The Rag Blog

Many of the refugees are from the white collar middle class, and are the people Iraq can least afford to lose. Most of them are only 3 months or less from exhausting all their saving and being thrown into complete destitution. Children are not being educated, and literacy is falling dramatically in the next generation. Many girls are forced into ‘survival sex,’ i.e. prostitution.

CAIRO, Egypt — One in five Iraqi refugees in Syria has been tortured or suffered from other violence, and more than a third fled their homeland between July and October, at the height of the U.S. troop buildup that was intended to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, preliminary data from a new United Nations study show.

The survey also found that the refugee population is highly educated — nearly a third have university degrees, including master’s and doctorates — and that many refugees are only weeks away from exhausting their savings.

The survey, which the IPSOS market research firm conducted in October and November, is the most comprehensive study to date of the 1.5 million Iraqis who’ve sought safety in Syria from the sectarian violence at home. The results are based on interviews with 754 refugees, who were asked detailed questions that ranged from whether they’d been hit by grenades to how they treat their children’s illnesses. Full results are expected in early January.

The U.N. survey includes special questions about trauma that researchers from Harvard University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hope will help them determine for the first time the extent to which the violence in Iraq has damaged the mental health and stability of the war’s survivors.

The survey may provide some insight into the impact of U.S. actions. The preliminary results suggest that as American forces moved into Baghdad’s neighborhoods to establish security, large numbers of Iraqis moved out.

Of the refugees polled, 78 percent said they’d come from Baghdad, which has been the focus of military operations since the U.S. troop buildup began last February. Thirty-five percent said they’d fled between July and October, when U.S. troop strength peaked. Another 30 percent said they’d fled to Syria last year, as violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims intensified.

More than half the survey’s participants said they’d received direct threats or had lived through bombings. Eleven percent had been assaulted and 6 percent had been kidnapped.

The number of refugees with missing or dead relatives has risen steadily in the past four years; 54 percent had dead or missing family members this year, up from 22 percent last year. Murder was cited as the No. 1 cause of death, listed in 78 percent of the cases in the U.N. survey. A majority of respondents, 62 percent, blamed sectarian militias for the deaths. Twenty-eight percent listed “unknown” and 2 percent listed “al Qaida.”

Sybella Wilkes, the Damascus-based U.N. spokeswoman on refugee issues, said the survey’s results on financial instability confirmed the observations of field workers, who’d noticed new levels of desperation among the most recent Iraqi refugees. Forty percent have been living in Syria for less than a year, according to the survey, and they’re finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet.

“We’ve seen the poorest of the poor here,” Wilkes said. “We’re seeing more homelessness, child labor, survival sex, early marriage and temporary marriage. The floodgates opened in 2006, and the Iraqis who’ve come since then have been much poorer” than earlier waves of refugees.

Thirty-three percent of the Iraqis surveyed predicted that they’d run out of money within three months, while a quarter of the refugees depend on remittances from relatives in Iraq or abroad. Nearly all refugees are renters, and 71 percent of them live with other family members in apartments with two to four rooms. Nearly a quarter of respondents lived in one-room housing.

Groceries are a top expense, and most respondents said they hadn’t received any food assistance from the U.N. or other agencies. Rice and lentils were listed as the most-needed staples. As of November, 51,000 Iraqis in Syria receive monthly food baskets from the U.N.’s World Food Program.

Education is another troubling issue. Less than 3 percent of the Iraqi adults surveyed were illiterate, and 35 percent of them had attended universities. But dropout rates among school-aged refugees have more than doubled since May, from 21 percent to 46 percent. Of those who’ve dropped out, 19 percent are working.

Health care also is precarious. Although an estimated 19,000 refugees registered with the U.N. have chronic illnesses, 19 percent aren’t taking medication because they can’t afford it.

12/19/07 “ICH” — – The November 19 New York Times announces, “Baghdad’s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves.”

The Washington Post on November 23 reports, “Returnees Find a Capital Transformed.”

People in the US are willing to believe the establishment media telling them that refugees are returning to their homes in Baghdad in an environment of improved security and new hope.

It is true that there have been fewer American soldiers killed in Baghdad and the number of Iraqis fleeing to Syria has declined. However, this relatively quieter security situation needs to be placed in its proper context, something the Western media steadfastly refuses to do.

We are proudly informed that buying off Sunni militias and resistance fighters at $300 per month is among the latest U.S. military tactics, but we are conscientiously kept uninformed about the implications of such a move. Nor is there any mention of the growing antagonism it has generated in the US-backed Iraqi Government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. By its own admission, the U.S. military has paid over $17 million, so far, to recruit 77,000 Sunni fighters, many of whom were launching attacks against the Americans a few weeks ago (International Herald Tribune).

Post purchase, the US military has rechristened them “Concerned Local Citizens,” or “Awakening Forces.” The target is to procure another 10,000.

The current recruitment has indeed contributed to a de-escalation of violence in the capital city, and across much of al-Anbar province, which comprises one third of the geographic area of Iraq.

Reiterated Strategy

We are proudly informed that buying off Sunni militias and resistance fighters at $300 per month is among the latest U.S. military tactics, but kept uninformed about the implications of such a move.

After it failed to take control of Fallujah during the April 2004 assault, the US employed a similar tactic. It was a presidential election year in the US (as is 2008) and in order to save face, the U.S. military “handed” over security operations in Fallujah to the very people it had fought in April. Money and weapons flooded the city and strengthened the mujahedeen.

At the time a much larger battle was in the offing, the November 2004 U.S. siege of Fallujah, which left thousands dead, and destroyed approximately 70 percent of the city. It is worth noting that the attack was launched on November 8, 2004, just days after it was determined that George W. Bush would remain in office.

Under the “new and improved” conditions, consider the following:

* the fragility of the political balance in Iraq;

* the Middle Eastern regional instability;

* the ever intensifying U.S. threats of an attack against Iran;

* the likelihood of the “Concerned Local Citizens” staying loyal to their new masters;
and then let us consider what calamity awaits the occupied country.

Political Capital

Both the Maliki government and the Bush administration are using the return of refugees as political capital. This projection bears little relation to the ground reality.

To place an inconsequential fact on record, since the beginning of the US “surge” earlier this year, the number of people displaced from their homes in Iraq has quadrupled, and the number of detentions carried out by both Iraqi and U.S. security forces has escalated astronomically. On November 13, the International Committee for the Red Cross estimated there are around 60,000 people detained in U.S. and Iraqi prisons around Iraq.

Refugees returning to Baghdad have been projected in the West as evidence of the “surge” having brought security to Baghdad. Both the Maliki government and the Bush administration are using them as political capital. This projection bears little relation to the ground reality which indicates a steep decline in the number of returnees.

A recent UN survey, revealing the modest number of families returning to Baghdad, shows that “46 percent were leaving [Syria] because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security” (The New York Times).

It crucial to consider, but evidently not by the western media, that as of October 1st the Syrian government has imposed new visa restrictions whereby Iraqis who can prove they need medical treatment or intend to conduct business alone are permitted entry into Syria.

Iraqis who are barred entrance have the option of staying in a refugee camp on the border in the middle of the desert, or returning home.

Not More is Not Less

“It is true that hundreds of fighters were killed or detained by the so-called Awakening Forces, but there are thousands who will never quit fighting until this occupation is ended.”

Let us not discount the fact that the “lower violence rate” being reported by the Western media establishments imply that violence in Iraq is now down to 2005 levels, which at the time was considered catastrophic. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that “nearly 90 percent of US journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit.” Those surveyed have admitted that the “coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict” (Reuters).

The not-so-rosy reality is that the resistance has merely shifted location. As Ali Khamees, a former major of the Iraqi army, recently told my Iraqi colleague in Ramadi, Ali al-Fadhily, “it is true that hundreds of fighters were killed or detained by the so-called Awakening Forces, but there are thousands who will never quit fighting until this occupation is ended. I believe it is a new strategy employed by the resistance to reduce the suffering of people in al-Anbar and move somewhere else to fight.”

Attacks against U.S. forces have increased notably in other Iraqi provinces like Diyala, Saladin and Mosul.

On November 28, a female suicide bomber wounded seven US soldiers in Baquba, the capital city of the volatile Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad. The previous day in the same city, another suicide bomber detonated his explosives filled vest in front of the police headquarters, killing six people and wounding seven, according to Iraqi police reports.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a 32 year old Ramadi resident cautioned my Iraqi colleague, al-Fadhily, “those Americans thought they would decrease the resistance attacks by separating the people of Iraq into sects and tribes. They are going deeper into the shifting sand. The collaborators are fooling the Americans right now, and will in the end use this strategy against them.”

Provinces like Saladin, Diyala and the Kurdish controlled north, now under regular bombardment from the Turkish military which is threatening invasion, have become more volatile than ever.

The Bush administration talks of withdrawing up to 5,000 troops from Diyala province, but on November 24 US military officials revealed that the overall number of American troops in Diyala will actually increase since the replacement brigade for the one being removed is larger and will mean more boots on the ground.

Crafting Political Chaos

“Those Americans . . . are going deeper into the shifting sand. The collaborators are fooling the Americans right now, and will in the end use this strategy against them”

The U.S. policy of propping up the Sunni militias whilst backing the Shia government has heightened the volatility of an already precarious political situation. Deep fissures are one fall out of this classic divide and rule tactic.

On November 29, legislators blocked Prime Minister Maliki’s attempts to get approval for nominees to fill the vacant portfolios of justice and communications in the cabinet. This was done by getting legislators from several parties to boycott the session and ensure that parliament did not have the requisite quorum to vote on the nominations.

The cabinet and parliament in Baghdad remain paralyzed thereby effectively derailing US efforts to push legislation for privatization of Iraq’s oil. Over a dozen ministers have quit Maliki’s government this year. These include members of the Accordance Front, the largest Sunni block in the parliament, which withdrew its support in August. The cabinet is presently composed primarily of Shia and Kurds which only underscores the sectarian and ethnic battle lines that the U.S. policies have drawn in Iraq.

Before swallowing the Bush administration rhetoric of things getting better in Iraq today, we would do well to cast a glance at the real picture of the calamitous occupation.

The Just Foreign Policy group in the US places over 1.1 million Iraqis dead as a direct result of the US led invasion and occupation. A conservative estimate of the wounded would be 3 million.

The UNHCR enlists an approximate 2.2 million Iraqis that have fled the country altogether, and another 2.4 million that have been internally displaced. An Oxfam International report released in July found another 4 million Iraqis who were in need of emergency assistance.

Iraq’s population at the time of the US invasion in March 2003 was roughly 27 million, and today it is approximately 23 million. Elementary arithmetic indicates that currently over half the population of Iraq are either refugees, in need of emergency aid, wounded, or dead.

While the US establishment media proffers us the assurance of “Baghdad’s Weary Start to Exhale as Security Improves,” for most Iraqis safe and secure survival remains a distant dream. For Americans it is perhaps time to act on the words of Carl Schurz and “cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

It’s tomato season in Immokalee, Florida. Today, like every other day, the tomato pickers will emerge from their trailers in the dark before dawn, and twelve hours later, they will return in the dark of the Florida night.

In the interval, the pickers will be picked up in battered trucks and shipped off to the fields. They will stoop and sweat to fill buckets with tomatoes, thirty-two pounds of them, for forty-five cents a bucket (the same piece rate, in real dollars, as in 1980). They will have to work fast and pick two tons today if they want to take home minimum wage.

The tomatoes will make their way to the growers, then to the vendors, then on to Whoppers and Happy Meals at fast food joints across the country. The money saved by paying poverty wages–or in extreme cases, nothing at all–will find its way into the profit margins of corporations like Burger King.

On November 30, the King’s corporate castle was under siege as the tomato pickers, most of them immigrant workers organized through the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), surged from the fields of Immokalee into the streets of Miami on a nine-mile march.

Their demands were simple: Pay a penny more per pound. Work with the CIW to end the abuse of workers. Zero tolerance for modern-day slavery in the fields.

And the farm workers weren’t alone. Hundreds of students, workers, clergy and allied activists marched with them, as they have since the birth of the Campaign for Fair Food in 2001–to “penny-per-pound” victories at Taco Bell in 2005 and McDonald’s last spring.

Marching, dancing, singing, shouting, pushing strollers, banging drums, bearing puppets of “the King” and cut-out buckets of tomatoes and flags inscribed with “Respect” and “Hope,” the 1,500-strong pageant against poverty paraded from the offices of BK co-owner Goldman Sachs to the King’s own 1 Whopper Way.

There, they delivered hundreds of worn work boots belonging to farmworkers who could not make it out of the fields that day. “Doubt our poverty?” they asked. “Walk in our shoes.”

Were BK executives to walk in their shoes, workers say, they would know that a penny more per pound–which would cost the company all of $250,000 a year–could mean the difference between their families getting fed or going hungry, getting care or going sick. It could mean the difference between the 1980 piece rate and a living wage for 2007, effectively doubling their daily pay,

The workers hold BK responsible for the difference: “Burger King has an active hand in creating these unconscionable conditions,” says CIW spokesman Lucas Benitez, “as its enormous purchasing power allows it to demand lower and lower prices, resulting in lower and lower wages.” Reports from Florida’s growers confirm the corporate connection.

A code of conduct and an independent monitoring system, as the CIW is also demanding, could in turn mean the difference between slavery and freedom for Florida’s most exploited workers, over 1,000 of whom have been found held against their will–often at gunpoint–in cases uncovered by the CIW and prosecuted over the last decade.

But instead of working with the CIW, the King has launched a public relations blitz and teamed up with a notorious agribusiness lobby, the Florida Tomato Growers’ Exchange, in its own penny-pinching counter-operation.

With BK’s backing, the Exchange has set out not only to sabotage the new campaign, but to dismantle the penny-per-pound agreements won by the CIW at Yum! Brands and McDonald’s. Calling the demand “pretty much near un-American,” the Exchange now threatens $100,000 fines against growers who pass on the extra penny.

As Lucas Benitez sees it, “Burger King has allied itself with the tomato industry … to push us back, back toward the same abuse and exploitation we have experienced for decades. But we will not be turned back.”

Burger King counters that “Florida growers have a right to run their business how they see fit.” To some farmworkers, whose own rights don’t bear so much as a mention, this statement echoes the words of Florida’s slaveholders and sweatshop farmers.

Francisca Cortez, another worker in the CIW, tells the story of two growers who were overheard saying of the tomato pickers, “A tractor can’t tell its boss how to run it.” As Cortez explains, “They were saying that as if the workers were like tractors. And for us, our response is that we’re not tractors, we’re human beings who need to be respected, who have rights.”

The farmworkers’ campaign to be treated like human beings, not tractors, has struck a deep chord among students across the country, who have rallied to the workers’ side through the Student-Farmworker Alliance (SFA). This alliance is flipping the script on corporate Goliaths like the King, combining the power of those who produce the food and those who consume it.

It is here, among its youthful target audience, that Burger King may learn the real price of intransigence, which could amount to much more than a penny per pound. It could cost the King his crown jewel–his brand image for a generation.

“We use our strategic place as the target consumers of these corporations,” says SFA organizer Marc Rodrigues, “organizing a coordinated rejection of and protest campaign against the corporations until they agree to the workers’ demands.”

The recent past is a prologue. Between 2001 and 2005, the Taco Bell boycott led students to “boot the Bell” off dozens of campuses nationwide. Last year’s McDonald’s campaign sparked student solidarity from Austin to Boston, yielding victory with the threat of a boycott. Last month’s “Kingdoom Days of Action” saw more than thirty protests ripple across the country in a single week.

On November 30, the march on Burger King reverberated all the way to Wall Street, as student activists dressed as penny-pinching financiers showed up at Goldman Sachs’s headquarters in New York City, pointing out that the bonuses of twelve of its executives exceeded $200 million last year–twice what Florida’s 10,000 tomato pickers took home.

Students see a direct connection to their own lives, too. “For students, it’s an issue of being cynically targeted and manipulated by this corporation,” explains Rodrigues, “trying to buy our loyalty and suck the money out our pockets…. So it’s a question of us standing alongside farmworkers and making sure that all of us are having our dignity, rights and lives respected.”

The campaign has tapped into a deepening disaffection with corporate power and profit amid poverty. To some, it looks like the new wave of the anti-sweatshop and global justice movements first seen in the 1990s–only the sweatshops are closer to home. To others, it looks like a new labor movement, a new student movement, a new immigrants’ movement.

The Campaign for Fair Food is all of these things, and at its core, it is a movement concerning some of the most basic struggles in American life: slavery versus freedom, fast food versus fair food, community versus corporate control, dehumanization versus human dignity.

“As poor people, part of a poor community here in the US, the dignity of our community is the most valuable thing,” insists tomato picker Gerardo Reyes. “And we must defend that dignity. We cannot let [corporations like Burger King] step on the most valuable thing for us, our dignity. That’s why we must keep on going with the struggle.”

To all intents and purposes, the Wahabi religious establishment of Saudi Arabia has just issued a fatwa against the US dollar. This bears watching.

A message issued by 26 leading clerics warns that inflation has reached intolerable levels in the Gulf kingdom.

While it does not vilify the dollar explicitly, the apparent political aim is to undermine the country’s dollar peg.

“The rulers should seek to try to remedy this crisis in a way that would ease people’s suffering.”

“We direct this message to the rulers and officials: we remind you of Prophet Mohammad’s words that you are shepherds who are responsible for your flock,” it said.

The statement was posted across the Islamic world. The background to this has been a raging debate in Gulf religious and economic circles about the destructive effects of the sliding dollar.

Among the lead-authors is Sheikh Nasser al-Omar, known for his fatwa against US-led forces in Iraq.

He has long preached the collapse of American-led capitalism, and now sees a perfect moment to plunge the knife. We can guess that al-Qaeda Inc is thinking along the same lines.

My own hunch is that the next al-Qaeda strike will not be a symbolic blow to a great building or city, but rather a carefully-timed economic blow: either by cutting – or trying to cut – the oil jugular, or by trying to precipitate a run on the dollar.

The Gulf pegs are preventing the region from taking action to stop the oil boom spiralling out of control.

Half the Mid-East is now overheating. Property booms have reached unstable extremes in almost all the oil states. Construction has become maniacal.

CPI inflation is 5.35pc in Saudi Arabia, the highest in over ten years. It has reached 10.1pc in the United Arab Emirates and 12.2pc in Qatar.

The dollar pegs – designed to anchor the currencies – are now forcing the Petrodollar economies to import US devaluation and monetary stimulus.

What has been a simmering problem for over a year, has become untenable since the Federal Reserve began slashing interest rates.

The Gulf has roughly $3.5trn under management in wealth funds and central banks, so a dollar shift makes waves.

Qatar has already slashed the dollar holding of its future generation fund from 40pc to 98pc.

Stephen Lewis, global strategist at Insinger de Beaufort, said the Fatwa was ominous.

“The Saudi government has been the one institution in the region battling to preserve the oil link with the dollar. If these clerics are able to wear down Saudi resistance, this could breach the bulwark. The dollar would quite likely be abandoned as the chief currency for pricing oil in world markets,” he said.

If the Mid-East breaks the pegs, a chain reaction threatens to follow across Asia. China now has 6.9pc inflation. It may have to ditch its cheap yuan policy soon enough anyway, or face the sort of double digit rises that destroy regimes.

The Saudi royal family rules by a delicate compromise. Although pro-Western in military and economic alliances, it relies on the endorsement of the Wahabi clerics as a key source of legitimacy.

Reluctance to confront this menacing bloc is the main reason why Riyadh tolerated – and helped – the Bin Laden network for so long.

The statement called on the Saudis to take action to stop food price soaring to fresh highs, if necessary with subsidies on key staples.

For now, the dollar is bouncing back. Speculative flows have swung back from euros to dollars after America’s CPI inflation shock of 4.3pc released last week.

One week’s data mean nothing. As the Fed cuts rates ever further to the cushion US property crash bites, Mid-East inflation will go from bad to seriously ugly with the policies now in place.

“Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous and Iran will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” – George Bush, Dec. 4, 2007

“We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. . . . Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.” – Prof. Harry Frankfurt (1986)

In early December, an intelligence report served as the instrument to disgrace Bush and Cheney. Behind this apparently benign act stood the relieved super rich and their government guardian who saw the reckless policies of Bush and Cheney as a threat to their power and fortunes.

In the early 1970s, the Establishment worried about Nixon. He brought a California crowd into the White House who didn’t consult the bastions of old power and wealth. Then, “Deep Throat” serendipitously emerged to reveal to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein details of Nixon’s involvement in a criminal break- in at Democratic Party Headquarters in Washington’s Watergate complex, and of a subsequent White House cover up. In August 1974, Nixon ­ facing impeachment — resigned. The power structure breathed a collective sigh of relief.

In December 2007, intelligence boss Mike McConnell released a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report that humiliated Bush and Cheney. By making facts about the non-functioning of Iran’s nuke program public, the NIE removed the Bush zealots’ ostensible reason for starting another war. The “experts” concluded “with high confidence” that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in 2003, thus nullifying the Bush’s pretext for bombing that country. The spooks also deduced that Iran might make a weapon by 2015 ­ if it reactivated its dormant program.

Compare that report with Bush’s September claim that Iran’s nuclear program could ignite World War III; reminiscent of Cheney’s 2002 rhetoric to show why Iraq needed invading that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger to make a nuclear WMD. Bush and Cheney also scoffed at intelligence reports that cast major doubt on these allegations. Bush still rejects the conclusion that Iran shut down its nuclear weapons production. (He also rejects evolution.)

By making this NIE public, the CIA further weakened Bush’s already damaged credibility. He no longer intimidates and stands exposed as a fraud.

The CIA informed Bush in August of its benign findings, but he shrugged off the facts and continued to insist on war as his answer to a non-existent threat. So, McConnell released the report which, for Bush compares with his twins making the centerfold of Playboy–on the humiliation scale.

The intelligence community sucker punched Great Intimidator — in public. Their NIE averred implicitly that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the hated Holocaust denier and only remaining axis of evil personage, had told the truth about Iran not developing nuclear weapons. Conversely, Bush and Cheney, leaders of the World Alliance for God and Good (WAGG) prevaricated through their proverbial teeth.

The NIE derailed the White House policy of bombing of Iran and led to a prolonged scream from neo con heavies like Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, and Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy. They now bleat on TV about “treason” in high places (CIA) and the nation’s desperate need to bomb Iran immediately.

Douglas Feith, Bush’s former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from July 2001 until he resigned in August, 2005 spoke to the American Enterprise Institue in Washington in December and defended his own failed policies in Iraq. Some neo cons demand a “Team B” report to invalidate the NIE, an equivalent of former CIA Chief William Casey’s ploy to resurrect the Soviet threat.

In 1980, after US intelligence concluded the USSR posed less of a threat to the West than in previous decades, Casey handpicked another team of “experts” who predictably found the declining Soviet Union more dangerous than ever. Team B thgus backed Reagan’s aggressive posture to build more missiles and a Star Wars defense.

Bush and Cheney, like Reagan and Casey, disregard their intelligence services ­ for which taxpayers pay $40 billion per year — and instead relied on Israel’s Mossad, whose spies rejected the CIA findings. Israeli intelligence clings to its claim that Iran will soon build a nuke.

For Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak publicizing the NIE report meant a “blow to the groin” of Israel. (Truth is a kick in the balls? Bombing is good for Israeli manhood?) Will Bush now secretly encourage Israel to use some its own nuclear stockpile to launch a “preemptive strike” against Iran?

For Bush, good nations behave obediently. England and now France, for example, should possess nuclear weapons. Sort-of-good Pakistan still rates approval (obedient by mouth, which is good enough); and of course, beloved Israel ­ with 200 or more nukes.

Iran, the only remaining member of Bush’s “axis of evil,” began punching the United States in the fist with its face in 1953 when Iranians brazenly elected a democratic government. The CIA and their British equivalent in the name of anti-communism and in the interest of the oil companies overthrew that government and set up a puppet Shah, who ruled despotically until 1979 when militant Muslims dumped him and established a theocracy. In 1980, Iranian militants held CIA and other US officials hostage for more than a year ­thus humiliating numero uno.

The President and most presidential aspirants follow the U.S. axiom. To keep its status, Washington without casus belli invades and occupies other countries. Those who dare challenge such blatantly illegal behavior now become Islamofascists.

Acting in the Lord’s name, US presidents took revenge for Iran’s insolent behavior. After failing to revive the Shah’s rule, the US backed the now hated but then useful Saddam Hussein who dutifully, and with US aid, invaded Iran in 1980.

After almost a decade of Iraq-Iran slaughter, the United States punished Iran with sanctions ­ while covertly selling it missiles to support anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua.

9/11 allowed Bush to declare a permanent and perpetual war against terrorism, thus undermining traditional foreign policy methods for unabashed aggression. His neo con advisers usurped power from the traditional Establishment, much as Nixon did with his California outsiders. The neo cons invaded the intelligence apparatus, much as Nixon’s Plumbers assumed FBI and CIA tasks. (Plumbers sealed “leaks” — to the press.) CREEP (Committee and Finance Committee to Re-elect the President) allowed Nixon his own private budget as well as a White House intelligence and police operation. Such behavior made the traditional agency heads seriously pissed off.

Bush and Cheney’s war-loving intellectuals like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Feith manipulated intelligence in order to use 9/11 to generate fear. They pushed the country into war with Iraq ­ which had nothing to do with 9/11. Even after the invasion turned sour, the neo cons pursued their plan to attack Iran. Now discredited, these men writhe from the NIE’s kick to their cerebral groins.

The repercussions from the revelation will play out in Europe as well. Bush’s plan to place missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic as a defensive shield against Iran’s “nuclear threat” has drawn the ire of Russian President Putin. Russia’s leader sees Bush repeating Truman and Churchill’s Cold War policies of 60 years ago, using a non-existent threat (Iran) as a pretext to militarily encircle Russia. In 1947, Truman declared the USSR an imminent threat to attack Western Europe while the Soviets still licked their wounds after losing more than 20 million people in World War II.

Repetition of history with a new metaphor! The groin kick ­ an intelligence report to the balls ­ should help abate the “hate Iran” fever that replaced the 2001-2003 “hate Iraq” zeal. The NIE revealed to the US public that Bush and Cheney were dangerous bullshitters who spread malicious lies about Iran. Previously, they had accused Teheran with providing Iraqi insurgents bombs to kill US military personnel, a line that remains in Bush’s verbal arsenal.

Sadly, presidential hopefuls from both Parties, excepting Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich, still buy into the anti-Iran axiom. They agree with Bush that the United States should not permit other nations to help anti-US insurgents albeit Washington feels duty bound ­ by God? — to help pro-US insurgents fight bad countries, like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Sound like bullshit?

The imperial bullshit level has surpassed the feeble imaginations of Cheney, Bush and even the presidential candidates. It emanates from the $700 billon smelly military budget pile, passed by Congress even though no nation poses a threat.

The NIE served to discredit Bush, which reduces chances of an imminent war with Iran, but don’t fool yourself: it doesn’t change fundamental US policy.

(Dec. 18) – Federal prosecutors are targeting a rising number of law enforcement officers for alleged brutality, Justice Department statistics show. The heightened prosecutions come as the nation’s largest police union fears that agencies are dropping standards to fill thousands of vacancies and “scrimping” on training.

Cases in which police, prison guards and other law enforcement authorities have used excessive force or other tactics to violate victims’ civil rights have increased 25% (281 vs. 224) from fiscal years 2001 to 2007 over the previous seven years, the department says.

During the same period, the department says it won 53% more convictions (391 vs. 256). Some cases result in multiple convictions.

Federal records show the vast majority of police brutality cases referred by investigators are not prosecuted.

University of Toledo law professor David Harris, who analyzes police conduct issues, says it will take time to determine whether the cases represent a sustained period of more aggressive prosecutions or the beginnings of a surge in misconduct.

The cases involve only a fraction of the estimated 800,000 police in the USA, says James Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the nation’s largest police union.

Even so, he says, the FOP is concerned that reduced standards, training and promotion of less experienced officers into the higher police ranks could undermine more rigid supervision.

12/18/07 “ICH” — – Year end is a good time to look back and reflect on what’s ahead. If past is prologue, however, the outlook isn’t good, and nothing on the horizon suggests otherwise. Voters last November wanted change but got betrayal from the bipartisan criminal class in Washington. Their attitude shows in an October Reuters/Zogby (RZ) opinion poll with George Bush at 24% that tops Richard Nixon’s worst showing of 25% at his lowest 1974 Watergate point. And if that looks bad, consider Congress with “The Hill” reporting from the same RZ Index that our legislators scored a “staggering 11%, the lowest (congressional) rating in history,” but there’s room yet to hit bottom and a year left to do it. Why not with lawmakers’ consistent voter sellout and failure record that keeps getting worse.

It’s been that way ever since 9/11 with both sides of the aisle complicit with the administration. This article looks back at the record, and year end is a good time to review it. It’s hard imagining another as bad with a President defiling the law and once telling Republican colleagues the Constitution is “just a goddamned piece of paper.”

He didn’t just say it. He governs by it, gets away with it, and former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, says “a coup has occurred (with another to come from) the next 9/11….that completes the first (that’s) seen a steady assault on every fundamental (aspect) of our Constitution (to create) an executive government (to) rule by decree” no different from a police state.

Author Naomi Wolf spells it out in her April, 2007 Guardian article – “Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps.” In it, she argues the Bush administration is following the same script any “would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms,” and she lists them. They range from “invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy” to “creat(ing) a gulag” to spying on everyone to harassing opposition to controlling the media to calling dissent treason to “suspend(ing) the rule of law.” She also notes how much “simpler” it is to shut down democracy than “to create and sustain” it, and that’s today’s threat.

It’s not with jackboots in the streets but by a steady “process of erosion” with the public largely unaware and distracted by media mind manipulators. It’s happening today, and Wolf sounds the alarm with the words of James Madison saying “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands….is the definition of tyranny,” and that’s the condition now in America. This article reviews the record for the past seven years. It’s not pretty.

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, (unlike every Pope in memory) condemned it in a wide-ranging UK Muslim magazine interview. It was quoted in a November 25 Sunday Times column headlined “US is ‘worst’ imperialist” and wields its power more reprehensibly than Britain ever did in its heyday. He explained that American overseas adventurism led to “the worst of all worlds” and expressed pessimism about the current state of western civilization and Washington’s own misguided sense of mission.

He critiqued the “war on terror” and stated America lost the moral high ground post-9/11 and needs to launch a “generous and intelligent programme of aid to the (nations it) ravaged;….check (its) economic exploitation of defeated territories” and demilitarize them. He called the West fundamentally adrift and our “definition of humanity (isn’t) working.” He denounced America’s violence and belief it can solve problems left for “other people (to clean up and) put….back together – Iraq, for example.” Another is the condition at home.

Since taking office in January, 2001, George Bush signed a blizzard of Executive Orders and attached dozens of “signing statements” to hundreds of law provisions even though nothing in the Constitution allows this practice, and the Supreme Court banned line-item vetos. He continues to do it while Congress and the courts condone his claiming unconstitutional “unitary executive” authority to ignore the law and do as he pleases in the name of “national security” on his say alone.

It began on 9/11 when George Bush addressed the nation and declared a “war on terrorism,” asked for world support to win it, and began what became “our government’s emergency (preventive war strategy) response plans.” The scheme was to ignore the law, go to war, and destroy our civil liberties to keep us safe from “rogue states, ‘bad guys,’ and evil-doers” throughout an “arc of instability” from the South American Andean region (mainly Colombia) to North Africa through the Middle East to the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia. Congress as well acted right out of the box with two audacious resolutions that surrendered its authority to the executive, allowed him to proceed, and signaled what would come.

The first one came September 18, 2001 in a joint “House-Senate Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF)” that authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.” A second followed in the October, 2002 “Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of the United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” and the rest is history. This article reviews other key congressional legislation to the present along with George Bush’s blatant abuse of presidential power.

His first action came November 13, 2001 when he issued Military Order Number 1 that one analyst called a “coup d’etat,” and “watershed moment in (the) country,” that was a hint of what would follow. This order violated the spirit and letter of a civil society under constitutional law with a firewall separating it from the military. No longer, and it got worse later on when its provisions resurfaced by act of Congress. That’s discussed below. First, Military Order Number 1 and what’s in it:

— it let the President usurp authority to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest any non-citizens (and later citizens as well) anywhere in the world if he claims they’re involved in international terrorism and to hold them indefinitely without charge, evidence or allowing them due process in a court of law.

— however, IF trials are allowed, they would be by special ad hoc “military commissions,” not civil courts and in secret, with evidence obtained by torture allowed, those found guilty given no right of appeal, and they can be secretly executed.

— no civil court has authority in these cases even if victims are identified and legal counsel wishes to represent them.

Few knew then that on November 13, 2001 US citizens lost their civil liberties, but that would come out later on. It’s still ongoing with Congress and the courts complicit in the willful destruction of our democracy that was already on life support. Today, it’s gone.

Use of National Security ((NSPDs) and Homeland Security Presidential Directives (HSPDs)

In the Bush administration, NSPDs replaced the Presidential Decision and Review Directives under Bill Clinton and others under different names since the Kennedy administration began the practice. Earlier ones remain in force unless superseded. They’re much like Executive Orders (EOs) with the “full force and effect of law,” relate to national security, and for that reason remain classified unless or until made public. In seven years, George Bush issued dozens of NSPD’s that are too many to review as well as over 20 Homeland Security Presidential Directives (HSPDs). A few key ones are discussed below.

The October 25, 2001 NSPD-9 deserves special note and was titled “Defeating the Terrorist Threat to the United States.” On March 23, 2004, Donald Rumsfeld gave this explanation of its classified contents to the 9/11 Commission:

— “To eliminate the Al Queda network;

— To use all elements of national power to do so — diplomatic, military, economic, intelligence, information and law enforcement;

— To eliminate sanctuaries for Al Queda and related terrorist networks — and if diplomatic efforts to do so failed, to consider additional measures.”

On April 1, 2004, the White House released this statement on the directive:

The NSPD called on the Secretary of Defense to plan for military options “against Taliban targets in Afghanistan, including leadership, command-control, air and air defense, ground forces, and logistics (along with similar efforts) against Al Queda and associated terrorist facilities in Afghanistan.”

Here’s the problem. The administration adopted these measures on September 4, 2001, seven days before 9/11. George Bush then signed them into binding law in NSPD-9 on October 25, 2001 to conceal when they originated.

Other important NSPDs relate to:

— combatting WMDs;

— developing and deploying an anti-ballistic missile defense that’s for offense, not defense;

— biodefense;

— deploying nuclear weapons and domestic nuclear detection;

— the Iraq war;

— a national space policy as part of the goal for “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems to deter any domestic or foreign threat or challenge to our global hegemony; and,

There’s one other crucially important combined NSPD-HSPD:

NSPD-51/HSPD-20 on April 4, 2007 – National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive

This is a combined directive from the White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish “Continuity of Government (COG)” procedures under a “Castastrophic Emergency” defined as follows:

“any incident (such as a terrorist attack), regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the US population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

COG is then defined as:

”a coordinated effort within the Federal Government’s executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency.”

Crucial to understand is that this combined directive gives the President and DHS unprecendented powers free from constitutional constraints. Under NSPD-51, the President can declare a “national emergency” and declare martial law without congressional approval. It allows him to create a de facto militarized police state with him as dictator and DHS as a national Gestapo to an even greater degree than it is already. It also empowers the Vice-President to implement the directives’ provisions as part of the “Continuity of Government” plan that in the case of Dick Cheney gives him even more power than George Bush the way this administration operates. This combined directive alone is the face of “police state America” in real time if it’s implemented, and it wasn’t likely enacted as window dressing. But there’s lots more besides.

Other HSPDs relate to:

— combatting “immigrant terrorism;”

— a national response plan to domestic incidents;

— critical infrastructure identification, prioritization, and protection;

— national preparedness;

— comprehensive terrorist-related screening procedures;

— domestic nuclear detection; and others.

Congressional Legislation After 9/11

Post-9/11, Congress acted in lockstep with the President and continues to pass laws any despot would love. Written, on the shelf, and ready to go long before 9/11, the USA Patriot Act was passed and signed by the president 45 days later on October 26, 2001. The legislative process capitalized on a window of hysteria to grant unchecked powers to the executive but created three grave civil liberties threats in the process:

— the erosion of Fifth and Fourteen Amendment due process rights by permitting indefinite detentions of undocumented immigrants that can now apply to anyone anywhere in the world; more on that below;

— the First Amendment loss of freedom of association that the Supreme Court considers an essential part of free expression; now anyone may be charged and prosecuted because of his or her claimed association with an “undesirable group;” and

— loss of the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, and as a consequence, the loss of privacy; the Act grants the administration unchecked surveillance powers to access personal records; monitor financial transactions; student records; conduct “sneak and peak” searches through “delayed notice” warrants; authorize roving wiretaps; track emails, internet and cell phone use; use secret evidence in prosecutions; deny immigrants the right to counsel if they’re unable to get their own; and ends built-in safeguards to let domestic criminal and foreign intelligence operations share information so CIA can now spy domestically.

The Act also creates the federal crime of “domestic terrorism” that broadens the definition and applies to US citizens as well as aliens. It states criminal law violations are considered domestic terrorist acts if they aim to “influence (government policy) by intimidation or coercion (or) intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” By this definition, anti-war or global justice demonstrations, environmental activism, civil disobedience and dissent of any kind may be called “domestic terrorism.” The Patriot Act was just for starters. Much more was ahead with a bipartisan Congress acting like a gift that keeps on giving and the President loving it.

The Homeland Security Act (HSA) of November 25, 2002 followed as a sweeping new anti-terrorism bill, and like the Patriot Act, was planned long before 9/11. It created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by combining previously separate government agencies under this new authority to prepare for, prevent and respond to domestic emergencies and give the federal government broad new powers to protect the nation within and outside our borders. In March, 2003, its largest investigative and enforcement arm was then established – the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). It was charged with protecting public safety by identifying and targeting “criminal” and “terrorist” threats to the country who in most cases are NAFTA and globalized trade victims here out of need, not choice, and who aren’t terrorists.

DHS is part of the administration’s plan to centralize unprecedented military and law enforcement power in the executive branch that aims for greater global dominance – to rule the world unchallenged including repressively at home by suppressing civil liberties in the name of “national security.” DHS and USA Patriot Act are two frightening measures to do it.

DHS is insidious. It encroaches on local authority by “mandat(ing) federal supervision, funding, and coordination of ‘local first responders.’ ” This refers to police and “emergency personnel” comprising local law enforcement. The Homeland Security Act (HSA) doesn’t mandate local control. Instead, it provides coordination and guidance as a first step measure with more to come. That’s why US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) was established in October, 2002 as an unprecedented move to militarize the mainland plus Alaska, Canada, Mexico, Gulf of Mexico and Straits of Florida and, for the first time ever, allow troops to be deployed on US streets to counter drugs, an “insurrection” loosely defined, and combat crimes with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. In other words, the President may now deploy military forces on US streets in the interest of “national security.” This power is unprecedented and dangerous.

So is another affecting everyone. It’s largely below the radar since it was was scheduled to be fully operational in late September, 2006. It’s the Pentagon’s New Offensive Strike Plan called the Joint Functional Component Command for Global Strike and Integration – or simply Global Strike Command. It grew out of the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that was updated more belligerently in early 2006. NPR is a declaration of preventive war on any nation, group or force anywhere on earth the administration calls a “national security” threat and could be used by NORTHCOM against US-based targets along with a HSA crackdown if martial law is declared.

HSA goes further still by creating a sweeping domestic intelligence agency called the Directorate of Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection. It’s to create and maintain an all-inclusive intrusive public and private information data base on everyone. It can include virtually everything – financial transactions and records, medical ones, emails, phone calls, purchases, books and publications read, organization memberships, and any other personal habit or pattern.

USA Patriot Act and HSA end the distinction between foreign and domestic intelligence gathering and, up to now, the sacrosanct firewall between them. They also no longer allow “critical infrastructure information” from a federal agency to be disclosed through a FOIA request as part of an official policy of secrecy characteristic of police states. There’s much more in both Acts as well that’s frightening, dangerous and unknown to the public. In sum, they end constitutional protections whenever the executive suspends the law in the name of “national security.” That’s how “police state America” works that’s hidden from public view.

The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005

Torture is official state policy for the Bush administration as its preferred means of intimidation, retribution and social control. The McCain Detainee (anti-torture) Amendment in October, 2005 was a futile effort to deter it. It was passed and weakened by the Graham-Levin Amendment, became the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and was attached to the 2006 Defense Department’s Appropriations Act. George Bush signed the legislation after which he gutted its provisions relating to detainees in one of his notorious “signing statements.” Its language gave himself the right (irrespective of the law) to “protect the American people from further terrorist attacks” using all his self-given powers as a “unitary executive” that places him above the law, Congress, the courts, the people, and world public opinion.

The legislation’s final form went further as well. It denied detainees habeas rights, let US forces use any cruel, abusive, inhumane or degrading treatment in the interests of “national security,” prohibited detainees from bringing suits as a result, and allowed statements gotten coercively to be used as evidence against them. It also followed previous policies as far back as September 17, 2001 when George Bush signed a secret “finding” authorizing CIA to kill, capture and detain “Al Qaeda” members anywhere in the world, rendition them to black site torture-prisons for interrogation, and obtain it by any means. From then to now, torture and abuse of anyone have been standard operating procedures for the Bush administration with complicity from Congress and the courts.

Other Repressive Legislation and More

The 107th, 108th, 109th and 110th Congresses will be remembered for likely having done more than all others before them to defile the rule of law and our constitutional protections. They conspired with a rogue administration, wrecked the republic, and for the 109th Congress, October 17, 2006 stands out shamelessly as a day that will live in infamy.

The Military Commissions Act

In a White House ceremony, George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) now known as “the torture authorization act,” but it’s more far-reaching than that. It grants the administration extraordinary unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged terror suspects and anyone claimed to be their supporters. It also lets the President call anyone anywhere in the world an “unlawful enemy combatant” and empowers him to arrest and incarcerate those accused indefinitely in military prisons without needing corroborating evidence proving guilt. The law states for persons detained that “no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause for action whatsoever…. relating to the prosecution, trial, or judgment of a military commission….including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of military commissions.”

MCA further scraps habeas protection (dating back to 1215 in the Magna Carta) for domestic and foreign enemies of the state, citizens and non-citizens alike, and says “Any person is punishable… who….aids, abets, counsels, commands, or procures” and in so doing helps a foreign enemy, provides “material support” to alleged terrorist groups, engages in spying, or commits other offenses previously handled in civil courts.

Other key elements of the act include:

— legalizing torture against anyone and lets the President decide what procedures can be used on his own authority;

— denying detainees international law protection and lets the executive interpret it;

— empowering the President to convene “military commissions” to try anyone he designates an “unlawful enemy combatant,” and hold them in secret detention indefinitely;

–denying speedy trials or any at all;

— allowing evidence obtained by torture or coerced testimony to be used against detainees in trial proceedings;

— permitting hearsay and secret evidence to be used; and

— denying due process, destroying human dignity, mocking the rule of law, and establishing the principle of kangaroo court justice for anyone the executive targets.

Revising the 1807 Insurrection Act and Ending 1878 Posse Comitatus Protection

Also on October 17, 2006, the president privately signed into law a hidden provision in Sections 1076 and 333 of the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. It amended the Insurrection Act of 1807 and Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prohibit using federal and National Guard troops for law enforcement inside the country except as constitutionally allowed or expressly authorized by Congress in times of a national emergency like an insurrection. The executive can now claim a public emergency, effectively declare martial law, suspend the Constitution for “national security,” and deploy federal and National Guard troops on the nation’s streets to suppress whatever he calls disorder. That means First Amendment-guaranteed peaceful public demonstrations and all organized acts of dissent are no longer constitutionally protected. Neither is the republic in “police state America.”

The new law also authorizes the Pentagon to transfer state-of-the-art crowd control weapons and technology to state and local responders. It’s to militarize them and blur the distinction between federal and local law enforcement agencies as an operational police state tactic.

The Real ID Act of 2005

Congress passed the Act that threatens personal privacy, it’s scheduled to become effective in May, 2008, and it will require states to meet federal ID standards if in takes effect next spring. That’s now in question as two dozen or more states passed laws prohibiting its use and refused to fund it.

The federal law mandates that every US citizen and legal resident have a national identity card that in most cases will be a driver’s license. It requires that it contain an individual’s personal information and means this ID will be needed to open a bank account, board an airplane, be able to vote, or conduct virtually any other essential type business.

In the future, the law may also require that the card contain a radio frequency identification (RFID) technology computer chip that will be able to track all movements, activities and transactions of everyone, everywhere, at all times. In other words, with this technology embedded, the card will become an empowered police state dream (and an Orwellian nightmare) to be able to monitor everyone having one all the time wherever they are.

However, growing state opposition to the law puts its status in doubt. It’s because it’s costly to establish and administer and will create a bureaucratic nightmare besides. It thus looks likely it won’t be adopted in its current form, but it may be revised and reintroduced, so don’t yet count this one out as some are ready to do. As of now, measures have been introduced in the House and Senate to repeal it by adopting national ID standards in other legislation and increase federal funding for it. So going forward, the issue of mandating national ID measures is very much alive. It looks like something on it will emerge as federal law going forward, but the cure may be worse than the disease if states adopt it to give “police state America” another repressive tool.

Pervasive Spying on Americans

Under George Bush, spying is a national pastime, but it’s no joke. The New York Times reported on December 16, 2005 that his administration had been secretly spying on Americans without warrants since late 2001. He authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept international communications of US citizens with known links to Al Queda, related “terrorist” organizations, or for any other reasons at its discretion. The operation was called the “Terrorism Surveillance Program.”

It made no difference to the administration that wiretapping without probable cause or judicial oversight violates Fourth Amendment protections and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In the current atmosphere, the rule of law is out the window, Congress and the courts condone it, and that’s the problem.

It surfaced again when Congress passed the Protect America Act of 2007 that amends FISA with doublespeak language Orwell would love. It supposedly aims to close “communication gaps” but will allow virtual unrestricted mass data-mining monitoring and intercept of domestic and foreign internet, cell phones and other new technology as well as transit international phone call traffic and emails. The Act claims to restrict surveillance to foreign nationals “reasonably believed to be outside the United States” and must be renewed. In fact, the law targets everyone including US citizens inside the country if the Attorney General or Director of National Intelligence claim they pose a potential terrorist or “national security” threat, but no evidence is needed to prove it.

This law allows virtual unrestricted warrantless spying of anyone for any claimed “national security” reason. It thus renders the notion of illegal searches and privacy rights null and void. But that already went on earlier post-9/11 through other unconstitutional speech-related monitoring activities. One was the short-lived Operation TIPS that was dropped when civilian informers refused to be spies. Then, there was the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness (TIA), later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, that was also ended under pressure but resurfaced in new form so illegal military spying continues. The Threat and Local Observation Notice (TALON) program was part of it to collect domestic intelligence through a huge database focused on “terrorism” that means everyone legally opposing Bush administration practices is targeted.

MATRIX is another new data mining tool that stands for the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Exchange Program. It violates our privacy by mass monitoring the lives and activities of ordinary people on the pretext of learning whether they may be engaging in any type terrorist or criminal activity.

Privacy isn’t mentioned in the Constitution, but Supreme Court decisions affirmed it as a fundamental human right. In addition, it’s protected under the Ninth Amendment, the Third prohibiting quartering troops in homes, the Fourth prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures, and the Fifth safeguarding against self-incrimination. MATRIX and other intrusive laws violate the letter and spirit of the law and permits Patriot and HSA justice in “police state America.”

Executive Orders Issued by George Bush

George Bush loves big numbers. They show up in budgets and spending, in his number of signing statements to congressional legislation, and in over 250 Executive Orders (EOs) in almost seven years. A key one is reviewed below.

July 17, 2007 Executive Order (EO): Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

The US Constitution has no provision that gives a President power to make new law through one-man executive order decrees. That never deterred others in the past from issuing them, but none ever abused this practice more than George Bush who’s issued over 250 of them thus far with more sure to come.

This one on July 17 is especially egregious but right in character for a President who disdains the law and shows it. It starts off: The President’s power stems from “the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America” as well as the International Economic Powers Act he also invokes.

The order continues: “….due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people,” George Bush, in fact, unconstitutionally usurped authority to criminalize the anti-war movement, make the First Amendment right to protest it illegal, and empower himself to seize the assets of persons violating this decree.

By this action, the President again, on his own authority, violated the Constitution, criminalized dissent, and moved the nation another step closer to tyranny in “police state America.”

Secrecy As Policy under George Bush

In November 1, 2001, George Bush signed Executive Order 13233: Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act. In so doing, he established an official administration policy of secrecy in violation of the 1978 Presidential Records Act, the 1974 Freedom of Information Act, and James Madison’s 1822 warning that “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or perhaps both.” He also violated the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services that ruled “executive privilege” is subject to “erosion over time” after a president leaves office, and Congress decided that little or none of an executive’s communications with his advisors should remain secret after 12 years.

Secrecy threatens democracy because it avoids accountability and empowers an imperial president way beyond issues of national security that are justifiable. On his own authority, George Bush placed limits on presidential records, the Freedom of Information Act, and a free and open society by giving himself the power to classify information for national security and create a whole new array of categories called “sensitive” information that includes anything he so designates. The result is that classified information doubled since 2001 and efforts to declassify material was stopped by invoking the “State Secrets” privilege to avoid court challenge. These actions characterize police states and represent another threat to a free and open society under an administration that disdains the law and operates freely without constraint.

The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA)

On November 27, 2006, George Bush signed AETA into law to amend the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992. The new Act has broad and vague language to criminalize First Amendment activities advocating for animal rights like peaceful protests, leafleting, undercover investigations, whisleblowing and boycotts. It shows how out of hand things have gotten with animal protection advocacy now a crime.

Under the old law, anyone convicted of a physical disruption causing $10,000 in damages to an animal enterprise was subject to a $10,000 fine or 10 years to life imprisonment. The new AETA is even harsher with penalties far exceeding comparable offenses under other laws. It expands the original Act by changing activity “for the purpose of causing physical disruption” to actions “for the purpose of damaging or disrupting” an animal enterprise. In this case, “disruptive” means any activity that results in “losses and increased losses” over $10,000 by peaceful protests for consumers boycotts, advocating harmful practice reforms, or a whisleblower doing the same things.

The Act also goes further. It allows for expanded surveillance of animal rights organizations to include criminal wiretapping and makes it easier for a court to find probable cause for the vague crime of economic damage or disruption than for one requiring hard evidence a person or group plans to commit these acts.

The bill exempts “lawful public, governmental or business reaction to the disclosure of information about an animal enterprise,” but that provision only applies to economic disruption claims, not damage and makes it hard to distinguish between the two. In addition, AETA:

— expands the kinds of facilities covered by adding ones that use or sell animals or animal products;

— it covers any person, entity or organization with a connection to an animal enterprise;

— it applies to any form of advocacy;

— it criminalizes threatening conduct and protected speech as well as communication with individuals who engage in these practices; and

— it potentially includes any form of communication such as emailing across state lines to boycott abusive animal activities;

— it protects corporate animal abusers with a vested interest in silencing dissent; and

— it effectively singles out any form of civil disobedience or protest activity and brands animal advocates as terrorists even when nothing they do causes physical harm; even worse, the bill’s language is so broad and vague it’s hard to know the difference between legal and illegal behavior; this Act is another nail in the coffin of free expression, the rule of law in a free society, and the right of everyone to be protected by law, not targeted by it.

The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 (HR 1955)

The House overwhelmingly passed this measure on October 23 that some observers call “the thought crime prevention bill.” It’s now in the Senate (S 1959) where if passed and signed by George Bush will establish a commission and Center for Excellence to study and take action against “thought criminals.” The commission will be empowered to subpoena and investigate anyone that will automatically create a perception of guilt that may be highlighted in the media for added emphasis.

This Act is a direct assault on democratic freedoms in the current atmosphere with both parties and a President determined to end them. The bill’s language hides its possible intent as “violent radicalization” and “homegrown terrorism” may be whatever the administration says they are. “Violent radicalization” is defined as “adopting or promoting an extremist belief system (to facilitate) ideologically based violence to advance political, religious or social change.” “Homegrown terrorism” is used to mean “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any (US) possession to intimidate or coerce the (US) government, the civilian population….or any segment thereof (to further) political or social objectives.”

This and other repressive laws may be used against any individual or group with unpopular views – those that differ from established state policy, even illegal ones, and historian Howard Zinn is concerned. He says: “This is the most recent of a long series of laws passed in times of foreign policy tensions, starting with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which sent people to jail for criticizing the Adams administration.” Under Woodrow Wilson in WW I, “the Espionage (and) Sedition Act(s) (jailed) close to a thousand people (who spoke) out against the war.” From HR 1955 and other post-9/11 laws, authorities now have the same power to target anti-war protesters or anyone expressing views this Act alone calls “terrorist-related propaganda.” Persons charged and convicted face stiff penalties in an effort to deter others. This measure is still another step toward full-blown tyranny in “police state America.”

Sections 1615 and 1622 of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act

These provisions authorize DOD to militarize the country under martial law by merging the military with state and local law enforcement during a national emergency described as “an incident of national significance or a catastrophic incident.” It also gives the Defense Secretary extraordinary power to determine what military capabilities are needed, to provide them to “active (and) reserve components of the armed forces for homeland defense missions, domestic emergency responses, and (to provide) military support to civil authorities (for) at least five years.”

The Act designates the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman to review NORTHCOM civilian, reservist and military positions and increase their number in preparation for a potential catastrophic event requiring “homeland defense missions, domestic emergency response, (and the need for) military support to civil authorities.”

Section 1622 then establishes a Council of Governors to advise the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security and the White House “on matters related to the National Guard and civil support missions.”

The Act is more proof of “police state America.” It establishes a martial law apparatus to be used in case of a “catastrophic event” of any kind and empowers the President or Vice-President under NSPD-51 to implement it in a “national emergency” without congressional approval.

Operation FALCON – Police State America in Real Time

Mike Whitney won a 2008 Project Censored Award for his February, 2007 article titled “Operation FALCON and the Looming Police State.” In it, he reported that the Bush administration “carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals” that he calls a “blueprint for removing dissidents and political rivals” reminiscent of Nazi Germany or any other repressive police state. Those chickens now reside at home, but the public is largely unaware and unconcerned. We all should be as Whitney raises a “red flag for anyone who cares at all about human rights, civil liberties, or simply saving his own skin.”

Operation FALCON stands for “Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally” and came out of the Bush Justice Department and right-wing think tanks “where fantasies of autocratic government have a long history” and are now playing out in real time. The scheme centralizes power in Washington and uses resources of local authorities for its own purposes.

Whitney traces its short history starting in the week of April 4 – 10, 2005 when over 10,000 criminal suspects were arrested in “the largest criminal sweep in the nation’s history” in a “single initiative.” Its aim was “quantity,” not “quality,” but Whitney asked why did the Feds get involved in local police work and suggested something more sinister was involved “than just ensuring public safety.” His answer – “to enhance the powers of the ‘unitary’ executive” by giving Washington power over local law enforcement, and that makes perfect sense under an administration obsessed with wanting unchallengeable control.

Operation FALCON II followed a week later from April 17 – 23 and swept up another 9037 “alleged fugitives.” The final FALCON III came from October 22 – 28, 2006 with 10,773 more arrests. Each sweep was the same and concentrated on alleged criminal types out of character for a federal operation, so clearly another motive was involved. Further, no one arrested was charged with a terrorist-related crime, and that alone looks fishy. Whitney thought so and called FALCON “new drills for a new world order” that’s waging permanent war, defiles the law, ignores checks and balances, condones torture, repealed habeas, and illegally spies on everyone.

Muslim and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) Sweeps

As FALCON targeted petty crooks and criminals, Muslims are the administration’s main “war on terrorism” victims. Post-9/11, thousands were mercilessly harassed and persecuted through mass witch-hunt roundups, detentions, prosecutions and deportations. Their assets were frozen, and legal immigrants among them were subjected to secret federal immigration court status hearings where those found guilty of minor past infractions were illegally held or returned to their countries of origin where they faced possible arrest and torture.

Others fared even worse and became political prisoners. Professor Sami Al-Arian was one of them because of his faith, beliefs and activism. Palestinian refugee, scholar, academic, community leader, civic activist, and freedom and justice advocate for his people made him a Bush administration target. His ordeal began when he was arrested in February, 2003 and unjustly charged with supporting terrorism, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, giving material support to an outlawed group, extortion, perjury and other offenses proved spurious in his subsequent trial in which he was exonerated. Yet he remains imprisoned under harsh conditions as the Bush Justice Department finds ways to hold him.

Another victim was Dr. Rafil Dhafir, a Muslim American of Iraqi descent and practicing oncologist until his license was suspended. He was convicted in a shameless kangaroo court trial of 59 of 60 trumped up charges of violating the Iraqi Sanctions Regulations (IEEPA) for using his own funds and what he could raise through his Help the Needy charity to bring desperately needed essential to life humanitarian aid to Iraqis under sanctions. He’s now serving a 22 year sentence in a special Terre Haute, IN “Communications Management Unit” (CMU) for Muslims and Arabs for his “crime of compassion” (see dhafirtrial.net, Katherine Hughes) where he, like Sami Al-Arian, is a Bush administration “trophy” prisoner in the “war on terrorism.”

Undocumented Latino immigrants have also been targeted with ICE shock troops mandated to do it. The agency was established in March, 2003 as the largest DHS investigative and enforcement arm and charged with protecting the public safety by identifying and targeting “criminal” and “terrorist” threats to the country. In most cases, they’re innocent victims of NAFTA and globalized trade coming north to survive. ICE heads them off at the border, hunts them down ruthlessly once they’re here, and boasts how well their multi-billion dollar budget lets them conduct a reign of terror against vulnerable people.

Workplace assaults continue, and on October 3, ICE said it swept up and deported (or will deport) more than 1300 “criminal aliens, immigrations fugitives, and immigration violators” in the “largest-ever” operation of its kind in the Los Angeles area. Most were Mexican nationals, but some were from 30 other countries, and ICE called them “immigration violators.” They’re Bush administration targets in its “war on terrorism” that soon may come for us.

Police State America Preparations

Today, dissent is an endangered species, and preparations are underway for mass detentions in the “war on terrorism” targeting anyone seen as a threat. Halliburton is the beneficiary with a DHS contingency contract worth nearly $400 million to build US-based camps for “detention and processing” in case of an “emergency influx of immigrants….or to support the rapid development of new programs (for planned) expansion facilities (for anyone with capacity for 5000 or more persons).”

This language is cover for planned US-based concentration camps for anyone labeled an enemy of the state or threat to “national security.” The plan is clear – to have facilities in place if martial law is declared with plenty of reasons to fear it’s coming. Why else these camps and why all the repressive laws, EOs, NSPDs, and HSPDs put in place if they weren’t for a purpose.

The Pentagon is also ready with a DOD action plan called “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support.” It envisions an “active, layered defense” both within and outside the country that pledges to “transform US military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the….US homeland.” It lays out a strategy for increased reconnaissance and surveillance to “defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States.” It also “maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us.”

These are ominous developments that suggest a likely real or contrived homeland terror attack severe enough to warrant suspending the Constitution and declaring martial law with the public acquiescing out of fear. If it comes, anyone may be targeted as a “national security” threat, indefinitely detained in a camp, and no evidence is needed for proof. The state and military will be empowered by law to act preventively through mass roundups and detentions that appears the reason for three test-run FALCON operations.

Full-scale militarization of the country is already lawful under the 1988 Reagan administration’s “national security emergency” EO 12656. It was meant for “Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States.” “Police state America” has been in the works a long time, and it now may be near the boiling point.

The Role of Blackwater USA in Police State America

Most people know about Blackwater but not how it operates. We better learn because it’s coming to a neighborhood near you, and that means trouble. Author Jeremy Scahill wrote the book on the company he calls “the world’s most powerful mercenary army” and describes it as a “shadowy mercenary company (employing) some of the most feared professional killers in the world accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences (and) largely off the congressional radar.” It has friends in high places who give it “remarkable power and protection within the US war apparatus” with unaccountable license to practice street violence with impunity to include cold-blooded murder wherever their paramilitaries are deployed.

For now, that’s mostly abroad, and controversy surfaced about the company after its mercenaries killed two dozen or more Iraqis and wounded dozens more in al-Nisour on September 16. It was the latest incident involving a company with a disturbing history of unprovoked violence and then claiming self-defense. Blackwater is contracted to provide security services for US diplomats, officials and others that once was assigned to the military at one-sixth or less what the company charges under an administration that believes anything government can do private business does better, so let it whatever the cost.

Using Blackwater and other paramilitaries is part of the scheme to militarize America, and New Orleans is its first test case. Scahill wrote that “about 150 heavily armed Blackwater troops dressed in full battle gear” arrived in the Crescent City right after Katrina hit and spread out into the city’s chaos. Others came later. Their cover was to provide hurricane relief, but that was a ruse as local residents still around in the wrong places soon discovered. They patrolled like Gestapo in SUVs with tinted windows and their logo on the back. Others used unmarked cars with no license plates, and relief wasn’t their mandate. They came to secure neighborhoods from their legal residents and treat those wanting to return like criminals. They wore flak jackets, carried automatic weapons and had extra guns strapped to their legs. They weren’t for show.

Instead of helping hurricane victims, they came as vigilantes to terrorize them and be empowered by federal, state and local authorities to do it. Blackwater USA is the face of paramilitarism on US streets as the “war on terrorism” comes to a neighborhood near you with New Orleans the first test case to see if the company can operate here the way it does in Iraq and get away with it. It’s doing it.

More than two years after Katrina, New Orleans is still a disaster zone, and many thousands of its residents are still without homes. Instead of helping them rebuild and restore their lives, federal funds instead go to private mercenaries to protect the privileged from desperate people needing help. Blackwater is another element in place in “police state America” where the streets of Boston, Boise or Buffalo may one day resemble Baghdad and bring the “war on terror” to the homeland with chilling implications of what that means.

A Look Ahead in Police State America

This article began and will end with the same chilling thought. It past is prologue, the outlook isn’t good in “police state America” under neocon rule that won’t appreciably change when the White House has a new occupant in 2009. The nation is at war and laws are in place that end constitutional protections, militarize the country, repress dissent, and our government is empowered to crush freedom and defend privilege from beneficial social change it won’t tolerate. It’s the price of imperial arrogance we the people are paying, and that won’t end until the spirit of resistance gets aroused enough to stop it in our own self-defense. We better hope that happens in time with potentially little of it left.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend a remarkable gathering of the global peace movement in London. The World Against War conference, held December 1-2 in the British capital, brought together over 1200 delegates from almost 30 countries to discuss Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the threat of an attack against Iran, and much more.

Tony Benn, the octogenarian who served 51 years as a Member of Parliament and remains a stalwart opponent of war and privatization, opened the conference by noting that the venue, the Methodist Central Hall, had been the site of the first meeting of the UN General Assembly more than 60 years ago.

Benn reminded delegates of the stated aims of the original UN gathering, “It pledged to end the scourge of war, to reaffirm commitment to human rights, to establish conditions under which justice could be maintained, and to promote social progress. And that was after 105 million people had died in two world wars.”

“With the invasion of Iraq,” Benn argued, “that Charter was torn up and thrown into the wastepaper basket by Bush and Blair and others, and we are here to reaffirm those demands on behalf of the human race.”

The achievement of that ambitious goal, in the UK as in Canada and elsewhere, faces two related obstacles: the glaring lack of adequate anti-war representation in the arena of electoral politics, and the relative weakness of peace and other social movements in the face of government, media, and military PR juggernauts.

Superficially, Prime Minister Gordon Brown finds himself in a spot similar to that faced by Paul Martin during his short term at the helm in Ottawa. Tony Blair, like Jean Chrétien, clung to power for a decade, leaving his successor to deal with low poll numbers and gathering scandals.

But while the Liberals in Canada steered away at least from official involvement in the Iraq War, Blair and Brown’s Labour Party went shoulder-to-shoulder with the Bush administration into the most disastrous imperial war in a generation.

Ten years ago, “New Labour” swept into power, shiny and triumphant. The much-hyped “Third Way” cast aside the remnants within the Labour Party of so-called dogmas like income redistribution and class struggle, and cast itself as modern and forward-looking. In the end, New Labour ended up returning to the old discredited territory – literally and in terms of policy – of the British Empire by occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

And so it is that many thousands of members have deserted the Labour Party, and many millions of voters have stayed home and now threaten to take their support elsewhere. Brown, with hands bloodied by war (and without the acting skills of Blair), may now well lose the next election to his Conservative challenger, David Cameron.

This is the grim reality of parliamentary politics in the UK, which does not reflect at all the anti-war majority of British public opinion. (There are notable exceptions, of course. Two sitting MPs, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway, the only Respect Party member in Westminster, made powerful presentations to the conference.)

Facing this situation, activists have to think hard about how the movement against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can be effective. Demoralization undoubtedly hit people in the UK as it did elsewhere after unprecedented coordinated protests failed to stop the invasion of Iraq in 2003. February 15 of that year in London saw the largest protest in the country’s history, with over 1.5 million people on the streets.

Today, there is certainly a feeling of helplessness with the looming threat of an attack on Iran by the U.S. and Israel, with all the catastrophic results and human suffering that would entail. There is obviously a serious divide amongst the U.S. elite about the advisability of such an attack. Anti-war activists, however, have to find ways to mobilize against such a strike, as depending on the sanity of the U.S. administration would be, well, insane.

The World Against War conference was a unique opportunity to compare notes with other activists, many of whom struggle under extremely adverse conditions. Some of the most inspiring speakers were from the Middle East. Hassan Juma’a Awad, a leader of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, was warmly received as he told of their effort to resist the oil privatization law.

Hamdeen Sabahy, an independent MP and opponent of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, was a revelation. In a special meeting of international delegates, he left his interpreter idle and gave a moving speech in English. Outlining the obstacles facing the pro-democracy movement in Egypt, Sabahy made it clear he felt optimistic at least about the company he was keeping on that weekend in London:

“It is a very ugly world, in many ways, with so much injustice. But here, with all of you, struggling for peace and for justice, it is a beautiful world.”

Derrick O’Keefe is the editor of rabble.ca. He attended the London conference as a representative of the Vancouver StopWar Coalition.

It’s that time of year, again. Time to wander the web searching for Holiday gifts for all those hard-to-buy-for folks, the usual cast of characters who make the holidays especially nerve-wracking. Well, have no fear and wander no more. This year Tomdispatch takes care of all the fuss and muss. We’ve scoured the web and assembled a one-stop-shop that will make your gift-buying a breeze. So forget about that already over-the-Hillary Clinton nutcracker or the Rudy Giuliani head that you affix to a tree so it appears the Republican front-runner is a stalker lurking in your yard — both so last year — and enjoy the Fifth Anniversary TomDispatch Holiday List from Hell. Because if you don’t, the terrorists win.

Black(water) Xmas

Let’s face it, nobody wants a White Christmas DVD these days, so how about making it a Black(water) Xmas? Some, no doubt, think Jeremy Scahill’s bestselling book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, is a suitable gift. But we here at TomDispatch have a tad more imagination than that. So, head with us to Blackwater’s own website and purchase that wonderful “cuddly black bear… sporting a Blackwater logo t-shirt.” It’s sure to be a hit with your young mercenaries-in-training or anyone else who likes to snuggle with a plush toy totally unaccountable to the laws of war.

And while you’re there, you’ll certainly want to pick up a classic Blackwater Christmas ornament. Undoubtedly manufactured from spent shell casings and metal taken from genuine Blackwater-shot-up cars, these $11.50 tree adornments are a perfect way to show your holiday spirit.

Does your tree still look a tad bare? PatriotShop.US asks, “What could be more jolly than a Patriotic Snowman proudly waving the United States flag?” Nothing in our book, so click on over and pay a mere $21.95 for one of them.

Silver B*lls

Sure, you can get a CD with the Xmas fave “Silver Bells” on it just about anywhere. And what a great gift idea — for anyone who’s been locked in a basement for the last 60 years. But if silver’s on your brain, here’s a different kind of classy treat for that special someone. You can stuff his stocking and blow his mind — thanks to coin-connoisseur Ken Potter — with the “Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraqi Mobile Scud Missile Launcher Commemorative Silver Ingot.” No description of this .999 pure 1 oz. bar of silver can do it full justice; but, in an accompanying explanation, the seller does eloquently describe the ins-and-outs of enemy missile technology: “The Iraqi Mobile Scud Missile Launcher ingot depicts a camel with a scud missile upright in his mouth and Iraqi soldier swinging a sledge hammer at the camel’s exaggerated testicles laying on a tree-stump.”

Of course, if that’s not quite your cup of tea, the company has thoughtfully cast a stirring, patriotic “challenge coin” of pure, unadulterated, 100% genuine bronze especially for that U.S. Marine on your holiday list. One side sports the Marine Corps motto, “semper fidelis,” and the iconic image of the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. The flipside, no less moving, shows Santa relieving himself at a urinal beneath his own special motto: “Tinkle Bells.” The manufacturer notes that if the design “proves popular” — and how could it not? — “we’ll make more next year.”

A Gift for the Otherwise Occupied

For those who can’t come home for the holidays, because they are currently occupying somebody else’s country, there are gifts galore, but there’s one that tops any list. While it might have come in even handier a couple of years back, when body armor was often lacking for troops in Iraq, there’s still reason to pick up the “Soldier’s Companion,” a “unique, metal plated Bible” — “the perfect gift for the uniformed Patriot on your list.” Since IEDs and EFPs (or Explosively Formed Penetrators) are still a threat, why not buy a bunch of these metal Bibles (at only $30 bucks a pop). So handy not just to read, but to line any Humvee with.

It’s Xmas in Karachi, With All of the Folks at Home

We’ve all been there before. It’s the last minute and you need to buy a gift for a shaky strongman who seized power in a “devastating military coup.” What to do? Why not follow the lead of the Bush administration? This year the holidays came early for Pakistani ruler Pervez Musharraf — #15, even before his latest crushing crackdown, on Parade magazine’s list of the World’s Worst Dictators — when he scored a whole slew of goodies through the U.S. Foreign Military Sales Program. Pervez must have been an awfully good boy because Santa subcontracted out loads of toys way early, including F-16 fighters from Boeing, 200 AIM-9M missiles from Raytheon, 10 Harpoon missiles from Boeing’s McDonnell Douglas Corporation, and more than $54 million worth of targeting pods — long-range precision-targeting systems for aircraft-delivered munitions — from Lockheed Martin. Should you have a dictator to cozy up to, any one of these will be sure to make him sleep a little easier this holiday season.

War Toys for Tots

What would Christmas be without war toys? After all, who hasn’t stationed GI Joe atop that Middle Eastern manger? And this year there are so many options for toys that celebrate America’s multiple on-going wars. For a measly $109, for example, you can buy little Bobby an Operation Iraqi Freedom Marine Corps sniper action figure, including bayonet and pistol, M-4 Carbine, and M40 sniper rifle. For little Suzie, there’s the “Jennifer” 101st Airborne Division action figure with enough fire power to tell any Barbie or Bratz in Iraq to sit down and shut up — or pay the ultimate price.

Let’s not forget that U.S. occupations are supposed to be multicultural affairs. So check out McFarlane’s rifle-toting “Ethnic Air Force Special Operations Command” action figure for just $9.99 — or, for $40 more, the mustachioed “Operation Enduring Freedom Jose.”

Holiday Reflection

Keep in mind that the holidays aren’t always about fun, fun, fun. It’s also a time for serious reflecting, as well as for mourning losses past and future. Admit it, you and your friends are already getting weepy at the prospect of having only one last Xmas with President Bush as your commander-in-chief (barring, of course, a Musharraf-esque power grab). Not to worry, the memory of his rule will never fade with the lovely, “museum quality” bust of Bush, in gorgeous “high quality polyresin.” Imagine, he can smirk on your mantle for decades to come!

Have you already moved on? Looking for new heroes to beautify your home? Then, it’s back to Blackwater! If you thought they only supplied lawless mercenaries, teddy bears, and tree ornaments, how wrong you were! Consider their inspirational “Evolution of Excellence” posters. Many have tough-looking, gun-wielding, white men like the “Train Hard… Or Don’t Train At All” one — showing a plainclothes Blackwater gunman flanked by a host of other black-ops operators, engaging in Blackwater black ops; or, if you’re of a more metaphorical mind, don’t miss the “Vigilance” poster that shows a Blackwater bear battling a scary sand-monster — assumedly born of the place U.S. troops and their mercenary brethren call “the sandbox.”

Spirit of the Season

When the holiday season comes round, which of you don’t head for your favorite haunts to shop till you drop? For most of us, that certainly means a trip to RightwingStuff.com. But for the few of you out there who aren’t regulars at the site that proclaims itself “back-handing the Left into submission,” here’s a helpful hint: think t-shirts. Take the “I’d fly 10,000 miles to smoke a camel… jockey” fitted T. What a perfect gift idea! But don’t rush to buy quite yet. After all, RightwingStuff isn’t the only made-in-the-USA game in town. You might also think about the “Give Peace a Chance. Bomb Iran” fitted t-shirt from SnafuGear. Or slip over to ConservativeBuys.com to pick up that “Tic Tac Toe Anti-Iran” T, featuring the snazzy game-board motif, with Afghanistan and Iraq already Xed out and all those bombs heading Iran-wards. Or what about the “Tehran Forecast” t-shirt that reads: “15,000 degrees, high radioactive winds.”

Had enough of shirts? Feelin’ a tad sad because the latest National Intelligence Estimate wrecked that plan to take out Iran? How about a trucker hat emblazoned with a picture of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s face on toilet paper and the phrase “Shiite Head” in faux Arabic script?

And, for goodness sake, don’t forget the Xmas cards you’ll need to accompany your gifts. Perfect for the T’s and the hat are DareWare’s “Funny Anti-Iran Anti-Muslim Greeting Cards” with a lovely image of a mushroom cloud and the classic all-seasonal line: “Nuke Iran for Peace.”

Spirit of the (Primary) Season

Thanks to the phenomenon of migrating primaries, this year we’re truly blessed to have the holiday season and the primary season coincide for the first time. Not only is it great for our country, our news cycle, and our many pundits, but it’s a bonanza for shoppers. For Republicans on your list, you won’t want to miss the gear they’ve been giddy for — like the “In Fred We Trust” Fred Thompson shirt that calls for “laws and borders” or the slightly incongruous “Mitt Romney Stein.” That’s beer to you, buddy, as the manufacturer indicates in advising a potential purchaser to “heft a cold one in this 22 oz. ceramic stein with gold trim… [and] make any day Oktoberfest.” You’d better lift two, because poor Mitt, a Mormon teetotaler, can’t.

At the Fred Thompson site, you can pick up this year’s safest holiday idea: “Fred Thompson 2008 Silicone Wristbands.” These Live Strong band knock-offs are “Certified Lead Free, Made in the USA of 100% USA-made ingredients [with] NO Chinese components.” You can adorn both wrists with these all-American bracelets — and your toddler can chew on them, to boot.

If you don’t want to commit to a candidate until the primary season shakes out, then how about just opting for a generic “War On Terror, Surveil This!” canary yellow messenger bag — with a handsome image of a Republican elephant holding up a satellite dish by its trunk. And don’t miss that magnifying glass placed over its rear either. (All the better to see the small donkeys it’s defecating, my dear.)

For Democrats — though obviously made by patriotic Republicans — there’s that “Bros Before Hoes” shirt featuring images of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton; or the T with “Barack Osama” in a turban (and this explanation at the site selling it: “Who would have ever guessed that 6 years after 9/11 and 4 years after the invasion of Iraq we would have a Presidential candidate running with the name ‘Barack Hussein Obama.'”) And don’t skip over the tile coaster featuring Hillary Clinton as Cerberus — that three-headed hound of hell from Greek mythology — complete with a Bill Clinton-snake tail attacking the White House. Just the thing to prevent unsightly stains on your coffee table!

Stress Free Holidays

Well dear shopper, how does it feel to have all your holiday gift worries taken care of in one fell swoop? And don’t worry about that other source of holiday gift anxiety — returns; Tomdispatch has a solution for that, too. Say you get two or three “Chuck for Huck” buttons, featuring action-hero-has-been Chuck Norris and Mike Huckabee, or one-too-many Rhinestone Rudy Giuliani pins (is there such a thing?) under the tree this year? No worries. Just head to Mitt Romney’s official campaign site where the candidate has set up his own private Ebay called the “Mitt Market” for you to sell “items with little hassle and the added benefit of supporting Governor Mitt Romney.”

What more can you ask for? With all the time saved and aggravation averted, you can sit back, relax, and admire your Blackwater ornament-adorned tree, hoist your Mitt Romney beer stein (just remember to set it down on that Hillary Clinton coaster), and enjoy the holidays all courtesy of the Christmas elves at Tomdispatch.

Names are still trickling in, 11 of the 15 now identified.

Afghanis transferred yesterday…
Ghulam Rohani, ISN 003 (if cleared for transfer attorney not told)
Abdullah Wazir Zadran, ISN 976 (cleared for transfer in 2006)
Dr. Hafizullah, ISN 1001 (cleared for transfer in 2007)
Abdullah Mujahid Haq, ISN 1100 (cleared for transfer in 2005)
Abdul Matin (ISN 1002) (not cleared for release)
Gul Chaman (ISN 1021)

ISN 222 wrongly identified by our military as “Omar Abdullah al Kunduzi” (it should make you wonder how they could investigate this man when they couldn’t even get his name straight! I will update when I get the correct name from his attorney.)

Abdul Akhouzada (ISN 954) (corrected) (not cleared for release)
Abdul Rauf Aliza (ISN108)

Sudanese:
Salim Muhood Adem (ISN 710). (released for transfer more than 2 years ago).
Adel Hamad (ISN 940) (released for transfer more than 2 years ago).

A Yemeni man never charged by the U.S. details 19 months of brutality and psychological torture — the first in-depth, first-person account from inside the secret U.S. prisons. A Salon exclusive.

12/16/07 “Salon” — – The CIA held Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah in several different cells when he was incarcerated in its network of secret prisons known as “black sites.” But the small cells were all pretty similar, maybe 7 feet wide and 10 feet long. He was sometimes naked, and sometimes handcuffed for weeks at a time. In one cell his ankle was chained to a bolt in the floor. There was a small toilet. In another cell there was just a bucket. Video cameras recorded his every move. The lights always stayed on — there was no day or night. A speaker blasted him with continuous white noise, or rap music, 24 hours a day.

The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation — one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.

It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words “I am innocent” in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.

So Bashmilah stopped eating. But after his weight dropped to 90 pounds, he was dragged into an interrogation room, where they rammed a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Liquid was pumped in. The CIA would not let him die.

On several occasions, when Bashmilah’s state of mind deteriorated dangerously, the CIA also did something else: They placed him in the care of mental health professionals. Bashmilah believes these were trained psychologists or psychiatrists. “What they were trying to do was to give me a sort of uplifting and to assure me,” Bashmilah said in a telephone interview, through an interpreter, speaking from his home country of Yemen. “One of the things they told me to do was to allow myself to cry, and to breathe.”

Last June, Salon reported on the CIA’s use of psychologists to aid with the interrogation of terrorist suspects. But the role of mental health professionals working at CIA black sites is a previously unknown twist in the chilling, Kafkaesque story of the agency’s secret overseas prisons.

Little about the conditions of Bashmilah’s incarceration has been made public until now. His detailed descriptions in an interview with Salon, and in newly filed court documents, provide the first in-depth, first-person account of captivity inside a CIA black site. Human rights advocates and lawyers have painstakingly pieced together his case, using Bashmilah’s descriptions of his cells and his captors, and documents from the governments of Jordan and Yemen and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to verify his testimony. Flight records detailing the movement of CIA aircraft also confirm Bashmilah’s account, tracing his path from the Middle East to Afghanistan and back again while in U.S. custody.

Bashmilah’s story also appears to show in clear terms that he was an innocent man. After 19 months of imprisonment and torment at the hands of the CIA, the agency released him with no explanation, just as he had been imprisoned in the first place. He faced no terrorism charges. He was given no lawyer. He saw no judge. He was simply released, his life shattered.

“This really shows the human impact of this program and that lives are ruined by the CIA rendition program,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, an attorney for Bashmilah and a professor at the New York University School of Law. “It is about psychological torture and the experience of being disappeared.”

Bashmilah, who at age 39 is now physically a free man, still suffers the mental consequences of prolonged detention and abuse. He is undergoing treatment for the damage done to him at the hands of the U.S. government. On Friday, Bashmilah laid out his story in a declaration to a U.S. district court as part of a civil suit brought by the ACLU against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing accused of facilitating secret CIA rendition flights.

Bashmilah said in the phone interview that the psychological anguish inside a CIA black site is exacerbated by the unfathomable unknowns for the prisoners. While he figured out that he was being held by Americans, Bashmilah did not know for sure why, where he was, or whether he would ever see his family again. He said, “Every time I realize that there may be others who are still there where I suffered, I feel the same thing for those innocent people who just fell in a crack.”

It may seem bizarre for the agency to provide counseling to a prisoner while simultaneously cracking him mentally — as if revealing a humanitarian aspect to a program otherwise calibrated to exploit systematic psychological abuse. But it could also be that mental healthcare professionals were enlisted to help bring back from the edge prisoners who seemed precariously damaged, whose frayed minds were no longer as pliable for interrogation. “My understanding is that the purpose of having psychiatrists there is that if the prisoner feels better, then he would be able to talk more to the interrogators,” said Bashmilah.

Realistically, psychiatrists in such a setting could do little about the prisoners’ deeper suffering at the hands of the CIA. “They really had no authority to address these issues,” Bashmilah said about his mental anguish. He said the doctors told him to “hope that one day you will prove your innocence or that you will one day return to your family.” The psychiatrists also gave him some pills, likely tranquilizers. They analyzed his dreams. But there wasn’t much else they could do. “They also gave me a Rubik’s Cube so I could pass the time, and some jigsaw puzzles,” Bashmilah recalled.

The nightmare started for him back in fall 2003. Bashmilah had traveled to Jordan from Indonesia, where he was living with his wife and working in the clothing business. He and his wife went to Jordan to meet Bashmilah’s mother, who had also traveled there. The family hoped to arrange for heart surgery for Bashmilah’s mother at a hospital in Amman. But before leaving Indonesia, Bashmilah had lost his passport and had received a replacement. Upon arrival in Jordan, Jordanian officials questioned his lack of stamps in the new one, and they grew suspicious when Bashmilah admitted he had visited Afghanistan in 2000. Bashmilah was taken into custody by Jordanian authorities on Oct. 21, 2003. He would not reappear again until he stepped out of a CIA plane in Yemen on May 5, 2005.

Bashmilah’s apparent innocence was clearly lost on officials with Jordan’s General Intelligence Department. After his arrest, the Jordanians brutally beat him, peppering him with questions about al-Qaida. He was forced to jog around in a yard until he collapsed. Officers hung him upside down with a leather strap and his hands tied. They beat the soles of his feet and his sides. They threatened to electrocute him with wires. The told him they would rape his wife and mother.

It was too much. Bashmilah signed a confession multiple pages long, but he was disoriented and afraid even to read it. “I felt sure it included things I did not say,” he wrote in his declaration to the court delivered Friday. “I was willing to sign a hundred sheets so long as they would end the interrogation.”

Bashmilah was turned over to the CIA in the early morning hours of Oct. 26, 2003. Jordanian officials delivered him to a “tall, heavy-set, balding white man wearing civilian clothes and dark sunglasses with small round lenses,” he wrote in his declaration. He had no idea who his new captors were, or that he was about to begin 19 months of hell, in the custody of the U.S. government. And while he was seldom beaten physically while in U.S. custody, he describes a regime of imprisonment designed to inflict extreme psychological anguish.

I asked Bashmilah which was worse: the physical beatings at the hands of the Jordanians, or the psychological abuse he faced from the CIA. “I consider that psychological torture I endured was worse than the physical torture,” he responded. He called his imprisonment by the CIA “almost like being inside a tomb.”

“Whenever I saw a fly in my cell, I was filled with joy,” he said. “Although I would wish for it to slip from under the door so it would not be imprisoned itself.”

After a short car ride to a building at the airport, Bashmilah’s clothes were cut off by black-clad, masked guards wearing surgical gloves. He was beaten. One guard stuck his finger in Bashmilah’s anus. He was dressed in a diaper, blue shirt and pants. Blindfolded and wearing earmuffs, he was then chained and hooded and strapped to a gurney in an airplane.

Flight records show Bashmilah was flown to Kabul. (Records show the plane originally departed from Washington, before first stopping in Prague and Bucharest.) After landing, he was forced to lie down in a bumpy jeep for 15 minutes and led into a building. The blindfold was removed, and Bashmilah was examined by an American doctor.

He was then placed in a windowless, freezing-cold cell, roughly 6.5 feet by 10 feet. There was a foam mattress, one blanket, and a bucket for a toilet that was emptied once a day. A bare light bulb stayed on constantly. A camera was mounted above a solid metal door. For the first month, loud rap and Arabic music was piped into his cell, 24 hours a day, through a hole opposite the door. His leg shackles were chained to the wall. The guards would not let him sleep, forcing Bashmilah to raise his hand every half hour to prove he was still awake.

Cells were lined up next to each other with spaces in between. Higher above the low ceilings of the cells appeared to be another ceiling, as if the prison were inside an airplane hanger.

After three months the routine became unbearable. Bashmilah unsuccessfully tried to hang himself with his blanket and slashed his wrists. He slammed his head against the wall in an effort to lose consciousness. He was held in three separate but similar cells during his detention in Kabul. At one point, the cell across from him was being used for interrogations. “While I myself was not beaten in the torture and interrogation room, after a while I began to hear the screams of detainees being tortured there,” he wrote.

While he was not beaten, Bashmilah was frequently interrogated. “During the entire period of my detention there, I was held in solitary confinement and saw no one other than my guards, interrogators and other prison personnel,” he wrote in his declaration. One interrogator accused him of being involved in sending letters to a contact in England, though Bashmilah says he doesn’t know anybody in that country. At other times he was shown pictures of people he also says he did not know.

“This is a form of torture,” he told me. “Especially when the person subjected to this has not done anything.”

In his declaration, Bashmilah made it clear that most of the prison officials spoke English with American accents. “The interrogators also frequently referred to reports coming from Washington,” he wrote.

After six months he was transferred, with no warning or explanation. On or around April 24, 2004, Bashmilah was pulled from his cell and placed in an interrogation room, where he was stripped naked. An American doctor with a disfigured hand examined him, jotting down distinctive marks on a paper diagram of the human body. Black-masked guards again put him in a diaper, cotton pants and shirt. He was blindfolded, shackled, hooded, forced to wear headphones, and stacked, lying down, in a jeep with other detainees. Then he remembers being forced up steps into a waiting airplane for a flight that lasted several hours, followed by several hours on the floor of a helicopter.

Upon landing, he was forced into a vehicle for a short ride. Then, Bashmilah took several steps into another secret prison — location unknown.

He was forced into a room and stripped naked again. Photos were taken of all sides of his body. He was surrounded by about 15 people. “All of them except for the person taking photographs were dressed in the kind of black masks that robbers wear to hide their faces,” Bashmilah wrote in the declaration.

He was again examined by a doctor, who took notations on the diagram of the human body. (It was the same form from Afghanistan. Bashmilah saw his vaccination scar marked on the diagram.) The doctor looked in his eyes, ears, nose and throat.

He was then thrown into a cold cell, left naked.

It was another tiny cell, new or refurbished with a stainless steel sink and toilet. Until clothes arrived several days later, Bashmilah huddled in a blanket. In this cell there were two video cameras, one mounted above the door and the other in a wall. Also above the door was a speaker. White noise, like static, was pumped in constantly, day and night. He spent the first month in handcuffs. In this cell his ankle was attached to a 110-link chain attached to a bolt on the floor.

The door had a small opening in the bottom through which food would appear: boiled rice, sliced meat and bread, triangles of cheese, boiled potato, slices of tomato and olives, served on a plastic plate.

Guards wore black pants with pockets, long-sleeved black shirts, rubber gloves or black gloves, and masks that covered the head and neck. The masks had tinted yellow plastic over the eyes. “I never heard the guards speak to each other and they never spoke to me,” Bashmilah wrote in his declaration.

He was interrogated more. Bashmilah recalls an interrogator showing him a lecture by an Islamic scholar playing on a laptop. The interrogator wanted to know if Bashmilah knew who the man was, but he did not. It was in this facility that Bashmilah slashed his wrists, then went on his hunger strike, only to be force-fed through a tube forced down his nose.

The CIA seems to have figured out that Bashmilah was not an al-Qaida operative sometime around September 2004, when he was moved to another, similar cell. But there was no more white noise. And while his ankles were shackled, he wasn’t bolted to the floor with a chain. He was allowed to shower once a week. He was no longer interrogated and was mostly left alone.

Bashmilah was given a list of books he could read. About a month before he was released, he was given access to an exercise hall for 15 minutes a week. And he saw mental healthcare professionals. “The psychiatrists asked me to talk about why I was so despairing, interpreted my dreams, asked me how I was sleeping and whether I had an appetite, and offered medications such as tranquilizers.”

On May 5, 2005, Bashmilah was cuffed, hooded and put on a plane to Yemen. Yemeni government documents say the flight lasted six or seven hours and confirm that he was transferred from the control of the U.S. government. He soon learned that his father had died in the fall of 2004, not knowing where his son had disappeared to, or even if he was alive.

12/16/07 “ICH” — — -It could, rightfully, be a cause of shame to the world. But the world, besieged by violence and injustice, hardly notices it. The people of Gaza, 1.4 million of them, are slowly and purposely being deprived of basic foods and medicines by the so called civilized countries in the West and there is hardly a protest. And all this happens because the people in Gaza want to be free and independent. Never mind that in the process children and innocent civilians are killed or families dispossessed.

Dr. Mona Elfarra, a Palestinian physician and human rights activist, thus describes a situation in her personal blog, “I don’t know exactly what was going on inside the little heads of the kids who were preparatory school children, of Al Buriege boy’s preparatory school. But the two tiny bodies were shot, with many bullets, as I was told by my colleagues at the emergency room at the Al Aqsa hospital…On November 10, the dreams of two tiny kids has stopped forever.”

As Dr. Elfarra states, both the children as well as the Israeli soldiers who killed them are victims of the occupation, “…the occupation that deprives the soldiers of their humanity, when under the false pretence of Israeli security, daily crimes are committed against my country. And against my people.” This is particularly true in the lack of food and medicines for the people in Gaza.

Most of the basic goods in Gaza are imported. Because of border closures, there is limited delivery of those goods, in particular sugar and wheat flour, which represent 80 percent of the caloric intake of Palestinians. The majority of the population depends on food aid from international organizations.

At the same time, the flow of exports leaving Gaza has practically stopped, while the commercial and humanitarian goods allowed to come in continues to decline. The Gaza Strip is practically sealed off from the outside world. Approximately 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day. It is estimated that 70 percent of the potential workforce is out of work or without pay. The Gaza Strip is not receiving tax monies owed to by Israel, which amounts to almost half of its budget.

Also critical is the public health and medical situation of the inhabitants of the Strip. The World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that the public health system is facing an unprecedented crisis. UNICEF reports that children are living in an environment of extreme violence, insecurity and fear. Shelling and sonic bombs have increased children’s signs of distress and exhaustion.

UN agencies have appealed for Israel to restore full energy supplies to the Gaza Strip, stating their concern over the status of the public health system. “In the last months, the situation has become intolerable, with problems of referral outside of Gaza for patients who need specialized care that cannot be delivered in Gaza,” states Dr. Ambroggio Manenti, head of the WHO office for the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israeli government General Security Service (Shabak) cites unspecified “security concerns” when denying medical patients exit permits from Gaza, a situation that has been denounced by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel.) “Israel denial of medical care to those in urgent need amounts to collective punishment against the population, which violates international law,” states Sarah Leah Whitson, director of Human Rights Watch Middle East division.

In June, PHR-Israel and Gisha, another Israel-based human rights group, challenged Israel’s restrictions on medical evacuees in Israel’s Supreme Court. One of those denied permission to leave Gaza was a 16-year-old girl with a heart condition. “Israel has legitimate security concerns about militant groups firing rockets from Gaza into civilian areas. But denying medical treatment to a 16-year-old girl with a congenital heart defect doesn’t make Israel any safer,” said Leah Whitson.

Leah Whitson’s words are confirmed by Gideon Levy, the Israeli journalist, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “But we have no right to do what we are doing. Just as no one would conceive of killing the residents of an entire neighborhood, to harass and incarcerate it because of a few criminals living there, there is no justification for abusing an entire people in the name of our security. The question of whether ending the occupation would threaten or strengthen Israel’s security is irrelevant. There are not, and cannot be, any preconditions for restoring justice.”