The Rag Blog

As most know, and as he said himself, speaking out against the war in Vietnam was for Martin Luther King, a breakthrough. It’s not that he wasn’t aware of war’s immorality prior to that point, but that he was concerned that his speaking out against the war might jeopardize the civil rights movement in which he was a part and a leader.

In other words, he feared he might lose the support of those who he’d struggled so deeply to gather by broadening his stance, by speaking true to his conscience. So he compromised. And I’m not talking about the good kind of compromise, the cooperating with your fellow human-being kind of compromise. I’m talking about the kind of compromise that dissolves the essence of your self.

He felt the dissolution. And finally, he came to a point where he could no longer watch his soul torn apart, because after all, it was the human soul that Martin Luther King most vigorously pursued—the soul, complete and true. And he stood up and he said, “A time comes when silence is betrayal.”

I know something about compromise myself. Compromise is a definitive element of any large institution such as a the military. The instincts and proclivities of an institution so often run counter to the individuals that make it up, and so often run counter to any common sense at all, that its members are left shaking their heads in bewilderment.

Like the day my unit flew to Iraq, and we had to turn in our cuticle scissors at the security gate as we boarded the plane with automatic rifles and machine guns slung over our shoulders. But we shrugged and smiled and tossed our scissors in a box and we moved on. In that case, only scissors were lost. In many others, however, we lost much more.

I went to war on the notion that we, the United States military, were going to do good for the Iraqi people, that we were going to help. And so when we rendered more misery than relief, when I saw my own head and hands playing into all the killing, I felt distinctly saddened. Yet I did nothing. I said nothing. I pressed on with the fight. Why?

I made a deal with myself. I compromised. “Hang in there boy,” I urged myself. “Hang in there until you can take command, until you’re in control. Then you’ll do it better. Then you’ll make good on your word.” I don’t know an officer in any outfit, in any clime or place, who hasn’t made that same promise many times throughout his or her life.

There are a few careerists out there, running around in hot pursuit of individual glory, but in my experience, most officers wanted deeply to do the right thing. And I thought earnestly that through those harmless compromises that popped up incidentally here and there, I could mitigate any harm done by doing some real good.

In Iraq, it was no different. I’ll make good, I told myself. But I never did. I let all those gray episodes of lethality whither into the silence. Our silence. My silence. Iraqi men were shot for walking outside past curfews we imposed. Others were shot for skulking in the darkness near roads we patrolled. And still others were shot for driving their cars near checkpoints we established.

None of them were armed. But they “could have been the enemy” we reasoned. And so I wrote down in our operations log that they were. That is how they will go down in history—as the enemy. That’s how they’ll be remembered.

When I finally took command of my own rifle company, I was happy and proud. And I was gloomy at the same time. It finally struck me that one cannot compromise one’s morality in a bargain today to achieve some greater morality on some later date. It doesn’t work. So I resigned. And from that point forward I vowed never to compromise what I believed in.

That is why I now say no, in response to those who suggest I should vote for this popular candidate, or that one, because they are the only ones who have any chance of winning. No, I say, to them. No, I will not vote for a candidate just to be on the winning side. I’ve done that before and it pays no dividends to the conscience. I will vote as I believe, and in doing so I will be complete and true to myself—even in losing.

That, I think, is what Martin Luther King was saying on April 4, 1967. That is what he meant when he said, “Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world. But we must move on.”

Any doubts as to the president’s sincerity in committing himself to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process were increased, not dispelled, by his performance once he left Israel for Abu Dhabi. There he delivered a speech portrayed by his aides as the “centerpiece” of his Middle East trip. It focused on Iran as the threat to peace and attempted to reassert his commitment to democratic trends in the region. No mention was made of Israel or the Palestinians, a serious disconnect from the reality perceived by his hosts who consider the ongoing Palestinian-Israeli issue, not Iran, as a far greater threat to regional stability and their own security against popular unrest.

Were there any good signs from Bush’s visit to Israel and the West Bank? Upon arriving at Ben-Gurion airport he immediately lambasted Hamas for undermining the Gazan economy, spurring CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman to post a story on babies dying in Gaza hospitals because of the American-backed Israeli blockade of most goods in and out of the area; no similar story appeared in the mainstream media. But Bush’s Israeli hosts were concerned. Prime Minister Olmert’s airport welcome was so effusive that many winced. Olmert had himself given an interview a week before where he had said that many “painful decisions” would be necessary regarding withdrawal from West Bank settlements. The question remains whether the pain Olmert forsees for Israelis by confronting settlers will be sufficient to meet minimum Palestinian expectations regarding the borders of a viable Palestinian state.

To his credit, Bush did speak openly of the need for Israel to end its “occupation” of Arab land. Israelis bristled at the word “occupation.” He referred to a “viable, contiguous, and sovereign” state, indicating that the Israeli right of oversight of Palestinian movements would be curtailed. He also called for the end of settlement building and removal of unauthorized outposts. But much of this can be reinterpreted to mean something quite different than what one might expect.

What does the word “contiguous” signify? Ariel Sharon referred to “transportational contiguity” for Palestinians on the West Bank. He meant that Israeli settlements and bypass roads would remain, some such as Maale Adumim virtually cutting the West Bank in half. Palestinians could connect between the northern and southern areas by means of tunnels under the Israeli bypass roads, overseen by Israeli troops on the roads above. That’s not exactly what contiguity usually means. Olmert himself has referred to contiguity with the idea that Gaza and the West Bank must be connected to form one Palestinian state; no mention of West Bank contiguity that could only be assured by removal of Malae Adumim. Olmert is adamant that that settlement will remain part of Israel.

Indeed, Israel officials can rely on Bush’s April 2004 letter, written with the aid of Elliott Abrams of the NSC, assuring Sharon that the “facts on the ground,” major population areas in the West Bank, could remain part of Israel. But where some might think that referred only to the Etzion and similar blocs close to Jerusalem, Israeli officials appear to have other towns in mind, including Ariel, an town that thrusts well into the northern West Bank and around which the security barrier is being extended. Once Bush had left, Israeli officials said with assurance that major settlement expansion would continue.

In such circumstances, we should not expect that any Palestinian leader, however conciliatory he might wish to be, could accept such a process where the “painful concessions” amounted to very little from a Palestinian perspective. Olmert may fear his settler constituency and civil war if required to abandon many settlements, but Abbas’s position depends on achieving nearly the maximum possible with respect to Israeli-occupied land across the 1967 Green Line.

Interestingly, Secretary of State Condalezza Rice appears more determined to confront the issues than President Bush. She has been cited in the Israeli press as saying that Israeli treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank reminds her of her childhood as a black woman in the American south. Strong stuff. But if Olmert feels he can bypass her and rely on Abrams to get to Bush, he may not feel too threatened.

Under the circumstances, with Bush far more focused on Iran than the Palestinians, we should not expect too much for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Bush has strong emotional ties to Israel, fueled by his helicopter survey of the West Bank with Ariel Sharon in 1998. As the Washington Post reported, Bush viewed the ten-mile width of Israel within its 1967 borders and quipped that there were driveways in Texas longer than that. What the Post did not note was that Bush made that remark at the AIPAC convention in spring 2000 as he appealed for Jewish support in the election campaign.

As Olmert noted in his Jerusalem Post interview, Israel faced the quandary of either withdrawing from much of the West Bank, to ensure a Jewish state, or retaining hold and taking on governance of the Palestinian population, denying the possibility of a Jewish state. Recognizing the dilemma and doing something about it are two different things. It is more likely that Olmert may hope that Palestinian rejection of a supposedly generous offer -recall the fictional narrative of what happened at Camp David 2000- will enable him to evade confrontation with the settlers. But such evasion threatens rather than ensures Israel’s security in the long term. Mahmud Abbas, on his part, must demand almost full Israeli withdrawal or be forced out of office. In such circumstances, what Olmert views as necessary for his political survival, which includes escaping assassination by settlers, will likely be what Abbas cannot accept if he himself wishes to survive.

Serious discussions of these matters may await a new administration. If Democratic, it will likely include Dennis Ross overseeing the supposed peace process. That is not encouraging. Ross essentially falsified the information he gave the American public on the Oslo process and Camp David. He willingly acknowledged to a European audience in Charles Enderlin’s Shattered Dreams [now in English] that Israel was as responsible for the failure of the peace process as the Palestinians. He specifically mentioned Israeli settlement building from 1993 onward to 2000. In his memoir for Americans, The Missing Peace, he never mentions Israeli settlements after the year 1993, thus evading the 1993-2000 period he mentions in Enderlin.

So Many Americans Support False Change Agents, Securing the Political Status Quo

The good news is the huge pent up public demand for political change. The bad news is that presidential candidates have made a mockery of the concept of change while ignoring true political reforms. Missing are details about fixing the corrupt, dysfunctional political system and restoring balance among the three branches of government and between the states and the federal government.

So what kind of change do people want? The Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey last month of both Democrats and Republicans found 24 percent of voters favor “small adjustments” in America, 29 percent want “moderate corrections,” but 46 percent thankfully seek “major reforms” and a “brand-new” approach.

When people rally behind false change agents something worse than being disappointed and having their hopes killed happens: the national energy for real change is wasted. In the end, false change agents protect the status quo political establishment. Hope is replaced by despair for disaffected anti-establishment masses. The worst false change agent is Ron Paul.

An early sign of trouble was that Paul supporters seemed to worship him as if he is the long-awaited savior for America, akin to one of our Founding Fathers. In their writing and behavior they seem like members of a cult, not thoughtful political activists open to new information. They don’t appreciate the need to have disagreements without being disagreeable. Though their hero speaks of persuasion, his supporters express obnoxious in-your-face anger, disparagement, and intimidation. They show disdain for others that want major political change but do not support Paul.

For years before he became a Republican presidential candidate I had admired Paul for his maverick behavior in Congress and had a very pleasant meeting with him. But I had doubts about most of his policy goals, and his use of pork spending earmarks to get billions of dollars for his district was troubling. Paul remains a change talker, not a change agent.

The more I examined what he wanted to do as president the more he looked like the emperor with no clothes. He never produced detailed plans on how he would use new legislation, presidential actions or constitutional amendments. This is especially important for his drastic changes, such as eliminating much of the federal government and putting the country’s currency back on the gold standard. His supporters never seem to demand details. Paul and his supporters exhibit therapeutic activism: activism that makes them feel good but lacks details necessary to convince others.

Yes, I have advocated a Second American Revolution and Paul’s supporters also want a revolution. But a revolution requires leaders that can communicate so effectively with diverse Americans that massive public support results. Paul and his supporters give freedom their highest priority, but do not welcome the exercise of freedom by Americans to reject their beliefs. As Gary Wood, a Paul supporter correctly observed: “You will create more damage to our cause than good if you continue to spew hatred and poisonous venom rather than reason and kindness. Threats and nasty vile hatred will not spread our message; only detract from the importance of liberty and freedom.”

Paul, the professed champion of the Constitution, brings it up in virtually every public statement and claims to believe in a strict reading of it. But he refuses to honor what is in Article V: the option the Founders gave us to have state delegates in a convention consider proposals for constitutional amendments. The one and only numeric requirement in Article V has been more than satisfied, as explained at www.foavc.org. Yet Paul has not demanded that members of Congress obey Article V and their oath of office to obey the Constitution. This is no trivial matter.

You would think he would honor the purpose of the Article V convention option: a way to circumvent an ineffective federal government and restore balance between it and the states. Paul should use his candidacy to make a public commitment to get the nation’s first Article V convention. That would be revolutionary.

Nor has Paul not forcefully criticized the two-party stranglehold on the political system, despite once losing as a Libertarian Party presidential candidate pushing the same policy ideas. Nor has he clamored for the impeachment of George W. Bush, whose foreign policies contradict Paul’s isolationist beliefs. No reason for Paul to be concerned about Bush supporters, only 4 percent of Republicans support Paul. And thankfully, citizens in Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire (a Libertarian stronghold), and now Michigan have not succumbed to Paul’s demonology. Despite having considerable money Paul has won no delegates.

Whether other candidates are true reformers remains doubtful. Obama’s glib talk of more bipartisanship smacks of protecting the status quo political establishment. Huckabee’s religiosity and Romney’s automaton personality are plain frightening, as are McCain’s and Giuliani’s bellicose beliefs. Edwards looks like the real thing, but like Kucinich has been out spent by Obama and the ever phony Clinton whose change priority is moving back into the White House.

1. Summary

— The United States has committed and sponsored the crime of genocide in Iraq.

— Responsibility for genocide rests on specific intent and given or probable consequences of actions. The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was the culmination and intensification of a consistent US policy, spanning over 17 years, of destroying Iraq as a national and state entity.

— The United States attempted and succeeded to destroy the state of Iraq, but has failed and cannot succeed in its attempt to destroy the nation of Iraq.

— The Iraqi people have the legal right to resist occupation, colonialism and genocide by all available means, including armed struggle.

— The national popular resistance in Iraq is combating genocide directly where international law as a preventative and protective mechanism has failed.

— In defence of civilisation, people the world over should rise up in support of the national liberation struggle of the Iraqi people.

— In defence of international law, jurists and law associations should work to bring the charge of genocide against the United States, its leaders and its allies.

15/01/08 “LewRockwell” — – On October 19, 2001, in speaking about the new government controls and heightened surveillance already being clamped on the American people in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney said that the new war “may never end. At least not in our lifetime. . . . The way I think of it is, it’s a new normalcy.” We should have taken his grim forecast more seriously.

The U.S. attack on and occupation of Iraq, represented by the Bush administration as a critical element in the larger Global War on Terror, began nearly five years ago, and it shows no signs of ending soon. Indeed, if John McCain is elected president and (with help from his successors) carries out the not-so-veiled threat to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for a hundred years, then we can confidently expect that the war will not end in our lifetime. Such a prospect is so seemingly preposterous, however, that one’s mind does not readily assimilate it.

It is difficult enough to absorb the reality that the United States has now been at war against the Iraqis for almost five years. An engagement sold to the public as a “cakewalk” and represented just six weeks after it began as a “mission accomplished” has now (as I write) continued for 1,760 days. Compare this duration with the time the United States was formally engaged in World War I (589 days) or World War II (1,365 days). In the 1940s, the U.S. forces (with important allies, to be sure) defeated two major economic and military powers in a globe-circling war in less time than the U.S. forces have been engaged in Iraq.

And after all this time, where does the U.S. venture stand? Evidently it is no closer to the “victory” the president has repeatedly said he seeks than it was immediately after the occupation began. The 901 U.S. troops who lost their lives in Iraq during 2007 were the largest number in any calendar year since the war began. As 2008 begins, we read reports of a U.S. air strike on the outskirts of Baghdad in which B-1 bombers and F-16 fighters dropped 40,000 pounds of explosives, an attack described by Major Alayne Conway as “one of the largest airstrikes since the onset of the war.” The attack came only a day after six U.S. soldiers participating in a major ground offensive were reported killed in the “biggest one-day loss in Iraq since May.” These events do not epitomize minor “mopping up” activities. The war obviously has no end in sight.

Notwithstanding these inauspicious developments and Senator McCain’s bizarre pronouncement, we might well think in a more focused way about what will ultimately bring the war to an end, because it almost certainly will end someday. Given its nature, it cannot be ended as each of the world wars was ended, by the formal capitulation of an enemy state. Loosely organized insurgents and guerrillas do not stop fighting in that fashion. In view of the particulars on the ground in Iraq, it would seem that no complete cessation of armed hostilities can occur there until the United States withdraws its military forces. So the question becomes: What will induce a future U.S. president or a future U.S. Congress to act decisively to bring the troops home?

In the abstract, the answer is easy: U.S. authorities will extract their occupation force when they perceive that doing so is in their interest. Note well that I said, “in their interest.” Whether a U.S. withdrawal serves my interest, or yours, or that of 95 percent of the American people is not necessarily important, because government leaders do not act to serve other people’s interests. Anyone who has advanced beyond infancy in his understanding of political affairs knows that despite all the dutiful claptrap that political leaders and their functionaries spout in public, they invariably pursue their own interests. Those interests may be material, political, institutional, or ideological, but in any event they are their own interests, not yours or mine.

It follows directly that up to this point the continued prosecution of the war has served the leaders’ interests. They may say they are trying to end the war. They may have secured their election or reelection, as many of the Democrats now serving in Congress have, by promising to do whatever they can to end the war. Yet the truth is that they’ve sold the public a bill of goods. When the leaders have considered all the personal consequences they expect to follow from acting to end the war, they have concluded that, all things being considered, doing so does not serve their interest, and therefore they have refrained from doing so.

After all, it’s not as though the U.S. war effort has a mind of its own. Whenever the president wants to remove the troops, he can do so; he has the power. Whenever the members of the majority in Congress want to remove the troops, by stopping the funding to support them there, they can do so; they have the power. The posture of powerlessness that our leaders often affect – my goodness, what can I do? my hands are tied – is a disingenuous pose. They can stop the U.S. engagement in the war whenever they want to do so. Thus far, they simply have not wanted to do so.

What might cause them to reach a new conclusion about what serves their personal interest? Several developments might turn the trick. Nearly all of them work by heightening the public’s anger with their leaders’ decisions.

Historically, the decisive development in similar instances has been the cumulation of public costs, especially the costs in life and limb. In both the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the public’s disfavor of the engagement closely tracked the cumulation of casualties. As political scientist John Mueller showed in his book War, Presidents, and Public Opinion, “every time American casualties increased by a factor of 10, support for the war dropped by about 15 percentage points” in the polls.

One reason the public has continued to tolerate their leaders’ continued prosecution of the war in Iraq is that the casualties have not been nearly so great, by an order of magnitude, as they were in Korea and Vietnam. So far, not quite 4,000 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq. That’s only one death for every 75,000 persons living in the United States, and therefore the loss of life has not cut deeply into the public psyche – most Americans have not been personally acquainted with anyone killed in the war. (The vastly greater loss of Iraqi lives seems to have made even less impression.) Sad to say, the public may not turn decisively against their leaders’ continued prosecution of the war until many more American soldiers have died.

Economic costs have also mounted, and they have loomed relatively much larger in this war than in the earlier wars in Korea and Vietnam. Who says the military leaders never learn? They’ve certainly learned how to increase hugely the financial costs of fighting a war. Estimates of the costs to date vary widely, depending on how one accounts for various joint, indirect, and implied costs, but a total cost to date in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars is not implausible, and later costs, including those associated with decades of care for the war’s legions of physically and mentally disabled, will add enormously to the total.

In earlier wars, even though the costs were relatively greater in blood than in dollars, the public eventually wearied of the economic sacrifices entailed by the financial expenses of continued fighting. Economist Hugh Mosley concluded that the Johnson administration “was reluctant to resort to increased taxes to finance the war for fear of losing public support for its policy of military escalation.” Historian Stephen Ambrose wrote that President Richard Nixon “realized that for economic reasons (the war was simply costing too much) and for the sake of domestic peace and tranquility he had to cut back on the American commitment to Vietnam”; the retrenchment was “forced on [him] by public opinion.”

As the recession that has just begun deepens, the public may well object more strenuously to the government’s squandering of such vast amounts of tax money on a senseless continuation of the war in Iraq. When their purses are not so full, people may resent every additional dollar spent on the war more than they did previously. Ultimately, they may become so angry that they will take actions to punish severely the political leaders who continue to support the war. Serious political challengers may attract a mass following by embracing the example of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who promised in the 1952 campaign to end the enormously unpopular war in Korea and, after he took office, kept his promise expeditiously.

When substantial negative feedback begins to jeopardize the personal job security, not to speak of the respect and fawning, the electorate affords incumbents, they will begin to take notice, and to discount more heavily the contributions from defense contractors, big financial establishments, petrochemical companies, and other high rollers who have encouraged them to stay the hopeless course – though not hopeless for these special interests, of course; for them it has been a bonanza. George W. Bush parlayed a campaign of fear-mongering into his reelection in 2004, but unless another major terrorist attack occurs in the United States, the public will grow increasingly resistant to such appeals and more eager to throw the rascals out as the war’s costs continue to mount.

It is extremely unfortunate that escalating costs in blood and money are the only proven means of bringing the general public to resist strongly their political leaders who are committed to a continuation of unnecessary, unwise, and immoral war. Some of us wish that rational argument, cogent evidence, and humane sentiment would persuade a preponderance of the public to demand an end to the war. History suggests, however, that only personal grief and economic pain will induce the American public to act against their perfidious leaders. Needless to say, if the public remains as passive and as easily bamboozled as it has been during the past seven years, the war will continue, maybe even for the hundred years in which Senator McCain declares that a U.S. occupation of Iraq would be “fine with me.”

Robert Higgs is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. His most recent book is Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government. He is also the author of Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society.

As the news and most bloggers become totally engrossed with the process of selecting the next big kahoona, I received a small check in the mail which reminded me of the original thesis of this blog.

It was a check from my food co-op.

It says, “due to our successful operations this year, the board of directors has authorized a refund of part of our net savings to qualifying member patrons. This check represents a refund of approximately 1.02% of your purchases during the year. This 20% of the total amount allocated in your name, with 80% retained by the co-op to help fund our expansion project. Assuming your purchases were for personal,living, or family expenses, this rebate is not subject to federal income tax.

“Please Cash this Check” and if desired, you can use it on your next shopping trip to the Co-op.

My rebate check is for 12 dollars and 80 cents.

And in all fairness, the 20% return is a pretty good return on my modest investment, not to mention the reductions I enjoyed in all my purchases.

The co-op movement is still very much alive. I also get a small check from my electric co-op membership for my house in the country. In many parts of the country, these electric coops are very important chunks of the electrical infrastructure. In farming areas, large growers band together to own the cotton gin or the grain elevator. Many of these coops such as Pedernales Electric Coop , are large enterprises.

Certainly these organizations can be and often are controlled by a small clique of insiders, but the by-laws and articles of the organization, much like our constitution, are generally inherently democratic.

I started this blog after the Kerry defeat because I felt it was time for us to quit falling for the veneer of democracy that we always fall for every four years. I urged us all to reconsider the amount of energy and money that we invest into a system that has become corrupted and a dangerous diversion from the real work at hand. I urged us all to grow out of our nationalistic tribal cocoons and to emerge as global citizens.

I spoke of giant cyber-coops and of great global aggregations of people and ideas and access. I argued and visioned that someday, in the not so distant future, we would begin to form new inventions of social contract between ourselves and our distant friends and colleagues in cyberspace.

I reasoned that as the world begins to truly grapple with the great issues of the day, that we would do ourselves well by uniting with others in cooperation, rather than counting on the dated idea that competition will most fairly allocate the resources we will seek and require.

True, competition is a pretty good idea in times of wide open spaces, unlimited resources, and a level playing field. But today, we as individuals must compete against the greatest creatures of capital and control that have ever walked on the earth…the multinational corporation. Meanwhile, our finite resources are now recognized to be just that, finite, and our open space is now full of oxydized climate altering carbon.

But don’t fool yourself, the next president (of either party) will represent these corporate leviathons, not the consumers that dutifully stood in the cold and suffered the long lines, and the endless claims of change for a change.

And so now, it is that time again. We are all caught up in the drama. We watch the debates and the returns like a bowl game. We convince ourselves that all we need is a great leader, one who will end the domination of these giant leviathons of wealth.

When, in fact, all we really need is each other cooperating together.

We must flip the system.

Instead of a world of Multinational Corporations and Consumers.

We need a world of Multinational Cooperations and Providers.

Power does not give of itself naturally.

It does not volunteer to distribute itself.

It can be overtaken violently,

or it can be undertaken quietly, steadfastly, bit by bit,

family by family,

Some principles are worth fighting for: like the cherished right of television networks to decide who is and who is not a legitimate candidate for president.0115 03

NBC Universal Inc. is a major media conglomerate. And major media conglomerates have traditionally been able to police the parameters of presidential politics. Any affront to this order of affairs is a threat to the ability of corporations to define the American discourse.

That’s what is at stake as NBC fights to limit the amount of information Nevada Democrats have available to them before the caucuses on Saturday to choose delegates to the Democratic National Convention. So the network has announced that its crack legal team will work through the night to overturn a judge’s order that Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich be included in the last pre-caucus debate between the Democratic presidential contenders.

On the day after the New Hampshire primary, when New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson was still in the race, Kucinich, Richardson, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Illinois Senator Barack Obama and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards were invited to participate in the debate scheduled to be televised on MSNBC from 9 to 11 p.m. Tuesday.

Debate organizers wanted Richardson in the forum and knew that they could not exclude Kucinich, who was running ahead of the New Mexican in several national polls. So they grudgingly contacted the Kucinich campaign, which participated last week in initial planning discussions for the debate.

But when Richardson dropped out of the race on Thursday, the network yanked the invitation to Kucinich, who has stirred up past forums — and distinguished himself from Clinton, Obama and Edwards — by calling for the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, advocating for the impeachment of members of the Bush administration, and even discussing the damage done to the political process by media monopolies.

The Kucinich campaign sued NBC over the network’s decision to conduct a closed debate. And Senior Clark County District Court Judge Charles Thompson ruled Monday that the congressman must be allowed to participate. Arguing that Nevada voters — and, by extension, the Democratic nominating process in which they are playing a high-profile role — would benefit by hearing from more than just NBC-favored contenders Clinton, Obama and Edwards, Judge Thompson said, “I don’t think that just deciding that just three is good enough for the state of Nevada is a legitimate basis (for dropping Kucinich).”

“Had it been established at the beginning that they’ll only take the top three for the debates, I wouldn’t have any problem enforcing it,” the judge explained to NBC’s lawyers. “I’m somewhat offended that a legitimate candidate was invited to a debate and then uninvited under circumstances that appear to be that they just decided to exclude him.”

How offended? Judge Thompson told the network’s lawyers that any move to exclude Kucinich would lead him to issue an injunction to stop the televised debate.

This threat to its ability to police the discourse was an affront that NBC would not let stand. “We disagree with the judge’s decision and are filing an appeal,” declared Jeremy Gaines, a vice president for MSNBC, who announced that the cable channel’s parent network would demand an immediate hearing before the Nevada Supreme Court.

Kucinich’s lawyers will battle to preserve Judge Thompson’s ruling, and the candidate’s right to a participate in the forum. They have fewer resources, but are possessed of one commodity that the broadcast and cable network seem to lack: an understanding that democracy is best served by free and open debate.

Once, when my children were young, one of them rushed into me and said: “Mama, so-and-so said the ‘K’ word.” I don’t remember which one of my children was the tattler, or which one was the tattlee, but I remember the ‘k” word. I could never figure out what the “k” word was, because neither of the children would say that very naughty word.

If all one did was listen or watch the corporate media, one would think that “Impeachment” was a naughty word. I did appear on some cable shows over the summer (before my activism transformed into a Congressional campaign) and was able to outline the rationale for impeachment, but since then, there has been a virtual black-out on the word, or concept.

On January 1st, about 400 impeachment activists hit the Rose Parade with impeachment posters and huge banners. There was some local coverage, but the coverage seemed to surround the issue of “politics is ruining the parade” than the issue of accountability. When we marched at the end of the parade with our large copy of the Preamble of the Constitution and our signs and banners, we were the victims of a lot of violence and rage—name calling up to and including projectiles being thrown at us.

A couple of months of go, I called for America to send handwritten letters to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, via my campaign office. Today was the day that we delivered them to her office. We took over 8,000 letters and over 3,000 signatures on petitions to her office. We had a coalition of Americans represented in the 11,000 total and we had there present: Greens, Progressive Democrats, Peace and Freedom party members, community leaders and activists, and Independents joining hands and hearts to demand what we all think is one of the overriding issues of our time: holding George Bush and Dick Cheney accountable for their crimes against the peace; crimes against humanity; and crimes against the very fabric of what makes America a nation of laws: our Constitution.

Although we had some activists there with cameras and we will be able to put the event up on YouTube, there was not a single representative from the corporate media there to hear from Green Party Presidential hopeful, Cynthia McKinney who was the first Congress rep to introduce articles of impeachment against George Bush before her term expired in 2006.

Not one person from the media came out to hear Minister Christopher Mohammed (from San Francisco’s Bayview Hunter’s Point community) outline the local connection between Speaker Pelosi and her refusal to do her Constitutional duty to impeach George and Dick: she is complicit in the crimes and foxes don’t police the hen house.

That’s okay if the media didn’t show up: it says more about them than us, and we had dozens of patriotic Americans who did show up to help us deliver thousands of letters and we know those people (and more) were there with us in spirit.

Like Cynthia said: We must never give up! When I am elected to Congress and start serving my term, George and Dick will have 17 days to go and I will introduce Articles of Impeachment every day and will not allow them to go riding off into the sunset to enjoy their retirement when they have ruined the lives of millions of people here and all over the world.

The founders of our Representative Republic thought that the “I” word was so important, they included the word six times in the Constitution and the “G” (God) word or “PP” (political parties) word zero times.

Either we have the rule of law or we don’t.

There is still time to support Congressman Bob Wexler (D-Fl) in his efforts to get H Res 799 (Impeachment Articles against Dick) out of committee and off the table and onto the House Floor where they truly belong.

In the agonizingly absurd civil rights “debate” between the supporters of Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I’m with the Lion of Anacostia.

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress,” declared Frederick Douglass in 1857, in response to those who suggested that the great abolitionist was pushing too hard for an end to human bondage. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Douglass understood that the relationship between struggle and power is definitional for those who seek consequential change in the body politic. Both are needed to bend the arc of history toward progress.

As such, it is boneheaded in the extreme to diminish the role of movements in forcing social and political progress. But it is surely just as silly to suggest that who holds power might be of limited or lesser consequence.

If the candidate Hillary Clinton campaigned for in 1964, Republican Barry Goldwater, had been elected, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement would have suffered a setback. Dr. King believed that it was dramatically better for the movement, and for America, that Democrat Lyndon Johnson won that essential presidential election of 44 years ago.

This would appear to be the point that Hillary Clinton was attempting so clumsily — or so calculatingly — to make when she said prior to the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary that, “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.”

Unfortunately, while Clinton’s words may have had some truth in them, her comment came across as precisely the sort of crude and self-serving interpretation of history that Americans expect from the lesser of our leaders. And that it was. By so casually referencing the complex role that civil right agitation played in forging racial progress, she invited the firestorm that has come. Obama is not speaking out of turn, or unreasonably, when he suggests that, “Senator Clinton made an unfortunate remark, an ill-advised remark, about King and Lyndon Johnson… And she, I think, offended some folks who felt that somehow diminished King’s role in bringing about the Civil Rights Act.”

The pettiness of the politics that are on display as we mark the 79th anniversary of King’s birth borders on the grotesque. Surely, there is a measure of comfort to be found in the fact that both leading Democratuc candidats for president want to claim a piece of this country’s civil roghts legacy. But there is nothing graceful, nor reassuring, in the way in which the claims have been staked.

Clinton played games with the nation’s civil rights narrative in order to position herself as a stronger presidential nominee for the Democrats, and Obama’s campaign has effectively slammed her for it. Clinton says she is “personally offended” by the signals coming from the Obama camp with regard to her regard for King and the civil rights movement. Obama glibly stirs the pot by suggesting that he is somehow above the fray while saying of Clinton: “She is free to explain (herself).”

Neither candidate matches the charicature that the campaign of the other invites us to accept. At the same time, neither candidate has cut through the thicket of this distorted debate and reached for the higher ground that might distinguish a contender for the presidency as something more than a politician on the hunt.

Where both Clinton and Obama are misguided is in their shared attempt to score political points rather than to step back from the abyss of an ugly discourse and to seek the clarity that is so frequently absent from our politics.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is using history well or wisely. Neither is telling those of us who recognize the significance of the King-Johnson collaboration – and, for a brief shining moment it was a collaboration – what we need to hear. Neither is answering the fundamental questions: How, as president, would they relate to social and political movements? Would they invite the Martin Kings and the Frederick Douglasses of the twenty-first century to the White House? Would either of these two candidates, as president, sit down with those demanding fundamental change, craft policies with supposed radicals, and coordinate political strategies with influential outsiders – as did both Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and Abraham Lincoln in the 1860s?

Frederick Douglass knew, as did King, that it mattered who held the presidency. An imperfect Lincoln was better than a perfect Jefferson or Jackson. As Douglass explained in remembering the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, “We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States.”

King was similarly clear-eyed about Johnson, a Texas politician who came slowly to the cause of civil rights but was crucial to its advancement. Where the administration of John Kennedy had kept King at arm’s length, Johnson reached out to the man who would win the Nobel Peace Prize during the new president’s first year in office. King said Johnson helped him understand that “new white elements” in the American South might be motivated by a “love of their land (that) was stronger than the grip of old habits and customs.” Johnson, in turn, recognized the necessity of maintaining close ties with King and other civil rights leaders, both because the president valued their insights and because he needed their support.

The president got that support in 1964, when King urged African-American voters to use all of their burgeoning political might to block the candidacy of Goldwater, a conservative Republican who had voted with southern racist Democrats against civil rights legislation. Though Johnson and the civil rights movement had been at odds during the course of the campaign — especially over the question of whether to seat black delegates from Mississippi at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City — there was no question about where the most prominent leader of the movement stood with regard to the fall race. Three days before he was awarded the Nobel Prize, in October, 1964, King abandoned the traditional neutrality of the civil rights movement in presidential politics and delivered a historic address at Brooklyn’s Antioch Baptist Church in which the New York Times reported that he said the “negative” attitudes of the Republican presidential candidate on human, political and constitutional questions had compelled him to call for the crushing defeat of Goldwater

When Goldwater’s candidacy was indeed crushed on November 3, 1964, one of Johnson’s first post-election calls was to King, who said that “the forces of good will and progress have triumphed.”

But the civil rights leader said something else. Rather than place his blind trust in the president to deliver on the promise of justice, King described Johnson’s landslide as “a definite mandate from the American public” to take the civil rights movement deeper into the south, to expand its demands on Washington and to generally raise the level of expectations.

Johnson responded by echoing King’s sense of urgency.

In the same week of December, 1964, that the world heard King accept the peace prize – with his memorable description of the honor as “profound recognition that non-violence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time–the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression” – Johnson appeared before civil rights leaders in Washington and declared that, “There are those who say: It has taken us a century to move this far, and it will take another hundred years to finish the job. Well, I am here to say to you tonight that I do not agree. Great social change tends to come rapidly in periods of intense activity and progress before the impulse slows. I believe we are in the midst of such a period of change.

“There are those who predict that the struggle for full equality in America will be marked by violence and hate; that it will tear at the fabric of our society. Well, for myself, I cannot claim to see so clearly into that future. I just do not agree. I know that racial feelings flow from many deep and resistant sources in our history, in the pattern of our lives and in the nature of man. But I believe there are other forces, that are stronger because they are armed with truth, which will bring us toward our goal in peace. There are our commitments to morality and to justice, which are written in our laws and, more importantly, nourished in the hearts of our people. These commitments, carried forward by men of good will in every part of this land, will lead this nation toward the great and necessary fulfillment of American freedom. In this way, our peoples will once again prove equal to the ideals and the values on which our beloved nation rests.”

That was a remarkable statement coming from a just-reelected president. It confirmed Johnson’s commitment to respond to the demands of the civil rights movement, thus assuring that King’s initiatives had not just the prospect but the likelihood of realization.

That is the unique dynamic of the King-Johnson relationship, the dynamic that created the sort of progress Clinton, Obama and others now struggle to define as somehow being more likely to be replicated under one or the other of them.

What we would do well to demand of both these candidates and their campaigns is something more than the cheap positioning of an election season. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both owe it to America to suggest that they could – and would – recreate the King-Johnson dynamic in order to achieve the progress that is still needed not just along the color line that Frederick Douglass and Martin King struggled to move but along lines of gender, class and sexual orientation.

For meaningful progress to be achieved, movements are necessary.

But so, too, are presidents.

It is when a movement has the ear of a willing president that necessity gives way to something more tangible and potentially transformational: the discussion of how to move from an antiquated here to only-dreamed-of there. In a democracy, this can never be a one-sided discussion – as Martin King and Lyndon Johnson, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln and every other great American combination recognized. The ability of a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama to articulate that recognition in the language of this moment might well make one of them the next president of a nation that longs not for another history lesson but for the making of history.

John Nichols is a co-founder of Free Press and the co-author with Robert W. McChesney of TRAGEDY & FARCE: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy — The New Press.

15/01/08 “Counterpunch” — — The U.S. public holds Big Business in shockingly low regard.

A November 2007 Harris poll found that less than 15 percent of the population believes each of the following industries to be “generally honest and trustworthy:” tobacco companies (3 percent); oil companies (3 percent); managed care companies such as HMOs (5 percent); health insurance companies (7 percent); telephone companies (10 percent); life insurance companies (10 percent); online retailers (10 percent); pharmaceutical and drug companies (11 percent); car manufacturers (11 percent); airlines (11 percent); packaged food companies (12 percent); electric and gas utilities (15 percent). Only 32 percent of adults said they trusted the best-rated industry about which Harris surveyed, supermarkets. [1]

These are remarkable numbers. It is very hard to get this degree of agreement about anything. By way of comparison, 79 percent of adults believe the earth revolves around the sun; 18 percent say it is the other way around.[2]

The Harris results are not an aberration. The results have not varied considerably over the past five years — although overall trust levels have actually declined from the already very low threshold in 2003.

The Harris results are also in line with an array of polling data showing deep concern about concentrated corporate power.

An amazing 84 percent told Harris in a poll earlier in 2007 that big companies have too much power in Washington. By contrast, only 47 percent said that labor unions have too much power in Washington (as against 42 percent who said labor has too little power), and 18 percent who said nonprofit organizations have too much power in Washington.[3]

These results have proven durable. At least 80 percent of the public has ranked big companies as having too much power in Washington since 1994. In 2000, Business Week and Harris asked a broader question: Has business gained too much power over too many aspects of American life? Seventy-four percent agreed.[4]

The November 2007 poll also asked about support for measures to control corporations. These results are eye-opening as well, though perhaps not in the expected way.

Harris asked which industries “should be more regulated by government — for example for health, safety or environmental reasons — than they are now?” Only oil companies (53 percent), pharmaceutical companies (53 percent) and health insurance companies (52 percent) crossed the 50 percent threshold. Even the tobacco industry managed to escape in the survey with only 41 percent favoring greater regulation. These data trend significantly negative — against greater regulation — over the last five years.

Does this show that while people distrust Big Business, they equally distrust the government to constrain corporate power?

No.

The U.S. skepticism to regulation is only skin deep. When polls present specific regulatory proposals for consideration, U.S. public support is typically strong and often overwhelming — even when arguments against government action are presented.

For example:

* After hearing arguments for and against, 76 percent favor granting the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco, with 22 percent opposed.[5]

* After hearing arguments for and against, 75 percent favor legislation that would significantly increase energy efficiency, including auto fuel efficiency standards, and the use of renewable energy.[6]

* Eighty-five percent favor country-of-origin labeling for meat, seafood, produce and grocery products, and three quarters favor a legislative mandate.[7]

* Seventy-one percent say it is important that drugs remain under close review by the FDA and drug companies after they have been placed on the market.[8]

* And, from a Harris finding a week after the poll showing skepticism about industry regulation in general, the polling agency found that those who think there is too little government regulation in the area of environmental protection outpaced those who think there is too much by a more than 2-to-1 margin (53 to 21 percent).[9]

What the Harris findings on attitudes to regulation do show is that the business campaign against regulation as an abstract concept has been very successful.

It highlights the need for consumer, environmental, labor and other corporate accountability advocates to defend the concept of regulation, and to connect the rampant corporate abuses in society with the deregulation and non-regulatory failures of the last three decades. There’s little doubt that the general public attitude toward regulation significantly affects the willingness of politicians — none too eager to offend business patrons in the first place — to take on corporate power.