Two Wrens

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

two wrens on my window sill
plainly looking in
scouting for that place to safely
put their wren eggs in
peering at the far left corner
where the day before they’d been
a ready-made perfect nest
for two ready to begin

through an open door they’d flown
while hoping me a friend
and they found a crafted basket
hung near the trash bin
they landed on it poked around
found nothing to offend
flung debris down to the floor
in their natural whirl-wren
then flew out the way they’d come
expecting to return again

they’d been there once before
at least had one of them when
I’d emerged into the room
much like a bear into its den
I didn’t know it was around
until it began to ascend
to a window then the ceiling
as its path did amend
till it found the open doorway
after time well-spent

that debris on the floor
from its nest-exploring stint
included dollar bills that fluttered down
and two-dollar ones that went
some collected by my mother
with a hope and a glint
for a future she’d not know
but for a time heaven-sent

besides the money I had placed there
like a charm to intend
to increase my wealth and income
by some multiple of ten
there were a dozen birds’ feathers
one found floating on the wind
and a young deer’s right antler
with its leftward bend
a desiccated black beetle
with its pincers unpinced
and some gemstones with some meaning
that had once made sense
and one feather from a heron
that seemed suited for a prince

there were fortunes from some cookies
with a mystical hint
and other memories you could touch
like found fur that was meant
to remind me forever
of a cat who seemed sent
from the soul of a city
that needed to repent
this orange fur so soft
yet the city so bent
that it would kill this kitty
to escape paying more rent
with its heart so hard
that love’s hardly made a dent
well this kitty’s passed
but I like to think I know where he went
and someday this city’s heart
will be healed as with a stent

two wrens on my window sill
clearly looking in
wondering where has gone the nest
to lay their wren eggs in
it was there just yesterday
their presence they had lent
poking round the crafted basket
right near the trash bin

just turn around you dear little busy
hopping happy wrens
you’ll see it hangs right behind you
on the deck beside some limbs
where you can perch and keep watch
and understand it never ends
all your love and your labor
and your care it imprints
and lives on and multiplies
in your absence
in the nest that you found
and improved and did amend
so that you’ll never have to be
on the outside looking in

two wrens on my window sill
is where it all begins
with two wrens on my window sill
is where my story ends
with two wrens on my window sill
I’ll always have two friends
with two wrens on my window sill

Two Wrens

By Larry Piltz
St. Patrick’s Day 2008

Indian Cove / Austin, Texas / The Rag Blog

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Om

Posted on March 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Don’t Argue. Just Do It.
By Jerome Doolittle

This is your own, personal mantra. Repeat it to yourself silently, over and over, with your eyes shut and your ears plugged. It will help, I promise. It has worked for others.

No cognition, no dissonance.

Source

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An Economic Allegory

Posted on March 18, 2008 by RagBlog

The Emperor Cult
By Tim Case

“Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.” ~ Isabel Paterson, The God of the Machine

17/03/08 “Lew Rockwell” — – Too often history is viewed through the blinders of what ruler made what decision, or what war occurred, on what date. This had led to many not understanding the effects the state and its leadership could or will have on their lives.

This, I believe, also leads to one of the reasons for a continuing admiration, if not adoration, of the state and the state leadership.

We don’t know or aren’t told what effect such and such ruler’s decisions had on the masses of people and their lives. What did they feel or think? How did it change their lives? What was the people’s response; was it flight, fright, or fight? Let me give you an extreme, but not uncommon example.

Preceding the U.S. entry into WWI, America’s president, Woodrow Wilson, set the stage for one (of many) of the Federal government’s most profane periods in American history.

While still “neutral” President Woodrow Wilson in his State of the Union address on December 7, 1915, said in part:

“There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags, but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt… necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers… I am urging you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation… disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out… I need not suggest the terms in which they may be dealt with.”

He was speaking of the German-Americans and many who heard or read his speech took it as a directive to attack German ideas and beliefs. Whole communities went so far as to suspect anyone who spoke German of treason to the U.S. government while being loyal to the German Kaiser.

California Congressman Julius Kahn went even further when speaking of the German people living in America:

“I hope that we shall have a few prompt hangings and the sooner the better. We have got to make an example of a few of these people, and we have got to do it quickly.”

The hatred that was being garnered against these American citizens is exemplified by the New York Times headlines of April 6, 1918: “Senators favor shooting traitors,” then six days later by the Chicago Tribune’s headlines “Cure treason and disloyalty by firing squad.”

In 1918 my grandmother, who was of German heritage, was 22 years old. Many years later I asked her why she wouldn’t speak German, even though I knew she could speak it fluently. What she told me was chilling.

She related to me, with tears in her eyes, that during 1915 to 1918 she was so frightened that she would be arrested, shot or hung by the federal government, for speaking her native language that she swore she would never speak German again. She never did and she forbad me from ever leaning German as a second language!

Was my grandmother an isolated example? No, there were many among the loyal German communities that lived in fear and were dehumanized by being called “Huns” or worse.

It is easy to see then how the perception of history may change when we can show the consequences of government policy on people’s lives, along with the dates and events.

While some may think of the events of the early 1900’s as being recent history, it is still history. Furthermore with history, regardless of the era, we are dealing ultimately with the lives of real men, women and children who lived it, suffered through it, and struggled to cope with the events that were overtaking them.

The same is true of those who lived, worked, and supported the Roman Empire.

When Augustus Caesar took the throne in 27 BC, at the age of 36, it marked the end of almost a century of revolution, civil wars, civil disturbances, confiscations of property, and prohibitions. Tacitus tells us that the whole world was exhausted and was thrilled to acquiesce to the Roman Empire just to have peace.

One of Augustus’ first acts was to reform the tax system. Next he again standardized the silver coin of the realm, the denarius, at 84 to the pound and the realm’s gold coin, the aureus, at 40 to 42 to the pound.

This had a calming effect on the Romans and restored the unity, pride and material affluence of the people (in fact only about 10% of the population would actually benefit from the prosperity) in the Roman Empire which also solidified Augustus’ reign as emperor.

During the early days of the republic the Romans had lived comfortably with a modest tax which can be rightfully called a wealth tax. However, by the time of Augustus the Roman people were saddled with a progressive tax and a system of tax collection that was fraught with repression and criminal extortion.

Augustus’ idea was to set a flat tax based on wealth and population. This new tax was modeled on the ancient tax system of the early republic and was based on both population and individual wealth. This is probably what he meant when he said of himself:

“I restored many traditions of the ancestors, which were falling into disuse in our age, and myself I handed on precedents of many things to be imitated in later generations.”

The effect of Augustus’ new tax system was that it standardized the amount of revenue the Roman state would receive yearly and stopped the brutal progressiveness of the older tax system.

This placed the citizens of Roman Empire in a unique position, because now they knew each year what their tax liability was but more importantly they knew that anything they earned above the required tax was theirs, no matter how much their income increased.

The obvious result of such a tax system was that there was now a major incentive to become producers, especially since the marginal tax rate above the required tax was zero. Never mind that the wealth earned this year would be assessed and taxed next year; they now had a full year to use their money to increase their income before their wealth was reassessed.

The Forum Romanum called by the Romans Forum Magnum or just the Forum, was the center of Roman life; as such it was the Roman heart of commerce and banking along with being the location for the administration of justice.

The importance of the Forum made the streets leading to and from it prime locations for businesses which supported many bookshops, shoe shops, the finest spice shops and the daily needs of Rome’s citizens.

Augustus’ pro-growth tax system brought about the lowest interest rates in Roman history. This is turn led to people borrowing investment capital for new businesses or speculating in commodities.

Business ventures require loans, and loan contracts were quickly standardized throughout the empire.

Julius Alexander, the lender, required a promise in good faith that the loan of 60 denarii of genuine and sound coin would be duly settled on the day he requested it. Alexander, son of Cariccius, the borrower, promised in good faith that it would be so settled, and declared that he had received the sixty denarii mentioned above, in cash, as a loan, and that he owed them. Julius Alexander required a promise in good faith that the interest on this principal from this day would be one percent per thirty days and would be paid to Julius Alexander or to whomever it might in the future concern. Alexander, son of Cariccius, promised in good faith that it would be so paid. Titius Primitius stood surety for the due and proper payment of the principal mentioned above and of the interest.

Transacted at Alburnus Maior, October 20, in the consulship of Rusticus (his second consulship) and Aquilinus.

We have no way of knowing what this gentleman wanted to use the 60 denarii for, but consider for a moment the timing of this loan which closed on October 20th.

In ancient Rome wheat was the staple of the people, which made its supply critical. Estimates of the yearly market need in Rome for wheat range from 20 to 40 million modii; where a modii is approximately 15 pounds or ¼ bushel of wheat. This means that the average consumption of wheat in ancient Rome was 30 million modii – 450,000,000 pounds – annually.

Given that at this time the population of Rome was in the neighborhood of 5,000,000 we find the average need per person, annually was 6 modii: 90 pounds – 1½ bushels. Of course these totals are going to be greater or lesser based on gender, age, ability to pay and doesn’t take into account the state’s grain welfare program.

However, it shows that Rome required vast amounts of wheat, and highlights its tenuous position.

Something happened to the grain shipments in 18 BC because Augustus Caesar wrote:

From that year when Gnaeus and Publius Lentulus were consuls, when the taxes fell short, I gave out contributions of grain and money from my granary and patrimony, sometimes to 100,000 men, sometimes to many more.

There are many things that could hinder the flow of wheat to Rome but the one thing that not even the might of Rome could change was the weather on the Mediterranean Sea.

The transporting of goods overland was cost prohibitive except for short distances and that left shipping via the Mediterranean Sea to bring the majority of goods to Rome. That is until November of each year when the storms on the Mediterranean closed it to trade until March of the following year. Even during October and April it would be dangerous to sail the Mediterranean, due to sudden storms, so we can assume that wheat imports would begin to taper off in October of each year and would not resume again until sometime in April.

The five plus months when the wheat ceased to arrive must have caused the price to rise based on the simple laws of supply and demand since this law was the controlling factor in Rome’s economy.

If Alexander, son of Cariccius took out the loan because he was a baker and wanted a hedge against wheat shortages for the five months that the Mediterranean was closed to shipping; he would have been able to purchase 120 modii – 30 bushels, 1800 pounds – of wheat.

Many have called the era from Caesar Augustus until the death of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in 180 AD, the golden years of the Roman Empire. In some ways it was. Augustus’ sweeping reforms dealt with all aspects of the Roman life and set the stage for a very successful period in Roman history. Gibbon even goes so far as to call this period the time when the “human race was most prosperous and happy.”

What is missed in all the jubilation is that Caesar Augustus was ahead of his time. His Fabian socialist ideals were the firm foundations upon which the misery of countless generations would eventually rest.

The Roman people loved their emperor and the peace that came with Augustus’ programs. They were caught up in their success and daily life; raising their children, paying their bills along with the myriad of things that just living entails.

Like the sirens of Greek mythology whose sweet singing lured mariners to destruction on the rocks, so is the promise of the state; regardless of the age.

The Romans were simply people, and being human they either didn’t see or refused to believe the destruction that was overtaking them even as the producers in their society started becoming insolvent then dejected due to the heavy controls that the state was imposing on their lives.

By 192 AD the tax base began to fail; as tax revenues decreased the Roman state began to micromanage the economy, which bound farmers to their farms and craftsmen to their workbenches. All businesses soon became de facto organs of the state; it was business at the point of a sword which tried to control and direct all aspects of the markets. The Roman state’s efforts were to no avail, commerce continued to deteriorate due to the tax burden.

The Roman state’s answer was to exacerbate the problem by increasing the money supply, so denarii with less silver content were issued.

As inflation raged prices sky rocketed (at one point inflation reached an estimated 15,000%), people began to put aside and hide the older, high silver content coins and pay their taxes in the newly issued coins of less value. International trade soon slowed to a crawl. The “real” value of the state’s revenues, as expected, was proportionally reduced.

It wasn’t long before the Roman state began requisitioning cattle and food directly from the farmers, and other producers were simply robbed, as needs arose, by the army. The result was social chaos ensuing from state terrorism which some have christened “permanent terrorism.”

The Roman state even went so far as to demand that state permission be given before anyone could change their residence or occupation. The state fixed prices and wages which eventually led to a complete failure of the visible market, since there was no work there was nothing to buy or sell so the people resorted to food riots, lawlessness and city flight.

The same creeping socialism that affected the Roman Empire has been at work in America since the adoption of the Constitution over the Articles of Confederation, and like those ancient people of Rome we are caught in its trap. Was it the love of the state or our foolishness that resulted in our not seeing what is now overtaking us? Future historians will have to decide.

For the present we will continue to put up with TSA theft of private property, special travel ID’s, threats from Homeland security that permission will be needed for employment and government regulations designed to “monitor” commerce.

As our civilization continues its slide into the socialistic abyss of monetary suicide and as the real possibility of famine lurks on the horizon, let’s at least not allow the words of the Roman poet, satirist, and literary critic, Horace to be a vision of our future.

Time corrupts all. What has it not made worse?
Our grandfathers sired feebler children; theirs
Were weaker still – ourselves; and now our curse
Must be to breed even more degenerate heirs.

Tim Case is a 30-year student of the ancient histories who agrees with the first-century stoic Epictetus on this one point: “Only the educated are free.”

Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com

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The So-Called Success of the Surge

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Dahr Jamail portrait ©2005 Robert Shetterly.

Rule, Not Reconciliation
by Dahr Jamail / FPIF / March 17, 2008

As we mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, rhetoric around the “success” of the so-called surge continues. Presidential hopefuls, along with members of the Bush administration, continue to tout “progress,” citing fewer U.S. casualties and moves amongst Iraqi groups towards “reconciliation.” While indeed, there has been a reduction in violence, it is lost in the headlines that thousands of Iraqis still are losing their lives each month in the conflict. But even worse, the “success” of the surge has the potential to bring violence to all time highs.

In his final State of the Union address in January, George W. Bush proudly held up the newly formed “Awakening Groups,” known locally in Iraq as the Sahwa, as examples of both Iraqi cooperation and independence. Members of these groups now total nearly 80,000, and are paid $300 of U.S. taxpayer money a month to not attack occupation forces. These groups are referred to as “Concerned Local Citizens” by the military, as though they are comprised of concerned fathers and uncles who suddenly became keen to collaborate with members of a foreign occupation force which has eviscerated their country.

In reality, most of the Sahwa are resistance fighters who are taking the money, arms, and ammunition, whilst biding their time to build their forces to move, once again, against the occupation forces which now support them, in addition to planning to move against the Shia dominated government. Furthermore, it is widely known in Iraq that many of the Sahwa are al-Qaeda members, the irony of which is not lost to Iraqis, who heard the U.S. propaganda as to the reasons the Sahwa were formed: to drive al-Qaeda from Iraq and to promote security so as to enable political reconciliation within the government in Baghdad by providing the space for this to occur.

Illustrating the counter-productive nature of Bush’s plan, Iraq’s puppet government, led by U.S.-installed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is having nothing to do with the Sahwa. When the U.S. military began to organize the Sahwa by buying off prominent Tribal Sheikhs across Iraq’s al-Anbar province, Maliki made it clear that none of the Sahwa would ever be granted positions within the government security apparatus.

And why should he feel differently? With Shia mlitiamen and death squad members he supports comprising the brunt of the Iraqi military and police, why would Maliki choose to grant legitimacy to the very groups who wish to gain a counter-balance of power in the Baghdad government?

Despite the periodic bickering and blaming from the Bush administration aimed at Maliki and his government, the Prime Minister remains in power for the sole reason that he and his cronies enjoy the backing of the occupation forces. After all, this is an “Iraqi” government that is located within the Green Zone. It is an “Iraqi” government that would not last five minutes without that kind of protection, as polls in Iraq indicate that it enjoys less than one percent support from the Iraqi population.


Arming (and splitting) Shia and Sunni
“I can’t think of a more classic example of divide and rule,” Phil Aliff, a then active duty U.S. soldier with the 10th Mountain Division told me at Fort Drum last October. He served nearly one year in Iraq from August 2005 to July 2006, in the areas of Abu Ghraib City and Fallujah, both west of Baghdad. Aliff was disgusted in the U.S. policy of, as he described it, “Arming the Sunni while politically supporting the Shia … how is that promoting reconciliation?”
According to the U.S. military, 82 percent of the Sahwa are Sunnis. Now the Sahwa, as my Iraqi colleague Ahmed Ali and I have been reporting for Inter Press Service, are openly challenging the government in Baghdad. In Baquba, the capital city of Diyala province, they are in the process of forcing the resignation of the Shia police chief of the province, Gen. Ghanim al-Qureyshi. A local Sahwa member told Ali in Baquba recently that their demands also include “the nomination of four Sunni assistants to be available as the new police chief, hiring 5,000 members of the Sahwa to serve as government security personnel, and government police no longer to be allowed into certain predominantly Sunni districts in an effort to eliminate the sectarian conduct of the police.”
So much for reconciliation. The Sahwa albeit wrought with its own infighting, corruption, and power struggles, now form an effective counterweight to the Iraqi government and are beginning to demand posts in various ministries in Baghdad, as well as power within government security forces.
Read the rest of it here.
[Dahr Jamail has reported from inside Iraq and is the author of Beyond the Green Zone. He writes for Inter Press Service, The Asia Times, and is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus. A fourth-generation Lebanese-American, he grew up in Houston.]

Dahr Jamail to Speak in Austin
Thursday, April 3, 7:00 p.m.
UT campus, Geology 2.324

In late 2003, weary of the overall failure of the U.S. media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people and US soldiers, Dahr Jamail went to Iraq to report on the war himself.

Jamail spent eight months in occupied Iraq as one of only a few independent U.S. journalists in the country. In the Middle East, he also has reported from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Jamail’s dispatches were quickly recognized as an important media resource. He is now writing for the Inter Press Service, The Asia Times and many other outlets. Jamail’s reports have also been published with The Nation, The Sunday Herald, Islam Online, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, and the Independent to name just a few.

His newest book is Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books). Vivid, insightful, and often in the participants’ own words, Beyond the Green Zone goes past the polished desks of the corporate media and Washington politicians to tell first hand of the reality of life under U.S. occupation.Geology building is on the UT East Mall, next to the MLK statue.

Co-sponsored by the UT Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the UT School of Journalism, International Socialist Organization, MEChA, Campus Progress, and Campus Antiwar Movement to End the Occupation.

More info: 512-471-1947 or dcloud@mail.utexas.edu

Praise for Beyond the Green Zone

“Very prescient, brave.” — Seymour Hersh

“From the earliest days of the war, Dahr Jamail has been a human conduit for the voices of Iraqis living under US occupation. In the face of tremendous personal risk, his commitment to the crucial, principled task of bearing witness has never wavered, and this extraordinary book is the result.” –Naomi Klein, author, No Logo

“This book pierces the miasma of ignorance, mendacity and embedded egotism that has shaped most coverage of Iraq in the American press. It is a passionate and deeply insightful look at the reality of war and occupation, and also an example of international journalism at its best.” –Stephen Kinzer, former bureau chief, New York Times, and author, All the Shah’s Men

“Dahr Jamail does us a great service, by taking us past the lies of our political leaders, past the cowardice of the mainstream press, into the streets, the homes, the lives of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. He is a superb journalist, in the most honorable tradition of that craft, in the tradition of Heywood Broun, John Reed, I.F. Stone. If what he has seen could be conveyed to all Americans, this ugly war in Iraq would quickly come to an end.” –Howard Zinn

Michael Corwin / The Rag Blog

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The End of the Sovereign Self

Posted on March 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Tomgram: Philip K. Dick Meet George W. Bush

Blowing Them Away Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry: Globalization Bush-style
By Tom Engelhardt

Imagine, for a moment, that you live in a small town somewhere near the Southern California coast. You’re going about your daily life, trying to scrape by in hard times, when the missile hits. It might have come from the Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) — its pilot at a base on the outskirts of Tehran — that has had the village in its sights for the last six hours or from the Russian sub stationed just off the coast. In either case, it’s devastating.

In Moscow and Tehran, officials announce that, in a joint action, they have launched the missile as part of a carefully coordinated “surgical” operation to take out a “known terrorist,” a long-term danger to their national security. A Kremlin spokesman offers the following statement:

“As we have repeatedly said, we will continue to pursue terrorist activities and their operations wherever we may find them. We share common goals with respect to fighting terrorism. We will continue to seek out, identify, capture and, if necessary, kill terrorists where they plan their activities, carry out their operations or seek safe harbor.”

A family in a ramshackle house just down the street from you — he’s a carpenter; she works at the local Dairy Queen — are killed along with their pets. Their son is seriously wounded, their home blown to smithereens. Neighbors passing by as the missile hits are also wounded.

As it happens, there are no terrorists in the vicinity. Outraged, you organize your neighbors and march angrily in protest through the town, shouting anti-Russian, anti-Iranian slogans. But, of course, there is nothing you can really do. Iran and Russia are far away, their weaponry powerful, your arms nonexistent. The state of California is incapable of protecting you. This is, in fact, at least the fourth time in recent months that a “terrorist” has been declared “taken out” from the air or by a ship-based cruise missile, when only innocent Californians have died.

As news of the “collateral damage” from the botched operation dribbles out, the Russian and Iranian media pay next to no attention. There are no outraged editorials. Official spokesmen see no need to comment further. No one is held responsible and no promises are made in either Tehran or Moscow that similar assassination strikes won’t be launched in the near future, based on “actionable intelligence,” possibly even on the same town. In fact, the next day, seeing UAVs once again soaring overhead, you load your pick-up and prepare to flee.

Swatting Flies in Somalia

Philip K. Dick meet George W. Bush. When it comes to such a thing happening in the United States, we are, of course, at the wildest frontiers of science fiction. The U.S. is a sovereign nation. We guard our air space and coastal waters jealously. Any country violating them for purposes of aggressive action, no less by launching a missile against an American town, would be committing an act of war and would certainly be treated accordingly.

If, somehow, such an event did occur, it would be denounced in Washington and on editorial pages across the country as a shocking contravention of international legal conventions and a crime of war… unless, of course, we did it in a country where sovereignty has been declared meaningless.

In fact, an almost exact replica of the above fictional incident — at least the fourth of its kind in recent months — did indeed take place at the beginning of March in the embattled failed state of Somalia. (For that country’s most recent abysmal collapse, the Bush administration, via an invasion by Ethiopian proxy forces, can take significant credit.) One or two houses in Dobley, a Somali town, were hit, possibly by two submarine-launched Tomahawk Cruise missiles in what a U.S. official termed “a deliberate strike against a suspected bed-down of known terrorists.”

The missiles were evidently meant for Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, an al-Qaedan suspect in the bloody bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. He was, however, not in Dobley, despite the “actionable intelligence” on hand. Accounts of the dead and wounded in the town vary. One report claimed only wounded Somalis (and two dead cows); most spoke of anywhere from four to ten dead civilians. Local district Commissioner Ali Nur Ali Dherre told CNN that three women and three children had been killed and another 20 people wounded; while a “U.S. military official said the United States is still collecting post-strike information and is not yet able to confirm any casualties. He described [the] strike as ‘very deliberate’ and said forces tried to use caution to avoid hitting civilians.”

For the dead Somalis, not surprisingly, we have no names. In stories like this, the dead are regularly nobodies and, though the townspeople of Dobley did indeed march angrily in protest yelling anti-American slogans, just about no one noticed.

In our world, only the normal smattering of small news reports dealt with this modest sidebar in the President’s Global War on Terror (GWOT). On the GWOT scorecard — if you remember, for a long time George Bush kept “his own personal scorecard” of top terror suspects in a desk drawer in the Oval Office, crossing off al-Qaedan figures as U.S. forces took them down — this operation hardly registered. One terrorist missed, and not for the first time, possibly a few dead peasants in some god-forsaken land. Please, move on…

In a recent Pentagon briefing for reporters featuring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Michael Mullen, who had just returned from a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, 4,500 words of back-and-forth were interrupted by this question from a reporter:

“Secretary Gates, the strike on Somalia two days ago — did the missiles that were fired — did they strike their target? And was the target Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan? Do you have a report back from the field? And Admiral Mullen, what message did you give to President Musharraf, and why did you meet with him?”

Gates responded to the Somali part of the question in eight words: “You know we don’t talk about military operations.” He might have added: …unless they’re successful.

That was evidently all that the incident and its minor “collateral damage” deserved in such a global war. So Gates and Mullen moved on immediately. So many matters more important than a single “decapitation” strike that didn’t succeed to consider.

Read the rest, including links and references, here.

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Million Musicians March : Alan Pogue

Posted on March 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Saturday’s Peace Parade takes off from the capitol. Ragphoto by Alan Pogue.

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Beyond Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Posted on March 17, 2008 by RagBlog

Judge calls immigration officials’ decision ‘beyond cruel’
By Henry Weinstein, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 13, 2008

In a stinging ruling, a Los Angeles federal judge said immigration officials’ alleged decision to withhold a critical medical test and other treatment from a detainee who later died of cancer was “beyond cruel and unusual” punishment.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson allows the family of Francisco Castaneda to seek financial damages from the government.

Castaneda, who suffered from penile cancer, died Feb. 16. Before his release from custody last year, the government had refused for 11 months to authorize a biopsy for a growing lesion, even though voluminous government records showed that several doctors said the test was urgently needed, given Castaneda’s condition and a family history of cancer, Pregerson said.

But rather than test and treat Castaneda, government officials told him to be patient and prescribed antihistamines, ibuprofen and extra boxer shorts, the judge wrote in a decision released late Tuesday. In summary, the judge wrote, the care provided to Castaneda “can be characterized by one word: nothing.”

Pregerson blasted public health officials’ “attempt to sidestep responsibility for what appears to be . . . one of the most, if not the most, egregious” violations of the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment that “the court has ever encountered.”

At this stage of the proceedings, “the only question is whether” the plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, show that government officials “were deliberately indifferent to his condition. The court finds that they do,” Pregerson said.

Read all of it here.

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Free Rodney Reed

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Walter Reed, father of Rodney Reed.

National Phone Jam For Rodney Reed
March 17 and 18: Demand a new trial for Rodney Reed!

Oral arguments in Rodney’s case are being heard Wednesday, March 19 by the notorious Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. We are asking everyone to phone and email the CCA and the Texas Attorney General to ask for a new trial for Rodney Reed.

The presiding judge of the CCA, Judge Sharon Keller, has come under fire recently for denying the appeal of Michael Richard — the last person to be executed in Texas as a national de facto moratorium on executions took effect — because she was unwilling to keep the court open after 5 PM. With the life of an innocent man in the hands of this court, we need to ratchet up the pressure.

Rodney Reed deserves a new trial, where evidence of his innocence can finally be heard in court. Evidence was hidden by police and prosecutors that implicates another suspect in the murder of Stacey Stites. Read the attached fact sheet for an overview of the case. Rodney’s defense has long posited that Jimmy Fennell, the fiance of Stacey, is the more likely suspect in this crime.

FreeRodneyKing.org

For recent developments surrounding Jimmy Fennell check out:

http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/07/0107fennell.html
and http://www.statesman.com/news%20/content/news/stories/local/03%20/09/0309fennell.html

PLEASE CONTACT:
TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS (512)463-1551
ATTORNEY GENERAL GREG ABBOTT (512)463-2100

ATTEND ORAL ARGUMENTS IN THE CASE OF RODNEY REED,
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 9 A.M.
TEXAS COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEALS, 201 14TH STREET

Enter through glass doors on plaza which face out to Congress on north side of Capitol. The courtroom should be on the right, or ask at the desk for directions.

Freerodneyreed.org, myspace.com/cedpaustin
494-0667 or cedpaustin@gmail.com

The Case For Rodney Reed;
The Case Against Capital Punishment

Although shocking, Rodney’s case is anything but unique in a criminal justice system marked by race and class bias. Reed—a Black man of less than modest means living in rural Texas—was convicted by an all-white jury. His relationship with Stites, a white woman, was taboo in this context. His original trial lawyers, who are Black, publicly stated that they were afraid to stay overnight in Bastrop during the trial, yet they were still expected by the courts to mount the most rigorous defense possible.

Today, Black men constitute just over twelve percent of the nation’s population, but occupy nearly half of the spots on U.S. death rows. Furthermore, nearly all of those sentenced to death relied on notoriously inadequate court-appointed attorneys or (in states other than Texas, which has no public defender system) public defenders without the necessary resources to investigate and defend capital cases.

As Rodney and his family await the CCA decision, local activist groups, led by the Austin chapter of Campaign to End the Death Penalty (CEDP), are working to raise public awareness about the Reed case. The case has received a significant boost in visibility with the award-winning documentary State vs. Reed. These next few weeks are crucial in the fight for justice for Rodney Reed. The judges on the Court need only briefly survey the existing analysis and discussion surrounding this case to see that there is a consensus supporting a new trial for Reed.

The fight goes well beyond winning a new trial for Rodney. The United States is alone among industrialized democratic countries in its use of capital punishment, and Texas has become an icon for this barbaric practice. Rodney Reed is only one of 391 people on death row in Texas, many of whom have experienced the similar miscarriages of justice. If we see the flaws in Rodney’s case, we must begin to call the entire institution into question.

Readers may write the CCA on Rodney’s behalf (at Court of Criminal Appeals, PO Box 12308, Capitol Station, Austin, Texas 78711) and sign the petition online. Our legislators, Governor Rick Perry, and all those vying for office in the upcoming elections must also get the message that the costs of the lives ruined by the death penalty far outweigh any benefit in carrying on Texas’ tradition of executions.

Dana Cloud / The University of Texas at Austin / The Rag Blog

CEDP’s 2007-2008 National Speaking Tour
A Broken System – Crying out For Justice
In Austin, April 9, 2008
At UT, The Texas Union, Chicano Culture Room

Featuring Mothers of Texas Death Row Prisoners:
Anna Terrell — mother of Reginald Blanton
Lee Greenwood — mother of Joseph Nichols, killed March 7, 2007
Sandra Reed — mother of Rodney Reed

Also a “Live From Death Row” Event, with a live call from a death row prisoner.

Campaign to End the Death Penalty Weekly Meeting
Wednesdays at 7 p.m.
In NOA Rm. 1.116 on UT Campus
(on Wichita a block north of Dean Keeton)

The CEDP will be building the panel event “A Broken System – Crying Out For Justice,”coming up on April 9, and featuring mothers of death row prisoners.

A lot of our work will center on ongoing campaigns, such as the case of Rodney Reed, and of D.R.I.V.E. – the group of death row prisoners organizing for better prison conditions. With no executions happening, this is a good time to seize the momentum on this issue and get involved in ending executions forever.

Justice for Rodney Reed — an innocent man on Texas’ death row. http://www.freerodneyreed.org/

Stefanie Collins / The Rag Blog

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Gotcha’ Bank Right Here…

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

George W. Bush puts an optimistic spin on purchasing Bear Stearns for $2 per share when it traded last year for $159.

BuckFush.com
Thanks to Jim Baldauf / The Rag Blog

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Nostalgia for Saddam?

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Only Saddam Hussein could run Iraq, says aide

By Damien McElroy / Telegraph.co.uk / March 16, 2008

Baghdad — A prominent figure in the Iraqi opposition movement that helped propel America and Britain to war in 2003 has said the country would be better off if Saddam Hussein was still in power.

Lufti Saber, once a key lieutenant of the first post-Saddam Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has a ringside seat on the new Baghdad regime as an aide to the American-led military coalition. But the political manoeuvring and administrative incompetence he has witnessed on a daily basis has led the former political prisoner to radically revise his views of the invasion of Iraq.

“None of these people trust each other,” he said. “Everything comes down to that. The whole system is set up to ensure that nobody does anything that somebody else thinks is wrong.”Saddam had a way of rising above that. As soon as he made a decision, it happened.

People knew it had to be done. It didn’t matter where they were in the country, they knew the floor at work had to be cleaned, just in case Saddam turned up. Now the country is engulfed in chaos and nobody does anything because they all refuse to take responsibility.”

Iraq marks the fifth anniversary of the US-led invasion this week, plagued by problems seen only in failed states.

Many former supporters of the invasion share a bleak outlook on the country’s future prospects, though polls show general population retains hopes for the future.

Mr Saber spent eight years on death row during Saddam’s dictatorship before he was release in an eve of battle amnesty.

He had worked for Dr Allawi’s Iraq National Accord, which in the mid-1990s was based in the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq.

Before his arrest, Mr Saber was instrumental in orchestrating a failed coup within the senior military ranks in 1996.

“I never thought I would say it given that he sentenced me to death,” he said. “But I find myself wishing Saddam was still here. Only he had the knack of running this god-forsaken country.”

Despite the failure of the putative putsch, Dr Allawi, a secular Shi’ite Muslim from a prominent Baghdad merchant family, emerged as a close ally of Western intelligence agencies, including MI6 and the CIA.

After the invasion, he stood as one of a handful of potential leaders of a new government.
But Washington installed an interim administration, the Coalition Provision Authority, which struggled to establish its authority.

By the time Dr Allawi accepted a leather-bound portfolio certifying his appointment as interim prime minister in July 2004, a multi-pronged insurgency had already taken root.

With Iraqi’s splitting along confessional lines, there was no prospect of the kind of revitalised secular state he sought flourishing.

Fundamentalist Shi’ite political parties triumphed in the 2005 elections and have held sway ever since.

Baghdad, once a cluttered stew of religious and ethnic groups, emerged from the 2006 civil war as a predominately Shi’te city, pocketed with Sunni enclaves.

When Saddam was executed in 2006, Shi’te politicians danced around his body. Mr Saber suffered in the sweep of violence across the city.

“My home is in Ameriya district, which was mixed but is now exclusively Sunni,” he said.

“I’ve had to move to a flat which is an area that is protected. My family are in Syria. It is unbelievable to me that I am so close to not being able to live in my country.”

Read all of it here.

From Harry Edwards / The Rag Blog
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A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall

Posted on March 17, 2008 by RagBlog

U.S. Chief Auditor Leaves: Giving Dire Warning About National Debt
By David S. Broader

16/03/08 “Washington Post” — -It was sheer coincidence that David M. Walker spent his last day Wednesday as comptroller general of the United States at the same time that the House and Senate were beginning to debate their budget resolutions for next year.

As the head of the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, Walker has been perhaps the most outspoken official in Washington warning of the fiscal train wreck that awaits this country unless it mends its ways.

The budget resolutions approved last week both envisage an increase in the deficit next year. The Senate predicts $366 billion, the House $340 billion. Meanwhile, over the next five years, independent estimates are that the national debt, already $9 trillion, will grow by $2 trillion more. Almost half the government debt owed to banks or individuals is held by foreign creditors, notably China, Japan and the OPEC nations, up from 13 percent five years ago.

Both resolutions forecast a balanced budget in 2012, but they use the same dubiously optimistic assumptions President Bush employed to make the same claim for his tax-and-spending proposal. Once again, the hard choices are being pushed off to some hazy future.

For much of his nine years as comptroller general, and with increasing urgency in recent times, Walker has been warning policymakers in Washington and audiences around the country that this nation is courting disaster by not paying its bills.

Last week, he cautioned in a speech that “largely due to the aging of the baby boomers and rising health care costs, the United States faces decades of red ink. . . . If the United States continues as it has, policymakers will eventually have to raise taxes or slash government services that U.S. citizens depend on and take for granted. . . . Over time, the U.S. government could be reduced to doing little more than mailing out Social Security checks to retirees and paying interest on the massive national debt.”

Even as a nonpartisan employee of Congress, Walker has been blunt enough to say, again and again, that “at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and on both sides of the political aisle, there are too few leaders who face the facts” about this fiscal mess.

When I went to see Walker two days before he left office, he told me he had begun to realize he was pushing the limits on advocacy at the GAO. So he jumped at the opportunity offered him by Peter G. Peterson, the son of Greek immigrants who made a fortune as a Wall Street investment banker. Peterson has created a foundation bearing his name and promised to fund it with $1 billion over a period of years. Walker is now running it.

The foundation’s main focus will be to spur action to curb the deficits, but other target areas will include education, especially fiscal literacy and civics, energy conservation and nonproliferation of nuclear and biological weapons.

Read all of it here.

Today We’re All Irish: Debt Serfdom Comes to America
By Dr. Ellen Brown

17/03/08 “Global Research” — – March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day, when people of all national origins raise a glass and declare, “Today we’re all a bit Irish!” This may be truer than we know. The Irish were driven to America by debt, and they are leading the Western world in household debt today. The London Daily Telegraph reported on March 13, 2008 that household debt in Ireland has reached 190 percent of disposable income, the highest in the developed world; and that the Irish banking system is suffering such acute strains from the downturn in the housing market that it may have to nationalize its banks.1 The same may soon be happening in the United States, and for much the same reasons.

Debt Drives the Irish to America

A short review of the history of the Irish in North America reveals that few were here before 1845, when a disease struck the potato crops of Ireland, wiping out the chief or only source of food for many poor farmers. Famine continued for the next five years, killing over 2.5 million people. “God put the blight on the potatoes,” complained the Irish farmers, “but England put the hunger upon Ireland.” Farmers who were heavily in debt were shipped to England to pay the rent owed to their landlords. Impoverished Irish immigrants saved what little money they could to send family members across the Atlantic, traveling on overcrowded ships on which many died of disease or hunger on the way. When they arrived, the Irish men had to fight – often physically – to get labor jobs involving long hours and low pay; while the women worked mainly as servants (called “Brigets”) to upper-class families. Despite their very low wages, they managed to send a bit of money back to their families, until other family members had enough to buy the ship tickets to America. In the American South (mainly New Orleans), the Irish lived in swamp land infested with disease. Here, Irish men were looked upon as actually lower than slaves. As one historian put it, if a plantation owner lost a slave, he lost an investment; if he lost a laborer, he could always get another. Because the Irish workers were plentiful and expendable, they were often sent in to do dangerous jobs for which the slave-owners were reluctant to send their valuable slaves.2

“Debt Slavery” Replaces Physical Slavery

This form of “debt slavery” or “debt peonage” was not just an accidental development of history. It was a deliberately-planned alternative to the slave arrangement in which owners were responsible for the feeding and care of a dependent population, and it is still with us today. Although European financiers were in favor of an American Civil War that would return the United States to its colonial status, they admitted privately that they were not necessarily interested in preserving slavery. They preferred “the European plan”: capital could exploit labor by controlling the money supply, while letting the laborers feed themselves. In July 1862, this ploy was revealed in a notorious document called the Hazard Circular, which was circulated by British banking interests among their American banking counterparts. It said:

Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are glad of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. This can be done by controlling the money. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war, must be used as a means to control the volume of money. To accomplish this, the bonds [government debt to the bankers] must be used as a banking basis. . . . It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that.

A system of “debt peonage” is inextricably linked to a banking system in which money is issued privately by bankers and lent to the government rather than being issued as “greenbacks” by the government itself Today the “European plan” has evolved into the private central banking system, and it has come to dominate the economies of the world. A private central bank creates money simply by printing it or entering it as an accounting entry, then lends it to the federal government in exchange for government bonds or debt. Private commercial banks create many more dollars in the same way, advancing money created as accounting-entry loans without even incurring the cost of a printing press. Except for coins, the entire U.S. money supply is now created as a debt to private bankers.4 Banks create the principal but not the interest necessary to pay back their loans, so more money is always owed back than was put into the money supply in the first place. More loans must therefore continually be taken out to cover the interest, spiraling the economy into increasing levels of debt and inflation, in a futile attempt to repay principal and interest on a debt that is actually impossible to repay. The result is “debt peonage,” and it has systematically reduced the people to working for the company store, bound to their corporate masters for the food, shelter and health care formerly provided by slave owners under the old physical-slave system.

Read the rest here.

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Police watch riot at SXSW

Posted on March 16, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Fucked Up fucks up.

Music fans leap into river to escape chaos
By NME.com / Mar 15, 2008

A riot occurred in the early hours of this morning (March 15) on Lamar Pedestrian Bridge in the midst of the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, during an impromptu party gig by hardcore rockers Fucked Up.

Fucked Up were playing an unofficial gig at around 4 a.m., when fans who had attended SXSW gigs earlier in the night began congregating. Soon around 1,000 fans were on the bridge. Fired up by the music, the fans began to mosh, creating a mosh-pit 30-people wide.

The bridge began to buckle and bounce under the weight of the crowd, which prompted many fans to jump into the river to escape. Police soon arrived at the scene, but realised that they were powerless to halt the riot and could do nothing but wait until it quelled.

Fucked Up’s guitarist, Mike Haliechuck told NME.COM that he thought the bridge was going to collapse, explaining why fans felt they had to jump into the water.“I could feel the bridge going up and down – it was crazy,” he said. “The police couldn’t do anything, so they just had to wait.”

It is not thought that any fans were hurt in the incident.

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