’s mental health system is unprepared for the rising demands placed on the system.”

Source. / truthout

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Wanted : Vegan Republican Moles…

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

In preparation for the Republican National Convention, the FBI is soliciting informants to keep tabs on local protest groups
By Matt Snyders / May 21, 2008

They were looking for an informant to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors. Paul Carroll was riding his bike when his cell phone vibrated.

Once he arrived home from the Hennepin County Courthouse, where he’d been served a gross misdemeanor for spray-painting the interior of a campus elevator, the lanky, wavy-haired University of Minnesota sophomore flipped open his phone and checked his messages. He was greeted by a voice he recognized immediately. It belonged to U of M Police Sgt. Erik Swanson, the officer to whom Carroll had turned himself in just three weeks earlier. When Carroll called back, Swanson asked him to meet at a coffee shop later that day, going on to assure a wary Carroll that he wasn’t in trouble.

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.

“I’ll pass,” said Carroll.

For 10 more minutes, Mazzola and Swanson tried to sway him. He remained obstinate.

“Well, if you change your mind, call this number,” said Mazzola, handing him her card with her cell phone number scribbled on the back.

(Mazzola, Swanson, and the FBI did not return numerous calls seeking comment.)

Carroll’s story echoes a familiar theme. During the lead-up the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division infiltrated and spied on protest groups across the country, as well as in Canada and Europe. The program’s scope extended to explicitly nonviolent groups, including street theater troupes and church organizations.

There were also two reported instances of police officers, dressed as protestors, purposefully instigating clashes. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, the NYPD orchestrated a fake arrest to incite protestors. When a blond man was “arrested,” nearby protestors began shouting, “Let him go!” The helmeted police proceeded to push back against the crowd with batons and arrested at least two. In a similar instance, during an April 29, 2005, Critical Mass bike ride in New York, video footage captured a “protestor”—in reality an undercover cop—telling his captor, “I’m on the job,” and being subsequently let go.

Minneapolis’s own recent Critical Mass skirmish was allegedly initiated by two unidentified stragglers in hoods—one wearing a handkerchief over his or her face—who “began to make aggressive moves” near the back of the pack. During that humid August 31 evening, officers went on to arrest 19 cyclists while unleashing pepper spray into the faces of bystanders. The hooded duo was never apprehended.

In the scuffle’s wake, conspiracy theories swirled that the unprecedented surveillance—squad cars from multiple agencies and a helicopter hovering overhead—was due to the presence of RNC protesters in the ride. The MPD publicly denied this. But during the trial of cyclist Gus Ganley, MPD Sgt. David Stichter testified that a task force had been created to monitor the August 31 ride and that the department knew that members of an RNC protest group would be along for the ride.

“This is all part of a larger government effort to quell political dissent,” says Jordan Kushner, an attorney who represented Ganley and other Critical Mass arrestees. “The Joint Terrorism Task Force is another example of using the buzzword ‘terrorism’ as a basis to clamp down on people’s freedoms and push forward a more authoritarian government.”

Source. / City Pages / Minneapolis/St. Paul

Attorney General’s Guidelines on General Crimes, Racketeering Enterprise and Terrorism Enterprise Investigations.

Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

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The Financial Three-Card Monte Falls Down

Posted on May 22, 2008 by RagBlog


“Far From Normal”
By Jim Kunstler

Those were the words that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke used to describe the financial markets (and by extension the economy) these heady spring days when everybody else with a rostrum, it seems, has pronounced the so-called liquidity crisis contained. There’s a great wish for American finance to return to business-as-usual — raking in fantastic fees for innovating new modes of tradable paper, and engineering mergers and buy-outs that generate huge fees plus $100 million kiss-offs for corporate CEOs in the noble struggle to dismantle America’s productive capacity — but apparently events are still out of hand.

The Federal Reserve itself has been instrumental in promoting abnormality by doing everything possible to prevent the work-out of bad debts in the system. Since money is loaned into existence, and loans are debts, the work-out of bad debt suggests the discovery that a lot of money has disappeared — which is exactly the case. The Fed has postponed the work-out by sucking up truckloads of impaired, untradable securities in exchange for loans to giant banks who don’t have enough cash on hand to pay their janitors.

Personally, my theory has been that the specter of peak oil pretty clearly implies the inability of industrial economies to continue producing real wealth in the customary way. In the face of this, either consciously or at a more mystical level, the worker bees in banking recognize that, in order to maintain their villas in the Hamptons, money has to be loaned into existence some other way (than in the service of industrial productivity).

We’ve tried just about everything else. There was the so-called service economy, an attempt to replace manufacturing with hamburger sales. Then there was the information economy, in which work would be replaced with knowing about stuff. Then there was the tech thing, which was about bringing internet companies that existed only on the back of cocktail napkins to the initial public offering stage of capitalization — which allowed a few-hundred-or-so thirty-year-old smoothies to retire to vineyards in the Napa Valley, while hundreds of thousands of retirees lost half the value of their investment portfolios. Then there was the housing boom, which was all about the creation of more suburban sprawl under the theory that houses (or “homes” in the jargon of the realtors) represent an obvious sort of wealth, and therefore that using houses as collateral would allow humongous sums of money to be loaned into existence — along with massive fees for structuring the loans into bundles of bond-like thingies.

This has all failed now because the racket went too far. Every possible candidate for a snookering got snookered. Too much collateral for which there were no takers went into the ground. The insane run-up in house values made a downward price movement inevitable, and as soon as the turnaround happened, it fell into the remorseless algebra of a deflationary death spiral. More importantly, however, this society ran out of tricks for loaning money into existence and instead began to experience the pain of money thought-to-be-in-existence being defaulted into a vapor — and worse, these defaults led to logarithmic chains of money destruction in its places of origin, the investment banks that had created the racket.

The important part of this is that the money is gone. What makes matters truly eerie is that the “bubble” in suburban houses has occurred at exactly the moment in history when the chief enabling resource for suburban life — oil — has entered its scarcity stage.

The logical conclusion of all this is not what the American public wants to hear: we have become a much poorer society and are now faced with the unavoidable task of making major changes in how we live. All the three-card-monte moves at the highest level of finance lately amount to an effort to avoid the unavoidable, acknowledging our losses. Certainly the political fallout of all this will be awesome. But it’s not about politics, really. It’s about the entire society’s inability to form a workable new consensus of reality.

It’s hard to predict how long these institutions at the heart of our economic system can linger in the “far from normal” limbo of pretending that money has not been defaulted out of existence. Since the same process is underway in Great Britain and Spain, places beyond the control of Bernanke, Secretary Paulson, and the Boyz on Wall Street, and since actions and reactions there will affect the destiny of money here, its hard to escape the conclusion that we’re at most months away from the brutal recognition that Wall Street has managed to bankrupt itself (and, by extension, the United States). This is dark heart of the matter of which no one dares speak.

Meantime, on the ground, every mook and minion in the land sees the gas pumps levitate beyond the $4 hash mark, and notes with bugged-out eyes the double-digit price stickers on common supermarket items, and feels the rush of blood from the extremities when some check-out clerk at the WalMart declares that a certain proffered credit card is maxed out, and some strangers in overalls — the neighbors say — managed to hot-wire the GMC Sierra in the driveway, and took it away….

The candidates for president will have a lot to talk about. I wonder if they’ll dare to.

Source / Clusterfuck Nation

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Wedding Vows

Posted on May 22, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Thanks to Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog

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Resisting Monsanto’s Seed Imperialism

Posted on May 22, 2008 by RagBlog


Focus On The Corporation: The Genetically Modified Food Gamble
by Robert Weissman

There have been few experiments as reckless, over-hyped, and with as little potential upside as the rapid rollout of genetically modified crops. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA), a pro-biotech nonprofit, released a report [in February 2008] highlighting the proliferation of genetically modified crops. According to ISAAA, biotech crop area grew 12 percent, or 12.3 million hectares, to reach 114.3 million hectares in 2007, the second highest area increase in the past five years.

For the biotech backers, this is cause to celebrate. They claim that biotech helps farmers. They say it promises to reduce hunger and poverty in developing countries. “If we are to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of cutting hunger and poverty in half by 2015,” says Clive James, ISAAA founder and the author of the just-released report, “biotech crops must play an even bigger role in the next decade.”

In fact, existing genetically modified crops are hurting small farmers and failing to deliver increased food supply–and posing enormous, largely unknown risks to people and the planet.

For all of the industry hype around biotech products, virtually all planted genetically modified seed is for only four products–soy, corn, cotton, and canola–with just two engineered traits. Most of the crops are engineered to be resistant to glyphosate, an herbicide sold by Monsanto under the brand-name RoundUp (these biotech seeds are known as RoundUp-Ready). Others are engineered to include a naturally occurring pesticide, Bt.

Most of the genetically modified crops in developing countries are soy, says Bill Freese, science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety and co-author of “Who Benefits from GM Crops?,” a report issued at the same time as ISAAA’s release. These crops are exported to rich countries, primarily as animal feed. They do absolutely nothing to supply food to the hungry.

As used in developing countries, biotech crops are shifting power away from small, poor farmers desperately trying to eke out livelihoods and maintain their land tenure. Glyphosate-resistance is supposed to enable earlier and less frequent spraying, but, concludes “Who Benefits from GM Crops?,” these biotech seeds “allow farmers to spray a particular herbicide more frequently and indiscriminately without fear of damaging the crop.” This requires expenditures beyond the means of small farmers–but reduces labor costs, a major benefit for industrial farms.

ISAAA contends that Bt planting in India and China has substantially reduced insecticide spraying, which it advances as the primary benefit of biotech crops.

Bt crops may offer initial reductions in required spraying, says Freese, but Bt is only effective against some pests, meaning farmers may have to use pesticides to prevent other insects from eating their crops. Focusing on a district in Punjab, “Who Benefits from GM Crops?” shows how secondary pest problems have offset whatever gains Bt crops might offer. Freese also notes that evidence is starting to come in to support longstanding fears that genetically engineering the Bt trait into crops would give rise to Bt-resistant pests.

The biotech seeds are themselves expensive, and must be purchased anew every year. Industry leader Monsanto is infamous for suing farmers for the age-old practice of saving seeds, and holds that it is illegal for farmers even to save genetically engineered seeds that have blown onto their fields from neighboring farms. “That has nothing to do with feeding the hungry,” or helping the poorest of the poor, says Hope Shand, research director for the ETC Group, an ardent biotech opponent. It is, to say the least, not exactly a farmer-friendly approach.

Although the industry and its allies tout the benefits that biotech may yield someday for the poor, “We have yet to see genetically modified food that is cheaper, more nutritious, or tastes better,” says Shand. “Biotech seeds have not been shown to be scientifically or socially useful,” although they have been useful for the profit-driven interests of Monsanto, she says. Freese notes that the industry has been promising gains for the poor for a decade and a half–but hasn’t delivered. Products in the pipeline won’t change that, he says, with the industry focused on introducing new herbicide resistant seeds.

The evidence on yields for the biotech crops is ambiguous, but there is good reason to believe yields have actually dropped. ISAAA’s Clive James says that Bt crops in India and China have improved yields somewhat. “Who Benefits from GM Crops” carefully reviews this claim, and offers a convincing rebuttal. The report emphasizes the multiple factors that affect yield, and notes that Bt and RoundUp-Ready seeds alike are not engineered to improve yield per se, just to protect against certain predators or for resistance to herbicide spraying.

Beyond the social disaster of contributing to land concentration and displacement of small farmers, a range of serious ecological and sustainability problems with biotech crops is already emerging–even though the biotech crop experiment remains quite new. Strong evidence of pesticide resistance is rapidly accumulating, meaning that farmers will have to spray more chemicals to less effect. Pesticide use is rising rapidly in biotech-heavy countries. In the heaviest user of biotech seeds–the United States, which has half of all biotech seed planting– glyphosate-resistant weeds are proliferating. Glyphosate use in the United States rose by 15 times from 1994 to 2005, according to “Who Benefits from GM Crops,” and use of other and more toxic herbicides is rapidly rising. The US experience likely foreshadows what is to come for other countries more recently adopting biotech crops.

Seed diversity is dropping, as Monsanto and its allies aim to eliminate seed saving, and development of new crop varieties is slowing. Contamination from neighboring fields using genetically modified seeds can destroy farmers’ ability to maintain biotech-free crops. Reliance on a narrow range of seed varieties makes the food system very vulnerable, especially because of the visible problems with the biotech seeds now in such widespread use.

For all the uncertainties about the long-term effects of biotech crops and food, one might imagine that there were huge, identifiable short-term benefits. But one would be wrong. Instead, a narrowly based industry has managed to impose a risky technology with short-term negatives and potentially dramatic downsides.

But while it is true, as ISAAA happily reports, that biotech planting is rapidly growing, it remains heavily concentrated in just a few countries: the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, and China. Europe and most of the developing world continue to resist Monsanto’s seed imperialism. The industry and its allies decry this stand as a senseless response to fear-mongering. It actually reflects a rational assessment of demonstrated costs and benefits — and an appreciation for real but incalculable risks of toying with the very nature of nature.

Source / Eat the State

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Surgeons (or Is It Politicians?)

Posted on May 22, 2008 by RagBlog


An Oregon surgeon says: ‘I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’ An Ohio surgeon, responds: ‘Sure, but you should try electricians! Everything inside them is color coded.’

The third surgeon from Massachusetts. says: ‘No, I really think librarians are the best; everything inside them is in alphabetical order.’

An Alabama surgeon, chimes in: ‘You know, I like construction workers … those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.’

But the Washington DC surgeon shut them all up when he observed: ‘You’re all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the head and the ass are interchangeable.’

Thanks to Glenda Warn / The Rag Blog

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Austin’s Legendary Oat Willie’s, In Art

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Oat Willie’s, Austin’s venerable sixties headshop, a living monument to counterculture history in one of the true birthplaces of the sixties counterculture, recently observed its fortieth birthday with a gala celebration at Austin’s Moose Lodge. Hosted by founder and proprietor Doug Brown, a wondrous gathering of vintage luminaries and geezerly ne’er-do-wells marked the occasion by downing a surfeit of Doug’s spirits and juicy barbeque while hobnobbing and telling lies.

The following comes to us from Leea Mechling of the South Austin Museum of Popular Culture where a show of original artwork produced for Oat Willie’s will open May 24, 2008.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog

Before there was an Armadillo World
Headquarters, before there was a Vulcan Gas Company, there was a place in the 1600 block of Lavaca in Austin called the Underground City Hall.

It was the prototype of what was to become Oat Willie’s. It was purchased forty years ago by Doug Brown (and George Majewski) from Joe Brown for $75. At that time the inventory consisted mostly of a pile of Los Angeles Free Presses and a pile of free clothes.

Doug and George ran the place, but had to keep other jobs at first since the place didn’t make enough to support them while they built their stock into what became the first head shop in Austin history. Their first order of products was from Bells of Sarna in New York and consisted of Indian brass merchandise, incense, and candles. They put it in the window and the candles melted, covering the incense boxes with wax.

And so began a four decade run here in the Capital City that still continues to this day. The name of the establishment was changed early on to Oat Willie’s, who was a minor character in the pantheon of comic art personas created by local artist Gilbert Shelton before he moved out to San Francisco and hooked up with Jack Jackson and Rip Off Press to create the world of underground comix.

They sold Johnny Winter his first pair of sandals, the black straps dark against his pale while calves. They started taking homemade items on consignment like beaded necklaces and chicken bone necklaces. They sold pipes, papers, scales and other types of paraphernalia. They expanded into selling toys, books and underground comix, clothing, used records, beaded curtains, batik bedspreads. They would hold book signings by local artists and give away free local art posters to shows at the Armadillo World Headquarters and Soap Creek Saloon calendars of band appearances. They had the very first black light poster room in Austin, perhaps in all of Texas. A cat named Lisa who liked to sleep on the cash register provided security.

However, they were always more than just a store. They were a cultural hub and a nexus for a community of people that was rising up in Austin and around the nation. The core was those people called hippies, but it was more than that. A cultural and spiritual community that was producing art and music had never been seen before, a community of people finding their way towards a way of life and an attitude toward life that had not been invented yet. It was a time of communes and experimentations to try to attain a way of life to replace the old and staid way of life that their parents had been trapped by. These were the people that Oat Willie’s served and helped towards a fresh new view of life and our relationships.

The South Austin Museum of Popular Culture is proud to help celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Oat Willie’s, an Austin institution, by displaying art produced on behalf of the company by a plethora of local artists.

The South Austin Museum of Popular Culture, at 1516 South Lamar, invites you to the opening of their exhibit of the art produced by, and devoted to, the famous Oat Willie’s. This exhibition is comprised mostly of original pen and ink drawings fashioned over the last forty years by local Austin artists and will begin at 7:09 pm on the evening of May 24th, 2008.

40 Years of Oat Willie artwork
May 24 thru July 5, 2008
Reception Saturday, May 24, 7:09 pm
artwork, film footage
vintage vinyl will be played

South Austin Museum of Popular Culture.

Looking back on Oat Willie’s, by John Kelso / Austin American-Statesman.

The Rag Blog

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Tom Hayden on Obama, Hillary and War With Iran

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

It’s About War and Peace, Not Simply Race and Gender
By Tom Hayden / May 20, 2008

The decisive issue in this election is about war and peace, between Barack Obama’s proposed diplomacy with Iran to end the war in Iraq, and the hawkish stance of his two rivals, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, who favor an escalating the tensions with Tehran even to the point of war.

The mainstream media, and some of the blogosphere, continue to miss the danger of an escalated war as they blog and dabble over race, gender and numbers of pledged delegates.
The anti-war movement and most Democrats have been fairly silent about these differences as well.

The facts, however, are simple, as follows:

The Bush administration, many neo-conservatives, and Israeli officials have busily built the case that Iran is an “existential threat,” and that the coming months represent a “now or never” moment to attack Iran before a new president takes office.

With sufficient US political and military backing, the Israelis seem set to go.

Clinton has voted to identify Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist organization.” The White House and Gen. Petraeus have asserted that Iran is directly and indirectly responsible for killing American soldiers in Iraq. Those two elements are a sufficient cause to go to war.

Clinton has said the US could “obliterate” Iran if they attacked Israel, and threatens “massive retaliation” to protect Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against Iran. There has been virtually no media discussion of this NATO-like proposal for the Middle East.

Both Clinton and McCain deride Obama’s offer to open unconditional talks with Iran. Obama himself appears to be adjusting, or backing away, from his original straightforward proposal. He needs to stiffen, realize this is what the election is about, and fight back, with allies at his side.

Instead of stumbling over the nature of direct diplomacy [with whom, where, with what preparations], Obama should rely on his strongest arguments.

The bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Study Group proposed US-Iran negotiations as essential to finding a political solution in Iraq. Former CIA chief John Deutch says the same thing. Iraq needs a non-aggression agreement and trade with the US; in return, the US needs Iran’s acceptance of an orderly withdrawal from Iraq without the country falling into greater civil war. The issue of nuclear power needs to be negotiated on a separate track, according to Baker-Hamilton.

Barack should not seem to over-promise the results of diplomacy, which could provoke more attacks on his resolve and experience. But he can easily remain assertive against the failed and obviously hypocritical notion of never talking to our adversaries.

It’s more simple than he says.

John Kennedy talked with Nikita Khrushchev, and nuclear war was averted.

Richard Nixon talked with Mao tse-Tung, and commercial competition replaced a military confrontation.

Look where non-talking gets us. We refuse to talk to Cuba, leaving us diplomatically and commercially isolated from the continent and world.

As for rank hypocrisy, the Bush administration is already talking with North Korea and, in a limited way, with Iran.

The possibility of avoiding a broader war may rest on whether Obama wins this debate.

Source. / The Huffington Post

Thanks to Carl Davidson / The Rag Blog

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Michael Rossman, Berkeley Activist from 60s, Dies at 68

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Ron Anastasi and Michael Rossman carrying the Free Speech banner from Sproul Hall to demonstration outside the Regent’s Meeting. November 20, 1964. Photo by Ronald L. Enfield.

Free Speech Movement leader dies at 68
By Kristin Bender / May 17, 2008

BERKELEY — Michael Rossman, one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, died last week after a short battle with leukemia. He was 68.

Rossman died at his Berkeley home surrounded by family and friends, said his wife, Karen McLellan.

Rossman was at Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus on the afternoon of Oct. 2, 1964, when 3,000 students sat around a police patrol car and kept it from taking student protester Jack Weinberg to jail.

One by one, people took off their shoes and hopped onto the top of the police car to speak, and in essence the Free Speech Movement was born.

During a time when student protests were unprecedented, Rossman and students Mario Savio, Hal Draper, Brian Turner, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Bettina Aptheker, Jackie Goldberg and others insisted that the UC administration lift a ban on campus political activities, academic freedom and free speech. It was a student protest that lasted about three months during the 1964-65 school years.

But for Rossman it was something that consumed most of his life. He wrote essays, news stories and books about it. He was the president and chief executive officer of the Free Speech Movement Archives and took very seriously the way information was presented on the group’s Web site, said Lee Felsenstein, secretary-treasurer of the archive.

“Michael, I would have to call him a renaissance man because he embodied both art and science and activism. He was a poet and had that sort of sensibility, which could be hard to bear when you were reading one of his long writings. Nevertheless, he had a way with metaphors that was a very important part of him,” Felsenstein said.

Rossman came to Berkeley in 1958 and earned a degree from Cal in mathematics in 1963.

He spent more than 30 years teaching science in elementary schools, including Ecole Bilingue, a French-American School In Berkeley. He was also the founder of Camp Chrysalis, a science and environmental education camp in its 26th year.

“He had the most marvelous and open curiosity and he could answer a kid’s question in just about every direction because he knew so much,” McLellan said. “He wanted children to just explore and he wrote these amazing essays on science education.”

Rossman was many things — a man of integrity, great humor and brilliance, his widow said. But most of all, he was a teacher. “Just about whereever he was he was a teacher. He just couldn’t help himself,” she said.

He was also a collector.

For years, he had been compiling an archive of political posters from the 1960s and ’70s in his Berkeley home. “It’s far larger than the one at the Smithsonian,” said McLellan, adding that there could be close to 100,000 posters.

He also spent more than 40 years writing about the Free Speech Movement, including the books “The Wedding Within the War,” a chronicle of the movement in the ’60s, and “New Age Blues,” partly about cults.

He also headed the 20th, 30th and 40th anniversary commemorations of the Free Speech Movement.

“He was a very important part of the movement and especially the kind of experimentation that went on afterward. The Free Speech Movement was basically a political struggle, and yet in my view was really a revolution because it overturned a social order and it opened large possibilities for students,” Felsenstein said.

Rossman was diagnosed with leukemia in June 2007 and quickly went to writing a blog to keep his friends and family informed. Even in writing about his illness, his words were frank and honest. “Misfortune has found me, abruptly,” he wrote July 22, 2007.

In the next eight months — through hospital stays, thousands of dollars spent on medical costs, a bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy, a relapse and a lot of blood transfusions, his blog shows how he struggled, but also used humor to cope with a disease that would ultimately kill him.

Later blog entries became weighty with medical terms and descriptions of his worsening condition. The last entry was written last month.

This week, McLellan, with whom he has two grown sons, posted a blog entry alerting friends that Rossman had died at 2:30 p.m. May 12. “No flowers, thank you,” she wrote. “My yard is in splendid bloom.”

Source. / Oakland Tribune / Contra Costa Times
Also see Michael Rossman, Who Fought for Campus Rights, Dies at 68 / New York Times

Thanks to Tom Burgess / MDS / The Rag Blog

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Rev. Carroll Pickett Discusses Texas’ Death Row, Opposition to the Death Penalty

Posted on May 21, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Rev. Carroll Pickett at “The Walls,” Huntsville, Texas

Chaplain Discusses ‘Death House’ Ministry

Reverend Carroll Pickett was the death-house chaplain at the Walls prison unit in Huntsville, Texas for 13 years. During his tenure, he ministered to 95 inmates executed by lethal injection.

Because he was employed by the state, Pickett was unable to voice his disapproval of capitol punishment while performing his ministry. But he has become an opponent of the death penalty since leaving the prison system.

Pickett co-authored a memoir with Carlton Stowers, titled Within These Walls. He is now the subject of a new documentary, At the Death House Door.

Rev. Pickett discussed his years spent ministering to Texas death house inmates Monday, May 19, 2008, on National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air.” Listen Now to the revealing program [39 min 19 sec].

Source, with links to related NPR material / Fresh Air, NPR / May 19, 2008

Also see Death row chaplain has change of heart / Austin Chronicle.
And David Lee Powell and the Question of “Closure” by Mariann Wizard / The Rag Blog

Thanks to William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog

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Cartoon Tuesday – Charlie Loving

Posted on May 21, 2008 by RagBlog

Cartoon by Charlie Loving / The Rag Blog

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Everybody Looks Like a Danger to Stability

Posted on May 21, 2008 by RagBlog

ARE YOU ON THE LIST? The federal government has been developing a highly classified plan that will override the Constitution in the event of a major terrorist attack. Illustration by Brett Ryder.

The Last Roundup: Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
By Christopher Ketcham

In the spring of 2007, a retired senior official in the U.S. Justice Department sat before Congress and told a story so odd and ominous, it could have sprung from the pages of a pulp political thriller. It was about a principled bureaucrat struggling to protect his country from a highly classified program with sinister implications. Rife with high drama, it included a car chase through the streets of Washington, D.C., and a tense meeting at the White House, where the president’s henchmen made the bureaucrat so nervous that he demanded a neutral witness be present.

The bureaucrat was James Comey, John Ashcroft’s second-in-command at the Department of Justice during Bush’s first term. Comey had been a loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years. Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush administration’s various domestic surveillance and spying programs. Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn’t allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say, however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes. Shortly before the certification deadline, Ashcroft fell ill with pancreatitis, making Comey acting attorney general, and Comey opted not to certify the program. When he communicated his decision to the White House, Bush’s men told him, in so many words, to take his concerns and stuff them in an undisclosed location.

The Continuity of Governance program encompasses national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces. In short, it’s a road map for martial lawComey refused to knuckle under, and the dispute came to a head on the cold night of March 10, 2004, hours before the program’s authorization was to expire. At the time, Ashcroft was in intensive care at George Washington Hospital following emergency surgery. Apparently, at the behest of President Bush himself, the White House tried, in Comey’s words, “to take advantage of a very sick man,” sending Chief of Staff Andrew Card and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on a mission to Ashcroft’s sickroom to persuade the heavily doped attorney general to override his deputy. Apprised of their mission, Comey, accompanied by a full security detail, jumped in his car, raced through the streets of the capital, lights blazing, and “literally ran” up the hospital stairs to beat them there.

James Comey, credible witness

Minutes later, Gonzales and Card arrived with an envelope filled with the requisite forms. Ashcroft, even in his stupor, did not fall for their heavy-handed ploy. “I’m not the attorney general,” Ashcroft told Bush’s men. “There”—he pointed weakly to Comey—”is the attorney general.” Gonzales and Card were furious, departing without even acknowledging Comey’s presence in the room. The following day, the classified domestic spying program that Comey found so disturbing went forward at the demand of the White House — “without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality,” he testified.

What was the mysterious program that had so alarmed Comey? Political blogs buzzed for weeks with speculation. Though Comey testified that the program was subsequently readjusted to satisfy his concerns, one can’t help wondering whether the unspecified alteration would satisfy constitutional experts, or even average citizens. Faced with push-back from his bosses at the White House, did he simply relent and accept a token concession? Two months after Comey’s testimony to Congress, the New York Times reported a tantalizing detail: The program that prompted him “to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases.” The larger mystery remained intact, however. “It is not known precisely why searching the databases, or data mining, raised such a furious legal debate,” the article conceded.

Another clue came from a rather unexpected source: President Bush himself. Addressing the nation from the Oval Office in 2005 after the first disclosures of the NSA’s warrantless electronic surveillance became public, Bush insisted that the spying program in question was reviewed “every 45 days” as part of planning to assess threats to “the continuity of our government.”

Few Americans—professional journalists included—know anything about so-called Continuity of Government (COG) programs, so it’s no surprise that the president’s passing reference received almost no attention. COG resides in a nebulous legal realm, encompassing national emergency plans that would trigger the takeover of the country by extra-constitutional forces—and effectively suspend the republic. In short, it’s a road map for martial law.

While Comey, who left the Department of Justice in 2005, has steadfastly refused to comment further on the matter, a number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations claim the program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency. Sources familiar with the program say that the government’s data gathering has been overzealous and probably conducted in violation of federal law and the protection from unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Read all of it here. / Radar Online

Thanks to Charlie Loving / The Rag Blog

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