The Rag Blog

SAN FRANCISCO -­ A statement issued last week by Nobel Peace Prize laureates including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has galvanized attention on a long-simmering case involving eight former Black Panther Party members charged with the 1971 murder of a San Francisco police sergeant. The men and their supporters contend the evidence cited against them was obtained under torture.

On Nov. 30, a World Council of Churches representative officially released the International Call on the San Francisco Eight, signed by Archbishop Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams of the Community of Peace People, Northern Ireland, and representatives of organizations that have also received the peace prize.

The statement cites the known involvement of the U.S. government and the FBI in illegal policing against civil and human rights organizations, including the COINTELPRO operation targeting the Black Panther Party, the lack of new evidence in the case, and the dismissal of the alleged evidence presented in an earlier investigation.

The Nobel laureates call for dropping all charges against the eight, freeing two of the men who have been jailed for decades, and pursuing official investigations into “the ongoing legacy and possible continued operation of COINTELPRO and similar programs, with an eye towards true reconciliation and human rights based on internationally recognized standards and principles.”

Six of the eight men ­ Francisco Torres, Richard Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray Boudreaux, Hank Jones and Harold Taylor ­ were rearrested last January on charges stemming from the 1971 killing of San Francisco Police Sgt. John Young and other charges connected to attacks on other officers. Two others, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaquim, have long been jailed on other charges.

Three of the men had been charged in 1973 with Young’s murder. But a federal court ruled the next year that both San Francisco and New Orleans police had tortured them to obtain a confession. Charges were dismissed in 1975 because statements used as evidence were made following torture.

The case was reopened in 2003 by the U.S. Department of Justice, using funds allocated to the Department of Homeland Security. The California state attorney’s office, which is working on the case with a federal task force, has said no new scientific evidence has emerged.

Both on Jan. 26 and Nov. 30, “Democracy Now” featured interviews with San Francisco Eight members who detailed horrific accounts of prolonged torture at the hands of New Orleans police in 1973.

A Dec. 3 court hearing in the case brought nearly 100 supporters to a lively picket line in front of the City’s Hall of Justice. At the hearing, Judge Philip Moscone set Jan. 10 as the date for the San Francisco Eight to officially enter pleas. He also set April 21 for the start of the preliminary hearing in the case.

Marching in the picket line was S.F. Eight member Francisco Torres. “The message the government wants to send youth is, this is what will happen to you if you get involved and resist government policies, so it’s pointless to resist,” he said.

“This is not a government of the people any more,” Torres warned. “We need to become more aware and more investigative, and our movements need to build links and listen to each other.”

WASHINGTON (Dec. 6) – The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether C.I.A. officials withheld information about aspects of the program from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission appointed by President Bush and Congress. It was not clear who within the C.I.A. authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The New York Times informed the C.I.A. on Wednesday evening that it planned to publish an article in Friday’s newspaper about the destruction of the tapes. Today, the C.I.A. director, General Michael V. Hayden, wrote a letter to the agency workforce explaining the matter.

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah.

Mr. Moussaoui’s lawyers had hoped that records of the interrogations might provide exculpatory evidence for Mr. Moussaoui — showing that the Al Qaeda detainees did not know Mr. Moussaoui and clearing him of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot.

Hayden’s statement said that the tapes posed a “serious security risk,” and that if they were to become public they would have exposed C.I.A. officials ” and their families to retaliation from Al Qaeda and its sympathizers.”

“What matters here is that it was done in line with the law,” he said. He said in his statement that he was informing agency employees because “the press has learned” about the destruction of the tapes.

General Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate.

“This is a matter that should have been briefed to the full Intelligence Committee at the time,” an official with the House Intelligence Committee said. “This does not appear to have been done. There may be a very logical reason for destroying records that are no longer needed; however, this requires a more complete explanation.”

Staff members of the Sept. 11 commission, which completed its work in 2004, expressed surprise when they were told that interrogation videotapes existed until 2005.

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

General Hayden said the tapes were originally made to ensure that agency employees acted in accordance with “established legal and policy guidelines.”General Hayden said the agency stopped videotaping interrogations in 2002.

“The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages,” his statement read.

In October, federal prosecutors in the Moussaoui case were forced to write a letter to the court amending those C.I.A. declarations. The letter stated that in September, the C.I.A. notified the United States attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., that it had discovered a videotape documenting the interrogation of a detainee. After a more thorough search, the letter stated, C.I.A. officials discovered a second videotape and one audio tape.

The letter is heavily redacted and sentences stating which detainees’ interrogations the recordings document are blacked out. Signed by the United States attorney, Chuck Rosenberg, the letter states that the C.I.A.’s search for interrogation tapes “appears to be complete.”

There is no mention in the letter of the tapes that C.I.A. officials destroyed in 2005. Mr. Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.

John Radsan, who worked as a C.I.A. lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said the destruction of the tapes could carry serious legal penalties.

“If anybody at the C.I.A. hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute,” he said.

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and C.I.A. officers became concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

He said the worries about the impact a leak of the tapes might have in the Muslim world were real.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to several tough physical tactics, including waterboarding, which involves near-suffocation. But C.I.A. officers judged that the release of photos or videos would nonetheless provoke a strong reaction.

“People know what happened, but to see it in living color would have far greater power,” the official said.

Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been pushing legislation in Congress to have all detainee interrogations videotaped so officials can refer to the tapes multiple times to glean better information.

Mr. Holt said he had been told many times that the C.I.A. does not record the interrogation of detainees. “When I would ask them whether they had reviewed the tapes to better understand the intelligence, they said ‘What tapes?’,” he said.

Here’s what I like to do every time I see a throng of frothing religious zombies marching in the streets of Sudan or Pakistan or Colorado Springs or anywhere else in the world, carrying knives and torches and holding festering clots of fear in their hearts as they burn flags or photographs or copies of “The Goblet of Fire” or “The Golden Compass” or that sweet little book about the cute gay penguins in the Central Park Zoo and all screaming for the instant death of someone who dared to suggest that, say, Jesus was actually a liberal pacifist or that L. Ron Hubbard was a nutball hack or that it’s perfectly delightful to let sweet little schoolkids name a sweet little teddy bear ‘Muhammad.’

I try to remember. No wait, that’s not quite right. First, I get past the wave of nausea and sadness, that hot, palpable feeling that we are, still and forever, a baffled and insane and deeply doomed species and the world of man is indeed bleak and hopeless on far too many levels to count.

Yes. Must get past that.

Then I remember. I remember the remaining 1.2 billion Muslims of the world who are also reading about the Great Teddy Bear Blasphemy of 2007 and going oh holy hell no, please, Allah no, not this again, not these inbred fundamentalist jackals making us all look so horribly bad, and why does the media insist on showing such a harsh, fragmented picture of a generally peaceful (albeit overly militant) faith and is there really nothing we can do?

I remember how difficult it must be in this, the age of instant and global and yet often wrongheaded media coverage, for the average true believer of any of the world’s giant, confused religions to stay focused and faithful and full of piety, considering the increasing number of mindless zealots who so effortlessly poison their spiritual well.

Then I wonder: Do such events ever spur any sort of somber internal query among the faithful? Do these countless acts of terrorism and extremism, so common to every major world religion, ever stir up some sort of nagging notion that perhaps there really is something fundamentally wrong with how billions of people still cling to these codified, archaic systems of faith, so terrified as they are of change, of progress, so saturated in reactionary groupthink that they give rise to endless outbursts of hate and ignorance? Sadly, I think I know the answer.

Indeed, the distressed reaction from normal Muslims must be a very similar to what average Christians experience when they hear about yet another loud-mouthed gaggle of Bible zealots using Jesus as a weapon to attack and bash and impede, to go after gays and women and science and sex and terrifying little books about girls and magic dust and talking polar bears.

It’s a common Christian lament. It’s also a bit bogus, unconvincing, hollow. Because the fact is, the extremists of any religion merely serve to illuminate the fact that there’s always something inherently dangerous in giving yourself (and your national identity) over to such divisive, woefully dualistic systems that, no matter what your stance, absolutely insist that man is but a flawed, lustful animal that can never truly know God. Or to put it more crudely: The fanatics may like to pee in the pool, but religion built the damn pool in the first place.

Because then I think of how many senators and Bible-thumpers and Bush-bashed Americans who are seeing stories like this and snorting, “See? Murderous Muslim fanatics raging in the streets! This is why Christianity is so much better. This is why we should bomb the Middle East to rubble. Bush is right!” And they raise their flags and cock their Bibles and pat themselves on their arrogant backs, conveniently forgetting that the only real difference between radical Islam and Christianity’s own bloody, murderous past is, well, a bit of time, with a splash of geography.

Ah yes, the bloody crusades, the sadistic assaults on conflicting belief systems, the gay popes and murderous priests and boundless hypocrisy, the book burnings and witch burnings and pagan slaughters and a billion sexual oppressions, the mountains of guilt and shame and sin sin sin. Been there, done that, still doing a great deal of it but not quite as, you know, explicitly as before. Note to righteous Christians: That violent Sudanese march? Different branch, same family tree.

I think of Christopher Hitchens’ terrific stunt of book, “God is Not Great,” and also Richard Dawkins’ excellent “The God Delusion,” bestsellers both and both effortlessly revealing, by way of reason and scientific fact and sheer common sense, how organized religion has been, almost without fail, the single most successful impediment to mankind’s true moral, spiritual and even political progress throughout history.

To me, both are dead right, and yet also deeply missing the point, if for no other reason than that they both argue their perspectives straight from the mind, the realm of reason and logic, when spirit is, of course, a matter of the heart. To me, the greatest argument against organized religion is not merely that it makes no logical sense — this much is obvious. It’s how it puts the heart, the fluid and indefinable — and yes, hotly mystical — spirit, in a kind of theological cage, bound and gagged and fed only scraps of carefully censored truth, and dares to call it love.

All these thoughts swirl and dance when suddenly I read that the pope, perhaps the most dangerous, out-of-touch world figure in all of organized religion’s dour pantheon, has declared that atheists — atheists! — are responsible for some of “the greatest forms of cruelty” in history. I laugh out loud. It is a wonder that lightning did not strike him dead on the spot.

Pascal: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” Twain: “Man is kind enough when he is not excited by religion.” Tom Robbins: “A sense of humor, properly developed, is superior to any religion so far devised.” Salud, gentlemen.

And finally, I think of the eternal chicken-and-egg debate, modified thusly: Which came first, the radical fundamentalists who can’t walk and chew warm theology at the same time, or the overeager commercial media, ever in need of tales of shock and titillation and blood to get you to pay attention?

Or the existential version: If extremist hooligans march in the streets and there are no media to cover it, do they make a sound? Does it make a bit of difference? Does anyone care? If there are no cameras, will the zealots just stay home and masturbate to copies of “The Hills” on DVD? Then again, if the media ignore such eruptions, will they be accused of bias? Of neglecting their duties, especially if something truly dangerous occurs? If you were running a news organization in this age of fear and persecution and limitless media potential, what would you do?

As for me, I love Great Danes. Also Dobermans and Ridgebacks and sleek Lab mixes. Alas, I do not yet have a dog. When I finally get one, perhaps I shall name him Allah. Maybe I shall get a second dog and name her Buddha, my parrot Jesus, my new mattress set Shiva and Shakti, my car Dionysus, and my favorite Pyrex sex toy, naturally, oh sweet Lord. This is the plan.

Robert Whiteside is a workingman’s workingman.

But exactly eight months ago, he found himself among the ranks of the unemployed.

The father of three, Statesville resident, erstwhile employee of the Cleveland Freightliner plant and union leader was fired, ostensibly for allowing what the powers to be said was an unauthorized strike.

Since then Whiteside and four other members of the United Auto Workers Local 3520’s negotiating team have been fighting to get their jobs back.

The group – which includes fellow Local 3520 officers Allen Bradley, David Crisco, Glenna Swinford and Franklin Torrence – has come to be known as “the Cleveland Five” and they have come to symbolize flaws in the labor union system.

“We did nothing wrong,” said Whiteside, “except to have the audacity to do what a union local is supposed to do – stand up for its membership.”

The group members said they did exactly what the rank and file voted for when, on April 3, they called for members to go on strike.

The workers’ contract had expired at midnight on April 1, one day after the company had a massive layoff. Later that day, the UAW International leaders called on the local “to accept a package we had already voted to reject,” Torrence said.

“We were told to take this and ratify it and that ‘we could work out the open issues later,’ ” Torrence said

But the negotiating team saw right through that.

“There was nothing new and if we accepted the contract we would lose all our bargaining power,” Swinford said. “Once you ratify a contract, the deal’s over and you have what you have.”

And they didn’t think what they were given was fair.

“There were 22 open articles,” Bradley said. “And 86 sub-issues that involved health and safety matters. The contract was no good as it was.”

But, for reasons the five could only speculate on, the international arm of the UAW wanted the matter settled quickly.

Part of settlement involved workers agreeing to work only every other week to stave off even more layoffs.

“I think international wanted that so they could keep the union dues coming in,” Bradley said. “But what happened is that by cutting back their hours so much, they lost their status as full-time workers and lost most of the benefits they fought for in the contract in the first place.”

But at least the workers still had jobs.

Initially, all 11 members of Local 3520’s negotiating committee were fired. Six have been reinstated.

“We don’t know what happened with the others,” Torrence said. “It seems like there was something political going on, but we really don’t know.”

The five who have remained without a job are running out of resources. They had to fight to get unemployment benefits, which were initially denied. Those funds have since dried up.

The group also had to defend itself against internal charges brought by fellow union members alleging that the group “misled” the membership into going on strike.

And an arbitration meeting that was supposedly “guaranteed” to take place within eight weeks has still not happened. It’s been eight months.

If the arbitrator rules in their favor – whenever the hearing takes place – the best the five can hope for is back pay minus any unemployment benefits and pay from other jobs.

The five think the UAW International is hoping they fade away. One of the five – Crisco – has been forced to take another job.

“I guess they can drag this thing out until next summer,” Whiteside said.

“They are trying to starve us out,” Torrence said.

Whiteside said the experience has left him wondering if organized labor can survive.

“We are all pro-labor and we still believe in the solidarity of the union,” he said. “But the structure of the UAW has to change or it will squeeze the middle-class workers right out of it. It’s not supposed to be like this.”

The Cleveland Five has gotten the attention of labor groups all over the country. The NAACP has also staked out a position in support of the group.

“It is very strange for a members of a local to be forced to fight against their own union,” Whiteside said.

12/05/07 “Washington Post” — – – 12/04/07 — – We Americans like to think of ourselves as strong, rugged and supremely confident — a nation of Marlboro Men and Marlboro Women, minus the cigarettes and the lung cancer. So why do we increasingly find ourselves hunkered behind walls, popping pills by the handful to stave off diseases we might never contract and eyeing the rest of the world with an us-or-them suspicion that borders on the pathological?

Last week, I heard some of the nation’s leading cultural anthropologists try to explain these and other phenomena. I came away convinced that we, as a nation, definitely should seek professional help.

The American Anthropological Association held its annual meeting here in Washington, and I was invited to an afternoon-long panel discussion titled “The Insecure American.” I decided to overlook the fact that my hosts, Hugh Gusterson of George Mason University and Catherine Besteman of Colby College, had recently co-edited a book called “Why America’s Top Pundits Are Wrong.”

“The Insecure American” turned out to be a revelation — by turns alarming, depressing and laugh-out-loud amusing — as scholar after scholar presented research showing just how unnerved this society is.

Setha Low, who teaches at the City University of New York, has spent years studying the advent and increase of gated communities. People decide to sequester their families behind walls because they are afraid of crime, they feel isolated from their neighbors, and they’re nostalgic for a kind of idealized Norman Rockwell past, Low reported. Nothing terribly irrational about that.

But after extensive interviews with residents of gated communities in San Antonio and on Long Island, Low discovered that there isn’t really less crime behind the walls, people don’t really feel more secure, and there was no greater sense of small-town closeness among neighbors. Despite the gates and guard huts, people still felt they needed to set their alarm systems.

Joseph Dumit of the University of California at Davis presented his work arguing that health care has been redefined into a statistical exercise in risk reduction. The average American fills nearly 13 prescriptions a year, Dumit said, and many of the drugs are not to make the patient well but to reduce the statistical risk that the person will become ill. People who are otherwise healthy are prescribed statins to lower their cholesterol, for example, or beta blockers for high blood pressure.

Dumit pointed out that this risk-driven approach assumes that every one of us is “inherently ill.” It also drives health-care costs by pushing doctors and drug companies to spend whatever it takes to incrementally reduce a patient’s risk of getting sick — even though some of those patients never would have gotten sick, anyway.

Susan F. Hirsch, a professor at George Mason University, gave a riveting presentation on how terrorism feeds insecurity. Hirsch’s husband, Abdulrahman Abdullah, was killed in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. When some of the alleged perpetrators faced justice in a New York courtroom in 2001, Hirsch began attending the trial as a victim. She ended up studying it as an anthropologist, concluding that the legal system, while imperfect, was the best way to deal with terrorists.

Catherine Lutz of Brown University reported on her studies of what President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex.” She noted that the immense resources this country devotes to war-making are based on assumptions that anthropologists might not accept as given — that war is embedded in human nature, for example, and therefore can never be consigned to our barbarian past, as was done with slavery.

Lee Baker of Duke University, Brett Williams of American University and other presenters described their research on economic insecurity, driven by forces such as globalization, immigration and gentrification.

And Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, had me wincing as she talked about her investigations of what she called “vulture capitalism” — the global trade in body parts for transplant. The fastest-growing segment of kidney transplant recipients, Scheper-Hughes said, consists of patients over 70; when they can’t get a needed organ from the transplant registry, she said, they often ask a healthy child or grandchild to donate.

To recap: We’re afraid of one another, we’re afraid of the rest of the world, we’re afraid of getting sick, we’re afraid of dying. Maybe if we study our insecurities and confront them, we’ll learn to keep them in check. Before we turn the whole nation into one big, paranoid gated community, maybe we’ll learn that life isn’t really any better behind the walls.

So they lied again. And again. Despite the fact that the Bush administration knew quite well that its very own intelligence estimate stated quite clearly that the Iranian government had halted its work on building nuclear weaponry, Mr. Bush told the world not more than two months ago that Iran was risking World War Three if it continued said work. On Monday, December 3, 2007, an report from Mr. Bush’s own government said quite clearly that its intelligence proved that Iran halted nuclear arms work four years ago. Despite this knowledge, the Bush administration and its enablers in Congress have continued to move the United States closer and closer to war with Iran.

Of course, the fact that the White House has been lying for at least four years about the dangers of Iranian nuclear weaponry comes as no surprise to many of the world’s citizens. After all, it was this very same administration that invaded Iraq on the basis of lies regarding Iraq’s nuclear ambitions and its long lost weapons of mass destruction. What is somewhat surprising is the response to Monday’s news from the White House. According to national security adviser Stephen Hadley, everything that the White House has said up to now about Iran’s nuclear intentions was not wrong. Indeed, according to Hadley, it only proves that gathering intelligence is “notoriously difficult.” Furthermore, in the White House’s estimation, this revelation proves that the White House was right and that the US is correct to continue threatening war and encouraging sanctions. You know, just to keep Iran in line. Now, I don’t know about you, but this argument sounds very similar to Bill Clinton’s line about what constituted having “sex with that woman.” In other words, they got caught in a lie and now the Bush White House and its allies in the government and media are using facetious arguments to justify those lies.

Will it fly? If US politicians like Joseph Lieberman and the government Israel have anything to say about it, it will. Israel has already essentially dismissed the report and continues to insist that Iran is very close to possessing a nuclear weapon. In addition, the recent appointment of Iraq war architect and propagandist Paul Wolfowitz to the State Department office that deals with other nation’s WMD may be an indication that some type of story creation a la the yellow cake lie of 2002 is already in progress. Even if this doesn’t occur, the ongoing spin by the White House to make Teheran’s cessation of nuclear arms activity a continuation is enough to convince me that Bush and Co. are still keeping an attack on Iran on its front burner, despite the hopeful and confused commentary by former CIA analyst Robert Baer that appeared at Time.com on December 4, 2007. In this odd little piece, Baer puts forth the supposition that George Bush himself was behind the release of the intelligence estimate. Why? To forestall and attack on Iran, of course. Essentially, Baer writes that Bush is against attacking Iran because of the situation in Iraq-where he repeats the latest Washington line that things are “looking up”-and because the White House is afraid Israel will be attacked if Iran is. I’m not sure where Mr. Baer has been or what prescriptions he may be on, but the possibility of Israel being attacked because of Bush’s bellicosity has never been a concern of Bush in the past and if, Tel Aviv’s statements since the release of the intelligence estimate are any indication, it doesn’t seem to be a concern of Tel Aviv now. In the New York Times, a different story is emerging-that the intelligence estimate “holds up to scrutiny, but they (various experts) acknowledge that some conclusions seem to have been thinly sourced.” This statement sounds like an open door to more spin. As for the situation in Iraq, Mr. Bush certainly wasn’t too concerned about destabilizing it in 2003 when he invaded.

Anti-Invasion and Anti-Tehran-HOPOI and Stop the War UK

Meanwhile, in the British segment of the movement against war with Iran there is a debate over whether or not those groups and individuals opposed both to a US/Israel attack on Iran and the theocracy that currently rules that country can be part of the national Stop the War UK Coalition. Some of those forces, now coalescing around the group Hands Off the People of Iran (HOPOI), recently had their petition to join that coalition rejected. The reasons for this decision are murky, with the Stop the war Coalition claiming that HOPOI is hostile to its aims and is seeking to set itself up as an alternative to Stop the War UK. HOPOI’s response to the rejection and explanation is that Stop the War UK includes dozens of groups with differing agendas on several issues but all of them are opposed to the occupation of Iraq and any attack on Iran. How, they wonder, is HOPOI any different? Furthermore, HOPOI claims the exclusion is political and revolves around some prominent members of Stop the War UK being apologists for the Iranian mullahs.

This argument is somewhat reminiscent of the debates that took place among leftists regarding the Soviet Union and China during the post Cold War era of the twentieth century. Like that argument, it has the potential to divide a movement that needs to remain united. After all, many of the groups in Stop the War UK are leftist, as are the groups currently making up HOPOI. Divisions precipitated by different tendencies on the left in antiwar movement around Vietnam occasionally caused confusion not only amongst the Left but also among the general population opposed to the war. Indeed, the support for the Soviet Union by some left formations probably caused some folks to not participate in the movement. Similarly, a perception by the general population opposed to war with Iran might not participate in a movement that appears to align itself with the government in Tehran-even if it doesn’t in actuality.

The groups in HOPOI are anti-imperialist first and foremost. This means that before everything else they are opposed to an attack on Iran and its people. They oppose US imperialism and Israeli aggression. As noted above, the group is composed of small communist organizations and also oppose the theocracy in Iran, considering it to be antidemocratic and a betrayal of the revolution against the Shah. At one time the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (PMOI) might have been considered to be in an allied camp with HOPOI, but in recent years the PMOI’s work with some of the neocons in the United States and rumors that it works with various US intelligence agencies has insured HOPOI’s opposition to the group, despite the PMOI’s publicly stated opposition to a US invasion.

For those of us in the US and western Europe, our primary concern should be preventing war with Iran. This may mean making temporary alliances with groups with whom we disagree on several points, but to allow those differences to supersede opposition to an invasion would not only be foolish; it would be doing Washington’s work. Perhaps HOPOI’s conference in London this weekend will make progress toward alleviating some of the problems it is experiencing with Stop the War UK.

A jury in Ann Arbor, Michigan took four and a half hours on the evening of December 3 to acquit Catherine Wilkerson of two criminal misdemeanor charges stemming from an incident in November 2006. Wilkerson’s alleged “crimes” consisted of intervening to assist an unconscious man who in her estimate was in grave risk of asphyxiation after an Ann Arbor cop had inflicted unnecessary and sadistic force, and a paramedic had compounded the brutality by breaking three ampoules of ammonia under the unconscious man’s nose, saying, “You don’t like that, do you.”

The entire case is a parable of current trends: the criminalization of free speech; prosecutions intended to chill lawful protest; out-of-control police conduct; a spaniel press; and most sinister of all, a witch-hunting posture towards anything a cop or a prosecutor can construe as “radical terrorism”. This posture is embodied in its most sinister guise by the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 404-6 earlier this year and now under review by a committee of the U.S. Senate.

Catherine Wilkerson runs a medical clinic for poor people in Ann Arbor. She was not arrested in the November 30, 2006 episode, which I described here last week as the case went to trial. The charges came later, clearly at the instigation of the University of Michigan and intended as a warning that exercise of First Amendment rights of free speech and protest would be dealt with harshly. Although Wilkerson was acquitted we should note that she spent unpleasant months awaiting her days in court, aware that a guilty verdict could have grave professional consequences. In a just world the president of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, who signed off on this malicious witch hunt by her campus cops, working in cahoots with the Ann Arbor PD, would now spend as many months as Wilkerson wondering whether she had a professional future.

Both the campus cops and the Ann Arbor PD conducted themselves in a manner that should have resulted, should still result, in officers being disciplined or dismissed. Seven weeks after the November 2006 incident the campus police compiled a report stuffed with lies, designed to persuade the credulous that at least six armed police enforcers, somehow stood at risk from Wilkerson, as one of their number–a hulking brute–sadistically inflicted PPCT tactics on his physically slight and unresisting captive. “PPCT” stands for Pressure Point Control Tactics, the application of pressure to selected points on the victim’s head and neck. As complacently described on one site, “The application of these pressure points is to control passive or defensive resistance and are highly effective no matter what the size or strength level of the officer.” “Passive resistance” in this case meant no resistance at all, a state duly rewarded by the punitive application of ammonia to the victim by a medical tech complicit in this exercise of “law enforcement”.

It should be noted that a vigilant press could have torn this report to shreds and possibly averted the prosecution that followed. The Ann Arbor News’s reporting, as well as that of the Michigan Daily, was disgraceful from start to finish, to a level that objective assessment can justifiably stigmatize as complicity with the police and barely concealed hostility to Wilkerson, very possibly because her political activities have included solidarity with the Palestinian cause. This depressing example of shoddy journalism was balanced by very useful internet reporting before and during the trial done by the Committee to Defend Catherine Wilkerson.

The jackboot state in its local guise here took the form of the Washtenaw County Prosecutor, Brian Mackie, and assistant prosecutor Margaret Connors who, incredibly, tried to add additional charges before and during the trial. Remember that this entire legal arsenal was brought to bear on a woman who at no point did anything other than offer verbal medical advice aimed at protecting the life of an unconscious man in danger of asphyxiation. During the trial Connors made frequent efforts to demonstrate to the jury that defense witness bore the taint of having been involved in radical activities–otherwise known as lawful exercise of rights of free speech and assembly, including efforts to defend Wilkerson’s rights. To quote from the Committee to Defend’s daily web report,

During cross-examination of the witnesses who came to protest last year, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Margaret Connors highlighted the political motivations of this prosecution by frequently asking protesters about their protest history as if regularly exercising your First Amendment rights somehow makes you an untrustworthy ‘repeat offender.’ This is a police state mentality, pure and simple, one where criticizing the government makes you a suspect when your testimony contradicts the official story of police and prosecutor. At times, Connors’ courtroom antics have been laughable but there is nothing funny about the (mis)use of state power to silence or punish government critics. One witness was also excluded at the prosecution’s request due to involvement with these updates and defendwilkerson.org, demonstrating what we already knew-police and prosecutors cruise the internet and use it to collect ‘criminal intelligence.’

“Heroes: Bill Wilkerson, [Catherine’s husband] who taught me about Ho Chi Minh, another hero and about the immorality of the US war against Vietnam.” The prosecutor made specific reference to Ho Chi Minh and his status as a hero. The intent of this line of questioning seemed to be to stress Dr. Wilkerson’s politics in an effort discredit her and her fellow protesters as dishonest radicals who contrived the whole incident last year as “political theater.”

The defense seems to have been fortunate in having a reasonable judge, Elizabeth Pollard-Hines, and–above all–a jury which had no difficulty in throwing out the absurd charges and discounting Connors’ accusations and inferences. Wilkerson’s lead attorney Buck Davis opened his final speech to the jury about telling them they should thank Wilkerson for giving them opportunity to defend the US constitution and that the University of Michigan and Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie were trying to criminalize speech and protest. So they were. In this instance they failed, albeit against a darkening national backdrop.

On October 23, 2007, the House of Representatives passed the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 by a vote of 404-6. The nays were: Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), Jerry Costello (D-IL), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), John Duncan (R-TN).

Where was Barbara Lee? She voted for it. Ron Paul? His staff says he was campaigning in New Hampshire. Where were the other few protectors of the Constitution?

“Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed.” – Vladimir Lenin, 1916
Imperialism, The Highest [Last] Stage of Capitalism

Most people in the U.S. have become anesthetized to hearing about the “national debt” for a number of reasons:

* Hearing about the National Debt repetitively over a lifetime, conditions us to believe that the debt has no direct effect on our purse. Repetition conditions the individual to accept the debt as irrelevent to daily life. Repetition numbs.

* Media impressions that national debt is a normal and necessary for all countries to do business

* Illusions of the US as an invinceable superpower.

* The media-spawned belief that there are no alternatives and persistent attacks remove socialism from the discussion.

* The belief that safeguards have been adopted against a repeat of the Great Depression of 1929 (e.g. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) created by the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 to insure the first $100,000 of depositor’s money).

* The belief that the U.S. economy will always be resilient and invinceable based on one’s own, brief personal or family history.

* Feelings of helplessness, i.e. “there is nothing we can do about it anyway”.

* The paralysis of anxiety, rooted in unacknowledged fear causing intellectual, psychological and physical withdrawal from family, community, the true self and the body politic.

* The mind-numbing and values-corrupting influence of one of capitalism’s most powerful drugs: consumerism.

These influences continue for most USers until they experience the repossession of the automobile, losses of the home, health care (especially in a medical crisis), decent education, healthy diets, and/or the loss of a job with few if any alternatives for similar work. The culture of materialism, consumerism, immediate gratification spawned by the news, entertainment and advertising media makes it extremely difficult for most to imagine a total collapse of the “invulnerable” U.S. economy. But it’s coming just as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. The “when” is not known but immanency has always been in the genetics of capitalism.

The Great Depression of 1929-1933

Consider the process that led to the Great Depression, beginning 78 years ago:

“The Great Depression was not a sudden total collapse. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April, though still almost 30 percent below of peak in September 1929. Together government and business actually spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. But consumers, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the prior year, cut back their expenditures by ten percent, and a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the USA beginning in the summer of 1930. Compare current conditions in the U.S. economy with those that occurred from October 29, 1929 to March, 1933:

“The Great Depression (also known in the U.K. as the Great Slump) was a dramatic, worldwide economic downturn beginning in some countries as early as 1928. The beginning of the Great Depression in the United States is associated with the stock market crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday.

“In the spring of 1930, credit was ample and available at low rates, but people were reluctant to add new debt by borrowing. By May 1930, auto sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, but wages held steady in 1930, then began to drop in 1931. Conditions were worst in farming areas where commodity prices plunged, and in mining and logging areas where unemployment was high and there were few other jobs. The decline in the American economy was the motor that pulled down most other countries at first, then internal weaknesses or strengths in each country made conditions worse or better. By late in 1930, a steady decline set in which reached bottom by March 1933.” Wikipedia

One of the catalysts cited was a “… a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland”. What are or will be our “severe droughts” in these times? Another major natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina or “the Big One” from the San Andreas Fault on the US west coast? Will the belligerant war on Iraq bankrupt the US economy? Will it be the changes in world currencies and the ultimate plummet of the dollar? Or will it simply be the continuing undermining of the fabric of western society?

“The collapse of the global marketplace would be a traumatic event with unimaginable consequences. Yet I find it easier to imagine than the continuation of the present regime.”

– George Soros, Financial
Speculator and Profiteer

Marginalizing the Prophets

We have received ample warnings in recent years, largely via the internet about the inevitability of economic collapse. Many view the “war on terror”, in particular the war on Iraq to be a lurch forward toward total collapse in the process because of the unprecedented burden on the economy. Those who issue these warnings are always marginalized by the corporate media with simple-minded epithets like, “prophets of doom” who “do not understand the complexities” of the economy.

The War on Universal Values

In recent years, those of us who have been around for awhile, have witnessed the media campaign to increase the velocity and frenzy of commercial advertising, the destruction of human values with the normalization of the vulgar and build up of consumer-credit buying power. For decades, Hollywood Film, New York City Sitcoms and Advertising have used sophisticated technology and programming to destroy: the societal fabric of extended family, gender roles, respect for parents, elders and “the other”, the work ethic, human sexuality, self-examination and basic honesty. These persistent attacks almost always target the youth, invading the home and supplanting parental leadership with media control leaving layered cynicism in their wake. This war on the youth is rooted in the philosophical underpinnings of Relativism. Generations have been trained to ridicule any belief that absolute truth can possibly be known and that notions of right and wrong are obscured as they are predicated on the individual’s perceptions, histories and external conditions.

The Cultural Conquest Breeds International Conflict

This war on social and family structure is the threat against which intact cultures in other lands attempt to protect themselves. For example, a few years ago, we visited Morrocco and drove our rented car through the small towns of this predominantly Muslim country. We were somewhat surprised to see hundreds of young Muslim men sitting in tea houses along the road in small towns watching naked women on US shows like “Bay Watch” while their families were at home. For many Muslim fathers and mothers, satellite television has penetrated their public places and ultimately their homes with the filth of Hollywood. It is viewed as a moral and ultimately, political invasion against which defending children, home and traditional ways becomes more and more difficult. On the other hand, the US/British employ their psychological defense of projection when they bill their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as a campaign to save Muslims from themselves, to give them “democracy” and “liberty” and generally a better way of life. Then they attribute the angry reaction to, “They are jealous of our freedom and way of life”!

Self Responsibility and Individualism

Individualism is not new to the human species. The story from the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible tells us that after Cain killed his brother, Abel, God asked Cain about his brother’s whereabouts. Cain answered,”Am I my brother’s keeper?” suggesting that he bore no responsibility for his brother. A sense of responsibility for others has been stripped from the culture in most western society. When you find it, you can attribute it to residual influences of parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles who have survived the stripping. Individualism has become an effective weapon, destroying the unity of the working class – the enemy of capitalism.

The mental mantra in uncivilized western society is “If it didn’t happen to me, my family, in my town, in my country, it is of no concern to me.” When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, a massive earthquake struck Bam, Iran and the Great Tsunami killed a quarter million people in the Indian Ocean, most people in the west watched the news reports with fascination and salved themselves with a sentimental sympathy but beneath it all was, “That is there and I am here. I and my family are safe”, mouthing self-righteous clichés like “There but for the grace of God go I”. The poor around the world were the exception to this rule because tragedy has often knocked at their doors or the doors of others close to them.

Self-responsibility is lost to individualism in the guise of “competition” where greed is bred. As stated by Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) in the Hollywood movie, Wall Street in 1987:

“The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed — for lack of a better word — is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

Consumer Confidence, Darling of the System

We often hear the media cite indices of “consumer confidence”, generally referring to the confidence people have in the system. The rush on the banks to withdraw personal funds appears to be the ultimate threat to capitalism in times of economic crisis. As a result, the economic “experts” try to buoy up “consumer confidence” by reporting strength in the stock market, other portrayals of economic strength and by giving people the ability to buy on credit. These tactics work for a while despite the fact that most people generally make little to no connection between a stock market index and money for rent, clothing, food and healthcare. The alarm clocks of losses in health care, cars, homes, credit cards and inaffordability of a good education sound to wake us up. The poorest of the poor are hit first before it travels upward to erode the middle class, a cancer that is now in advanced stages.

President Bush had his news conference today and of course there is going to be a lot of questions and skepticism about when he knew the NIE findings and why in August 2007, when according to his own account he was told by Mike Mc Connell, director of National Intelligence, that there was new intelligence on Iran, he did not ask what that new intelligence was and waited until last week to hear about it.

But being an “Iran person,” my moment of utter disbelief came when I heard him say this in the news conference:

“People say, would you ever talk to Iran? For you veterans here, for those who have been following this administration for a while, you might remember that I have consistently said that we will be at the table with the EU-3 if Iran would verifiably suspend their program — and the offer still stands. What changed was the change of leadership in Iran. We had a diplomatic track going, and Ahmadinejad came along and took a different tone. And the Iranian people must understand that the tone and actions of their government are that which is isolating them. There’s a better way forward for Iran. There’s a better way forward for the Iranian people than one in which they find themselves isolated in the world. Their economy can be stronger. But their leadership is going to have to understand that defiance, and hiding programs and defying IAEA is not the way forward. And my hope is, is that the Iranian regime takes a look at their policies and changes their policies back to where we were prior to the election of Ahmadinejad, which was a hopeful period. They had suspended their program, they were at the table. The United States had made some very positive gestures to convince them that there was a better way forward. And hopefully we can get back to that day.”

This goes even beyond deception and reaches the level of unreal. The man must either think that no one is watching or he must have really convinced himself that prior to Ahmadinejad things were going all swell with Iran.

Just for the record, it is important to remember that the inclusion of Iran as a standing member of axis of evil came in May 2002 when the reformist Mohammad Khatami was president and after Iran and the United States had cooperated in Afghanistan.

It was also during the Khatami presidency, in 2003 and beyond, that the Bush Administration reportedly ignored Iran’s offer of a deal and continuously complained about the European track to negotiate with Iran. In fact, as late as spring and summer of 2005, until the last days of Khatami’s presidency, the Bush Administration refused to allow the Europeans to entertain any scenario that would permit Iran to contemplate engagement in any enrichment-related activity even in the future.

As I discuss here in 2005, it was this intransigence that ultimately led Iran to bring its uranium conversion plant in Isfahan out of suspension during the last days of the Khatami Administration.

I continue to believe that this intransigence was also very instrumental in pushing aside the more conciliatory foreign policy that was practiced during the Khatami era and opened the path for the hard-line argument that no concession will satisfy the United States. The United States only understands the language of power and not dialogue, it was and is continued to be said.

WASHINGTON, May 15 (IPS) – Admiral William Fallon, then President George W. Bush’s nominee to head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition in February to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three and vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM, according to sources with access to his thinking.

Fallon’s resistance to the proposed deployment of a third aircraft carrier was followed by a shift in the Bush administration’s Iran policy in February and March away from increased military threats and toward diplomatic engagement with Iran. That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon’s resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran.

The plan to add a third carrier strike group in the Gulf had been a key element in a broader strategy discussed at high levels to intimidate Iran by a series of military moves suggesting preparations for a military strike.

Admiral Fallon’s resistance to a further buildup of naval striking power in the Gulf apparently took the Bush administration by surprise. Fallon, then Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, had been associated with naval aviation throughout his career, and last January, Secretary of Defence Robert Gates publicly encouraged the idea that the appointment presaged greater emphasis on the military option in regard to the U.S. conflict with Iran.

Explaining why he recommended Fallon, Gates said, “As you look at the range of options available to the United States, the use of naval and air power, potentially, it made sense to me for all those reasons for Fallon to have the job.”

Bush administration officials had just leaked to CBS News and the New York Times in December that the USS John C. Stennis and its associated warships would be sent to the Gulf in January six weeks earlier than originally planned in order to overlap with the USS Eisenhower and to “send a message to Tehran”.

But that was not the end of the signaling to Iran by naval deployment planned by administration officials. The plan was for the USS Nimitz and its associated vessels, scheduled to sail into the Gulf in early April, to overlap with the other two carrier strike groups for a period of months, so that all three would be in the Gulf simultaneously.

Two well-informed sources say they heard about such a plan being pushed at high levels of the administration, and Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh and Maziar Bahari reported Feb. 19 that the deployment of a third carrier group to the Gulf was “likely”.

That would have brought the U.S. naval presence up to the same level as during the U.S. air campaign against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, when the Lincoln, Constellation and Kitty Hawk carrier groups were all present. Two other carrier groups helped coordinate bombing sorties from the Mediterranean.

The deployment of three carrier groups simultaneously was not part of a plan for an actual attack on Iran, but was meant to convince Iran that the Bush administration was preparing for possible war if Tehran continued its uranium enrichment programme.

At a mid-February meeting of top civilian officials over which Secretary of Defence Gates presided, there was an extensive discussion of a strategy of intimidating Tehran’s leaders, according to an account by a Pentagon official who attended the meeting given to a source outside the Pentagon. The plan involved a series of steps that would appear to Tehran to be preparations for war, in a manner similar to the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But Fallon, who was scheduled to become the CENTCOM chief Mar. 16, responded to the proposed plan by sending a strongly-worded message to the Defence Department in mid-February opposing any further U.S. naval buildup in the Persian Gulf as unwarranted.

“He asked why another aircraft carrier was needed in the Gulf and insisted there was no military requirement for it,” says the source, who obtained the gist of Fallon’s message from a Pentagon official who had read it.

Fallon’s refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch”.

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, “You know what choices I have. I’m a professional.” Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, “There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box.”

Fallon’s opposition to adding a third carrier strike group to the two already in the Gulf represented a major obstacle to the plan. The decision to send a second carrier task group to the Gulf had been officially requested by Fallon’s predecessor at CENTCOM, Gen. John Abizaid, according to a Dec. 20 report by the Washington Post’s Peter Baker. But as Baker reported, the circumstances left little doubt that Abizaid was doing so because the White House wanted it as part of a strategy of sending “pointed messages” to Iran.

CENTCOM commander Fallon’s refusal to request the deployment of a third carrier strike group meant that proceeding with that option would carry political risks. The administration chose not to go ahead with the plan. Two days before the Nimitz sailed out of San Diego for the Gulf on Apr. 1, a Navy spokesman confirmed that it would replace the Eisenhower, adding, “There is no plan to overlap them at all.”

The defeat of the plan for a third carrier task group in the Gulf appears to have weakened the position of Cheney and other hawks in the administration who had succeeded in selling Bush on the idea of a strategy of coercive threat against Iran.

Within two weeks, the administration’s stance had already begun to shift dramatically. On Jan. 12, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had dismissed direct talks with Iran in the absence of Tehran’s suspension of its uranium enrichment programme as “extortion”. But by the end of February, Rice had gotten authorisation for high level diplomatic contacts with Iran in the context of a regional meeting on Iraq in Baghdad.

The explanation for the shift offered by administration officials to the New York Times was that the administration now felt that it “had leverage” on Iran. But that now appears to have been a cover for a retreat from the more aggressive strategy previously planned.

Throughout March and April, the Bush administration avoided aggressive language and the State Department openly sought diplomatic engagement with Iran, culminating in the agreement confirmed by U.S. officials last weekend that bilateral talks will begin with Iran on Iraq.

Despite Vice President Dick Cheney’s invocation of the military option from the deck of the USS John C. Stennis in the Persian Gulf last week, the strategy of escalating a threat of war to influence Iran has been put on the shelf, at least for now.

Pakistan police today arrested the leader of the feminist U.S. antiwar group Code Pink, who was in Lahore for a student peace rally, according to a spokeswoman for the group.

Medea Benjamin, a co-founder of the group, was arrested by plainclothes police with guns drawn and taken to a police station in Lahore, spokeswoman Dana Balicki said.

Police also arrested Tighe Barry, a longtime Code Pink activist, who was participating with the student rally outside the Lahore Press Club.

The students were protesting the emergency rule imposed Nov. 3 by President Pervez Musharraf.

Police told Ms. Benjamin and Mr. Barry they had to leave the country because their visas had expired, Ms. Balicki said, adding that their visas were valid.

“The government agents grabbed Barry by the arm and tried to hold him. Benjamin got help from some journalists, who managed to escort the two activists inside the club,” Ms. Balicki said.

She said that when Ms. Benjamin and Mr. Barry left the club, the plainclothes police on three motorcycles followed the car through the city and then, with guns drawn, arrested the pair.

“It’s a sad state of affairs when the Pakistani government — a government that is trying to portray itself to the West as democratic — tries to harass and deport U.S. human rights activists,” Ms. Benjamin said at the press club before her arrest. “If they do this to us, who have the protection of being U.S. citizens, imagine what they do to their own citizens.”

Ms. Balicki reported that Khummeram Khosa, a lawyer in Lahore who was driving the car for Ms. Benjamin and Mr. Barry, said he expected the pair would be released soon because the police “don’t have the guts to hold them for long.”

Ms. Benjamin and Mr. Barry have been in Pakistan since Nov. 25 to support opponents of the emergency rule, including lawyers, judges and students.

Earlier, they conducted a 24-hour vigil outside the home of lawyer Aitzaz Ahsan, who is under house arrest.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy was not available for immediate comment.

Protests against the war in Iraq by Code Pink members, often clad in pink shirts and pink tiarras, have become a fixture on Capitol Hill.

Code Pink activist are arrested regularly for disrupt congressional hearings on the war, targeting Democrats and Republicans with protests.

‘Drag your tongue across the sugar cube and hope you get a taste. It’s like smelling the food but you’re not allowed to touch the silverware. Fascism you can vote for, how sweet.’ ~’Omegg.’ Just a small entertaining taste of poetry with a twist, from the rock band ‘Stoned Sour.’ (a great rant when heard in its entirety)

12/03/07 “ICH” — – Dear citizens of a crumbling nation, have you even noticed our country is being demolished all around us? Haven’t you noticed the pillars shaking, the foundation cracking, and debris falling everywhere? I certainly hope so, because the Bush administration’s wrecking ball hasn’t quite finished swinging yet, so keep your equilibrium stable and your stand-post securely firm, because before it’s over, there may not be much of anything left standing, or worth saving, and I don’t want to lose you.

What a waste! It really hasn’t required much effort to see what the hell has been happening here. It’s been getting steadily worse every day, for a very long time. All that was ever needed to see it daily was a simple common-sense compass pointed in any direction. Had we not been asleep, we could have easily prevented the carnage in every sector. But since we gullibly continue to believe the lying corporate news media blowhards about how damn great everything is, and since we put our trust in leaders who repeatedly lie with every word they utter, we now find ourselves in a bloody OZ wonderland — a screwed-up place where everyone considers all Americans fair game at home and abroad. So hunker down, my tar-and-feathered friends, hunting season is in full swing, and we’re headed for the endangered species list. That’s right sleepyhead, we’re a perishable item confined within the construct of our own self-destructive borders.

And since so few of us now hold the key to what little flicker of hope remains, I ask you this – do you know what your post entails? Well, do you? Do you ‘serve a purpose,’ or just ‘purposely serve’? Our fate, our future (if there is one), depends on how we answer and what we do today. We need to get off our asses and get busy!

After years of having my sensory modem continually assaulted from every direction and, with the future not looking too bright these days, sometimes I find strength and courage by searching the past for helpful solutions on how to inspire myself and others. Knowing the heavy burden we all must bear, I can honestly say with no disillusionments, ‘I know what my post entails.’ My purpose is to assist others, when possible, to help them find their weary way in order to solidify a combined awareness to birth a unified force to extend peace and justice with real checks and balances for a more deserving journey in life.

True patriotism is an on-demand wildcard that needs to be played from time to time. We have a solemn constitutional responsibility as American citizens to serve, protect and safeguard this great nation from all enemies foreign and domestic. America is NOT a squatter’s patch for lazy, brain-dead do-nothing zombies to sit on their asses while everything falls apart around them. Aside from improving our daily life, our obligation includes removing any and all crazy tyrants residing at the White House, as well as those spineless rubber-stamping idiots that foul the very air they breathe in both Houses of Congress.

I am invoking an age old citizen call-to-action. Consider yourselves drafted modern-day minutemen, obligated to awaken the masses for battle to fight the true monster at bay, the enemy within. Welcome aboard brothers and sisters, let’s give the devil his due…

We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Just remember the good ol` 60’s hippie days. An exciting LSD era when the youth of this nation popped its cork in front of Richard Nixon and God, and actually did something positive to change our wicked ways. A better day existed when groovey strands of long hair served as some sort of crazy miracle potion empowering the strength of men. The longer it grew, the more you became a freak-flag Samsonite. We belonged to a kind of ‘hip’ Lord of the Rings fellowship that saved the day — at least for a while — and everyone knew without question what their post entailed.

And all the other colorful mojos didn’t hurt the process either — bell-bottom pants, psychedelic shirts, Mexican serapes, Navajo headbands, luminous body paints, mini-skirts, love-beads, love making, wake-up bells, feathers forever in all shapes and colors and flowered friendliness that definitely changed the way the whole world thought about teenagers. A thrilling time when virtually everyone seemed to find their own voice. Gee, I sure miss the good ol’ days…

Many people have different ideas of how hippies came to be. It was a serious counterculture party-wave that swept America off its feet as the largest generation of young people were coming of age. Mostly from middle and upper class, they came from everywhere with a well-deserved sense of dignity and self-respect for what they believed in. They valued peace, love, and personal freedom in a way that reached far beyond the confines of establishment rules.

Ah, 1967 — the summer of love, a culture extravaganza overflowing with honorable people who felt the world should live as one in peace and harmony. It was a compassionate calling for all segments of our society to come together as one to resist and prevent the cycle of war, violence and modern day slavery . However, as history has proven time and again, nothing is ever earned or given without its fair share of blood, sweat and tears with a lot of hard sacrifice. And the sixties movement was no different in terms of ‘paying its dues.’

Berkeley University is only one example of some of the most violent student protests that happened during the Vietnam War. And the uproar was not limited to just ending the war. The middle finger was directly pointed towards University administrations as well, for a variety of legitimate reasons. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement resulted in many arrests in its struggle. In fact, it had the largest number of student arrests in United States history. Like an army of hungry vultures, 700 angry policemen wielding clubs and spraying mace descended on the University during a peaceful day of protest and instigated a full-blown riot, assaulting dissenters (and news anchors) whose only crime was simply exercising their constitutional right to peaceably dissent in a public forum. Many were beaten unconscious in this shameless display of unnecessary violence. Only one day of many to remember in our nation’s history.

Sometimes, I can still hear the echo of the words afterwards. Don Brice, President of The News Director Association, rightly accused the Oakland police of being the real culprits who started the riot on purpose. In response to Brice, actor/Governor Ronald Reagan said, ‘The work of the Oakland Police Department was in the finest tradition of California’s law enforcement agencies. The officers displayed exceptional ability and great professional skill. The taking of alleged grievances to the streets cannot and will not be tolerated.’ To this day, It’s still hard to imagine Reagan later became President.

The Vietnam War was protested throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. Protests, rallies and demonstrations occurred across the nation and covered many different social issues — civil rights, women’s rights, etc. All of this happened in the midst of the harsh reality that any day we could all be drafted into a war we venomously opposed. It was a time mixed with fear as well as culture and social change that shocked the world.

We are now at yet another defining moment in our nation’s history — moments such as the Vietnam War, Cuban Missile Crisis, TET offensive, the fall of both the Berlin Wall and of Saigon, Watts Riots, Berkley Free Speech Movement, Women’s Liberation Movement, Black Panthers, presidential assassinations, Civil Rights killings, Apollo Space Missions, Mickey Mantle, Woodstock, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Zippo lighters, Zig Zag rolling papers, Black Light Posters, High Times magazine, Cheech and Chong, Hippies, fashion lords, culture shocks, art — you name it, you got it! The ‘be here now’ generation filled America’s ocean to its absolute brim…and rocked the planet. In fact, if you look real close, you can still see the Watermark left on the Crest from an everlasting journey. Whew…WHAT A FREAKIN RIDE!

Okay, my wise old gray haired friends, I know it’s a little hard to recapture that same nostalgic spark with just a quant 60’s butterfly kiss, but the next time you go to shave your head (the new style these days), you may want to throw on John Lennon’s old album ‘Imagine’ for inspiration. It’s better then doing nothing while waiting for a cup of porridge with ankle irons strapped on at a FEMA camp.

Please tell me the hopes of yesterday have not all gone up in smoke. Take notice old flowered ones, the times are a’changing, and for the worse. Our nation needs us, and our reputation at home and around the globe is as dry as dry can get. So either get with the program and find your patriotic post, or punch me in the dead-spot until I die. Because I refuse to sit idly by and do nothing while waiting to get rounded up as an ‘enemy combatant’ by jack-booted Blackwater mercenaries and have a microchip shoved up my ass. So…Lose the kick-stand and Reeve-up the motors, It’s time to mount up and ride…