The Rag Blog

On November 3rd, I felt a stadium shake from 6,000 students jumping to their feet and chanting “Green Jobs, Not Jails! Parks, Not Prisons! We Won’t Stop Till Somebody Listens!” It was kind of a national coming-out party for the youth climate movement. More than a student environmental conference, Powershift 2007 was a moment revealing youth power and its potential to drive some deeply transformative shifts in this country.

Powershift was a project of Energy Action, a youth founded and led coalition of over 40 organizations ranging the spectrum from Greenpeace to the Indigenous Environmental Network. The goal was to bring together student leaders from across the nation to College Park, Maryland, for what would become the largest youth summit on Global Warming to date. Energy Action outlined three goals for the conference; to ensure that Climate Change be a central issue in the 2008 Presidential campaign, to empower a “truly diverse network of young leaders,” and to have geographic diversity in the attendance.

Groups from the Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC) to the Arab-American Action Network (AAAN) mobilized their membership, while student organizers on campuses coordinated bus travel for youth leaders from all over the country. The most striking aspect of Powershift was that the bulk of the outreach was done not through traditional activist organizations, but through academic networks of professors and school administrations. Participants were more likely to have come to the conference through their environmental science class or recycling program than with an organized group campaigning for change.

Powershift, whether intentionally or not, was perfectly positioned to engage a base of budding activists-to-be, giving them a sense that they were part of a larger movement for the first time. The movement-building groups in attendance seized the opportunity.

Van Jones, founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, spoke about grassroots organizing, climate justice, and movement building in a language accessible and engaging to the thousands of young people in attendance. He went beyond urging the predominantly white crowd to start making connections between economic and racial justice and the environment. Instead, he asserted that our movements had already come together; that this new movement includes everyone. He went on to warn that the right wing was plotting to defeat us by dividing us. “This is a poor people’s movement. And we aren’t going to be tricked into leaving anyone behind… If we win cuts on carbon emissions, without using them as a platform to transform our economy, we will have failed.” The crowd roared.

Whether or not our movements are actually united, Van was able to animate and excite new folks, most of whom had likely never heard of “climate justice” before. Deep into the night, students talked about how we can’t let the politicians trick us into thinking that climate change is solvable without addressing larger issues of social inequity.

Democratic Representative Ed Markey spoke too, appealing to students to support his energy bill. When outlining his plan for 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, students in the stadium spontaneously broke out into thunderous chanting “We Want More! We Want More!” forcing Markey to stop in the middle of his speech. “We want more” was a fitting slogan for the tone of Powershift. Person after person that I spoke to kept saying the same thing: the older generation has screwed us. It’s time for us to take our future back.

Panels and discussions at the conference included delegations from Indigenous communities ravaged by US agribusiness, organizers talking about civil disobedience and direct action, racial justice organizers discussing the concept of Green Jobs, and young people debating the role of student organizing in social movements. The workshop tracks included “Anti-Oppression and Diversity,” “Campus Organizing,” “Corporate Campaigning,” “Environmental Justice/Energy,” “Media and Messaging,” “Skills Trainings,” among others.

Much of Powershift was geared toward opening doorways into the movement. One such project was called “I Shot Powershift.” Energy Action gave away 100 video cameras to youth leaders, on the condition that they film 5 short clips during the conference, upload them to youtube, and tag them “Powershift07.” They would then commit to uploading at least 12 more videos throughout the year based on their local work. The end result will be thousands of videos of young people taking action on climate change, flooding the internet. What better way to help young people, who often feel isolated on their own campuses, feel like they are part of a larger movement?

After two days of panels and workshops, Powershifters wearing green hard-hats descended upon Capitol Hill for a day of lobbying and rallying. Simultaneously, more than 300 students joined Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Coal River Mountain Watch, and SEAC in a mass die-in that shut down a major Citibank branch for the day. Citi is one of the biggest funders of coal-fired power plants. While Appalachian women whose communities are being ravaged by mountain-top removal rallied the crowd, activists in haz-mat suits dumped coal all over the front of the bank. With an infectious energy, positive and creative chanting and messaging, tons of art, and no arrests, it was an exciting and radicalizing first action for many of the 300+ students “dying.”

As global warming increasingly becomes “the issue of our generation” it will be up to us to frame the national debate and push for deeper changes. In large coalitions, differences on how to move forward always exist, and Energy Action is certainly no exception. We still have a lot of work to do to build the kind of movement Van Jones spoke of. Powershift 2007, not without its own contradictions, marked an important turn toward a climate justice framework, an exciting development within the larger environmental movement here in the US.

The ten worst appointees for reproductive freedom.

“On September 11, we saw clearly that evil exists in this world, and that it does not value life … Now we are engaged in a fight against evil and tyranny to preserve and protect life.” – George W. Bush in 2002, linking abortion rights with terrorism, as he declared the 29th anniversary of Roe v. Wade to be “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”

Bush has used his Oval Office years to limit reproductive freedom and stack critical posts with right-wingers bent on rolling back the clock.

And now it appears yet another reactionary Bush appointee is on track to get a lifetime position as a federal judge…

Bush nominated Wyoming lawyer and former state representative Richard Honaker to the US District Court back in March, but the reproductive rights group NARAL believes he may soon get a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Honacker authored a 1991 bill which would have outlawed most abortions, and has said that abortion is “wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.”

If the nomination goes through, Honacker will stay on the bench long after Bush is out of office, and he’ll join a growing list of appointees eager to regulate your sexuality. A Top Ten list, so far…

1. Patricia Funderburk Ware

In 2001, Bush named abstinence-only proponent Patricia Funderburk Ware to be Executive Director of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA). Ware’s qualifications for the job of promoting “effective prevention of HIV disease” included criticizing condom use and lobbying against HIV/AIDS being in the Americans With Disabilities Act. Two years later, Ware recommended that a controversial character named Jerry Thacker join the PACHA panel. Thacker has called AIDS a “gay plague” and homosexuality a “deathstyle.” Amid public protest, Thacker soon withdrew his nomination and Ware left her PACHA post.

2. Tom Coburn

Bush nominated then-Rep. Tom Coburn (R-OK) to be PACHA co-chair in 2003. Coburn supports mandatory reporting to public authorities of the names of those testing positive for HIV/AIDS. He favors “the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life.”

According to Coburn, the gay community “has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country, and they wield extreme power… That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom that we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That’s a gay agenda.” Who else would you want advising the Bush administration on AIDS?

3. David Hager

Hager was one of three religious conservatives that Bush put on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in 2002 and only public outcry prevented him from becoming its chairperson. Critics argued that in his gynecology practice, Hager had refused to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women and had recommended Scripture readings to alleviate headaches and premenstrual syndrome. A memo which Hager wrote helped persuade the FDA to overrule its own advisory panel in 2004, thus preventing the emergency contraceptive “Plan B” from being made more easily available. Critics assailed the FDA’s decision as ignoring scientific evidence, but in Hager’s assessment: “Once again, what Satan meant for evil, God turned into good.” A downright criminal side of Hager emerged when his former wife went public with the fact that he had been emotionally, physically and sexually abusive during their 32-year marriage, forcibly sodomizing her on a regular basis. As Hager’s ex-wife told The Nation magazine in May 2005, “it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible.”

4. & 5. Lester Crawford and Norris Alderson

As Acting Commissioner of the FDA, Lester Crawford was notorious for blocking over-the-counter access to emergency contraception (EC).

Democratic senators initially halted Crawford’s confirmation to head the FDA, but gave approval in June 2005 after he promised to take action on EC by September 1, 2005. Once sworn in, however, Crawford stalled yet again, despite the FDA Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee’s having voted 23 to 4 in favor of making EC available over-the-counter. Dr. Susan Wood, the well-respected head of the FDA Women’s Health Office, soon resigned in protest – and that’s when things got really bizarre. Weeks after Wood stepped down, the FDA Women’s Health Office sent out a mass email announcing that she would be replaced by Dr. Norris Alderson, who was duly listed on the FDA site as: “Acting Director, Office of Women’s Health, Associate Commissioner for Science.” One small problem. Alderson is a veterinarian.

The administration appointed an animal doctor to be in charge of women’s health. Speaks volumes, doesn’t it? After predictable outcry, the FDA tried to pretend that Alderson had never been appointed in the first place. Recipients of the initial mass emailing, of course, knew otherwise. To make things even weirder, Crawford himself suddenly resigned as head of the FDA in September 2005 (just months after having been confirmed), amid allegations of not having properly disclosed his financial holdings to the Senate.

In August 2006, the FDA finally approved making the EC “Plan B” available over-the counter to consumers 18 years and older.

6. John G. Roberts

Progressives balked in September 2005 when Bush put forward far-right extremist John G. Roberts to head the US Supreme Court. In Robert’s illustrious career, he had fought against minority voting rights, argued against women’s educational rights, and tried to limit the rights of women prisoners. A legal brief Roberts contributed to said that Roe vs. Wade was “wrongly decided and should be overruled.”

Roberts became Chief Justice within weeks of his nomination, and as expected, has dragged the Supreme Court to the right. In the past two years, for example, the Roberts’ court upheld the constitutionality of a federal anti-abortion law (the so-called Partial Birth Abortion Act) and decreased public school students’ rights to free speech.

7. Samuel Alito

In January 2006, the stridently anti-choice Samuel Alito was sworn in to the US Supreme Court. Alito had previously argued that the strip-search of a mother and ten-year old girl without a warrant was constitutional and that women should be required to tell their husbands before getting an abortion. Alito stated in a 1985 application to be Deputy Assistant Attorney General: “I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to abortion.” For good measure, he added, “I am and always have been a conservative.”

Alito replaced the moderate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the nation’s high court. The obvious shift to the right caused by the addition of Roberts and Alito led Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to observe: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.”

8. Paul Bonicelli

In October 2005, Paul Bonicelli was appointed as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the US international development agency’s Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA). Bonicelli’s main prior claim to fame was being Dean of Academic Affairs at the fundamentalist Patrick Henry College, where the Student Honor Code mandates: “I will reserve sexual activity for the sanctity of marriage.” Patrick Henry College also has a 10-part Statement of Faith which says that hell is a place where “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.” Bonicelli’s current office at DCHA is responsible for: “strengthening the rule of law and respect for human rights; promoting more genuine and competitive elections and political processes; increasing development of a politically active civil society; and implementing a more transparent and accountable governance.” In other words, a guy who thinks that non-believers “shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity” has been put in charge of promoting human rights across the world.

9. Eric Keroak

In 2006, Bush tapped Eric Keroack to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for Population Affairs at the Health and Human Services Department. Keroack opposes contraception, has described premarital sex as “modern germ warfare,” and espouses the bizarre, unscientific belief that casual sex depletes “bonding” hormones. He was previously medical director of a Christian pregnancy counseling service which described contraception as “demeaning to women.” And that’s who the Bush administration chose to oversee the distribution of $283 million in family planning funds for the nation.

Keroack resigned in March 2007, after state Medicaid officials began taking action against his private medical practice.

10. Susan Orr

Keroack was replaced by Susan Orr, who had been “Senior Director for Marriage and Families” at the anti-gay, anti-reproductive rights Family Research Council. In her prior career, Orr had opposed the emergency contraception RU-486 and gushed that Bush was “pro-life… in his heart” for withholding funds from international family planning groups which even discussed abortion. Orr has claimed that contraception is “not a medical necessity.” Yet she now is in charge of facilitating access to both contraception and sex education for low-income families across the nation.

While presidential candidate George W. Bush insisted that he would put “competent judges on the bench, people who will strictly interpret the Constitution and will not use the bench to write social policy,” his judicial and other appointments have proven otherwise. And these appointees will not leave office when Bush does.

U.S. farm subsidies under the 2002 farm bill have been repeatedly challenged by trading partners, and new bill proposals from Congress would likely worsen the situation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s top economist said.

“We are going to face continuing challenges for our domestic support programs” unless lawmakers make significant changes to their legislation to overhaul the farm bill, USDA Chief Economist Keith Collins told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview Thursday.

The 2002 farm bill had been set to expire in September, but Congress is late in completing its work on cobbling together a new five-year farm policy bill. The House passed its version in July, but the Senate did not approve its bill until December. Both houses must come together and resolve their differences before presenting a unified piece of legislation to the White House.

Bush administration officials have made veto threats to both the House and Senate, saying the bills lack necessary subsidy reform.

Instead of reining in subsidies in a time when some prices farmers receive for their crops are at record-high levels, Collins said, Congress is trying to raise price support levels and target prices.

The subsidy challenges by U.S. trading partners have been lodged through the World Trade Organization. A WTO ruling in December slammed the U.S. for not sufficiently complying with an earlier ruling that cotton subsidies need to be curtailed.

Substantial counter-cyclical farm payments and marketing-assistance loan programs are still under fire, Collins said, and Congress’ proposals don’t address the problems.

“Under the House and Senate farm bill proposals,” he said, “they do not reform domestic programs in a way that would eliminate such challenges and, in fact, they may aggravate such challenges.”

The United States also faces yet another possible challenge through the WTO. Upon request by Canada and Brazil, the WTO opened an investigation in December into whether the United States has exceeded its ceiling on trade-distorting subsidies for corn, cotton, soybeans and other farm commodities.

Brazil and Canada, according to news reports, asked for the WTO investigation after failing to get the U.S. to limit subsidies in the ongoing WTO Doha Round of trade talks.

U.S. lawmakers, Collins said in the interview, are still working under the U.S. interpretation of constraints agreed on in the 1994 Uruguay Round trade pact, not in the spirit of the Doha Round. The Uruguay Round was agreed on under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, or GATT, which became the WTO.

Immediately after 9-11 the U.S. government began barking orders to the world, especially to the Muslim world. Perhaps echoing unconsciously the Christian scripture passages Matthew 12:30 and Luke 11:23, it proclaimed, “Either you are with us, or with the terrorists.” Remember those terrifying days, of omnipresent institutionalized ritualistic grief, anger and mandated unity, when any questioning was met with official indignation, threats, or punishment? When everything was supposed to be so clear? When above all, the national need to attack somebody—some Muslims—was supposed to be obvious, and the attack on Afghanistan in particular framed as common sense?

In Afghanistan, the Taliban was told that Washington would not distinguish between terrorists and the regimes that harbor them. The Taliban was of course one of the fundamentalist Islamist groups emerging from the long U.S. effort (1979-93) to topple the Soviet-supported secular regime. The Taliban in power from 1996 had netted some aid from a Washington deeply interested in Afghan oil pipeline construction, and also received aid and diplomatic support from Pakistan. Pakistan’s CIA (the Inter-Service Intelligence or ISI) had helped create the Taliban in order (as Benazir Bhutto later explained) to secure the trade route into Central Asia.

The Taliban, then with U.S. aid suppressing opium poppy production with extraordinary success, and manifesting no special hostility towards Washington, was ordered to hand over 9-11 mastermind Osama bin Ladin. But Pashtun culture (far more than most cultures) mandates that guests receive hospitality and protection, and bin Ladin, a periodic visitor from 1984 and permanent resident since 1996, was no ordinary guest. He had raised or supplied from his personal funds millions of dollars for the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen (which one must always emphasize was supported by him as well as the U.S.), and fought against the secular “socialist” Afghan regime in the name of Islam. Taliban leader Mullah Omar could not simply turn him over to the Americans and maintain any credibility with his own social base. On the other hand, the Taliban did not wish to provoke an invasion. So the Afghans asked for evidence of bin Ladin’s complicity in the attacks. Washington treated the request as absurd. The Afghans offered to turn bin Ladin over to an international court of Islamic jurists. The U.S. reiterated its demand that bin Ladin be transferred to American authorities immediately, knowing this was not going to happen and that it would thus have a popularly accepted casus belli.

Meanwhile Pakistan’s dictator-president Gen. Pervez Musharraf was told by the U.S. State Department that Pakistan must cut ties to the Taliban. “Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age,” he was told by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, through his deputy Richard Armitage, if he was unwilling to cooperate in the destruction of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Musharraf was also ordered to host U.S. troops and prevent anti-U.S. demonstrations in his country. Briefly Pakistan protested that it might be better to preserve diplomatic ties with the Taliban government, in order to influence it to cooperate with the U.S. which (one must repeat) had not hitherto had an unfriendly relationship with the U.S. But caving into the U.S. diktat, angering ISI officers deeply invested in Taliban support, risking a coup or assassination, Musharraf complied with U.S. demands. He was rewarded with the removal of U.S. sanctions imposed after Pakistan’s nuclear tests in 1998, and promises of massive aid as the U.S. prepared to bomb Afghanistan, topple the Talibs and impose following their downfall a government of Afghans willing to work with Washington. This of course turned out to be a government dominated by the Northern Alliance, a collection of non-Pashtuns including Uzbek and Tajik warlords hostile to Pakistan and supported by India and Iran.

The U.S. bombed; the Taliban fell, for the most part retreating to ancestral villages and lying low, monitoring the situation, seeking opportunities for resurgence. Few Americans at the time questioned the Bush administration’s ready conflation of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but the two were and are appreciably different. Al-Qaeda is a mostly Arab but multinational global network of Islamists hostile to the U.S. and its policies towards the Muslim world, growing in strength due to the continuation of those policies; the Taliban is a primarily Pashtun organization reflecting traditional Afghan Muslim fundamentalist values and fiercely opposed to foreign domination. The former is sophisticated, headed by well-educated men; the latter is largely illiterate, headed by clerics learned only in Islamic literature. The former wants to attack multiple targets to foment a generalized confrontation between the West and Islam; the latter wants to mind its own house and maintain Afghan traditions with all their xenophobic, medieval, patriarchal, misogynistic, anti-intellectual appeal.

A mix of Taliban militants and al-Qaeda forces resisted the U.S. invasion; hundreds at least escaped into Pakistan’s Federally-Administered Tribal Areas and North-West Frontier Province. Having driven bin Ladin and his followers out of Afghanistan, the U.S. declared a great victory and without skipping a beat moved on to invade and occupy Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9-11. The latter crime inevitably produced outrage globally, but particularly in Muslim countries like Pakistan, where the prestige of bin Ladin, already high in 2001, has soared ever since. (A recent poll showed his approval rating at 46%, compared to Musharraf’s 38% and Bush’s 9%.)

Preoccupied with establishing an empire, U.S. leaders lost interest in al-Qaeda. Indeed in March 2002 President Bush referring to bin Ladin declared, “I truly am not that concerned about him.” As for the al-Qaeda forces in Pakistan (whose very existence close U.S. ally Musharraf denied), they were Pakistan’s problem. The U.S. had unleashed a huge problem on the Pakistani state by invading its neighbor, toppling the Afghan government, and forcing al-Qaeda to relocate into Pakistan where sympathetic tribesmen (who have always resisted firm incorporation into the state) offered them safe haven. Pashtuns straddle the boundary of the two countries; Pakistani Pashtuns are largely sympathetic to the Taliban, and now a Pakistani Taliban is growing in strength in the Taliban and elsewhere.

Thus the “good war” in Afghanistan preceding the generally discredited war-based-on-lies in Iraq was in fact a very bad war so far as Pakistan was concerned. It brought Afghanistan a new warlord government, in which opium is again the chief commercial crop, prettified by a “democratic” election and the appointment of a longtime CIA contact, Hamid Karzai as president and de facto mayor or Kabul. It is increasingly challenged by the recrudescent Taliban and new recruits who have regained control of much of the south. Karzai from his weak position keeps offering them peace talks, which they reject, demanding the invaders leave before any negotiations.

For the U.S. the “good war” has meant 474 soldiers dead (116 so far this year); “coalition” dead have increased every year since 2003 and almost as many European troops have died during the last two years as Americans. Support for the Afghan mission has declined in Europe as its relevance to “counter-terrorism” becomes increasingly unclear and its character as an unwinnable counterinsurgency effort becomes more apparent.

The war in Afghanistan saddled Musharraf with a mounting Islamist rebellion in the Swat Valley and elsewhere; grave dissatisfaction within the military at the unprecedented deployment in the frontier provinces (where troops have performed poorly and unenthusiastically against Islamists); and personal unpopularity related both to his ties to the U.S. and to his abuses of power. Adding to his woes, the U.S. military struck targets within his country (without his consent, he claims), and threatened to take further action against Taliban or al-Qaeda forces in Pakistan. Then the Pakistani Chief Justice opposed his bid to run for president again, and needed to be arrested, causing a nasty political crisis. In an embarrassment to Musharraf the Supreme Court ordered the justice’s release. In the meantime supporters of former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif clamored for their return.

The natural thing for a beleaguered strongman to do in such circumstances would be to declare a state of emergency and assume emergency powers. But the U.S. State Department told him no, don’t do that, let Bhutto come back, work out some accommodation with her. Let the two of you share power and erect an anti-terrorist united front. So Musharraf hesitated until November, when he did indeed declare a state of emergency, meeting with Washington’s public disapproval. The U.S. threatened to cut off some non-military aid if he didn’t quickly lift martial law and hold elections in which Bhutto might compete. Musharraf negotiated with Bhutto, trading cancellation of corruption charges against her for his agreement to respect the constitutional provision that disallowed him to be both president and military officer at the same time.

Quite possibly Musharraf was thinking, “These people, who have already done so much to destabilize Pakistan, now want to destabilize it further by forcing me into this.” But he did, and Bhutto got killed, maybe by his people (cui bono?), maybe by al-Qaeda, maybe by homegrown Islamists angered by Bhutto’s Washington ties, which are even more intimate than Musharraf’s.

Maybe Musharraf will now cancel the election. Maybe he will hold it, arranging to win big. Either way, Washington analysts agree his position is weakened by the assassination. Pakistan, more or less stable as of 2001, has in the interval been knocked off balance by U.S. action in the region. Told it must be for or against the U.S., it was obliged to obey, with grim results.

Unprecedented militant Islamism. Unprecedented support for bin Ladin and al-Qaeda. Unprecedented support for the Taliban. Unprecedented Taliban-like attacks on Buddhist monuments, parts of Pakistan’s cultural heritage. The assassination of a popular pro-Western political figure on whom the U.S. State Department had placed its bets. Anti-Musharraf rioting in the wake of the assassination. Dire consequences indeed of Musharraf’s alliance.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades.

One of President Bush’s much-vaunted ‘accomplishments’ since the start of his reign of terror is the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security. This cabinet post was created following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., and brought with it artificial ‘safeguards’ to give the citizenry the illusion of increased security. Among these new ‘safeguards’ were allegedly tightened security at airports, resulting in hours-long delays for many travelers, and the purging of the nation of illegal aliens.

A recent article in New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger brings to light the myth of Mr. Bush’s new cabinet post, and exposes on a micro-scale the waste and home-grown terrorism that ‘Homeland Security’ has produced.

For example there is one Eleuterio Mosquera, a 56-year-old mechanic who had lived in the U.S. for seventeen years, during which time he had committed no crime other than remaining in the country after being told to leave. At 5:30 on a recent morning, Mr. Mosquera was leaving his Newark home for work at the recycling plant that had employed him for seven years, unaware that the two SUVs parked across the street contained a total of seven, heavily-armed federal agents. Mr. Mosquera never made it to his car; the agents arrested him, handcuffed him and took him to jail as his 78-year-old mother, a U.S. citizen, watched in horror.

Now it is certainly admitted that Mr. Mosquera, who came to the U.S. from Ecuador in 1991 and had been ordered back to that country that same year, did not do so. But it must also be admitted that he had lived quietly, working, paying taxes and minding his own business for nearly 17 years. He purchased and renovated a house in Newark, an area in desperate need of such attention. Yet despite his innocuous, productive and totally non-threatening life, seven federal agents were required to arrest him. One has difficulty understanding this. If the government was not going to leave him alone, why not quietly arrest him? How much does it cost to send seven federal agents after such a man? And, as the the old cliché asks: ‘Can’t they find some real criminals to arrest?’

But finding real criminals is no longer the task. Previously in NJ, the goal was that 75% of all illegal aliens arrested had to have a criminal record; there certainly is some logic in pursuing real criminals whether or not they are U.S. citizens. But because they are difficult to catch, that goal has been dismissed. Last year, of all those illegal immigrants arrested, a whopping 12% had criminal records. The rest were guilty of civil offenses, usually involving immigration violations. Scott Weber of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Detention and Removal, is unabashed. Said he: “Many times the criminal fugitives are harder to locate and take more time, but it doesn’t mean we’re not looking.” He further stated that those guilty of immigration (civil, not criminal) offenses need to be caught because they too have violated the law.

Many of those arrested have been in this country for many years; they are homeowners, have children who are U.S. citizens and often only come to the attention of authorities because they have applied for residency. As reported by The Star-Ledger: “Critics say a program that was designed to deport the immigration system’s worst offenders is instead catching thousands of people precisely because they’re the ones trying to legalize their status.”

Among those arrested recently were Isaac Nimni, an Israeli national who only came to the attention of authorities when his wife applied to sponsor him, and Rupi Rana, a 20-year-old student at the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), majoring in computer programming and computer engineering, arrested along with his parents and a brother who holds a master’s degree from NJIT in computer programming.

Ironically, most of those arrested wind up at the Elizabeth, NJ Detention Center, not far from the Newark Liberty International Airport. One wonders about any relationship between the work of the ICE agents and the concept of liberty.

If federal agents are busy arresting immigrants guilty of nothing other than being in the U.S. illegally, men and women who are otherwise law-abiding, productive members of society, when other illegal aliens are, in the words of Mr. Weber, “harder to locate,” what then, is the advantage? Why not devote the time that is currently spent harassing and forcibly deporting law-abiding people to finding those with criminal records? The answer, unfortunately, is obvious. In NJ during the last fiscal year which ended in September, ICE teams arrested 2,079 people, more than twice the number arrested the previous year. The fear-mongering Bush administration can point to these figures, and those from other states, to tell a frightened population that Mr. Bush’s efforts are bearing fruit; illegal aliens, who are all busy ramming jetliners into corporate office buildings, when they are not busy at work at recycling plants, raising their children, or studying in graduate school, are being rounded up like so much cattle and summarily deported back to from whence they came. And with names like Eleuterio Mosquera and Rupi Rani, they must certainly be up to no good.

Mr. Bush is busy building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border, to keep out the likes of Messrs Mosquera and Rani. Yet no one is protecting the U.S. from the crimes of the Bush administration: illegal wiretapping, deprivation of freedom of speech among others, not to mention an illegal, immoral imperial war for oil.

For seven years Mr. Bush has relied on the combination of a gullible public, willing to cower in fear at the mere mention of the word ‘Islam,’ and a weak, spineless Congress without the slightest concept of the idea of ‘checks and balances.’ By finding immigrants seeking permanent residency and sending them back to uncertain and often dangerous futures he is able to foster the illusion that he is ‘protecting Americans.’ While he does so, U.S. citizens and Congress look the other way as the nation’s reputation is shattered throughout the world, as the U.S. attempts to steal Iraq’s oil and individual freedoms fade into a polluted sunset.

The list of victims of Mr. Bush is endless: nearly 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands more seriously injured. Over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died in his war, with millions more wounded. Over 3,000,000 have been displaced. Add to that the thousands of people who have lived blameless lives in the U.S. for years, lacking only the official paperwork allowing them to do so, who are now languishing in detention centers or who have been deported. And then add those who depended on them for a living and who are now bereft of their primary means of support.

This is U.S. society in the first decade of a new millennium. One hopes that a new president, to be inaugurated in January of 2009, will bring about welcome changes, but when looking at the front-running candidates, one is left with little optimism.

Comrades of the National Assembly:

You have no easy task on your hands. On January 1st, 1959, surrounded by the accumulated and deepening grievances that our society inherited from its neo-colonial past under U.S. domination, many of us dreamed of creating a fully independent nation where justice prevailed. In the arduous and uneven struggle, there came the moment when we were left completely alone.

Nearly 50 years since the triumph of the Revolution, we can justifiably feel proud of ourselves, as we have held our ground, for almost half a century, in the struggle against the most powerful empire ever to exist in history. In the Proclamation I signed on July 31, 2006, none of you saw any signs of nepotism or an attempt to usurp parliamentary powers. That year, at once difficult and promising for the Revolution, the unity of the people, the Party and State were essential to continue moving forward and to face the declared threat of a military action by the United States.

This past December 24, during his visit to the various districts of the municipality which honored me with the nomination of candidate to parliament, Raúl noted that all of the numerous candidates proposed by the people of a district famous for its combativeness, but with a low educational level, had completed their higher education. This, as he said on Cuban television, made a profound impression in him.

Party, State and Government cadres and grassroots organizations face new problems in their work with an intelligent, watchful and educated people who detest bureaucratic hurdles and inconsiderate justifications. Deep down, every citizen wages an individual battle against humanity’s innate tendency to stick to its survival instincts, a natural law which governs all life.

We are all born marked by that instinct, which science defines as primary. Coming face to face with this instinct is rewarding because it leads us to a dialectical process and to a constant and altruistic struggle, bringing us closer to Martí and making us true communists.

What the international press has emphasized most in its reports on Cuba in recent days is the statement I made on the 17th of this month, in a letter to the director of Cuban television’s Round Table program, where I said that I am not clinging to power. I could add that for some time I did, due to my youth and lack of awareness, when, without any guidance, I started to leave my political ignorance behind and became a utopian socialist. It was a stage in my life when I believed I knew what had to be done and wanted to be in a position to do it! What made me change? Life did, delving more deeply into Martí’s ideas and those of the classics of socialism. The more deeply I became involved in the struggle, the stronger was my identification with those aims and, well before the revolutionary victory I was already convinced that it was my duty to fight for these aims or to die in combat.

We also face great risks that threaten the human species as a whole. This has become more and more evident to me since I predicted, for the first time in Rio de Janeiro, –over 15 years ago, in June 1992– that a species was threatened with extinction as a result of the destruction of its natural habitat. Today, the number of people who understand the real danger of this grows every day.

A recent book by Joseph Stiglitz, former Vice-President of the World Bank and President Clinton’s chief economic advisor until 2002, Nobel Prize laureate and bestselling author in the United States, offers up-to-date and irrefutable facts on the subject. He criticizes the United States, a country which did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, for being the largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, with annual emissions of 6 billion tons of this gas which disturbs the atmosphere without which life is impossible. In addition to this, the United States is the largest producer of other greenhouse gases.

Few people are aware of these facts. The same economic system which forced this unsustainable wastefulness on us impedes the distribution of Stiglitz’ book. Only a few thousand copies of an excellent edition have been published, enough to guarantee a margin of profit. This responds to a market demand, which the publishing house cannot ignore if it is to survive.

Today, we know that life on Earth has been protected by the ozone layer, located in the atmosphere’s outer ring, at an altitude between 15 to 50 kilometers, in the region known as the stratosphere, which acts as the planet’s shield against the type of solar radiation which can prove harmful. There are greenhouse gases whose warming potential is higher than that of carbon dioxide and which widen the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, which loses as much as 70 percent of its volume every spring. The effects of this phenomenon, which is gradually taking place, are humanity’s responsibility.

To have a clear sense of this phenomenon, suffice it to say that the world produces an average of 4.37 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita. In the case of the United States, the average is 20.14, nearly 5 times as much. In Africa, it is 1.17, while in Asia and Oceania it is 2.87.

The ozone layer, in brief, protects us from ultraviolet and heat radiation which affects the immune system, sight, skin and life of human beings. Under extreme conditions, the destruction of that layer by human beings would affect all forms of life on the planet.

Other problems, foreign to our nation and many others under similar conditions, also threaten us. A victorious counterrevolution would spell a disaster for us, worse than Indonesia’s tragedy. Sukarno, overthrown in 1967, was a nationalist leader who, loyal to Indonesia, headed the guerrillas who fought the Japanese.

General Suharto, who overthrew him, had been trained by Japanese occupation forces. At the conclusion of World War II, Holland, a U.S. ally, re-established control over that distant, extensive and populated territory. Suharto maneuvered. He hoisted the banners of U.S. imperialism. He committed an atrocious act of genocide. Today we know that, under instructions from the CIA, he not only killed hundreds of thousands but also imprisoned a million communists and deprived them and their relatives of all properties or rights; his family amassed a fortune of 40 billion dollars -which, at today’s exchange rate, would be equivalent to hundreds of billions- by handing over the country’s natural resources, the sweat of Indonesians, to foreign investors. The West paid up. Texan-born Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was then the President of the United States.

The news on the events in Pakistan we received today also attest to the dangers that threaten our species: internal conflict in a country that possesses nuclear weapons. This is a consequence of the adventurous policies of and the wars aimed at securing the world’s natural resources unleashed by the United States.

Pakistan, involved in a conflict it did not unleash, faced the threat of being taken back to the Stone Age.

The extraordinary circumstances faced by Pakistan had an immediate effect on oil prices and stock exchange shares. No country or region in the world can disassociate itself from the consequences. We must be prepared for anything.

There hasn’t been a day in my life in which I haven’t learned something.

Martí taught us that “all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn”. Many times have I said and repeated this phrase, which carries in eleven words a veritable school of ethics.

Cuba’s Five Heroes, imprisoned by the empire, are to be held up as examples for the new generations.

Fortunately, exemplary conducts will continue to flourish with the consciousness of our peoples as long as our species exists.

I am certain that many young Cubans, in their struggle against the Giant in the Seven-League Boots, would do as they did. Money can buy everything save the soul of a people who has never gone down on its knees.

I read the brief and concise report which Raúl wrote and sent me. We must not waste a minute as we continue to move forward. I will raise my hand, next to you, to show my support.

“There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater. … Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later….”

12/28/07 “ICH” — — These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account. His children found the manuscript when he died in 1999 and published it the following year as “Geschichte eines Deutschen” (The Story of a German).

The book became an immediate bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages—in English as “Defying Hitler.”

I recently learned from his daughter Sarah, an artist in Berlin, that today is the 100th anniversary of Haffner’s birth. She had seen an earlier article in which I quoted her father and e-mailed to ask me to “write some more about the book and the comparison to Bush’s America. … This is almost unbelievable.”

More about Haffner below. Let’s set the stage first by recapping some of what has been going on that may have resonance for readers familiar with the Nazi ascendancy, noting how “odd” it is that the frontal attack on our Constitutional rights is met with such “calm, superior indifference.”

Goebbels Would be Proud

It has been two years since top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

The Times had learned of this well before the election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information.

In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen’s book, “State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” revealing the warrantless eavesdropping was being printed, Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate no longer.

It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen’s book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs’s trademark criterion: All The News That’s Fit To Print.

(The Times’ own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper’s explanation for the long delay in publishing this story “woefully inadequate.”)

When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times.

The truth would out; part of it, at least.

Glitches

There were some embarrassing glitches. For example, unfortunately for National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, the White House neglected to tell him that the cat would soon be out of the bag.

So on Dec. 6, Alexander spoke from the old talking points in assuring visiting House intelligence committee member Rush Holt, D-New Jersey, that the NSA did not eavesdrop on Americans without a court order.

Still possessed of the quaint notion that generals and other senior officials are not supposed to lie to congressional oversight committees, Holt wrote a blistering letter to Gen. Alexander after the Times, on Dec. 16, front-paged a feature by Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.”

But House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan, apparently found Holt’s scruples benighted; Hoekstra did nothing to hold Alexander accountable for misleading Holt, his most experienced committee member, who had served as an intelligence analyst at the State Department.

What followed struck me as bizarre. The day after the Dec. 16 Times feature article, the president of the United States publicly admitted to a demonstrably impeachable offense.

Authorizing illegal electronic surveillance was a key provision of the second article of impeachment against President Richard Nixon. On July 27, 1974, this and two other articles of impeachment were approved by bipartisan votes in the House Judiciary Committee.

Bush Takes Frontal Approach

Far from expressing regret, the president bragged about having authorized the surveillance “more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks,” and said he would continue to do so. The president also said:

“Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it.”

On Dec. 19, 2005, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-NSA Director Michael Hayden held a press conference to answer questions about the as yet unnamed surveillance program.

Gonzales was asked why the White House decided to flout FISA rather than attempt to amend it, choosing instead a “backdoor approach.” He answered:

“We have had discussions with Congress…as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.”

Hmm. Impossible? It strains credulity that a program of the limited scope described would be unable to win ready approval from a Congress that had just passed the “Patriot Act” in record time.

James Risen has made the following quip about the prevailing mood: “In October 2001, you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America.”

It was not difficult to infer that the surveillance program must have been of such scope and intrusiveness that, even amid highly stoked fear, it didn’t have a prayer for passage.

It turns out we didn’t know the half of it.

What To Call These Activities

“Illegal Surveillance Program” didn’t seem quite right for White House purposes, and the PR machine was unusually slow off the blocks.

It took six weeks to settle on “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” with FOX News leading the way followed by the president himself. This labeling would dovetail nicely with the president’s rhetoric on Dec. 17:

“In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al-Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. … The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after September 11 helped address that problem…” [Emphasis added]

And Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed NSA from 1999 to 2005, was of course on the same page, dissembling as convincingly as the president. At his May 2006 confirmation hearings to become CIA director, he told of his soul-searching when, as director of NSA, he was asked to eavesdrop on Americans without a court warrant.

“I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001,” said Hayden. “It was a personal decision. … I could not not do this.”

Like so much else, it was all because of 9/11. But we now know…

It Started Seven Months Before 9/11.

How many times have you heard it? The mantra “after 9/11 everything changed” has given absolution to all manner of sin.

We are understandably reluctant to believe the worst of our leaders, and this tends to make us negligent. After all, we learned from former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that drastic changes were made in U.S. foreign policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian issue and toward Iraq at the first National Security Council meeting on Jan. 30, 2001.

Should we not have anticipated far-reaching changes at home as well?

Reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and court documents and testimony on a case involving Qwest strongly suggest that in February 2001 Hayden saluted smartly when the Bush administration instructed NSA to suborn AT&T, Verizon, and Qwest to spy illegally on you, me, and other Americans.

Bear in mind that this would have had nothing to do with terrorism, which did not really appear on the new administration’s radar screen until a week before 9/11, despite the pleading of Clinton aides that the issue deserved extremely high priority.

So this until-recently-unknown pre-9/11 facet of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was not related to Osama bin Laden or to whomever he and his associates might be speaking. It had to do with us.

We know that the Democrats briefed on the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, (the one with the longest tenure on the House Intelligence Committee), Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, and former and current chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, D-Florida, and Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, respectively.

May one interpret their lack of public comment on the news that the snooping began well before 9/11 as a sign they were co-opted and then sworn to secrecy?

It is an important question. Were the appropriate leaders in Congress informed that within days of George W. Bush’s first inauguration the NSA electronic vacuum cleaner began to suck up information on you and me, despite the FISA law and the Fourth Amendment?

Are They All Complicit?

And are Democratic leaders about to cave in and grant retroactive immunity to those telecommunications corporations—AT&T and Verizon—which made millions by winking at the law and the Constitution?

(Qwest, to its credit, heeded the advice of its general counsel who said that what NSA wanted done was clearly illegal.)

What’s going on here? Have congressional leaders no sense for what is at stake?

Lately the adjective “spineless” has come into vogue in describing congressional Democrats—no offense to invertebrates.

Nazis and Their Enablers

You don’t have to be a Nazi. You can just be, well, a sheep.

In his journal, Sebastian Haffner decries what he calls the “sheepish submissiveness” with which the German people reacted to a 9/11-like event, the burning of the German Parliament (Reichstag) on Feb. 27, 1933.

Haffner finds it quite telling that none of his acquaintances “saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from then on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened, and one’s desk might be broken into.”

But it is for the cowardly politicians that Haffner reserves his most vehement condemnation. Do you see any contemporary parallels here?

In the elections of March 4, 1933, shortly after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi party garnered only 44 percent of the vote. Only the “cowardly treachery” of the Social Democrats and other parties to whom 56 percent of the German people had entrusted their votes made it possible for the Nazis to seize full power. Haffner adds:

“It is in the final analysis only that betrayal that explains the almost inexplicable fact that a great nation, which cannot have consisted entirely of cowards, fell into ignominy without a fight.”

The Social Democratic leaders betrayed their followers—“for the most part decent, unimportant individuals.” In May, the party leaders sang the Nazi anthem; in June the Social Democratic party was dissolved.

The middle-class Catholic party Zentrum folded in less than a month, and in the end supplied the votes necessary for the two-thirds majority that “legalized” Hitler’s dictatorship.

As for the right-wing conservatives and German nationalists: “Oh God,” writes Haffner, “what an infinitely dishonorable and cowardly spectacle their leaders made in 1933 and continued to make afterward. … They went along with everything: the terror, the persecution of Jews. … They were not even bothered when their own party was banned and their own members arrested.”

In sum: “There was not a single example of energetic defense, of courage or principle. There was only panic, flight, and desertion. In March 1933, millions were ready to fight the Nazis. Overnight they found themselves without leaders. … At the moment of truth, when other nations rise spontaneously to the occasion, the Germans collectively and limply collapsed. They yielded and capitulated, and suffered a nervous breakdown. … The result is today the nightmare of the rest of the world.”

This is what can happen when virtually all are intimidated.

Our Founding Fathers were not oblivious to this; thus, James Madison:

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. … The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”

We cannot say we weren’t warned.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an Army officer and then a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years, and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

When the hideous photographs of torture and abuse emerged from Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2004, they created a public relations disaster for the Bush administration. The White House had painstakingly worked to capitalize on the 9/11 attacks by creating a “war on terror.” Never mind the absurdity of declaring war on a tactic. Central to Bush’s new “war” was the portrayal of us as the good guys and al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Saddam Hussein as the bad guys.

But the Abu Ghraib photos of naked Iraqis piled on top of one another, forced to masturbate, led around on leashes like dogs shined the light on U.S. hypocrisy.

After the Abu Ghraib revelations, the Bush administration could not tolerate more bad publicity. So in 2005, the CIA destroyed several hundred hours of videotapes depicting torturous interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, probably including water boarding. The former U.S. official involved in discussions about the tapes reported widespread concern that “something as explosive as this would probably get out,” according to the Los Angeles Times. This destruction of evidence may violate several laws. And it remains to be seen how high up the chain of command the criminality goes.

Now that the videotape scandal has come to light, Bush and his men are back in damage control mode. CIA Director Michael Hayden minimized the significance of the destruction, claiming the tapes were destroyed “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries.” These claims are disingenuous.

The tapes likely portray U.S. officials engaged in torture, which violates three U.S.-ratified treaties as well as the U.S. Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act.

Bush justifies his administration’s “harsh interrogation techniques” by maintaining that Zubaydah, under interrogation, fingered Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. But according to investigative journalist Ron Suskind in his 2006 book One Percent Doctrine, it was a “walk-in” who led the CIA to Mohammed in return for a $25 million reward.

Zubaydah evidently wasn’t a top al Qaeda leader. Dan Coleman, one of the FBI’s leading experts on al Qaeda, said Zubaydah “knew very little about real operations, or strategy.” Moreover, Zubaydah was schizophrenic, according to Coleman. “This guy is insane, certifiable split personality.” Coleman’s views were echoed at the top levels of the CIA and were communicated to Bush and Cheney. But Bush scolded CIA director George Tenet, saying, “I said [Zubaydah] was important. You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” Zubaydah’s minor role in al Qaeda and his apparent insanity were kept secret.

In response to the torture, Zubaydah told his interrogators about myriad terrorist targets al Qaeda had in its sights: the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statute of Liberty, shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, and apartment buildings. Al Qaeda was close to building a crude nuclear bomb, Zubaydah reported. None of this was corroborated but the Bush gang reacted to each report zealously.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed the government’s duty to provide criminal defendants with any evidence in the government’s possession that might tend to exonerate the defendant or impeach the prosecutor’s case. Zacarias Moussaoui tried to subpoena Zubaydah to testify at his trial. On May 9, 2003, Assistant U.S. Attorneys David Novak and David Raskin lied to U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over Moussaoui’s trial. When the judge asked “whether the interrogations are being recorded in any format”?, the U.S. Attorneys, evidently relying on information from the CIA, said “No.” This is obstruction of justice.

When Zubaydah and al-Nashiri go before the military commissions, they will undoubtedly raise their torture as a defense to whatever crimes they face. Yet the evidence of that torture has been destroyed by the government.

There was no way of knowing whether these tapes could have intelligence value in the future. Indeed, the government defied the 2003 and 2004 demands of the 9/11 Commission by failing to turn over the videotaped interrogations. Now the CIA is parsing words by claiming the commission never directly asked for videotapes. “We asked for every single thing they had,” commission co-chairman Thomas Kean said. “And then my vice chairman, Lee Hamilton, looked the director of the CIA in the face, and said, ‘Look, even if we haven’t asked for something, if it’s pertinent to our investigation, make it available to us.’” Hamilton said the CIA “clearly obstructed” the commission’s investigation.

At the same time the 9/11 Commission was denied the tapes, the ACLU filed Freedom of Information Act requests seeking records of the treatment of all detainees held in U.S. custody abroad since 9/11. When the government refused to comply with the FOIA requests, the ACLU sued in federal court in New York. On September 15, 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the CIA and other government agencies to “produce or identify” all requested documents within one month. They are still not forthcoming. The ACLU has filed a motion to hold the CIA in contempt of court for refusing to comply with Judge Hellerstein’s order.

When the destruction of the tapes became public, both the House and Senate intelligence committees opened investigations, and subpoenaed witnesses and documents to shed light on the matter. Attorney General Michael Mukasey refused to cooperate and tried to put the kabosh on the congressional probes, asking them to wait until he had finished his own internal investigation. But after criticism in the media, the CIA relented and agreed to produce documents and the testimony of acting CIA general counsel John Rizzo.

The decision to destroy the tapes was allegedly made by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who was chief of the Directorate of Operations, the CIA’s clandestine service. Although the House intelligence committee has subpoenaed Rodriguez, there is no indication his bosses will allow him to testify.

The Sunday Times (London) reported that Rodriguez may seek immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before the House intelligence committee. Rodriguez’s testimony could be explosive.

At least four top White House lawyers participated in discussions with the CIA between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy the videotapes. They included Alberto Gonzales, David Addington (Cheney’s former counsel, now his chief of staff), Harriet Miers, and John Bellinger (former senior attorney at the National Security Council). The New York Times quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying there was “vigorous sentiment” among some high White House officials to destroy the tapes.

Two former CIA officials, Vincent Cannistrano and Larry Johnson, think it highly unlikely Rodriguez made the decision to destroy the tapes on his own. George W. Bush “has no recollection” of hearing about the existence or destruction of the tapes before Hayden briefed him on December 13. Yet given Bush’s keen interest in Zubaydah’s interrogation, it seems more likely the President was involved with the decision to destroy the tapes.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Michael Mukasey refused to opine about whether water boarding constitutes torture. Mukasey knew the Bush administration had admitted water boarding prisoners, and that torture is a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. Mukasey was shielding his future bosses from criminal liability as war criminals. Now the Department of Justice, under Mukasey, is investigating the destruction of the tapes.

Justice Department regulations call for the appointment of an outside special counsel when (1) a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted, (2) the investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department, and (3) under the circumstances it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter. When these three conditions are satisfied, the attorney general must select a special counsel from outside the government. (28 C.F.R. 600.1, 600.3 (2007).)

When he was a federal judge, Michael Mukasey issued the material witness warrant for Jose Padilla. The warrant was based partly on information from Abu Zubaydah. It is not clear whether Mukasey knew Zubaydah’s statements were obtained by torture. But since he issued the warrant, Mukasey has a real or apparent conflict of interest. He has said it is premature to appoint an outside special counsel. But like the Nixon administration, the Department of Justice cannot be trusted to investigate itself. Congress should be pressured to pass a new independent counsel statute.

In a remarkable symbol of the injustices of post-Katrina reconstruction, hundreds of people were locked out of a public New Orleans City Council meeting addressing demolition of 4500 public housing apartments. Some were tasered, many pepper sprayed and a dozen arrested.

Outside the chambers, iron gates were chained and padlocked even before the scheduled start.

The scene looked like one of those countries on TV that is undergoing a people’s revolution – and the similarities were only beginning. (See video at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMBWAXfGsc4)

Dozens of uniformed police secured the gates and other entrances. Only developers and those with special permission from council members were allowed in – the rest were kept locked outside the gates. Despite dozens of open seats in the council chambers, pleas to be allowed in were ignored.

Chants of “Housing is a human right!” and “Let us in!” thundered through the concrete breezeway.

Public housing residents came and spoke out despite an intense campaign of intimidation. Residents were warned by phone that if they publicly opposed the demolitions they would lose all housing assistance. Residents opposed to the demolition had simple demands. If the authorities insisted on spending hundreds of millions to tear down hundreds of structurally sound buildings containing 4500 public housing subsidized apartments, there should be a guarantee that every resident could return to a similarly subsidized apartment. Alternatively, the government should use the hundreds of millions to repair the apartments so people could come home. Neither alternative was acceptable to HUD. A plan of residents to partner with the AFL-CIO Housing Trust to save their homes was also ignored.

Outside, SWAT team members and police in riot gear and on horses began to arrive as rain started falling. Those locked out included public housing residents, a professor from Southern University, graduate students, the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, ministers, lawyers, law students, homeless people who lived in tents across the street from city hall, affordable housing allies from across the country and dozens of others.

Inside the chambers, Revered Torin Sanders and others insisted that the locked out be allowed to come and stand inside along the walls – a common practice for over 30 years. No one could recall any City Council locking people out of a public meeting. The request to allow people to stand was denied. The Council then demanded silence from those inside. Those who continued to demand that the others be let in were pointed out by police, physically taken down and arrested. Ironically, some young men were tasered right in front of the speaker’s podium.

This was a meeting the council had repeatedly tried to avoid. It was only held after residents (100% African American and nearly all mothers and grandmothers) got an emergency court order stopping demolitions until the council acted. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced long ago it was going to demolish 4500 public housing apartments despite the Katrina crisis of affordable housing no matter what anyone said. HUD had no plans to ask the council or anyone else for approval. The judge said otherwise, so the meeting was scheduled.

Leaders of the U.S. Congress, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, asked that the decision be delayed 60 days so they could try to move forward on Senate Bill 1668 which would resolve many of the demolition problems. This request was backed by New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and Presidential candidates John Edwards and Barack Obama.

Opponents cited the affordable housing crisis in New Orleans. Homeless people camped across from City Hall and for blocks under the interstate. The number of homeless people doubled since Katrina. Thousands of residents in FEMA trailers across the Gulf Coast were being evicted. More on the reasons to oppose demolition can be found here.

Solidarity demonstrations opposing demolition were held in Washington DC, New York, Oakland, Minneapolis, Houston, North Carolina, Maine, Philadelphia, Cleveland, New Jersey, and Boston. Thousands of people across the country contacted city council members. Dozens of community, housing and human rights groups petitioned the Council not to demolish until there was an enforceable requirement of one for one replacement of housing.

But hours before the meeting began, a majority of the council publicly announced on the front page of the local paper that they were going to approve demolition no matter what people said at the meeting. The paper, the developers and others were delighted. Residents and affordable housing allies were not.

Inside, the council started the meeting surrounded by armed police, National Guard and undercover authorities from many law enforcement agencies.

Outside, the locked out could see the people who had been arrested on the inside being dragged away to police wagons. A few of the protestors then pulled open one of the gates. The police started shooting arcs of pepper spray into the crowd. A woman’s scream pierced the chaos as police fired tasers into the crowd. Medics wiped pepper spray from fallen people’s eyes. A young woman who was tasered in the back went into a seizure and was taken to the hospital.

Inside and out, a dozen people were arrested – most for disturbing the peace. They joined another dozen who had been arrested over the past week in protest actions against the demolitions.

The City Council meeting continued. Supporters of demolition were given careful, courteous attention and softball questions by council members. Opponents less so.

Despite pleas from displaced residents, dozens of community organizations and federal elected officials, the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to allow demolition to proceed. In their approval the Council did promise to urge HUD to listen to residents and to work for one for one replacement of affordable housing. Several city council members read from typed statements about their reasons to support demolition: the deplorable state of public housing; the lack of available money for repair; the oral promises of all, the federal government and developers, to do something better for the community.

After the meeting, residents vowed to continue their struggle for affordable housing for everyone and to resist demolitions – putting their bodies before bulldozers if necessary.

The struggle for affordable housing continues as does the campaign to stop demolition until there is a real right to return and one for one replacement of housing. Residents and local advocates applaud and appreciate the support of allies from across the nation. Critics label national supporters as “outside agitators” – exactly the same charge leveled at civil rights activists historically. But people understand that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Public housing residents and local affordable housing advocates welcome the humble participation of social justice advocates of whatever age, of whatever race, from whatever place, who join and act in true solidarity.

Residents vow to make sure that the promises made by the Council and the Mayor are enforced. For example, the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, announced that he would not allow HUD to demolish two of the four housing developments until HUD gave documentation of funded plans including one for one replacement of the housing demolished and details of the developments and their plans.

The Senate will continue to be lobbied to pass SB 1668 – which would really guarantee one for one replacement of housing. It is currently stalled in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee because of opposition by Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter.

Litigation is still pending in state and federal courts to enforce Louisiana and U.S. laws that should protect residents from illegal demolitions. Investigations into the legality of locking people out of a public meeting, the legality of a law passed at such a meeting, the indiscriminate use of tasers and pepper spray, are all ongoing.

Padlocked and chained gates will only amplify the voices of the locked out calling for justice. Pepper spray and tasers illustrate the problems but will not deter people from protesting for just causes. Bulldozers may start up, but just people will resist and create a reality where housing is a real human right.

Stephanie Mingo, a working grandmother who is one of the leaders of the residents, promised to continue the resistance after the meeting: “We did not come this far to turn back now. This fight is far from over. We are not resting until everyone has the right to return home.”

Those wanting additional information should look to: www.justiceforneworleans.org or www.defendneworleanspublichousing.org

12/27/07 “ICH” — — At long last, the age-old problem of health care for the poor and near-poor is being discussed in open forum. The problem has existed since the ethos of class differentiation was begun with the invention of wampum. In this modern age, it is only through the activities of individual greed that it continues, despite the glaring fact that one solution is the only alternative.

Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts experiment has already been exposed as a failure as will be any other program for “mandatory insurance”. As with the assistance that is provided to the elderly holders of policies for Medicare Part D, recipients of the plan must be totally destitute in order to be free of the required “deductible and co-payment” muddle. Even if they have “insurance coverage” they still cannot afford the cash outlay that is necessary in order to obtain the necessary treatment.

How, then, to be sure that even those who are marginally above the “poverty level” can have the health care they need? How do we care for those who are ill before the condition creates a crisis? How to keep the healthy in good condition so that they can continue to lead productive lives?.

Half a century ago, a good businessman named Henry Kaiser joined other automobile and equipment manufacturers in ceasing the making of their former product in order to make the needed equipment that the country needed in order to effectively engage in World War II. He built huge shipyards on the West Coast and people poured in from all over the beleaguered nation to work in them. Soon it was apparent that these folks were physically devastated by the medical neglect, malnutrition, and other maladies inflicted by the Great Depression. The absenteeism troubled him until he reached one infallible conclusion: “It is less costly to keep people healthy than to get them well once they become ill.”

On that philosophy he built his own clinics and hospitals where employees of his operations could receive physical check-ups regularly, necessary medications, dental care, and visual examinations and treatments. A small amount was deducted from the paychecks of the workers and Kaiser workers bcame healthy, happy, and productive. Only later did the Bess Kaiser Memorial Hospital system become the largest Health Maintenance Organization on the West Coast. With the end of the war and the closure of the shipyards, the program became open to other employers on a group plan, though only those who were employed by such an employer could benefit from the total coverage, the excellent care, and the reasonable cost. With the advent of other, similar companies, Kaiser became just another HMO in order to deal with the competition.

But the principle that was discovered by Henry Kaiser remains as true now as then. Even with the S-CHIP program, small chidren must either attend or miss school while suffering from an ear infection or a bad cough while his working father, mother, or both, must wait for a payday so they will have the necessary nine or ten dollars to make the “co-payment”in order to see a doctor. Employees go to work feeling ill but “toughing it out” because they cannot afford to risk a hospital stay for fear of the “deductible” and its devastating effect on the family budget. What we have is not working and the plans that are proposed will not work. The news site, Alternet, has done a good series on the problem which may be read here.

There are many arguments from those who oppose the Universal Health Care plans as proposed by Dennis Kucinich and others. One is that it would raise taxes. Horrors! Have you computed the amount that you pay in insurance premiums each year? The insurance companies have been “taxing” you for half a century and you take it in stride. The added taxes to cover your health care would not be likely to be more than you are paying now to the insurance company and the coverage would be better.

Another is that it would “destroy an industry”. Perhaps an unfeeling industry should be brought to account for the exhorbitant profits that they have amassed as the result of denying care, requiring co-payments and deductibles to deter people from fully utilizing their benefits, and refusing coverage to “high-risk individuals”. Let them go back to insuring lives and property, cars, houses, and business liabilities.

The third argument against free universal health care is that it would cost too much. This argument is the least effective when viewed in the light of realism. The insurance companies declare an annual profit of some Ten Billion Dollars! How many of the 40% of Americans without adequate health care could be kept healthy by the addition of that amount to be paid to physicians, hospitals, and pharmacists?

It is time that the American people take a clear-eyed look at the reasons why our children are being weakened, our workers hindered, and our elderly going without medications at the end of the year because of the dread “donut hole”while we bear the burden of making the rich even richer. We manage our personal budgets with care to be sure that we spend our money in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. Why should we ask less of those firms that are stealing our health care dollars while leaving us without that for which we are paying? As they “cream the market”, insuring only the healthy and discontinuing coverage for those with serious illnesses, those left uninsured must liquidate their homes and other assets to pay for their own medical care until they are destitute and qualify for Medicaid and welfare.

That is why our nation, which spends more for health care than any other can only rank 45th in the quality of care. Those who can afford it have access to the most modern technology and life-saving procedures where those who cannot are left with medical care that is reminiscent of the nineteenth century. This is the great shame of our vaunted democracy where we expound that “all men are created equal”. The big lie is exposed when you learn that the rich get the best while the poor are shunted aside to die of neglect. When a plan is suggested that would care for the poor while costing the rich no more, we owe it to ourselves to give it serious consideration.