Now, It Seems, We’re a Nation of Cowards

Posted on April 16, 2008 by RagBlog

See below. Courtesy of the National Archives.

George W. Bush’s Version of the Nuremberg Trials
By David von Ebers

In many respects, the war crimes trials held at Nuremberg, Germany, in the aftermath of World War II represented the pinnacle of American-style constitutional democracy. Despite the fact that Nazi Germany posed the greatest existential threat America and its European allies ever faced, the Allied Powers, at our urging, insisted that the men who carried out the Holocaust and committed the perhaps gravest war crimes in history be given fair trials.

A while back, NPR’s “Morning Edition” program featured a guest commentary by a Jewish World War II Army veteran named Clancy Sigal, who, as it happened, had been stationed in the vicinity of Nuremberg in October 1946 when the war crimes trials began. Sigal, understandably, would have treated the Nazis in the dock rather differently: He actually went to tribunal with the intention of killing Herman Goering with his service revolver. But seeing Goering’s trial in process proved to be a transformative moment for Clancy Sigal:

Today, in the midst of a national debate on how to treat captured terror suspects, my mind flashes back to Room 600 at Furtherstrasse 22 [in Nuremberg]. We gave Goering and the other war criminals a chance not only to defend themselves but in some cases, preach hate and violence.

In a ruined Germany, where so many corpses still lay buried in the rubble, and life seemed so very fragile, we found it in ourselves to give the worst of men due process.

And that, it seems to me, is what once defined the essential difference between the United States and its enemies.

These days, the Bush administration and its conservative lackeys like to compare themselves to the World War II generation. They like that comparison so much, they often fantasize that they’re fighting World War III against the “Islamo-fascists” (as right-wing nub David Horowitz says). But if these supposed champions of freedom are the 21st Century version of FDR and Gen. Eisenhower and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, the U.S. representative at Nuremberg, you have to ask whether they, too, are capable of rising above hate and emotion and fear in order to do what our Constitutional principles command. Do Bush and his fellow travelers on the right so respect the rule of law and the fundamental principles on which our Constitution is founded that they can do the right thing? Can they give “the worst of men due process”?

No, this is how Bush and a compliant Congress have risen to the challenge of the post-9/11 world:

When military officials announced war crimes charges against six detainees for the Sept. 11 attacks two months ago, the move was part of an effort to accelerate the Bush administration’s sluggish military commission system, which has yet to hold a single trial.

But the Sept. 11 case immediately hit a snag. Military defense lawyers were in short supply, and even now, two months later, not one of the six detainees has met his military lawyer.

(Link courtesy of ThinkProgress.org.)

In other words, although the U.S. and its allies were able to put together the necessary procedures and commence the Nuremberg trials within about eighteen months after the fall of Berlin — and to do so with the basic requirements of due process in tact — the Bush cabal are still unable to go forward with their sham “military commission” proceedings against suspected al Qaeda agents more than six and a half years after the September 11 attacks.

But the problems with the Bush Administration’s “military commissions” run far deeper than a mere shortage of defense lawyers to represent accused terrorists. Because unlike the level of due process afforded the Nuremberg defendants, the procedures laid out in George Bush’s Military Commissions Act are so inadequate, so lacking in basic due process and fundamental fairness, that these cases are likely to be tied up in legal challenges for months, if not years, to come.

Specifically, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (.pdf file) permits the executive branch to seize an individual in the so-called “war on terror,” label him or her an unlawful enemy combatant and detain that individual indefinitely without allowing him or her access to the courts to challenge that designation. Instead (and supposedly in lieu of habeas corpus review in federal court), each detainee’s case is supposed to be reviewed by “combatant status review tribunals” — CSRT’s — which are to determine whether the individual is being detained properly and whether the detainee is guilty of war crimes (such as, in the case of the 9/11 attacks, illegally targeting innocent civilians).

The problem, however, is in the method of review. The CSRT’s are allowed to rely on evidence obtained through torture. They are allowed to review evidence in secret, evidence to which the detainee and his or her lawyer are not privy; and they are allowed to rely on hearsay evidence — that is, statements made out of court, by individuals who are not placed on the witness stand nor sworn in under oath, and who therefore cannot be cross-examined by the detainee or the detainee’s lawyers. Note that this evidence can be used not only to determine whether an individual is properly being detained, but whether that individual is guilty of a crime — some of which carry the death penalty. That’s right. The U.S. government — more specifically, the executive branch and the military — have the power to convict and execute an individual based on hearsay evidence, secret evidence, and/or evidence obtained through torture.

The obvious question, of course, is why? Why do we need to do this in secret? Why do we need to obtain convictions based on inherently unreliable evidence? Don’t we have real evidence against these people? Evidence that would stand up in court, subject to cross examination and so forth? What are the Bush cabal afraid of?

The truth?

Naturally, because these procedures are so defective they are being challenged in court, and that process (which may or may not cure the many defects in the Military Commissions Act) continues to draw out and prevent these cases from going to trial. In the end, however, if Bush and his lackeys manage to beat back the legal challenges to their bogus military commissions; if, in the end, the military commissions go forward, conduct sham trials and render guilty verdicts based on such defective processes and inherently faulty evidence, what will be the result? A mockery of everything our Constitutional system stands for.

How bitterly ironic. One of the great strengths of the Nuremberg process was that it not only provided assurances of fairness, it provided an open forum to air the Nazis’ hateful ideology and the sheer brutality of the Nazi regime. Men and women testified under oath, in graphic detail, about the Nazis’ crimes. Documents, photographs, even films, were introduced into evidence to show, in painful detail, how the inhumanity of the Nazi political philosophy translated into mass graves, piles of ash and bone, death, disease, starvation, forced labor, unbearably cruel medical experimentation … You know what I’m talking about.

And you know it largely because of the evidence adduced at the Nuremberg trials.

If the detainees at Guantánamo Bay truly are guilty of participating in war crimes, we now have a similar opportunity to expose the brutal, inhumane, and ultimately racist philosophy that motivates religious extremists like Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. We have the ability to put bin Laden’s morally bankrupt politics on trial before the whole world. We have the ability to remind the world, in painful detail, of the horrible and unnecessary suffering bin Laden and al Qaeda inflicted on 9/11; to remind people that innocent victims were incinerated, crushed to death, or leapt to their deaths to avoid a worse fate, all because of the hate he espouses.

But to do that effectively requires a fair, open legal process that we and the rest of the world can have confidence in. This is the only way to make the case in such a way that outside observers will really care about the outcome. Otherwise, we will have jettisoned the only opportunity we may ever have to put Osama bin Laden’s brand of religious extremism on trial.

Anthony D. Romero of the ACLU/National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer’s John Adams Project puts it this way:

The military commissions set up by the Bush administration for the men imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay – including those it suspects were involved in the September 11 attacks – are not true American justice. These trials should represent who we are, what America stands for, and our commitment to due process. They are not about how civilized the accused are, but how civilized we are. America does not stand for trials that rely on torture to gain confessions, or on secret evidence that a defendant cannot rebut, or on hearsay evidence.

I wish I could say that — that America does not stand for the kind of sham justice the Bush administration and Congress sanctioned in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 — but the sad truth is, nobody seems to care. We used to be proud of who we are. Now, it seems, we’re a nation of cowards.

Of course, the courts have an opportunity to prove me wrong, if they have the courage to strike down the Military Commissions Act, to guarantee habeas corpus rights to the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and to force our government to play by the rules on which it’s based. What are the odds of that happening?

Source / Journal of the Plague Year / The Rag Blog

Key to the photograph: Some of the defendants at Nuremberg. Front row, from left to right: Hermann Göring, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel. Back row from left to right: Karl Döwnitz, Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl.

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Peak Oil Solutions: Biofuels and GMO’s

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Scott Pittman, center, with Harvey Stone and Alice Embree at the Rag Reunion, Sept. 3, 2005. Photo by Carlos Lowry / The Rag Blog.

One Step Solution to a Two Step Ditch
By Scott Pittman / April 15, 2008 / The Rag Blog

With the spectre of peak oil, global climate change, loss of biodiversity, political tensions surrounding access to natural resources, world-wide epidemics and poverty we as a nation and a species are forced to look at our behavior and how it impacts our world.

Many of the solutions being presented by our political leaders are compounding the problems. The whole rush to the biofuels “solution” proposed by both Al Gore and George H. Bush are good political examples of how to turn a problem into a disaster. The proposed use of our most fertile cropland to provide fuel from the most energy-intensive plants (corn, sorghum, soy, and sugar cane) creates a food deficit, further destroys remnant native ecosystems, while at the same time accelerates the use of fossil fuels to create biofuels. Fertilizer, after all, is a byproduct of gas and oil. Behind these quasi-solutions to peak oil lies the greed for more profits at the expense of the natural world. In virtually every instance the only road to sustainability is the one paved with the bricks of individual life style change. We are past the age of the technological fix and are faced with the need of social fixes.

Most of the changes that we must make are not really that onerous but are simply inconvenient. Taking the time to discover what food is grown locally and purchasing that rather than our current eating habits that represent 1500 miles of transportation per bite; we could be supporting the local farmers in our community by eating close to home and at the same time decrease fuel use and CO2 emissions.

Learning to garden, to grow at least few things to reduce the need to rip out some distant mountain side or a valley for a monoculture of a commercial cropland has some significant beneficial effect, locally and globally. Developing our homes toward energy-efficiency and resource conservation by harvesting rainwater, planting edible plants, and using the sun for space and water heating are simple to accomplish and in the current political climate may provide you with tax benefits. Carpooling, using a bus, switching to a bike all allow us to meet our neighbors, get in shape and reduces not only our financial overhead, but our ecological footprint.

The latest technological fix is of course going to be trialed in Africa – if no one noticed the starvation of millions during the “green revolution”, perhaps they won’t notice the introduction of genetically modified seed (gmo) being promoted by Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Brothers. They have managed to get Kofi Annan to shill for them and Monsanto is footing the bill for Kenyan agricultural extention agents. All of this in the name of saving Africans from starvation. Heard of any of this in anyones presidential platform?

How does one fight such financial behemoths as Bill Gates, Rockefeller Brothers, Monsanto, and Archer Daniels Midland, especially if you are African? This is the slimey underbelly of a capitalist system gone mad and it is totally hidden from view. It makes it very difficult to get too concerned with whether Obama is more elitist than Hillary or McCaine.

Who will save the traditional seeds of Africa, where is Nikolai Vavilov when we need him? How did it happen that African scientists and farmers have no say in their future? The same way it happened that we elected George Bush for two terms. It seems to me that we have perhaps passed many of the dreaded tipping points and it is time to plant a garden (open pollinated seeds of course), and get to know our neighbors. It is after all spring!

[Scott Pittman was an Austin activist in the sixties, a member of SDS and a contributor to The Rag. He lives in Santa Fe, NM, where he founded the Permaculture Institute. He has been teaching permaculture courses since 1985 in over 18 countries on four continents. This article was posted on Scott’s Permaculture Travels.]

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Carl Davidson on Bitterness and Hope

Posted on April 15, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Hospital workers in Alquippa, PA, hit the streets over mass firings.

The Real Elitism of Clinton-McCain:
‘Bitterness,’ Hope And Obama In Western Pennsylvania
By Carl Davidson / April 14, 2008 / The Rag Blog

When I heard Hillary Clinton and John McCain claiming, against Barack Obama’s recent observation, that there was no ‘bitterness’ among working-class voters in Western Pennsylvania, I burst out laughing, ‘they’ve got to be kidding!’

Unfortunately they weren’t, and now the cable news punditry and right-wing talk radio has a new diversionary cause of the week to dump on Obama in lieu of serious discussion of policy and programs.

I’m born and bred in Beaver County, Western PA, which, in 1960, was the most blue-collar county in the entire country-steel, strip mines, and everything related to both. My grandfather died in the mill, Jones & Laughlin Steel, crushed by a crane, and another cousin met the same fate a few decades later. My parents are both in the Pennsylvania Bowlers Hall of Fame (and Barack would do well to stick to basketball!). After a long stint in New York City and Chicago, which were irresistible in my youth, I’m now back home, living in Raccoon Township.

Take it from me. There are a lot of bitter voters in these mill towns and the townships outside them. If they don’t express it to the coiffured media, they do to each other. It’s easy to see why. The towns are mostly empty, ravaged by deindustrialization. And the brown fields where the mills once stood are so poisoned grass won’t even grow. After sitting empty for years, the first new structure to go up not too long ago on one near here was a new prison.

Does this mean it’s a clear path for Obama? Not at all, it’s a rough climb, full of difficulties. But he’s doing better than anyone expected. None of the polls are that trustworthy, because some tell the pollsters the ‘right’ answer, while others, such as new youth voters with only cell phones, are hard to find. Obama’s closing on Clinton, now by a five point spread. The more people see him, the more they like him. But both Democrats run neck-to-neck against McCain in November. This is not a ‘safe state’ for anyone, anytime.

‘White male identity politics’ is the unpredictable elephant in the room. I’ve talked with older blue collar voters who claim John Edwards was their runaway favorite, but are now leaning to John McCain, in spite of their hatred for the war. White workers generally split three ways, roughly proportional, between the three candidates.

Younger working-class voters, male and female, white or Black, are not so caught up in it, and they are Obama’s ace-in-the-hole. If his campaign can get them to the polls in droves, he can win it. That’s the long and short of it, and if you can get here to help, please do so. Everything counts.

The bitterness runs deep, favors no single candidate, and comes in several varieties. Retired steelworkers here had their pensions stolen by speculative capital, winning only part of them back by hitting the streets. There’s also another kind of bitterness in Pennsylvania’s demographics. It’s now one of the oldest population areas in the country. My young nephews and nieces, even with some local college degrees or courses behind them, have a hard time finding work. Many young people have moved away to Florida or California, leaving older relatives behind. Here in Raccoon, they’re now shutting down the elementary school, claiming 500 pupils doesn’t justify the expense to keep it open. It means an hour on the bus for youngsters from a perfectly good school, and, yes, many parents are bitter.

Aliquippa is the nearest town to me, known as home of Mike Ditka and Tony Dorsett. In my youth, it was a bustling blue-collar town of 20,000-some 10,000 workers in the mill, a mixture of Serbs, Italians and African-Americans. Now it’s down to 6000, mostly poor and Black. They were the hardest hit of all, lacking the rural family homesteads to fall back on. Now joblessness, crime and addiction take a very bitter toll on the families still there, with nowhere to go.

Does this mean it’s all bleak? No, not at all, although Hillary Clinton is just dissembling, or worse, to assert that there’s no bitterness, only resilience and hope, in these towns. People here like to pull themselves up independently whenever they can, like the Scots-Irish and Germans who predominated here in the 1800s. Their class solidarity means they’ll accept a hand-up, and offer one, too. But they don’t like hand-outs at all, unless you’re at death’s door, which is why their anti-‘Fat Cat’ populism also contains antipathy to some features of liberalism. It’s also why Obama gets a standing ovation when he tells college students he’ll help, but challenges them to give back, with community service work.

This blue-collar populism runs the political gamut-left, center and right. You can get colorful examples in the hot debates in the interactive pages of the online edition of the largest daily paper, the Beaver County Times. Pick any topic or candidate-you’ll get fierce denunciations of the rich man’s war for oil, combined with warnings against Hillary’ ‘socialism’, claims that Obama’s a secret Muslim, and despair that McCain’s a clone of Bush.

In this lively public square, Obama or any candidate would do well to discern the main themes. Don’t get me wrong. People here are open and friendly. They don’t expect you to agree with them, or vice versa. But they do expect authenticity, so when you get out organizing, speak from the heart, and don’t put your head higher than anyone else’s, and expect the same in return.

At the top of their list is stopping the war now, since it’s preventing any solutions to anything else. Next, do something about health care-single payer is best, but either Obama’s or Hillary’s plan rather than nothing. Then debt relief and fuel prices, although no miracles are expected here.

Finally there’s creating new jobs and new wealth. This is probably most important strategically, but people have been spun so many promises, they’re cynical, and Obama was right to point it out. Still he should look deeper here, and more often.

What gets people’s attention are ‘high road’ programs like the Apollo Alliance, new ‘green’ industrial jobs building the infrastructure of energy independence. All those wind turbines and wave generators and whatnot have to be built somewhere, and what blue collar Pennsylvania, white and Black, knows how to do very well is build things that create high value and new wealth.

This is what gets people’s attention, not rebates, handouts and McJobs. Obama’s a natural on this subject, and he’d best spend less ad money on how’s he’s not in thrall to lobbyists, and spend more as an advocate of green industrial policy that would give these mill towns real hope for change.

[Carl Davidson is a peace and justice activist, a ‘Solidarity Economy’ organizer, and webmaster for Progressives for Obama.]

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Someone Will Have to Be Held Accountable

Posted on April 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Financial Collapse will End the Occupation: And it won’t be “A time of our choosing”
By Mike Whitney / April 14, 2008

“Come and see our overflowing morgues and find our little ones for us…
You may find them in this corner or the other, a little hand poking out, pointing out at you…
Come and search for them in the rubble of your “surgical” air raids, you may find a little leg or a little head…pleading for your attention.
Come and see them amassed in the garbage dumps, scavenging morsels of food…
Come and see, come…” Flying Kites Layla Anwar

The US Military has won every battle it has fought in Iraq, but it has lost the war. Wars are won politically, not militarily. Bush doesn’t understand this. He still clings to the belief that a political settlement can be imposed through force. But he is mistaken. The use of overwhelming force has only spread the violence and added to the political instability. Now Iraq is ungovernable. Was that the objective? Miles of concrete blast-walls snake through Baghdad to separate the warring parties; the country is fragmented into a hundred smaller pieces each ruled by local militia commanders. These are the signs of failure not success. That’s why the American people no longer support the occupation. They’re just being practical; they know Bush’s plan won’t work. As Nir Rosen says, “Iraq has become Somalia”.

The administration still supports Iraqi President Nouri al Maliki, but al-Maliki is a meaningless figurehead who will have no effect on the country’s future. He has no popular base of support and controls nothing beyond the walls of the Green Zone. The al-Maliki government is merely an Arab facade designed to convince the American people that political progress is being made, but there is no progress. Its a sham. The future is in the hands of the men with guns; they’re the ones who have divided Iraq into locally-controlled fiefdoms and they are the one’s who will ultimately decide who will rule the state. At present, the fighting between the factions is being described as “sectarian warfare”, but the term is intentionally misleading. The fighting is political in nature; the various militias are competing with each other to see who will fill the vacuum left by the removal of Saddam. It’s a power struggle. The media likes to portray the conflict as a clash between half-crazed Arabs–“dead-enders and terrorists”—who relish the idea killing their countrymen, but that’s just a way of demonizing the enemy. In truth, the violence is entirely rational; it is the inevitable reaction to the dissolution of the state and the occupation by foreign troops. Many military experts predicted that there would be outbreaks of fighting after the initial invasion, but their warnings were shrugged off by clueless politicians and the cheerleading media. Now the violence has flared up again in Basra and Baghdad, and there is no end in sight. Only one thing seems certain, Iraq’s future will not be decided at the ballot box. Bush has made sure of that.

[snip]

How Will It End?

The Bush administration has decided to pursue a strategy that is unprecedented in US history. It has decided to continue to prosecute a war that has already been lost morally, strategically, and militarily. But fighting a losing war has its costs. America is much weaker now than it was when Bush first took office in 2000; politically, economically and militarily. US power and prestige around the world will continue to deteriorate until the troops are withdrawn from Iraq. But that’s unlikely to happen until all other options have been exhausted. Deteriorating economic conditions in the financial markets are putting enormous downward pressure on the dollar. The corporate bond and equities markets are in disarray; the banking system is collapsing, consumer spending is down, tax revenues are falling, and the country is headed into a painful and protracted recession. The US will leave Iraq sooner than many pundits believe, but it will not be at a time of our choosing. Rather, the conflict will end when the United States no longer has the capacity to wage war. That time is not far off.

The Iraq War signals the end of US interventionism for at least a generation; maybe longer. The ideological foundation for the war (preemption/regime change) has been exposed as a baseless justification for unprovoked aggression. Someone will have to be held accountable. There will have to be international tribunals to determine who is responsible in the deaths of over one million Iraqis.

Read all of it here. Information Clearing House / The Rag Blog

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The Time Has Come to Turn a New Page

Posted on April 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter greets Nepalis during his visit to a polling station as an election observer, in Katmandu Nepal, Thursday, April 10, 2008.

Uri Avnery congratulates Carter for decision to meet with Hamas leaders

Tel-Aviv / April 13, 2008

To
Mr. Jimmy Carter
Former President of the United States

Dear Mr. President

I am writing to you on behalf of Gush Shalom, The Israeli Peace Bloc, to congratulate you on your wise and courageous decision to meet in Damascus with Hamas leaders and talk with them on the ways to promote peace in our region. I believe this is an act whose time had come – or rather, is already long overdue – and I would have liked the Government of Israel to avail itself of your position, your prestige and your tireless energy, in order to help end the suffering and bloodshed among both peoples.

As an increasing number of people are coming to realize, the policy of boycotting Hamas, starting on the day that the movement won the democratic elections held among the Palestinians, has failed utterly and caused terrible suffering and bloodshed to both peoples. The Government of Israel, with the support of the present US Administration, has undertaken large and small military operations; constantly sought to foment civil war among Palestinians; and imposed an inhuman economic boycott of the Gaza Strip, which exactly today reaches a cruel new peak with the denial of fuel to a million and half people. Not only did all these acts fail to break Hamas’ power; on the contrary, they resulted in increasing its popular support and severely weakening Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) who is more and more perceived as a collaborator, unable to bring his people any real achievement.

The time has come to turn a new page, based on recognition of reality: Hamas is a significant force among Palestinians, and will continue to be such, for better or worse, in the foreseeable future. It is impossible to reach an Israeli-Palestinian Agreement – and actually implement it – without Hamas being a party to that agreement.

Your visit to our region, Mr. President, has the potential of imparting an enormous momentum to removing the obstacles presently hindering serious negotiations aimed at ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands conquered in 1967. To the mind of myself the my fellow activists, what is most urgently needed at present includes:

* A full ceasefire, between all Israelis and all Palestinians, which will proved a safe daily life to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip as to those of the Israeli communities near to it;

* Removal of the shameful economic siege, which is a terrible collective punishment for Gaza inhabitants of Gaza;

* Achieving at last an exchange of prisoners which would restore to their homes and families the captured Israeli soldier Gil’ead Shalit as well as a significant number of Palestinian prisoners

* Encouraging the creation of a Palestinian National Unity Government, representing all important factions and able to negotiate on behalf of the entire Palestinian people – instead of the complete veto which the governments of Israel and the US at present impose on the creation of such a government among Palestinians.

It would have been best for all of us, Mr. President, were you able to go to Damascus with a full mandate from the Government of Israel and from you successor in the White House, to promote to the best of your ability the solution to the conflict in our region and the end to both peoples’ suffering. But even in the absence of an official government mandate, know that you are going to Damascus with the warm regards and full support of the peace seekers in Israel.

Most Sincerely Yours

Uri Avnery
Former Member of the Knesset
On behalf of Gush Shalom
(The Israeli Peace Bloc)

Source / Information Clearing House / The Rag Blog

And now for a little flashback:

Jimmy Carter: Give Hamas a chance: Former president says U.S. should not cut off aid to Palestinians
Thursday, February 2, 2006

(CNN) — Hamas deserves to be recognized by the international community, and despite the group’s militant history, there is a chance the soon-to-be Palestinian leaders could turn away from violence, former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday.

Carter, who monitored last week’s Palestinian elections in which Hamas handily toppled the ruling Fatah, added that the United States should not cut off aid to the Palestinian people, but rather funnel it through third parties like the U.N.

“If you sponsor an election or promote democracy and freedom around the world, then when people make their own decision about their leaders, I think that all the governments should recognize that administration and let them form their government,” Carter said. (Watch the former president cautiously defend Hamas — 4:35)

“If there are prohibitions — like, for instance, in the United States, against giving any money to a government that is controlled by Hamas — then the United States could channel the same amount of money to the Palestinian people through the United Nations, through the refugee fund, through UNICEF, things of that kind,” he added.

Read all of it here. / CNN / The Rag Blog

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Iraq Moratorium This Friday

Posted on April 15, 2008 by RagBlog

Iraq Moratorium #8 on Friday, April 18

The Iraq Moratorium, a nationwide grassroots movement uniting individuals and groups against the Iraq war, will be observed on Friday, April 18.

Since September, the Iraq Moratorium has asked people and groups opposed to the war and occupation to take some action on the third Friday of every month to end the war.

Individual actions can range from wearing a black armband or a button to school or work to writing letters, putting up signs, calling members of Congress, and a wide variety of other actions. The group’s website, www.IraqMoratorium.org offers ideas, and lists planned group actions across the country.

Since it began eight months ago, the Iraq Moratorium has sparked more than 800 group events – vigils, rallies, marches, speakers, films, and other actions – listed on the group’s website, with reports, photos and videos.

The Iraq Moratorium encourage local organizers to “do their own thing” on the third Friday of the month – but to do something, whatever it is, to end the war. It is all a loosely-knit national grassroots effort operating under the Iraq Moratorium umbrella.

“Two-thirds of the people in the United States want this war to end,” said Eric See, a Moratorium organizer in California. “Our goal is to get that Silent Majority to speak out, in whatever way they choose, as a way to inspire others to action and build a movement that will end this senseless bloodshed.”

“Doing something on Friday, even something small, is a first step toward ending the war,” See said. “It all makes a difference, and our individual actions are magnified when we all act on the same day. The Moratorium asks that people interrupt business as usual and do something to end the war.”

NOTE: For events in your community, check the website, www.IraqMoratorium.org.

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Hot Shots and Classic Takes

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Source.

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Here We Go Again

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Obama called elitist for telling the truth.
By Jane Smiley

You know, I just spent seven and a half years disagreeing with the administration that has given us an unprecedented military and economic mess. I saw it coming, it came, and in some ways it was worse, and promises to get worse, than I foresaw.

In the course of these seven years, I have had my patriotism questioned and demeaned fairly often. I was even put in a book, as one of a hundred people who were hurting America. When I got into this book, my relatives worried that I would get shot by some rightwing nut, even though several of them were and are rightwing nuts themselves (and they carry guns).

All this time, though, I considered myself a patriot and a loyal American because I was able to see the destruction that was being wreaked upon the nation, and in particular, upon the middle and working classes, by the Republican liars and war criminals and job outsourcers and health care destroyers and army wreckers and infrastructure ignorers and media whores and agriculture blackmailers (see this month’s Vanity Fair).

So now, Barack Obama tells the truth about conditions as we know them–that the countryside and the small towns are dying in many places in our country, and that the corporatocracy doesn’t care enough to do a thing about it. He points out that immigrant-baiting, gay-baiting, gun-baiting, and religious pandering have helped to destroy those towns and that countryside, that those being destroyed have been cynically enlisted by their very own destroyers to provide the votes that help accomplish the destruction.

And this is what Senator Hillary Clinton says about it: “Senator Obama’s remarks were elitist and out of touch. They are not reflective of the values and beliefs of Americans.”

From Senator Clinton’s remarks, I infer that to actually see what has gone on in the US in the last 20 years is unAmerican. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you were born, what you pay in taxes, what else you might have contributed to the culture, how you vote, who you support. If you don’t support fundamentalist religion, job outsourcing, and free access to guns, then you are not even American.

I cannot believe how angry this makes me. I cannot believe that after the last seven and a half years, I can even get this angry. Yes, I know she is pandering to her audience. Yes, I know she will do anything to get elected. Yes, I know that she and Bill Clinton are corrupt to the core, and that I should have never expected anything better of her.

But, please, any of you angry white women who still support this craven shill, don’t mention it to me. Do me the following favor — apologize to your children for not stopping the war that HIllary voted for, the war that is going to impoverish them. Then apologize to them for the effects of global warming that are going to make their lives hell. Then apologize to them for the school shooting they may someday see, the one where the kid gets the guns out of his father’s gun case, or buys at a gunshow. Apologize to them for the meaningless wars they are going to fight and pay for. Then tell them that “American values” killed their hopes and maybe killed them. And ask them if they think it’s going to be worth it.

Source. / Huffington Post / April 12, 2008 / The Rag Blog

It Takes Real Chutzpah for a Guy Who Owns Eight Houses (McCain) to Call Barack Obama an “Elitist”
By Robert Creamer

McCain doesn’t lack “chutzpah.” Yesterday his campaign actually accused Barack Obama of being an “elitist” for saying that it’s not surprising that people in small Midwestern towns are bitter after seeing their standard of living systematically destroyed over the last three decades.

Damn right they’re bitter; they have good reasons to be. And most of those reasons are the economic and trade policies that have — and continue to be — championed by George Bush and John McCain.

The McCain campaign is managed by a cadre of Washington-insider special interest lobbyists. He and his current wife are estimated to be worth about $100 million. He reportedly owns eight houses. His let-them-eat-cake economic policies are based on George Bush’s failed radical conservative “you’re on your own buddy” philosophy. One after another he supported trade agreements that protect the rights of corporations, but ignore the rights of labor, and have devastated one Pennsylvania community after another. He gets most of his campaign cash from the wealthiest corporate interests around. And he has the gall to call Barack Obama an “elitist”?

This is the same Barack Obama who spent years of his life organizing out-of-work steelworkers on the south side of Chicago — people just like those who live in Allentown or Erie or Pittsburgh or the Monongehela Valley in western Pennsylvania. He stood shoulder to shoulder with them, sat at their kitchen tables, spent hours in their church basements.

He didn’t do those things as a famous candidate, but as a community organizer being paid $8,000 a year by a coalition of churches. You don’t build a resume or a client list organizing unemployed steel workers. You do it because you respect the people and you care about justice.

In fact, the trademark of Barack Obama’s campaign for president is the honest, respectful way he talks to everyone — and stands up for everyday Americans.

If you want to talk about patronizing, or “elitism”, you need look no farther than the way Bush and McCain attempt to use fear and division to divert the attention of middle class people from the economic policies that pick their pockets, lower their wages, destroy their unions, and outsource their jobs. And all the while they use our money to bail out Wall Street, and give giant tax breaks to the real “elitists” — the economic elite.

It is Barack Obama who can lead a movement to change the way things are done in Washington. He can do it by empowering and inspiring the people who live in small-town Pennsylvania, and all of the other middle class Americans who have been left out by Bush-McCain policies that have benefited the “masters of the universe” on Wall Street and the Gucci-shoed lobbyist set on “K” Street.

As for Hillary Clinton, who joined in attacking Obama’s statement: she should know better. She knows that Obama is the furthest thing from an elitist, and she should know better than to join in the Republican narrative about the candidate who is the likely Democratic standard bearer in the fall.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist and author of the recent book: “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” available on amazon.com.

Source. / Huffington Post / April 12, 2008 / The Rag Blog

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The Coming War with Iran

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


It’s About the Oil, Stupid
By Joe Lauria / April 13, 2008

World civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how close we are to the end. Dick Cheney knew about peak oil back in 1999 when he spoke to the London Petroleum Institute as Halliburton CEO. He predicted it would come in 2010. After that it’s just a matter of years before it runs out. Whoever controls the remaining oil determines who lives and who dies.

Sixty percent of this oil is under a triangular area of the Middle East the size of Kansas. In that speech Cheney said: “The Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”

This small Middle East triangle encompasses the northeast of Saudi Arabia, all of Iraq and the southwestern part of Iran, along with Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates. The US controls Iraq. It has friendly governments in the other states.

Iran is the exception. The US now surrounds Iran.

Controlling an area the size of Kansas shouldn’t be a problem for the U.S. military, except that it is heavily populated and many people in the triangle don’t want the Americans there and are willing to fight.

It’s been known for at least thirty years that America needs alternative energy sources. But instead of an alternative energy plan we got the invasion of Iraq by oilmen wedded to a dying business, willing to kill hundreds of thousands to cling to the last drop. The US is never leaving the region or withdrawing from Iraq. McCain is right about staying, but 100 years is too long. The oil won’t last that long.

Iran is next. Lieberman set up Petraeus to testify last week that Iranian-backed groups are murdering hundreds of American servicemen in Iraq. On Friday Gates called Iran’s influence in Iraq “malign” and Bush said if Iran keeps meddling in Iraq “then we’ll deal with them.” They are building their case for war with resolutions in the Senate and at the UN. It’s only western Iran, from the Iraq border to 150 miles inside the country that the U.S. will have to occupy. That’s where Iran’s oil is. But the U.S. will have a nasty battle on their hands in Iran even if they restore a Shah-like puppet in Tehran 30 years after the revolution.

The Saudis would not mind seeing the Iranian regime go. But the Saudis may also be on the list. The US may have to destabilize and control Saudi Arabia some day too. The Wall Street Journal a few years ago revealed that in the 1970s under Nixon, Kissinger had plans drawn up for the US invasion and occupation of the Saudi oil fields. Those plans can be dusted off.

The American oil wars are being launched out of weakness, not strength. The American economy is teetering and without control of the remaining oil it will collapse. There will be massive chaos in any case, when only enough oil remains for the American elite and whomever they choose to share it with.

That will leave an oil-starved China and India, both with nuclear weapons, with no alternative but to bow to America or go to war.

It’s not about greed any more. It’s about survival. Because the leadership of this country was initially too greedy to switch from oil to solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable alternatives, it may now be too late. Had the hundreds of billions of dollars poured into the invasion and occupation of Iraq been put into alternative energy the world might have had a fighting chance. Now that is far from certain.

What is certain is that these wars are not about democracy. They are not about WMD. The coming one will not even be about Iran’s nuclear weapons project. It’s about the oil, stupid.

Source. /Huffington Post
Thanks to David Hamilton / The Rag Blog

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McCain Still Hopes for Hillary

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

McCain: ‘Hillary can still pull it off” —
Senator prefers Clinton Contest
April 14, 2008

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has confided to his inner circle that Hillary Clinton may yet be the Democratic nominee, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, a development the senator from Arizona would personally welcome!

“Look, I know something about long odds, they had me written off last summer,” McCain explained over the weekend, according to a top source.

McCain would prefer to go up against Clinton in the general election, insiders reveal.

He has instructed his campaign staff to “chill out” on countering Hillary Clinton’s torrent of claims and promises as primary voting comes to an end over the next 6 weeks.

McCain made the tactical decision to downplay Clinton’s tale of Bosnia sniper fire, leaving some McCain staffers frustrated and perplexed.

Instead, the critical focus has been on Barack Obama. McCain’s official website features 14 press releases taking on Obama since the first of the year, only 3 for the former first lady.

Source. / Drudge Report exclusive

Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

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A People’s History of American Empire

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Howard Zinn, The End of Empire?
by Tom Engelhardt / April 14, 2008

In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe’s “sole superpower” is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an “empire lite” has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can’t seem to make a move in its own interest that isn’t a disaster. The Iraq government’s recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with — we can be sure — more to come.

In the meantime, the fate of that empire, lite or otherwise, is the subject of Howard Zinn today at Tomdispatch, and of a new addition to his famed People’s History of the United States. The new book represents a surprise breakthrough into cartoon format. It’s a rollicking graphic history, illustrated by cartoonist Mike Konopacki, that takes us from the Indian Wars to the Iraqi “frontier” (with some striking autobiographical asides from Zinn’s own life). It’s called A People’s History of American Empire. It’s a gem and it’s being published today.

In honor of publication day, Tomdispatch offers the equivalent of a little online extravaganza. Below, you can read Zinn’s essay on how he first learned about the American Empire; and you can also click here for two special treats. You can view an animated video, using some of the book’s art, with voiceover by none other than Viggo Mortensen. (Think of it as Lord of the Rings, Part IV: The American Mordor Chronicles.) Finally, if you look below the video on that same page, you’ll see an autobiographical section of the new book, focusing on Zinn’s early years. (Click on each illustration to view a single page of text.) Have fun. Tom

Source. / TomGram / The Rag Blog
For more about the book and it’s author, go to HowardZinn.org.

Empire or Humanity?
What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me About the American Empire
By Howard Zinn

With an occupying army waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan, with military bases and corporate bullying in every part of the world, there is hardly a question any more of the existence of an American Empire. Indeed, the once fervent denials have turned into a boastful, unashamed embrace of the idea.

However, the very idea that the United States was an empire did not occur to me until after I finished my work as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force in the Second World War, and came home. Even as I began to have second thoughts about the purity of the “Good War,” even after being horrified by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even after rethinking my own bombing of towns in Europe, I still did not put all that together in the context of an American “Empire.”

I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called “The Age of Imperialism.” It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire — or period of “imperialism.”

Read the rest of it here.

A People’s History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

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Ouch! The Daily Show’s Eviscerating "Documentary" About Fox News

Posted on April 14, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Daily Show Gives Fox the Business
By Rachel Sklar / April 11, 2008

The Daily Show’s John Oliver put together a stunning smackdown of Fox News on the April 10 show, punctuated by some damning clips showing egregious comments from some anchors (John Gibson, natch) and some — gasp! — flip-flopping on certain positions (like, say, executive privilege). Watch as Oliver tries to sneak into Fox HQ dressed as the Statue of Liberty, hosts a pundit shoutfest, and waves many flags. Featuring Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Neil Cavuto, Chris Wallace, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George Bush, Bill Hemmer, Megyn Kelly, Jim Pinkerton, Peter Hart, Newt Gingrich and the super-chipper Gretchen Carlson. Watch it below:

Part I:

Part II:

Source. / The Huffington Post / The Rag Blog

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