The Rag Blog

Strikes have been described as everything from organized labor’s version of a declaration of war to a collective attempt at economic exorcism. Viewed by corporations as acts of defiance and aggression directed toward munificent, guiltless benefactors, strikes are nonetheless necessary, even if the arithmetic favors management (which it does, overwhelmingly).

In truth, a strike is often the only thing standing between a union membership and total capitulation. Even when painful, pulling the trigger is not only the honorable thing to do, it can provide long-term strategic benefits if played properly. Strikes can be cathartic. As George Meany (president of the AFL-CIO, 1955-79) liked to say, “You don’t own it until you pay for it.”

In regard to strikes, there’s a phenomenon that’s well known to union aficionados but more or less unheard of and, therefore, unappreciated by outsiders. This phenomenon involves women union members, and can be expressed by this general observation: Women members tend to show more resilience, intelligence and courage during a strike than the men do.

Whether it’s walking the picket line, attending informational meetings, or just sitting quietly at home contemplating the strike’s potential effects, women routinely behave more calmly and bravely than the men. Somehow, women handle the stress better. In the face of a strike, women tend to be more resilient than men, more able to accept bad news and stick to the game plan, less apt to go ape-shit.

I’ve seen dozens of instances of this phenomenon firsthand-instances of men overreacting, barking, panicking, breaking down, spinning out of control-all in response to a protracted strike (in some cases, even in response to the threat of a strike). In my experience I’ve never seen a woman do any of that stuff.

While men do things like punch holes in the walls of the union hall, and circulate hysterical petitions demanding recall of the bargaining board, women show up and perform their duties, whether it’s walking picket, stuffing envelopes, making telephone calls, or passing out blocks of government cheese. Although the term “team player” is overused and misused, women are, indeed, the preeminent team players during a strike.

I realize this sounds like a wild generalization (not to mention “sexist”), but it happens to be true. Ask any union honcho who’s ever been involved in a strike and is willing to speak honestly. They’ll tell you the same thing. Women union members exhibit more steely resolve and grace under fire than their male counterparts. Simple as that.

Three reasons are given to explain or account for this.

First, it’s suggested that because there are, typically, fewer women members than men in union locals, particularly ones affiliated with the manufacturing sector, and more particularly, ones affiliated with what are called “smokestack” industries (steel, paper, automobiles, heavy equipment), women are going to play a less prominent role than men.

Accordingly, women will be judged slightly differently. It’s possible that their low profile will be misinterpreted, that it will be mistaken as evidence of self-discipline or “poise.” Put simply, women members will be given credit where credit isn’t due. That’s one explanation.

Second, it is noted that because men are recognized by society as being the “providers,” a man’s response to a work stoppage is going to be more dramatic, more extreme, than a woman’s. Losing a job, even temporarily, will represent more of a crisis to a man, hence, his severe reaction (or overreaction). That’s the second explanation.

The third explanation is more revealing. It suggests that women are simply better equipped than men to handle adversity of this type. Granted, this is a glib and derivative assertion, a gender-based account of women’s behavior which, besides being blatantly sexist, is purely conjectural, incapable of being verified. So be it. But it also sounds suspiciously close to the truth.

In discussions with women union members, I’ve been told that the reason women bring a more “grown up” (their term) perspective to the table is because of their comparative life experiences. Women union members have already been forced to deal with all sorts of adversity, and, as a consequence, have gained confidence in their ability to survive and persevere.

Many have been single moms, left to raise kids after the fathers abandoned them; they’ve had to work for less money than men (except in union jobs), have had to “prove” themselves capable of doing men’s work, have had to routinely overcome obstacles most of their adult lives. Thus, to a woman, a work stoppage isn’t the shattering, cataclysmic event it is to a man. That’s the theory.

Ask any union honcho who’s been involved with a strike, and they’ll tell you that this gender distinction exists. Moreover, they’ll tell you that the exemplary behavior of women can have a salutary effect on the membership. It’s the “Norma Rae” syndrome (referring to the 1979 Sally Field movie) in action. A gutsy woman can become a de facto union leader on the basis of her actions; she can lead the membership, inspire them, mobilize them.

And a resolute, unbending woman, one willing to stand up to the company, is exactly what it will take to get someone like Wal-Mart to unionize. It will take a woman worker to inspire her male fellow-workers, to shame them into action. What the union movement needs are more women willing to step up and serve as examples.

Nothing against men, mind you; it’s just that men haven’t been the answer to what ails us, at least not lately. The labor movement needs another Norma Rae. It needs a thousand of them.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City Sunday with David L.
Boren, left, his host for a conference in Norman, Oklahoma.

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: January 7, 2008

NORMAN, Okla. — Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and a dozen current and former elected officials from both parties arrived in this college town Sunday evening with little fanfare but grand ambitions.

Over a Sunday dinner, Mr. Bloomberg and other participants in the conference were to begin discussing ways to end “partisan polarization” in Washington, according to the invitation sent last month.

The conference was organized by two former Democratic senators, David L. Boren of Oklahoma, now president of the University of Oklahoma here, and Sam Nunn of Georgia.

Last month, the former senators suggested that they would consider urging Mr. Bloomberg to mount an independent presidential campaign if the major-party nominees do not formally embrace bipartisanship to address the nation’s problems.

“Today, we are a house divided,” the two men explained in their invitation. “We believe that the next president must be able to call for a unity of effort by choosing the best talent available — without regard to political party — to help lead the nation.”

Mr. Bloomberg and his aides have toyed for months with the idea of such a campaign, though officially he says he plans to complete his second term as New York City’s mayor, which ends next year.

He is a repeat guest of Mr. Boren’s, having delivered the commencement address at the university last year.

Other participants in the conference include Christie Whitman, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey; Senator Chuck Hagel, the Republican senator from Nebraska; and the former senators Charles S. Robb of Virginia and Gary Hart of Colorado.

The private meetings on Sunday will be followed by a private breakfast on Monday and a public panel discussion, after which the participants may issue a brief statement of shared principles.

Arriving for dinner at Mr. Boren’s residence, Mr. Bloomberg brought gifts: three cheesecakes — one plain, one chocolate swirl, one raspberry swirl — from Junior’s, the famed Brooklyn outpost of pickles, pastrami and pastries.

SIXTEEN students sat around a table in the Manhattan cafeteria of the New School discussing where commas should go. They were rewriting, for the third time, a mission statement for their chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the activist group that had been dormant for nearly 40 years. They wanted the document to be collectively produced, but after more than three weeks of communal drafting, no one seemed particularly content with the results.

One student thought the phrase “we accept all persons” should be broadened to cover animals. Another worried that the word “delineation” was alienating because “it means drawing lines, and don’t we object to lines?” The only sentence everyone seemed to support wholeheartedly was the final one: “Power to the People!”

The subject was a sensitive one, because the revived group has yet to produce a document as compelling as the S.D.S. manifesto, the Port Huron Statement, written in 1962, long before any of them were born. Although members of the original movement serve as mentors, the young S.D.S. is eager to prove that its interest in social change extends beyond nostalgia.

“One of our strengths is having a clear understanding of what went wrong in the ’60s,” says Pat Korte, a 19-year-old sophomore at the New School, in Greenwich Village. Mr. Korte was a co-founder of the born-again organization in 2006, as a senior at Stonington High School, in Connecticut. S.D.S. now has around 120 active chapters and 3,000 registered members.

“We know the drive for revolutionary change is correct,” Mr. Korte says, “but blowing up buildings is not going to get us anywhere. Nor is joining the Democratic Party.”

According to a provisional statement, drafted at the national convention last summer at Wayne State University in Detroit, the group aims to combat “racism and white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism and transphobia, authoritarianism and imperialism.” Chapters focus on any issue that falls under the rubric of “oppression.” In the past year, members have occupied military recruiting centers, participated in hunger strikes to raise wages for university workers and demonstrated in front of companies that invest in nuclear power plants.

The group’s growth has surprised everyone involved, particularly former members who wondered why students would want to model themselves on an organization that ultimately self-destructed. The original S.D.S. became a major force in the opposition to the Vietnam War and grew to nearly 100,000 members before collapsing in 1969 into radicalized factions. It never quite overcame the perceived homogeneity of its leaders. Most were white, male and upper middle class.

The new S.D.S. is painstakingly self-conscious about its image and inherited failures. Men refrain from speaking for the group; if one interrupts a woman or finishes her sentence, he may be politely reminded of what he has done. There is no national hierarchy, and members coordinate through conference calls — up to 30 people on the line. (There’s a roll call at the start of each conversation.)

A significant number of chapters are not at prestigious universities, which already have a glut of political groups, but at commuter schools, community colleges and high schools, many of which had existed in a political vacuum. Members cite three events — 9/11, the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina — in describing what brought them to S.D.S.

The chapter at Queens College has 140 people on its mailing list, a quarter of them Latino. “At a working-class school, we have jobs to go home to at night, so the problems in the government more directly affect the quality of our lives,” says Rachel Haut, a 19-year-old junior. And while most young people view the war in Iraq via remote, on commuter campuses like Queens the military recruits heavily. Ms. Haut’s chapter sets up a table every other week to distribute literature aiming to discourage students from enlisting.

Although the student movements of the ’60s have often been viewed through a veil of mythical romance, their legacy has become particularly relevant in the midst of another unpopular war. Forty years after the events of 1968 — the Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy assassinations, the Tet offensive in Vietnam and the Democratic convention in Chicago — the decade is back on the cover of news magazines.

Three books written or edited by former S.D.S. members are coming out this month and next: “Ravens in the Storm: A Personal History of the 1960s Anti-War Movement,” by Carl Oglesby; “A Hard Rain Fell: S.D.S. and Why It Failed,” by David Barber; and “Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History,” edited by Paul Buhle.

“I think the sense of powerlessness is so profound right now that to know there was a movement of young people that changed history offers leverage, a sense of confidence,” says Dr. Buhle, a lecturer in American civilization at Brown.

The graphic history, which comes out this week, is written by the comic book author Harvey Pekar. It traces the rise and fall of the first S.D.S. and includes a six-page epilogue, “S.D.S. Revived.”

“While few seemed to be watching,” it begins, “the demography of American youth had shifted dramatically and a new generation of students, more insecure, much more often the children of immigrants, had arrived.” The first panel features a couple kissing on a grassy hill. The second panel, representing the new S.D.S., shows an airplane flying into the World Trade Center while New York City is engulfed in flames.

The epilogue also includes a drawing of Pat Korte, with shaggy hair and big, alarmed eyes. Jessica Rapchik, 19, was the S.D.S. co-founder with Mr. Korte. She says she was surprised that her role goes unmentioned in the book. The omission, she says, points to “larger problems in our society — men being sought out as voices of authority.”

MR. KORTE and Ms. Rapchik, of Chapel Hill, N.C., met on a conference call. Both were active members of an antiwar group in high school. They wanted to be part of an organization that would tackle more enduring issues.

“These problems won’t go away unless you change the entire power structure,” says Ms. Rapchik, now a sophomore at Antioch College. She blames the “dominant hegemonic system.”

Ms. Rapchik’s parents were so opposed to her involvement in a radical organization that they threatened not to help pay for college if she attended the first convention, so she stayed home. Mr. Korte says his father voted for Nixon. “My parents didn’t even know the ’60s happened,” he says.

In search of mentors, the students reached out to the first president of S.D.S., Alan Haber, who is now a woodworker. He and other original members met with the students and offered their old pamphlets and letters. The “old folks,” a k a the “veterans,” attend meetings and marches, help coordinate conferences and provide moral support. When students are arrested, veterans sometimes wait outside the jail with sandwiches.

But some chapters have distanced themselves from the ’60s generation. To Ms. Haut, at Queens College, it is not “productive” to work with “a lot of old white guys arguing about what they should have done.” As it is, the new group devotes a good deal of intellectual energy to self-analysis.

At the second national convention, attended by about 200 members, the students spent a day discussing how not to oppress one another. They split into caucuses based on gender, class, race and sexual orientation.

Nick Kreitman, a junior at Elmhurst College in suburban Chicago, participated in meetings about “Class Privilege,” “White Privilege” and “Hetero-Privilege,” in which, he says, members talked about the danger of coming off as the “liberal savior who is going to instantly solve all their problems.”

Because the ultimate goal is to become a mass movement, S.D.S. members make an effort to appeal to students who wouldn’t necessarily cast themselves as left-wing political activists. One proposal at the convention that was later adopted advocated using “the language of the mainstream” and avoiding “intimidating word choice” — an unintimidating euphemism for leftist buzzwords like “anti-authoritarianism” and “syndicalism.”

Aaron Petcoff, a founding member of the Wayne State chapter, worries about the group becoming a clique. “We can’t just go to the punk places and tell people it’s cool to join S.D.S.,” he says. He consciously recruits for diversity, and his chapter has one Hispanic, two African-American, two Iraqi-American and six white members.

Nationally, membership is predominantly white, and Mr. Petcoff describes himself as fitting “the stereotype of the white, left, activist guy.” He first learned about the group two years ago, when, he recalls, a roommate’s friend told him, “You look like you got drop-kicked out of S.D.S.” He was dressed in “these bell-bottom kind of pants and an olive green army jacket with a big peace sign.” He didn’t know what S.D.S. was, he says. “So I went to the computer and did an image search, which was how I found out the group was being revived.” Soon after, he joined.

AFTER shelving the syntactical problems of the mission statement, the huddle at the New School cafeteria moved on to planning action at the Manhattan office of a New School trustee whose company has military contracts. The students debated whether to demonstrate on the company’s property with a marching band, but the conversation soon digressed into the risk of using e-mail. Some worried that the authorities would read what they wrote. When one student offered that “the federal agencies probably don’t care,” the group ignored him.

Mr. Korte, who lives with three other members on Malcolm X Boulevard in Brooklyn, frequently reminds the group that it is trying to start a movement that will “last for decades,” not just a semester. He asked if anyone felt it was worth it to be arrested at a coming antiwar demonstration. Almost everyone raised a hand.

In the past two years, well over 100 S.D.S. members have been arrested for civil disobedience, including blocking ports in Washington from which military equipment was being shipped to Iraq and demonstrating in front of car dealerships in favor of higher fuel efficiency standards. This fall, the group began participating in the Iraq Moratorium, a series of monthly national antiwar demonstrations modeled after the 1969 Vietnam Moratorium.

Today’s organization has yet to depart significantly from the protest models of the past. Many members say they resent being overshadowed by the S.D.S. of 1968 and argue that their opposition will manifest itself in a way unique to their own generation. Beyond having a new organizing tool in the Internet, it’s unclear what this will look like. Students elegantly critique what’s wrong with the country but struggle to find new ways to channel their disgust.

“They’re blogging against the war, they’re not burning draft cards,” says Tom Hayden, the primary author of the Port Huron Statement, who went on to serve in the California State Senate. A former president of S.D.S., he has met many new members but held back from giving guidance. “The war in Iraq vividly demonstrates that the issues of the ’60s have not gone away,” he says. “But this generation has an identity crisis that it will have to resolve on its own.”

George Bush is coming to Israel this week. He will take pleasure in his visit. One can assume that there are few prime ministers with a giant photo of themselves with the U.S. president hanging on the wall in their home, as our Ehud Olmert boasted last week that he does, to his exalted guest, the comic Eli Yatzpan. There are also few other countries where the lame duck from Washington would not be greeted with mass demonstrations; instead, Israel is making great efforts to welcome him graciously. The man who has wreaked such ruin upon the world, upon his country, and upon us is such a welcome guest only in Israel.

A man is coming to Israel this week who has left a trail of killing, destruction and global hatred. Never has the U.S. been so despised as during Bush’s seven years in office, which abruptly brought his county back to the not-so-merry days of Vietnam.

He led the U.S., and the free world in its wake, into two brutal and completely futile wars of conquest, first in Afghanistan and then in Iraq. He sowed mass killing in these two wretched countries under the false pretext of a battle against global terror.

But the world after these two wars is not a better world or a safer one. And these two wounded countries feel no gratitude toward the superpower that ostensibly came to emancipate them from their regimes of terror.

There was no connection between the attack on the Twin Towers and Iraq. Saudi Arabia, where most of the terrorists came from, could have been a more appropriate target but it remained an ally of the U.S. despite its despotic regime. The war in Iraq, the rationale for which – the presence of weapons of mass destruction – was revealed to be false, was an atrocious, futile war that is far from being over, even if its daily toll of killing has declined from 100 to 50.

In Western Europe, in South America, in Asia, in all parts of the Arab and Muslim world and in parts of Africa, the sole global superpower has come to be viewed as a hostile, arrogant and ostracized entity. This is not good for America and it is not good for the world.

Closer to home, it is worth remembering the damage Bush has caused to the Middle East. His seven years in power have been wasted years, barren and dangerous. Never has there been a president who gave Israel such an automatic carte blanche and even encouraged it to take violent action, to deepen and entrench the occupation.

This is not friendship with Israel. This is not concern for its future. A president who did not even try to pressure Israel to end the occupation is a president who is hostile to it, indifferent to its future and fate.

A president who endorsed every abomination – from the expansion of settlements to the failure to honor commitments and signed agreements, including those with U.S. such as the passages agreement and the freeze on settlement construction – is not a president who seeks the best for Israel or aspires to peace.

What happened to the days when Israel hesitated before planting another trailer home in the territories or before every liquidation operation out of fear for America’s reaction? What happened to the days when there was a president in Washington who sowed trepidation in Jerusalem before each human rights violation or war crime?

This is all we got from Bush: a more entrenched and brutal occupation with the open, or tacit, encouragement of the U.S.; a green light for another superfluous war in Lebanon; a Hamas government in Gaza, which the U.S., and consequently the rest of the world, is boycotting – a measure that has only led to the starvation of Gaza, while failing to weaken Hamas; and U.S. authorization for “the settlement blocs.”

The Middle East has only moved further away from peace during Bush’s tenure.

His belated and feeble attempts to change this fact have not produced anything. Until a determined president is inaugurated in Washington who will engage in a serious effort to bring an end to the occupation, no peace will prevail here. Bush could have done this, but he abused his office.

A decade ago, the eyes of the world were on Venezuela, as one-time coup leader Hugo Chavez, calling for a Bolivarian revolution, surged ahead in the polls on a platform of social inclusion. And it didn’t take long for an unlikely courter to come a-calling: US tobacco giant Philip Morris was knocking on Chavez’s door, even before his inauguration.

A giant US corporation wooing arguably the Western Hemisphere’s most anti-corporate-America president perhaps seems like an exercise in futility today, but this was back during Chavez’s honeymoon period with the West: Before the International Monetary Fund supported the ephemeral 2002 coup against Chavez, announcing it stood “ready to assist the new administration in whatever manner they find suitable.” Before US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proclaimed that Chavez was “really, really destroying his own country.” Before Chavez stood in front of the UN General Assembly, crossed himself for protection against George Bush and claimed the US president smelled of sulfur.

Back in 1999, the new Venezuelan administration wasn’t viewed as unfriendly, only unknown. And the US tobacco industry had plenty to gain from friendly relations: the country, along with a bevy of others, was suing the industry for tobacco-related healthcare expenses, and stood to lose should Venezuela ramp up its cigarette taxes, heighten its anti-smuggling efforts or spearhead public health campaigns.

And so the tobacco industry suggested three talking points, according to documents recently uncovered in the Philip Morris Tobacco archive. They would argue that the lawsuit was not winnable; that dropping the lawsuit would separate the Chavez administration from the corrupt governments of the past; and that it would encourage foreign investment in the country.

Lawyers of Philip Morris first approached the Chavez administration soon after the election. At the time, they had been lead to believe that the lame-duck Caldera administration would allow the incoming administration to decide whether or not to file a health care cost recovery suit on behalf of the country. Instead, the Caldera administration filed the suit three days before leaving office, but apparently left the new government no documents related to the case, or at least not any government officials would acknowledge. “We were informed that the outgoing Attorney General, Mr. Nepomuceno Garrido, had left absolutely no files or information regarding his relationship with the [tobacco company’s lawyers] or the filing of the lawsuit,” said a 2000 Philip Morris backgrounder on Venezuela. “Similar inquiries were made with respect to the President’s Office and the Ministry of Health yet no files on the tobacco industry lawsuit could be found.”

Philip Morris stepped up its efforts to convince Venezuela to drop the suit. The company maintained a “steady dialogue” with the Chavez’s Attorney General’s Office and kept it “apprised of significant developments in the foreign sovereign health care cost litigation filed by other Latin American governments.” It also seems to have been working behind the scenes with Congressional offices: an unsigned letter released during discovery in another trial appears to be from a Congressional delegate to Venezuela. The letter focuses on two of the three talking points in Philip Morris’s backgrounder: the suit, the letter said, has no legal basis, and would only serve to discourage foreign investment. “Singling out the US industry in this lawsuit reveals a number of contradictions that will not go unnoticed by US public opinion,” the letter adds, noting that Venezuela receives excise taxes from the tobacco company and that the lawsuit, filed in a US court, ignores the impact of the local tobacco industry.

It’s not clear which Congressional office was responsible for the letter, or if it was ultimately sent. But the letter mentions that the signatory had been part of a December 1999 US Congressional delegation. Nexis contains no news reports for a December delegation, but a January delegation consisted of only four members: Bill Delahunt (D-MA), Mark Souder (R-IN), Sam Farr (D-CA) and former Representative Cass Ballenger (R-NC).

“It would make sense for it to come from the office from North Carolina,” said Ballenger, reached at his home. “But I’m 81 years old, I don’t remember.”

Representative Delahunt and Souder’s offices did not return calls for comment. Tom Mentzer, spokesperson for Farr, said the letter did not originate in the Congressman’s office.

In any case, the Chavez administration was apparently unimpressed by the threats of losing foreign investment or US public esteem. The suit moved forward.

At the time, the suit was only one of a number brought by foreign countries, following on the heals of state-level litigation. Venezuela, like various US states, alleged that “Big Tobacco” had conspired to deceive the government about tobacco’s health risks, and altered cigarettes to make them more dangerous than they would otherwise be. “While Venezuela and its various agencies and institutions are struggling to pay for the health care costs of tobacco, BIG TOBACCO continues to reap millions of dollars in profits from the sale of cigarettes and other products in Venezuela,” says the 1999 complaint. “Venezuela has expended hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars in caring for its residents.” The complaint, brought against Philip Morris, RJR, and British American Tobacco, among others, requested “compensatory damages, costs, and other such relief as the court deems appropriate” but did not specify an amount. The compensatory damages included both health care expenses and lost productivity due to tobacco related diseases.

There is some evidence that Venezuelan cigarettes were even more dangerous than their US counterparts. Between October 1960 and January 1961 Philip Morris’s Research and Development Department carried out a series of five tests comparing Venezuelan and US cigarettes. Participants found the Venezuelan cigarettes to be “more irritating” than domestic cigarettes, according to an internal report. Philip Morris subsequently halted the tests, saying in a report that, although “all panel smoking was carried out under extremely low illumination so panelists would not be able to see the printed ‘Venezuela’ on the Venezuela cigarettes,” the company could not be sure that the participants were unable to see the markings in the dark.

The suit jumped between state and federal court before finally landing in Florida’s Third District Court of Appeals. The court curtly dismissed the suit-ultimately no foreign country successfully sued the US tobacco companies-on the grounds that Venezuela didn’t have a right to sue on behalf of its citizens. “Simply, the government of Venezuela does not have a direct independent cause of action against the tobacco companies to recover for smoking-related medical expenses incurred by its citizens,” decided the court. “We add parenthetically, that is inappropriate for Venezuela to attempt to turn Miami-Dade County into the ‘courthouse for the world.'”

Reached for comment, Joel S. Perwin, Venezuela’s appellate lawyer called the court’s “courthouse for the world” comment “gratuitous,” since the case was dismissed for other reasons.

But losing a lawsuit in US courts wasn’t enough to convince the Chavez administration to steer clear of the US tobacco industry. For the tobacco industry, the worst was yet to come: in recent years, Venezuela has raised cigarette taxes, cracked down on tax evasion and broadened public health campaigns.

Venezuela’s government has long had an interest in regulating tobacco. Though the lawsuit alleges that the government would have done more to prevent tobacco usage had it known of the dangers of tobacco, the country was far from passive in its regulation of cigarettes. Taxes were 43 percent of a cigarette’s retail price in Venezuela in 1999, according to the World Bank. In 1990, the country prohibited sales of cigarettes to minors. And cigarette advertising has been banned from radio and television since the early 1980s. The country’s policies appear to have been effective: in 1999 Venezuela was home to 5 percent of Latin America’s population, but only consumed 2 percent of its cigarettes, according to the World Bank.

In 2003 and 2004, the Chavez administration took the previous administration’s already relatively stringent anti-smoking efforts a step further, announcing policies to ramp up Venezuela’s tax collection efforts. Among other moves Seniat, the country’s tax collection agency, declared a “zero evasion” policy. Though the broad based tax collection crackdown did not exclusively target the cigarette industry-among other groups IBM and Coca-Cola’s Venezuela branches and were temporarily closed-tobacco companies didn’t escape Venezuela’s new adherence to tax law. Eudomar Tovar, Venezuela’s Vice Minister of Finance, singled the tobacco industry out for criticism, saying that tax evasion robbed government coffers of almost $72 million annually. And last September, Alí Padrón, president of the sub-commission against customs fraud’s cigarette and tobacco sector, announced that it had snuffed out a significant portion of the tax evasion, cutting the number of smuggled cigarettes by more than half.

More recently, Venezuela took a direct swipe at the tobacco industry’s pocket book. In October, the country raised the excise tax on cigarettes from 50 to 70 percent, and mandated that all cigarettes sold in Venezuela-eventually including those in free-trade zones-be subject to the tax. The government estimates that the new tax will result in additional revenues of about $180 million. In 1999, the World Bank estimated Venezuela collected about $300 million annual cigarette tax.

In addition to increased taxes, the Chavez administration has also pursued a three-pronged strategy to decrease smoking in the country, providing more public education, increasing public access to smoking cessation programs, and limiting the areas in which Venezuelans can smoke.

In March 2005, cigarette packages in Venezuela became more graphic. Though cigarette packages had had warnings since 1978, the entire front of a package now consists of a picture representing the effects of smoking, such as rotting teeth or a foot with a toe tag and one of ten warnings, including “smoking causes impotence in men” and “smoking causes bad breath, loss of molars, and mouth cancer.” One of the sides of the box also contains health warnings.

Venezuela has also begun providing free medical care for people trying to quit smoking. Last August, the Health Ministry announced it had started 43 clinics to help people stop smoking and had trained more than 420 doctors who specialize in smoking cessation techniques. Venezuelans can participate in these programs free of charge. Earlier this year, the Ministry announced that the government paid almost $2800 per participant. “We’re providing treatment, completely free, to people who have voluntarily decided to quit their addiction, including giving out patches, gum, and other things that allow them to get better,” announced then-Health Minister Erick Rodríguez.

And the country has made it harder to light up. Earlier this year, the Health Ministry announced a ban on smoking in restaurants.

But despite the Chavez administration’s interest in tobacco industry, the industry has won at least one recent battle. Last May, Health Minister Rodríguez was widely quoted as saying Venezuela was preparing to ban domestic production of tobacco, leaving smokers to consume the more expensive, foreign cigarettes. The next day he appeared on state television, saying his words had been taken out of context and that the government was planning no such ban. Three days later Chavez announced Rodríguez resigned, citing personal reasons.

Margo Tamez recently sent out the following urgent call for support, explaining that since July, her Mother and Elders of el Calaboz, Texas, have been the targets of numerous threats and harassments by the Border Patrol, Army Corps of Engineers, NSA, and the U.S. related to the proposed building of a fence on their levee.

The NSA, for one, has been specifically demanding that Elders give up their lands for the levee–telling them that they will have to travel a distance of 3 miles to go through checkpoints, to walk, recreate, and to farm and herd goats and cattle ON THEIR OWN LANDS.

Margo’s mother just informed her that since last Monday the Army Corps of Engineers, Border Patrol and National Security Agency teams have been tracking down and enclosing upon the people; telling them that they have no choice: “the wall is going on these lands whether you like it or not, and you have to sell your land to the U.S.”

Margo asks that you Please help the elders and indigenous women land title holders resist forced occupation in their own lands! As a start, you can do so by sharing this information to your friends and networks. (more to follow.)

If you would like to contact Margo for more information, you can email her at mtamez@wsu.edu

06/01/08 “Washington Post” — — As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

After the 1972 presidential election, I stood clear of calls to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his misconduct during the campaign. I thought that my joining the impeachment effort would be seen as an expression of personal vengeance toward the president who had defeated me.

Today I have made a different choice.

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.

But what are the facts?

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly “high crimes and misdemeanors,” to use the constitutional standard.

From the beginning, the Bush-Cheney team’s assumption of power was the product of questionable elections that probably should have been officially challenged — perhaps even by a congressional investigation.

In a more fundamental sense, American democracy has been derailed throughout the Bush-Cheney regime. The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion — by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an “imminent threat” to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks — another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson’s observation: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”

The basic strategy of the administration has been to encourage a climate of fear, letting it exploit the 2001 al-Qaeda attacks not only to justify the invasion of Iraq but also to excuse such dangerous misbehavior as the illegal tapping of our telephones by government agents. The same fear-mongering has led government spokesmen and cooperative members of the press to imply that we are at war with the entire Arab and Muslim world — more than a billion people.

Another shocking perversion has been the shipping of prisoners scooped off the streets of Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other countries without benefit of our time-tested laws of habeas corpus.

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies — especially the war in Iraq — have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: “I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans.” Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

As former representative Elizabeth Holtzman, who played a key role in the Nixon impeachment proceedings, wrote two years ago, “it wasn’t until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country’s laws — that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. . . . A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law — and repeatedly violates the law — thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors.”

I believe we have a chance to heal the wounds the nation has suffered in the opening decade of the 21st century. This recovery may take a generation and will depend on the election of a series of rational presidents and Congresses. At age 85, I won’t be around to witness the completion of the difficult rebuilding of our sorely damaged country, but I’d like to hold on long enough to see the healing begin.

There has never been a day in my adult life when I would not have sacrificed that life to save the United States from genuine danger, such as the ones we faced when I served as a bomber pilot in World War II. We must be a great nation because from time to time, we make gigantic blunders, but so far, we have survived and recovered.

01/05/08 “Counterpunch” — — Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh recently said that Barack Obama is our “only hope” to “lead a reconciliation between the Muslim countries and the US.” Why? Because Obama’s father was a Muslim.

I simply don’t follow Hersh’s logic here. Seems to me the actions of a president are more important than some familial affiliation with a particular religion-not to mention that candidate Obama has aligned himself with Israel.

These are some of Obama’s comments during a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC):

“Our job is to rebuild the road to real peace and lasting security throughout the region, “Our job is to do more than lay out another road map.”

“That effort begins with a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel: Our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy. “That will always be my starting point.”

And calling for sustained military support to Israel, Obama said: “We must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs.”

For Barack Obama to say that “our job is to lay out another road map” for peace while we are providing military support to Israel as the country launches attacks on Palestinians is hypocrisy. There is more than a conflict of interest for the US to go to the table, act as peace brokers, and make demands. But, then, that is what we do as self-appointed police officers to the world. We decry the violence in Kenya. Condi Rice has just made a statement that it must stop. But the violence perpetrated on the Iraqi and Afghan populations by her boss’s policies continues without end. Our violence is good violence. Anyone else’s is barbaric.

It matters little to me that Barack Obama says he was against invading Iraq. After all, he votes to continue funding it. If this presidential candidate wanted to mend relations with Muslims, he could start by voting against additional war funding.

And he could say no to AIPAC – but this would be political suicide.

In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on “imperial fantasies.”

Um, thanks for finally noticing. What would you suggest we do about it?

“We can only hope,” concludes the New York Times, quite disempoweringly, “that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle, and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.”

But here’s the problem (other than the pretended certainty that Bush won the 2004 election):

The United States of America, as established by its Constitution, simply does not have a presidency with awesome powers. And the powers that Bush and Cheney have newly bestowed on the presidency, unchallenged by Congress or the media, are not powers that any human being can be expected to use with decency.

The Constitution gives the president extremely limited powers. He (or she) is to execute the laws created by Congress. He serves as commander in chief of the military. He can pardon crimes (but not impeachments). If he consults with and gets the support of the Senate, the president can negotiate treaties and appoint officials, ambassadors, and judges.

That’s about it. There is no constitutional presidential power to write or alter or violate laws, to act in secret, to abridge the judicial system, to violate the Bill of Rights, to violate existing treaties, to build an empire, or to launch a war. Those powers do not belong in the hands of a new president with “integrity, principle, and decency,” because they do not belong to the U.S. presidency at all. If the New York Times thinks that a new president with those powers will give us back a country that looks like the United States, then the New York Times is peering into a cracked mirror.

Oh, and the Vice President under the Constitution has no particular powers at all, other than serving as the president of the Senate, where he only gets to vote if there’s a tie.

In contrast, the legislative branch of our government, historically and even today in the version students are still taught in schools, has truly awesome powers. The Congress has the power to enact laws, all laws. Congress also has the sole power to raise and spend money. It has the power to declare war and to fund and oversee the military. It has the power to regulate international and interstate trade. Congress handles immigration, bankruptcies, the printing and valuing of money, the post offices, copyrights. Congress has the power to “constitute tribunals inferior to the supreme court,” and “to define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the high seas, and offenses against the law of nations.” But the first power the Constitution grants the House of Representatives is the power of impeachment. The first power it grants the Senate is the power to try all impeachments.

In school we learn about the “Separation of Powers” and about something called “Checks and Balances.” Our three branches of government are supposed to be separately elected, none of them created by any other. And the power to run the nation is supposed to be divided. Congress has certain powers. The courts have other powers. The president has others. Congress, as the most powerful branch, is further divided into two houses with somewhat separate powers. It’s important to understand that Congress is more powerful than the other branches, which is one reason the phrases “balance of power” and “checks and balances” can be misleading. There is not supposed to be anything evenly balanced about it.

Our system of “presidential” government derives from the English system when it had a king running the country, as opposed to the modern English system in which the prime minister is dependent on the parliament. A presidential system, in which the winner takes all in presidential elections, tends to develop two parties, and tends to develop party- , rather than governmental-branch- , loyalties in members of the legislature. This leads in turn to the phenomenon exemplified by Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D., New York) asserting that impeachment is no longer a part of our Constitution because we now have political parties.

But, of course, we had political parties when Richard Nixon was driven out of town and have had them throughout our nation’s history. Any system is dependent on the people within it and the activism of the people outside of it.

Tom Paine mocked the idea of “checks and balances” as absurd, not because he had a plan for a better government without such a system, but because he didn’t think parliamentary checks on a hereditary monarch justified colonial rule over people lacking any representation in either branch. Ultimately, the decisive factor in what sort of government people get is going to be the actions of the people outside the government. The checks and balances we now pretend to have in the United States are as absurd as were those enjoyed by King George. But serious checks and balances provide a canary in the capital coal mine. When they are violated, people should recognize and act on the danger.

Under the U.S. system, the executive branch is understood to have the following checks on legislative power, and it still has them, plus some:

1. The veto. Bush does still have this power, but it is overshadowed by his newly created signing-statement power. No longer must he choose between signing a bill and vetoing it. Now, he can choose to sign it and rewrite it.

2. Commanding the military. Bush does still have this power, but he has added to it the power to declare war in violation of various laws, to act in secrecy in matters of war, to lie to Congress about war, to engage in a variety of war crimes, to misappropriate funds for wars that were not approved for them, and to take the National Guard away from states in order to use it in the commission of his crimes.

3. The vice president’s vote in the Senate. He does still have this power.

4. Recess appointments. Bush makes use of this power.

5. Calling Congress into session in emergencies and determining adjournments when the two houses cannot agree. This is less relevant now that the bums hardly ever go home.

And the President is understood to have these checks on the judicial branch, which he indeed still has:

1. Appointing judges. Bush still has this power.

2. Pardoning convicts. Bush still has this power. He has even commuted the sentence of a White House staffer convicted in a case Bush himself is involved in (an act that James Madison and George Mason deemed an impeachable offense). Bush also orders former staffers to obstruct justice, refuses subpoenas, and declines to testify under oath or without Cheney at his side.

The executive branch also has a check on itself. The vice president and cabinet can vote that the president is unable to discharge his duties. Sadly, failure to discharge duties has become the standard for membership in the cabinet.

The judicial branch has an important check on Congress and the president in that it can rule laws to be unconstitutional, but this has been eliminated by Bush and Cheney. The chief justice of the supreme court also serves as president of the Senate during a presidential impeachment. But that power depends on the House of Representatives first impeaching.

The legislative branch is supposed to have an array of checks on the president and vice president, including various minor powers of oversight. But the all-important check is impeachment. With that removed by Nancy Pelosi, subpoenas cannot be enforced. Freedom of Information Act requests cannot be enforced. Contempt citations cannot be enforced. In fact, laws of all types cannot be enforced.

Congress has the power to pick the President and Vice President if there is no majority of electoral votes. This is a major exception to the idea of separate powers, but it is unlikely ever to come up, and means less now that elections are routinely stolen.

Congress can override a presidential veto, but that power too is rendered irrelevant by new presidential powers. The Senate gets to approve appointments, but that power is clearly not sufficient to rein in the march of the Bush power grab. The Senate gets to approve treaties, a power that is also insufficient to check Bush’s abuses, even without its elimination by Fast Track. Congress gets to approve the replacement of the vice president, but that power depends on getting rid of the current one.

Congress gets to declare war, but has handed that power to the president. Congress gets to allocate funds, but Bush has misappropriated funds without repercussion or even remark and has openly claimed the right to do so in signing statements. A huge percentage of government funding (of the military and secret spying) is largely unaccountable. The president is required to deliver a “State of the Union” speech, but he’s clearly not required to speak the truth.

That’s about it. The only major tool in the box of legislative checks on the executive branch (or the judicial branch) is impeachment. That’s not the fault of impeachment advocates. That’s the way the Constitution designed it.

After Bush and Cheney lost to Gore and Lieberman but were installed by the supreme court, Congress could have refused to certify the election or could have immediately impeached. Or it could have waited for the first string of impeachable offenses. With Congress failing in this for four years, it was left to the public to check the power of Bush and Cheney. The evidence from Ohio is overwhelming that we did so. Yet they remained in office. It was then up to Congress, and is still up to Congress, to impeach, and it would be even if we had credible honest elections. The point of impeachment is not to do what elections do. It is not to swap one tyrant for another every four years. The purpose of impeachment is to rein in an outlaw president or vice president immediately and to establish limits on the abuses that will be permitted future members of the executive branch. The executive branch bears little resemblance, remember, to the “unitary executive” branch.

It’s true that, as Nadler claims, we do not have the same world we once did. There are indeed major problems with our system of government that have nothing to do with impeachment. We lack a credible election system. We lack democratic communications systems. We’ve legalized massive bribery. We’ve imposed grossly undemocratic primary elections. We’ve locked out any but two entrenched parties. We’ve created an eternal election season.

Some of these structural deficiencies will be easier to repair than others. But among the easiest are the most significant. We don’t just have political parties. We also have astroturf activist groups that voluntarily take their instructions from the leadership of those parties. And we have raised millions of anti-citizens, human beings who live in the United States of America but self-censor themselves, declining to speak up for their own interests when those conflict with the interests of an entrenched party elite. The same phenomenon is at work within Congress, where the people’s representatives have accepted, as has the New York Times, the shifting of all power to the White House. Their interest is in whether the next king will be a Democrat or a Republican. Our interest should be in making sure it is not a king at all. We can only do that by making 2008 the year of impeachment.

“… Philanthropic spending adds mainly to the nation’s stock of hospitals, libraries, museums, parks, university buildings, theaters and concert halls. Public infrastructure — highways, bridges, rail systems, water works, public schools, port facilities, sewers, airports, energy grids, tunnels, dams and levees — depends mostly on tax dollars. It is hugely expensive and the money available, while still substantial, has shrunk as a share of the national economy…

The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that government should be spending $320 billion a year over the next five years — double the current outlay — just to bring up to par what already exists.

The shift from public money to private wealth in shaping the nation’s cities is evident in national data. Government outlays on physical infrastructure have declined to 2.7 percent of the gross domestic product, from 3.6 percent in the 1960s. Philanthropic giving, in contrast, has jumped to nearly 2.5 percent of G.D.P., from 1.5 percent in 1995 and 2 percent in the ’60s.

Most of this money goes into endowments and foundations, or comes in the form of individual gifts, and then is increased through leverage. Of the $3 billion that Yale has spent so far on its vast building program, for example, slightly less than two-thirds came from gifts and from the endowment, which now totals $22.5 billion. The rest was borrowed, Mr. Levin said.

Yale now spends more than $400 million annually on its renaissance, nearly six times its outlays for construction and renovation in the mid-1990s. New Haven, by contrast, budgeted $137 million in the current fiscal year for all its capital projects, including those subsidized by state and federal governments. That is less than twice the amount budgeted in the mid-’90s.

Government investment nationwide has lagged for several reasons, say business leaders, academics and public officials. Tax cuts have helped to hold down overall government spending. So has the view, widespread in recent decades, that public investment is often inept and wasteful. And politics intrudes, with the widely criticized earmark process in Congress cited lately as a prime example of misdirected spending.

“Governments are accountable to the democratic process, which has many, many virtues; I would not trade it for anything else,” Mr. Levin said. “But it is not particularly good at focusing resources and driving things efficiently.”

Perhaps most important, big businesses no longer put as much clout and attention behind public infrastructure investments. In an earlier era, corporations, many with deep roots in local communities, lobbied government for the railroads, highways and many other facilities they needed to operate successfully. And they served as a crucial fountain of local tax revenue.

But companies are more mobile today. And many of the urban manufacturers most dependent on public infrastructure have moved or gone out of business…

Some government-business alliances still carry weight. In the Seattle area, for example, Microsoft has pushed its headquarters city, Redmond, to spend millions to upgrade roads for its expanding campus, along with the millions that the software giant has spent.

Now Microsoft wants the state to replace a 40-year-old, two-lane bridge on a highway that connects Seattle and Redmond. “We joined the city in arguing for the new bridge,” said Lou Gellos, a Microsoft spokesman, “and that was instrumental in bringing the issue to the forefront.”…

As Yale invests, pursuing its goals, Mayor DeStefano falls increasingly into step, blurring the line between public and philanthropic infrastructure spending. Yale has acquired land to build two more residential colleges, and the mayor contributed by closing off and giving portions of two streets to the university.

Historians will view Bush as the President who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), made public on December 4, concluded Iran had closed its nuclear weapons program four years earlier. Bush could have attributed this “fact” to his aggressive rhetoric (threats). Instead, he whined at his press conference that day: “Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. The NIE says that Iran had a hidden — a covert nuclear weapons program. That’s what it said. What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?”

He seemed more compelled by his own words than by intelligence findings. Recall that in his January 2002 State of the Union Address, Bush — or speech writers–had placed Iran inside the elite Axis of Evil club.

OK. And now he could claim his threats worked. He got Iraq, North Korea, and Iran to stop nuclear weapons program (albeit Iraq didn’t have one). Bush could claim he even got Libya to quit the incipient nuclear club.

I can imagine him sporting his ubiquitous shit-eating grin and taking credit for international accomplishments. “Thanks to my inserting a perilous tone to my public discourse — one that has weighed on public consciousness like a toxic cloud–we won.”

Bush could have referred to post 9/11 days when the nation trembled in shock, and he swore “to prevent regimes that sponsor terror from threatening America or our friends and allies with weapons of mass destruction.” He then characterized North Korea as “a regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens.” Iran aggressively pursues “these weapons and exports terror.” The lead villain at that time, lest we forget: “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror”

These states “and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.” Bush swore “the United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

So, why didn’t Bush return to this theme and say “I didn’t permit it?”

Perhaps facts did play a strange role. Since thinking people understand that Iran did not threaten the United States or Western Europe, they will also recall how Bush’s “accomplished” mission in Iraq showed a less than accomplished President. Indeed, the hysteric in the White House invaded Iraq over non existent WMD.

Did Bush fear that boasting of another “mission accomplished would cause him more trouble? The NIE information on Iran combined with North Korea agreeing to dismantle its nuke program in exchange for fuel aid and normalization talks with the U.S. and Japan had dispelled Bush’s Harry Potter-like world of evil axes.

Nevertheless, Bush bleated about “dangerous” Iran. Keith Olberman of MSNBC called him a” pathological presidential liar, or an idiot-in-chief.” Why didn’t Karl Rove rescue him from such blasphemies? (Was he too busy writing “how to beat Hillary columns for Newsweek?)

Bush knew since early August that Iran had no operating nuclear weapons programs; so why, asked Olberman, did he on October 17 taunt Iranian President Ahmadinejad? “I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon.”

The answer: Bush apparently feels comfortable with inflammatory discourse; not with achievement oratory. Remember his July 24, 2004 fighting words: “Bring ’em on” he taunted the Iraqi insurgents on July 2, 2004, who had begun to attack US occupying forces. Maybe he recalls those words and the fiasco following his “Mission Accomplished” speech in May 2003 as Iraqi insurgent began killing and wounding US troops — and his ratings plummeted. For Bush, fear has worked well; especially scary are references to nuclear threats.

Compare President Franklin Roosevelt calming discourse to Bush’s alarmism. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said FDR in his 1933 Inaugural Address, when the Great Depression truly depressed millions of people, economically and mentally. Bush, in contrast, seems to feel comfortable as America’s year-round Halloween monster. “We have plenty to fear. Terrorism will never go away. The terrorists are everywhere, always plotting against us. Trust me to fight them as long as you people remain scared”

With that outlook, Bush probably didn’t consider sharing his knowledge with the public, that Iran had no operating nuclear weapons program. He did, however, slightly alter his tone, but never told the truth. The Washington Post’s chronology of Bush’s Iranian fright lines shows the nuance in his speech after the CIA informed him in August that Iran had shut its nuke program.

Look at the differences. On March 31 Bush stated definitively that “Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon” On August 6 he invented an Iranian provocation: “this is a government [Iran] that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon…” By August 9, however, as Olberman notes, fine distinctions began to appear in his alerts. Iranians “expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program…”

On October 4, Bush became semi biblical: “you should not have the know-how on how to make a (nuclear) weapon…”

Two weeks later, on October 17, Bush issued yet another veiled threat, without accusing Iran of actually trying to make a nuke. “Until they suspend and/or make it clear that they, that their statements aren’t real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon.”

On December 4, after the NIE report became public, Bush had to reluctantly acknowledge the key fact he had absorbed in August. But he nevertheless kept firing away. Indeed, with White House encouragement, his neo con acolytes like Frank Gaffney (Center for Security Policy) and Norman Podhoretz (Commentary editor and Rudy Giuliani adviser) compare Iran and Nazi Germany–on talk shows. As if!

After seven years in office, Bush has placed fear before victory. He saw how throwing panic at the public–terrorists everywhere — could serve his power. By seizing on the 9/11 tragedy and manipulating it as a symbol to keep the public terrified, he garnered unequaled presidential power and provoked world wide animosity–while Congress and the public were busy being scared. The rest of the nation didn’t do so well.

Under his and the malevolent Cheney’s guidance, the CIA used torture — while denying it — extraordinary rendition (kidnapping) and other invasions of the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta (no right to privacy or habeas corpus). Periodically, Homeland Security reveals how it foiled yet another terrorist plot. The latest of these alleged plots evaporated. Seven barely literate Miami men who know nothing of explosives or weapons were charged in June 2006 with conspiring to blow up the Chicago’s Sears Tower. One defendant was acquitted; the judge declared a mistrial for the six others.

Bush’s detractors accuse him of having the IQ of a moron and the morality of Henry Kissinger, but Bush has accomplished several missions: he has destroyed Iraq, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and put the people of this country into deep stress. The so-called intelligence community (oxymoron?), beyond angry that their intelligence was distorted in order to give Bush a pretext to invade Iraq, no doubt predicted Bush would recoil at receiving the no nukes in Iran finding, that he would discount it and use the braggadocio that has flavored his sour administration to diminish its impact.

Ironically, the intelligence experts have yet to actually show evidence that Iran sought a nuclear weapons program. The NIE claimed Iran once had a hidden weapons program. Bush averred. “What’s to say they couldn’t start another nuclear weapons program?”

The lap dog press has yet to even pose the question about the “fact” of Iran’s supposedly hidden project. IAEA head Mohamed El Baradai has never claimed he found evidence that the Teheran government actually had begun such production. The powerful in government and media “deduced” the logic that Iran was going beyond nuclear energy reactors since Iraq was seeking a weapons program and Israel, the most dangerous enemy in the region, had accumulated some 200 nukes.

Hey, Libya and North Korea could also restart their programs–an old fashioned axis of evil revival? Brazil, Argentina and South Africa could refurbish their old nuclear dreams!

Evil billionaires like Rupert Murdoch or T. Bone Pickens could start private nuclear weapons operations–a real life James Bond movie! How frustrating for Bush, wanting to fight–vicariously–and getting a diplomatic victory that he refuses to acknowledge.