The Rag Blog

11/18/07 “ICH” — — The people of Somalia are enduring yet another round of suffering as Ethiopian forces wreck havoc in the capital, Mogadishu. Apparently in response to an attack on one of its units, and the dragging of a soldier’s mutilated body through the city’s streets, an Ethiopian mortar reportedly exploded in Mogadishu’s Bakara market on November 9, killing eight civilians. A number of Somalis were also found dead the following day, some believed to have been rounded up by Ethiopian forces the night before.

Nearly 50 civilians have reportedly been killed and 100 wounded in the two-day fighting spree between fighters loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts and government forces and their Ethiopian allies. A report, issued by Human Rights Watch, chastised both Ethiopian troops and ‘insurgents’ for the bloodletting. Peter Takirambudde, the watchdog’s Africa director, was quoted as saying, ‘The international community should condemn these attacks and hold combatants accountable for violations of humanitarian law – including mutilating captured combatants and executing detainees.’ Of course, one cannot realistically expect the international community to take on a constructive involvement in the conflict. Various members of this ‘community’ have already played a most destructive role in Somalia’s 16-year-old civil war, which fragmented a nation that had long struggled to achieve a sense of sovereignty and national cohesion.

To dismiss the war in Somalia as yet another protracted conflict between warlords and insurgents would indeed be unjust because the country’s history has consistently been marred by colonial greed and unwarranted foreign interventions. These gave rise to various proxy governments, militias and local middlemen, working in the interests of those obsessed with the geopolitical importance of the Horn of Africa.

Colonial powers came to appreciate the strategic location of Somalia after the Berlin Conference, which initiated the ‘Scramble for Africa’. The arrival of Britain, France and Italy into Somali lands began in the late 19th century and quickly the area disintegrated into British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. Both countries sought expand their control, enlisting locals to fight the very wars aimed at their own subjugation.

World War II brought immense devastation to the Somali people, who, out of desperation, coercion or promises of post-war independence, fought on behalf of the warring European powers. Somalia was mandated by the UN as an Italian protectorate in 1949 and achieved independence a decade later in 1960. However, the colonial powers never fully conceded their interests in the country and the Cold War actually invited new players to the scene, including the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba.

One residue of the colonial legacy involved the Ogaden province of Somalia, which the British empire had granted to the Ethiopian government. The region became the stage of two major wars between Ethiopia and Somalia between 1964 and 1977. Many Somalis still regard Ethiopia as an occupying power and view the policies of Addis Ababa as a continuation of the country’s history of foreign intervention.

The civil war of 1991, largely a result of foreign intervention, clan and tribal loyalties, and lack of internal cohesion, further disfigured Somalia. As stranded civilians became deprived of aid, Somalia was hit by a devastating famine that yielded a humanitarian disaster. The famine served as a pretext for foreign intervention, this time as part of international ‘humanitarian’ missions, starting in December 1992, which also included US troops. The endeavour came to a tragic end in October 1993, when more than 1,000 Somalis and 18 US troops were killed in Mogadishu. Following a hurried US withdrawal, the mainstream media rationalized that the West could not help those who refuse to help themselves; another disfiguration of the fact that the interest of the Somali people was hardly ever a concern for these colonial philanthropists. Since then, the importance of Somalia was relegated in international news media into just another mindless conflict, with no rational context and no end in sight. The truth, however, is that colonial interest in the Horn of Africa has never waned.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 provided an impetus for US involvement in the strategic region; only one month after the attacks, Paul Wolfowitz met with various power players in Ethiopia and Somalia, alleging that al-Qaeda terrorists might be using Ras Kamboni and other Somali territories as escape routes. A year later, the US established the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) to ‘monitor’ developments and to train local militaries in ‘counterterrorism’.

The US contingent was hardly neutral in the ongoing conflict. Reportedly, US troops were involved in aiding Ethiopian forces that entered Somalia in December 2006, citing efforts to track down al-Qaeda suspects. The Ethiopian occupation was justified as a response to a call by Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), whose legitimacy is questioned. TGF, seen largely as a pro-Ethiopian entity, had been rapidly losing its control over parts of Somalia to the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) which came to prominence in January 2006, taking over the capital and eventually bringing long-sought stability to much of the country. Their attempts engage the US and other Western powers in dialogue failed, however, as a US-backed Ethiopia moved into Somalia in December 2006. On January 7, 2007, the US directly entered the conflict, launching airstrikes using AC-130 gunship. Civilian causalities were reported, but the US refused to accept responsibility for them.

The last intervention devastated the country’s chances of unity. It now stands divided between the transitional government, Ethiopia (both backed by the UN, the US and the African Union) and the Islamic courts (allegedly backed by Eritrea and some Arab Gulf governments). Recently, the UN ruled out any chances for an international peacekeeping force, and the few African countries who promised troops are yet to deliver (with the exception of Uganda).

This situation leaves Somalia once more under the mercy of foreign powers and self-serving internal forces, foreshadowing yet more bloodshed. Our informed support is essential now because the Somali people have suffered enough. Their plight is urgent and it deserves a much deeper understanding, alongside immediate attention.

GONZO: The Life of Hunter S. Thompson.
By Jann S. Wenner and Corey Seymour.
Illustrated. 467 pp. Little, Brown & Company. $28.99.

On July 2, 1974, I started work as deputy Washington bureau chief for Rolling Stone magazine. My unlikely boss was Richard Goodwin, the former Kennedy speechwriter, who invited me to join him in temporary residence at Ethel Kennedy’s home in McLean, Va. (the owner was in Hyannis for the summer). On July 3, Hunter Thompson joined us. Much of what ensued that holiday weekend is lost in the mists of history and a fog of controlled substances. There were extensive conversations about the viability of renting a truck, filling it with rats and dumping them on the White House lawn. There was also an effort to remove all the Andy Williams songs from the Kennedy jukebox and replace them with Otis Redding. But mostly I remember having a marathon conversation with Hunter about books and writers, settling finally on Joseph Conrad’s exhortation in “Lord Jim”: “In the destructive element immerse!”

This was, no surprise, one of Hunter’s favorite lines, and it led him into an astonishingly candid assessment of his own career, which was then at its peak. He had published his two brilliant “Fear and Loathing” books, and he was worried about what came next. He didn’t want to become a dull parody of himself but feared he lacked the gumption to jump the gravy train. I asked if he’d ever thought about stowing the psychedelic pyrotechnics — his “gonzo” journalism — and sitting down and writing a serious, straight-ahead novel. Well, of course he had. But, he said, “Without that,” and he glanced over at the satchel in which he carried his array of vegetation and chemicals, “I’d have the brain of a second-rate accountant.”

Hunter Thompson was always much more, and sometimes a bit less, than the sum of his ribald public persona. In compiling this oral history, Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour could easily have succumbed to the same temptation that Hunter did: to celebrate the myth, to recount a numbing parade of hilarious, drug-addled Hunter stories, and to miss the man. Happily, they have produced a rigorous and honest piece of work. “Gonzo” is a wonderfully entertaining chronicle of Hunter’s wild ride, but it is also a detailed, painful account of his self-destructive immersions; the brutality he visited upon his wife, Sandy; and the anguish of a life that veered from inspired performance art to ruinous solipsism. It’s especially good to be reminded that Wenner, in addition to being a successful media mogul and perpetual gossip item, has been a journalist of real distinction, with the ability to find talented editors like Seymour, who, I assume, did most of the actual cutting and pasting to create the book’s unflagging pace from interviews with 112 sources, ranging from Jimmy Carter to Johnny Depp. It was Wenner’s patience and indulgence that enabled Thompson to produce his very best work; Wenner’s vision made Rolling Stone, in the early 1970s, one of the most exciting publications in American history.

Hunter Thompson was born in Louisville, Ky., in 1937 and, from adolescence on, seemed intent on becoming a classic American Literary Character, part of the outlaw slipstream that produced Whitman, Twain, Hemingway, Guthrie, Mailer and Kerouac. This might have been a staggeringly banal career choice — there’s a testosterone-addled, troublemaking puer aeternus spewing fountains of self-absorbed gush in every high school — but Thompson actually turned out to have a distinctly American genius for comic hyperbole. He was the son of an insurance salesman who died when Hunter was in high school and an alcoholic mother who didn’t have a prayer of controlling her wild child. He was antsy, violent, a lover of books and guns, a member of the prestigious Athenaeum Literary Association in Louisville and of a street gang of pranksters, most of whom were sons of prominent families. In his senior year of high school, Thompson was arrested with two others after one in his group stole a man’s wallet — this, after other scrapes with the law — and thrown in jail. Douglas Brinkley, Thompson’s literary executor, recalled: “Hunter wrote his mother these very philosophical letters from behind bars. … The buddies that he was with … were waltzing because they knew the judge, … he was the poor kid on the other side of the railroad tracks with no dad. The game was fixed.” The judge gave Thompson a choice of prison or the military; he chose the Air Force. One senses that Hunter saw the experience mostly as grist for his legend. No doubt it helped solidify his politics, such as they were — a blithe populist libertarianism, unencumbered by doctrine.

Thompson’s chronological adolescence is dispatched in a few pages here, but his militant juvenility lasts the entire book. Even near the end of his life, he was terrorizing his neighbors in Aspen, Colo. The lawyer Gerry Goldstein remembers an episode involving another lawyer, John Van Ness, and later the actor Jack Nicholson: “First Hunter placed these defrosted elk hearts on John’s front doorstep, and then he started throwing these stones he’d collected onto the tin roof of John’s house and just listened as they rolled down. Then he shot off a couple of rounds from a 9-millimeter and started playing a continuous looped tape of pigs or rabbits being slaughtered — a godforsaken screeching, curdling sound. This poor little girl came to the window screaming. Apparently Van Ness was out of town and this teenage girl was house-sitting for them. From there, he proceeded to Nicholson’s house, where he engaged in the same folly.”

Thompson was able to get away with such nonsense, and with his flagrant drug use, because he had befriended the local sheriff, who had an elastic sense of justice when it came to literary perps. Indeed, about the only person in this book who successfully confronts Hunter about his behavior is — amazingly — Bill Clinton, a fellow not known for public confrontations. But at a meeting in Little Rock, just after Clinton was nominated in 1992, Thompson braces the president-to-be with a question about the Fourth Amendment and drug searches. “He leaned back and did one of these long windup Hunter kind of things where everybody is supposed to be amused by it all, and Clinton wasn’t going to have any of it,” Wenner recalls. “Clinton came back with this really tough, aggressive answer involving his brother Roger’s cocaine problem and how he had seen the horrors and destruction of drugs.”

The writer William Greider picks up the story: “Hunter got up from the table right after Clinton’s response. He just stopped asking questions. … It was like the dream had been smashed, and what was the point of going on with this?”

The structural defect of oral history is that it is easy, given a life like Hunter’s, to lose track of the reason he was special in the first place: the inimitable, hilarious whoosh of words, the cascading skeins of hyperbolic invective that came so close to replicating the disoriented epiphanies of a drug trip. The authors occasionally lay in samples of Hunter’s writing, but not really his best stuff — although the rejection letter he donated to Rolling Stone to handle the hordes of would-be imitators does sing. “You worthless, acid-sucking piece of illiterate” you-know-what, it began. “Don’t ever send this kind of brain-damaged swill in here again.”

“I never had any doubt that at some point he was going to commit suicide,” recalls his son, Juan. Old age is a difficult concept for a perpetual adolescent. Hemingway couldn’t handle it, and Hunter went out the same way, though more elegantly: with a pistol rather than a shotgun. His best work was pretty much complete by the time I met him, in July of 1974. Indeed, Nixon’s collapse that summer was so garish — the tearful “my mother was a saint” sayonara — that it beggared any acid fantasy that Hunter might have produced. Reality had gone gonzo. There was nothing left to do except to play his designated role as Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, wandering the campus lecture circuit, swindling would-be publishers, entombed in a mausoleum of celebrity he had created for himself.

Introduction

Venezuela’s democratically elected Present Chavez faces the most serious threat since the April 11, 2002 military coup.

Violent street demonstrations by privileged middle and upper middle class university students have led to major street battles in and around the center of Caracas. More seriously, the former Minister of Defense, General Raul Isaias Baduel, who resigned in July, has made explicit calls for a military coup in a November 5th press conference which he convoked exclusively for the right and far-right mass media and political parties, while striking a posture as an ‘individual’ dissident.

The entire international and local private mass media has played up Baduel’s speeches, press conferences along with fabricated accounts of the oppositionist student rampages, presenting them as peaceful protests for democratic rights against the government referendum scheduled for December 2, 2007.

The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC News and the Washington Post have all primed their readers for years with stories of President Chavez’ ‘authoritarianism’. Faced with constitutional reforms which strengthen the prospects for far-reaching political-social democratization, the US, European and Latin American media have cast pro-coup ex-military officials as ‘democratic dissidents’, former Chavez supporters disillusioned with his resort to ‘dictatorial’ powers in the run-up to and beyond the December 2, 2007 vote in the referendum on constitutional reform. Not a single major newspaper has mentioned the democratic core of the proposed reforms – the devolution of public spending and decision to local neighborhood and community councils. Once again as in Chile in 1973, the US mass media is complicit in an attempt to destroy a Latin American democracy.

Even sectors of the center-left press and parties in Latin America have reproduced right-wing propaganda. On November the self-styled ‘leftist’ Mexican daily La Jornada headline read ‘Administrators and Students from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) Accuse Chavez of Promoting Violence’. The article then proceeded to repeat the rightist fabrications about electoral polls, which supposedly showed the constitutional amendments facing defeat.

The United States Government, both the Republican White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress are once again overtly backing the new attempt to oust the popular-nationalist President Chavez and to defeat the highly progressive constitutional amendments.

The Referendum: Defining and Deepening the Social Transformation

The point of confrontation is the forthcoming referendum on constitutional reforms initiated by President Chavez, debated, amended and democratically voted on by the Venezuelan Congress over the past 6 months. There was widespread and open debate and criticism of specific sectors of the Constitution. The private mass media, overwhelmingly viscerally anti-Chavez and pro-White House, unanimously condemned any and all the constitutional amendments. A sector of the leadership of one of the components of the pro-Chavez coalition (PODEMOS) joined the Catholic Church hierarchy, the leading business and cattleman’s association, bankers and sectors of the university and student elite to attack the proposed constitutional reforms. Exploiting to the hilt all of Venezuela’s democratic freedoms (speech, assembly and press) the opposition has denigrated the referendum as ‘authoritarian’ even as most sectors of the opposition coalition attempted to arouse the military to intervene.

The opposition coalition of the rich and privileged fear the constitutional reforms because they will have to grant a greater share of their profits to the working class, lose their monopoly over market transactions to publicly owned firms, and see political power evolve toward local community councils and the executive branch. While the rightist and liberal media in Venezuela, Europe and the US have fabricated lurid charges about the ‘authoritarian’ reforms, in fact the amendments propose to deepen and extend social democracy.

A brief survey of the key constitutional amendments openly debated and approved by a majority of freely elected Venezuelan congress members gives the lie to charges of ‘authoritarianism’ by its critics. The amendments can be grouped according to political, economic and social changes.

The most important political change is the creation of new locally based democratic forms of political representation in which elected community and communal institutions will be allocated state revenues rather than the corrupt, patronage-infested municipal and state governments. This change toward decentralization will encourage a greater practice of direct democracy in contrast to the oligarchic tendencies embedded in the current centralized representative system.

Secondly, contrary to the fabrications of ex-General Baduel, the amendments do not ‘destroy the existing constitution’, since the amendments modify in greater or lesser degree only 20% of the articles of the constitution (69 out of 350).

The amendments providing for unlimited term elections is in line with the practices of many parliamentary systems, as witnessed by the five terms in office of Australian Prime Minister Howard, the half century rule of Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, the four terms of US President Franklin Roosevelt, the multi-term election of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair in the UK among others. No one ever questions their democratic credentials for multi-term executive office holding, nor should current critics selectively label Chavez as an ‘authoritarian’ for doing the same.

Political change increasing the presidential term of office from 6 to 7 years will neither increase or decrease presidential powers, as the opposition claims, because the separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers will continue and free elections will subject the President to periodic citizen review.

The key point of indefinite elections is that they are free elections, subject to voter preference, in which, in the case of Venezuela, the vast majority of the mass media, Catholic hierarchy, US-funded NGO’s, big business associations will still wield enormous financial resources to finance opposition activity – hardly an ‘authoritarian’ context.

The amendment allowing the executive to declare a state of emergency and intervene in the media in the face of violent activity to overthrow the constitution is essential for safeguarding democratic institutions. In light of several authoritarian violent attempts to seize power recently by the current opposition, the amendment allows dissent but also allows democracy to defend itself against the enemies of freedom.

In the lead up to the US-backed military coup of April 11, 2002, and the petroleum lockout by its senior executives which devastated the economy (a decline of 30% of GNP in 2002/2003), if the Government had possessed and utilized emergency powers, Congress and the Judiciary, the electoral process and the living standards of the Venezuelan people would have been better protected. Most notably, the Government could have intervened against the mass media aiding and abetting the violent overthrow of the democratic process, like any other democratic government.

It should be clear that the amendment allowing for ‘emergency powers’ has a specific context and reflects concrete experiences: the current opposition parties, business federations and church hierarchies have a violent, anti-democratic history. The destabilization campaign against the current referendum and the appeals for military intervention most prominently and explicitly stated by retired General Baduel (defended by his notorious adviser-apologist, the academic-adventurer Heinz Dietrich), are a clear indication that emergency powers are absolutely necessary to send a clear message that reactionary violence will be met by the full force of the law.

The reduction of voting age from 18 to 16 will broaden the electorate, increase the number of participants in the electoral process and give young people a greater say in national politics through institutional channels. Since many workers enter the labor market at a young age and in some cases start families earlier, this amendment allows young workers to press their specific demands on employment and contingent labor contracts.

The amendment reducing the workday to 6 hours is vehemently opposed by the opposition led by the big business federation, FEDECAMARAS, but has the overwhelming support of the trade unions and workers from all sectors. It will allow for greater family time, sports, education, skill training, political education and social participation, as well as membership in the newly formed community councils. Related labor legislation and changes in property rights including a greater role for collective ownership will strengthen labor’s bargaining power with capital, extending democracy to the workplace.

Finally the amendment eliminating so-called ‘Central Bank autonomy’ means that elected officials responsive to the voters will replace Central Bankers (frequently responsive to private bankers, overseas investors and international financial officials) in deciding public spending and monetary policy. One major consequence will be the reduction of excess reserves in devalued dollar denominated funds and an increase in financing for social and productive activity, a diversity of currency holdings and a reduction in irrational foreign borrowing and indebtedness. The fact of the matter is that the Central Bank was not ‘autonomous’, it was dependent on what the financial markets demanded, independent of the priorities of elected officials responding to popular needs.

As the Chavez Government Turns to Democratic Socialism: Centrists Defect and Seek Military Solutions

As Venezuela’s moves from political to social transformation, from a capitalist welfare state toward democratic socialism, predictable defections and additions occur. As in most other historical experiences of social transformation, sectors of the original government coalition committed to formal institutional political changes defect when the political process moves toward greater egalitarianism and property and a power shift to the populace. Ideologues of the ‘Center’ regret the ‘breaking’ of the status quo ‘consensus’ between oligarchs and people (labeling the new social alignments as ‘authoritarian’) even as the ‘Center’ embraces the profoundly anti-democratic Right and appeals for military intervention.

A similar process of elite defections and increased mass support is occurring in Venezuela as the referendum, with its clear class choices, comes to the fore. Lacking confidence in their ability to defeat the constitutional amendments through the ballot, fearful of the democratic majority, resentful of the immense popular appeal of the democratically elected President Chavez, the ‘Center’ has joined the Right in a last ditch effort to unify extra-parliamentary forces to defeat the will of the electorate.

Emblematic of the New Right and the ‘Centrist’ defections is the ex-Minister of Defense, Raul Baduel, whose virulent attack on the President, the Congress, the electoral procedures and the referendum mark him as an aspirant to head up a US-backed right-wing seizure of power.

The liberal and right wing mass media and unscrupulous ‘centrist’ propagandists have falsely portrayed Raul Baduel as the ‘savior’ of Chavez following the military coup of April 2002. The fact of the matter is that Baduel intervened only after hundreds of thousands of poor Venezuelans poured down from the ‘ranchos’, surrounded the Presidential Palace, leading to division in the armed forces. Baduel rejected the minority of rightist military officers favoring a massive bloodbath and aligned with other military officials who opposed extreme measures against the people and the destruction of the established political order. The latter group included officials who supported Chavez’ nationalist-populist policies and others, like Baduel, who opposed the coup-makers because it radicalized and polarized society – leading to a possible class-based civil war with uncertain outcome. Baduel was for the restoration of a ‘chastised’ Chavez who would maintain the existing socio-economic status quo.

Within the Chavez government, Baduel represented the anti-communist tendency, which pressed the President to ‘reconcile’ with the ‘moderate democratic’ right and big business. Domestically, Baduel opposed the extension of public ownership and internationally favored close collaboration with the far-right Colombian Defense Ministry.

Baduel’s term of office as Defense Minister reflected his conservative propensities and his lack of competence in matters of security, especially with regard to internal security. He failed to protect Venezuela’s frontiers from military incursions by Colombia’s armed forces. Worse he failed to challenge Colombia’s flagrant violation of international norms with regard to political exiles. While Baduel was Minister of Defense, Venezuelan landlords’ armed paramilitary groups assassinated over 150 peasants active in land reform while the National Guard looked the other way. Under Baduel’s watch over 120 Colombian paramilitary forces infiltrated the country. The Colombian military frequently crossed the Venezuelan border to attack Colombian refugees. Under Baduel, Venezuelan military officials collaborated in the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda (a foreign affairs emissary of the FARC) in broad daylight in the center of Caracas. Baduel made no effort to investigate or protest this gross violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, until President Chavez was informed and intervened. Throughout Baduel’s term as Minister of Defense he developed strong ties to Colombia’s military intelligence (closely monitored by US Defense Intelligence Agency and the CIA) and extradited several guerrillas from both the ELN and the FARC to the hands of Colombian torturers.

At the time of his retirement as Minister of Defense, Baduel made a July 2007 speech in which he clearly targeted the leftist and Marxist currents in the trade union (UNT) and Chavez newly announced PSUV (The Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela). His speech, in the name of ‘Christian socialist’, was in reality a vituperative and ill-tempered anti-communist diatribe, which pleased Pope Benedict (Ratzinger).

Baduel’s November 5 speech however marks his public adherence to the hard-line opposition, its rhetoric, fabrications and visions of an authoritarian reversal of Chavez program of democratic socialism. First and foremost, Badual, following the lead of the White House and the Venezuelan ‘hard right’, denounced the entire process of Congressional debate on the Constitutional amendments, and open electoral campaigning leading up to the referendum as ‘in effect a coup d’etat’. Every expert and outside observer disagreed – even those opposed to the referendum. Baduel’s purpose however was to question the legitimacy of the entire political process in order to justify his call for military intervention. His rhetoric calling the congressional debate and vote a ‘fraud’ and ‘fraudulent procedures’ point to Baduel’s effort to denigrate existing representative institutions in order to justify a military coup, which would dismantle them.

Baduel’s denial of political intent is laughable – since he only invited opposition media and politicians to his ‘press conference’ and was accompanied by several military officials. Baduel resembles the dictator who accuses the victim of the crimes he is about to commit. In calling the referendum on constitutional reform a ‘coup’, he incites the military to launch a coup. In an open appeal for military action he directs the military to ‘reflect of the context of constitutional reform.’ He repeatedly calls on military officials to ‘assess carefully’ the changes the elected government has proposed ‘in a hasty manner and through fraudulent procedures’. While denigrating democratically elected institutions, Baduel resorts to vulgar flattery and false modesty to induce the military to revolt. While immodestly denying that he could act as spokesperson for the Armed Forces, he advised the rightist reporters present and potential military cohort that ‘you cannot underrate the capacity of analysis and reasoning of the military.’

Cant, hypocrisy and disinterested posturing run through Baduel’s pronouncements. His claim of being an ‘apolitical’ critic is belied by his intention to go on a nationwide speaking tour attacking the constitutional reforms, in meetings organized by the rightwing opposition. There is absolutely no doubt that he will not only be addressing civilian audiences but will make every effort to meet with active military officers who he might convince to ‘reflect’…and plot the overthrow of the government and reverse the results of the referendum. President Chavez has every right to condemn Baduel as a traitor, though given his long-term hostility to egalitarian social transformation it may be more to the point to say that Baduel is now revealing his true colors.

The danger to Venezuelan democracy is not in Baduel as an individual – he is out of the government and retired from active military command. The real danger is his effort to arouse the active military officers with command of troops, to answer his call to action or as he cleverly puts it ‘for the military to reflect on the context of the constitutional reforms.’ Baduel’s analysis and action program places the military as the centerpiece of politics, supreme over the 16 million voters.

His vehement defense of ‘private property’ in line with his call for military action is a clever tactic to unite the Generals, Bankers and the middle class in the infamous footsteps of Augusto Pinochet, the bloody Chilean tyrant.

The class polarization in the run-up to the referendum has reached its most acute expression: the remains of the multi-class coalition embracing a minority of the middle class and the great majority of the working power is disintegrating. Millions of previously apathetic or apolitical young workers, unemployed poor and low-income women (domestic workers, laundresses, single parents) are joining the huge popular demonstrations overflowing the main avenues and plazas in favor of the constitutional amendments. At the same time political defections have increased among the centrist-liberal minority in the Chavez coalition. Fourteen deputies in the National Assembly, less than 10%, mostly from PODEMOS, have joined the opposition. Reliable sources in Venezuela (Axis of Logic/Les Blough Nov. 11, 2007) report that Attorney General Beneral Isaias Rodriguez, a particularly incompetent crime fighter, and the Comptroller General Cloudosbaldo Russian are purportedly resigning and joining the opposition. More seriously, these same reports claim that the 4th Armed Division in Marcay is loyal to ‘Golpista’ Raul Baduel. Some suspect Baduel is using his long-term personal ties with the current Minister of Defense, Gustavo Briceno Rangel to convince him to defect and join in the pre-coup preparations. Large sums of US funding is flowing in to pay off state and local officials in cash and in promises to share in the oil booty if Chavez is ousted. The latest US political buy-out includes Governor Luis Felipe Acosta Carliz from the state of Carabobo. The mass media have repeatedly featured these new defectors to the right in their hourly ‘news reports’ highlighting their break with Chavez ‘coup d’etat’.

The referendum is turning into an unusually virulent case of a ‘class against class’ war, in which the entire future of the Latin American left is at stake as well as Washington’s hold on its biggest oil supplier.

Conclusion

Venezuelan democracy, the Presidency of Hugo Chavez and the great majority of the popular classes face a mortal threat. The US is facing repeated electoral defeats and is incapable of large-scale external intervention because of over-extension of its military forces in the Middle East; it is committed once more to a violent overthrow of Chavez. Venezuela through the constitutional reforms, will broaden and deepen popular democratic control over socio-economic policy. New economic sectors will be nationalized. Greater public investments and social programs will take off. Venezuela is moving inexorably toward diversifying its petrol markets, currency reserves and its political alliances. Time is running out for the White House: Washington’s political levers of influence are weakening. Baduel is seen as the one best hope of igniting a military seizure, restoring the oligarchs to power and decimating the mass popular movements.

President Chavez is correctly ‘evaluating the high command’ and states that he ‘has full confidence in the national armed forces and their components.’ Yet the best guarantee is to strike hard and fast, precisely against Baduel’s followers and cohorts. Rounding up a few dozen or hundred military plotters is a cheap price to pay for saving the lives of thousands of workers and activists who would be massacred in any bloody seizure of power.

History has repeatedly taught that when you put social democracy, egalitarianism and popular power at the top of the political agenda, as Chavez has done, and as the vast majority of the populace enthusiastically responds, the Right, the reactionary military, the ‘Centrist’ political defectors and ideologues, the White House, the hysterical middle classes and the Church cardinals will sacrifice any and all democratic freedoms to defend their property, privileges and power by whatever means and at whatever cost necessary. In the current all-pervasive confrontation between the popular classes of Venezuela and their oligarchic and military enemies, only by morally, politically and organizationally arming the people can the continuity of the democratic process of social transformation be guaranteed.

Change will come, the question is whether it will be through the ballot or the bullet.

OTTAWA/TORONTO – Two Americans who deserted the U.S. Army to protest against the war in Iraq lost their bid for refugee status in Canada on Thursday, and the Canadian government made it clear they were no longer welcome.

The Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear appeals from the two men, Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, over decisions by immigration authorities — backed in two subsequent court rulings — that they were not refugees in need of protection.

Opposing the war on the belief that it was illegal and immoral, the two deserted when they learned their units would be deployed to Iraq, and came to Canada.

If deported to the United States, they say they face a court martial and up to five years in prison.

During the Vietnam War, Canada was a haven for tens of thousands of draft dodgers and deserters. But Hinzman and Hughey were volunteers rather than conscripts.

Their backers urged the government to let them stay in Canada anyhow, but this met with little sympathy from Ottawa.

“Canadians want a refugee system that helps true refugees,” said Mike Fraser, spokesman for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley.

“All refugee claimants in Canada have the right to due process and when they have exhausted those legal avenues we expect them to respect our laws and leave the country.”

He declined to comment on whether active steps would be taken to deport the two men to the United States. In any case, it could still take months before they can be sent away, said Lee Zaslofsky of the War Resisters Support Campaign.

“They won’t be deported tomorrow; there is a process,” said Zaslofsky, himself a Vietnam War deserter. He said the immigration department would ask if the two men want to do a “pre-removal risk assessment,” which can take months.

An immigration spokeswoman, Karen Chadd-Evelyn, said such an assessment would judge whether in the United States they would be at risk of torture, death or cruel and unusual punishment or treatment.

They can also apply for permanent residence in Canada on humanitarian or compassionate grounds.

The War Resisters Support Campaign, aware of some 55 deserters who have come to Canada since 2004, said they would press for a political way to let the deserters stay.

“It’s up to (politicians) if they want to give resisters access to Canada, as they did during the Vietnam War,” Michelle Robidoux said in the group’s small Toronto office.

The small opposition New Democratic Party said it would introduce a motion calling on the House of Commons immigrations committee to hold immediate hearings on the issue.

Meanwhile, one stratagem appeared to be for resisters to use the legal system to enable them to stay longer in Canada.

One deserter who still hopes to stay is Kimberly Rivera, from Mesquite, Texas. She came to Canada in February with her husband and two small children while on a two-week army leave, after spending three months on security duty in Iraq.

One of Australia’s top defence experts says the United States-led coalition cannot win the conflicts in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

Professor Hugh White, the head of Canberra’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, has told the ABC’s Correspondents Report the coalition will eventually abandon Afghanistan.

He says the US cannot succeed in Iraq, but has no escape from the tragedy its invasion has created in the strategically important Gulf region.

“I think they’re very different situations,” he said.

“But the core difficulties we face in each case are somewhat similar, and that is that the resources that the West has available, and the timeframes over which we’re prepared to bring them to bear, are just way too small to make a difference to the really deep-seated security problems, political problems, social problems, that really underpin the crises in each place.”

Professor White says the war in Afghanistan takes in two very complex, interacting problems which need to be dealt with simultaneously.

“You have the problem of trying to establish, almost for the first time in history, a strong, stable government based in Kabul that can effectively govern the whole of Afghanistan,” he said.

“That’s a huge nation-building challenge by itself.

“Then on top of that you’ve got the challenge posed by the insurgency from the Taliban, particularly in the south-east of the country.

“I think the interaction of those two would require – if the West was to prevail – an effort 10 times the size of the one we’ve got at the moment, and lasting for a generation.

“I just don’t see the West being prepared to put in that kind of scale of effort.”

Professor White predicts that the West will eventually give up on the Afghanistan conflict.

“I think there’s a strong and, I think, understandable humanitarian concern about the fate of the people of Afghanistan themselves,” he said.

“But I think that after another three or five years of the sorts of problems and difficulties and casualties that Western countries have been taking in Afghanistan, if – as I strongly suspect – there’s no sign of progress, it will be very hard for publics not to start getting very sick of them, and very sick of the operation, and very hard for governments not to start slowly but surely withdrawing down the scale of the effort.”

He says handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban and Al Qaeda would be a significant setback, but Afghanistan isn’t actually central to the ‘war on terror’.

“The reason for that is really very simple,” he said.

“As we’ve seen in Pakistan, if Al Qaeda and its affiliates can’t operate in Afghanistan, they’ll operate somewhere else.

“So the idea that keeping Afghanistan out of the hands of the Taliban, for example, is somehow critical to winning the ‘war on terror’, it seems to presuppose that Al Qaeda can’t operate anywhere else, and we know that it can.”

Iraq dilemma

Professor White says the US cannot win in Iraq, but nevertheless is unlikely to pull out.

“I think that’s the tragedy of the American position,” he said.

“I think they’re in the situation where the scale of resources that America has available, and the nature of the problems that it needs to deal with, simply preclude the United States achieving the kind of outcome that we all hope that we could find in Iraq – a stable government that controls the whole territory that governs more or less justly in the interests of all Iraqis, and so on.

“That just seems to be, to me, beyond reach.

“And even though… there may be, as some reports suggest, short-term improvements in security, for example, I think the chances of that leading to a long-term political evolution that would achieve our long-term objectives is very low.”

He says it would be “immensely difficult” for the US to to withdraw from Iraq.

“The reason for that is that unlike Afghanistan, for example, Iraq is absolutely central to core American strategic interests, and in particular, it’s central to the task of stability in the Persian Gulf,” he said.

“The key risk that the United States faces if it withdraws from Iraq is that Iran’s influence in Iraq and then into the southern shore of the Gulf – Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and so on – would expand very rapidly.

“And the US – defining Iran, as it does, as a kind of inevitable adversary for American interests and policy – I think will be very reluctant to run the risk that a US withdrawal from Iraq would in effect, liberate Iran to dominate the Gulf.”

US resigned to staying in Iraq

Professor White says no matter who becomes US president in January 2009 – a Republican or a Democrat – the US is probably going to stay in Iraq for another four years, despite the high numbers of casualties.

“I think you can already see that in the way in which the debate over Iraq is evolving in the run-up to the US presidential election next year,” he said.

“I think one could say that 2006 was the year in which Americans realised that they couldn’t win in Iraq. 2007 has been the year in which they’ve realised that they can’t get out.

“Even the Democrat candidates are acknowledging that there’ll need to be substantial US forces in Iraq for many years to come.”

He says two aspects underlie that realisation.

“The first is that although Americans, of course, are very distressed by the level of casualties that they’re taking in Iraq, by the costs, the financial costs of Iraq, I think they are now kind of factored into the political debate there,” he said.

“Secondly I think the US confronts what is in fact quite a characteristic problem, and that is weighing the known costs and risks of keeping doing what we’re doing, against the unknown costs and risks of doing something radically different.

“For Americans, terrible though it seems, the costs, including the costs in lives of staying in Iraq, are known and understood and are bearable.

Into every tragically depressing world situation some light must shine if you wait long enough and the planets align just right.

That glimmer of light came yesterday from, of all places, the Death Star known by many as Washington, D.C., from deep within one of the most unfathomable quadrants of that bleakness–the chambers of the United States Senate. Even more remarkably, it sprang from what some consider a true black hole–the Republican caucus.

But light it is, and in these times we need to celebrate every photon that comes our way.

Yesterday, the Senate voted 53-45, seven votes short of the 60 needed to advance the bill, against a $50,000,000,000 “supplemental” funding measure passed earlier this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives. What the Republicans objected to was the limp, inconsequential troop withdrawal plan supported by House and Senate Democrats–something that Groucho Marx would have much more accurately termed, “a sham of a mockery of a sham.”

The sham-of-a-mockery-of-a-withdrawal the Democrats wrote and the Republicans just could not stomach, required the president to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq by December 15, 2008–all except a few thousand for “protecting United States diplomatic facilities;” perhaps ten thousand or so for “conducting limited training, equipping, and providing logistical and intelligence support to the Iraqi security forces,” a few more thousand for “protecting United States Armed Forces and American citizens” in Iraq, including those pillars of the community from Blackwater, Inc.; and a few more thousand for “engaging in targeted counterterrorism operations against al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda affiliated groups, and other terrorist organizations in Iraq.”

They actually called this a limited presence.”

This was the “withdrawal” plan the Democrats wanted in exchange for another 50 billion dollars to continue the war. To paraphrase the late Republican Senator Everett Dirksen: “Even though the dollar is rapidly going down the toilet, pretty soon it adds up to real money.”

To the Senate Republicans I send a warm “thank you” for killing a $50,000,000,000 cash infusion into this tragic, illegal war.

To the scores of peace activists around the country preparing to occupy their U.S. Senators’ local offices to press them to vote against more war funding I say, “Declare victory in this round. And then get 10 friends to pledge to occupy those offices with you in February, when the Democrats will feel compelled to bail out Bush again.”

To MoveOn.org and similar groups whose main purpose in life is toadying up to the Democratic Party, I say, “Spare us your electronic mobilizations of well-meaning citizens to bombard the airwaves and street corners with a Damn the Republicans for voting against a timetable to end the war’ message. Leave the internet lines open for more meaningful emails like Nigerian business opportunities and penis patches.”

And to anyone who thinks this too cynical or too hard on our last, best hope, the Congressional Democrats, I commend this pompous, arrogant, condescending quote, dripping with hubris from a leading Senate liberal, Carl Levin (D-MI), during yesterday’s Senate debate: “We need to do more than say to the Iraqis that our patience has run out and that they need to seize the opportunity that has been given them … Their dawdling will only end when they have no choice.”

Yes, it’s quite an opportunity we’ve given the Iraqis, Senator Levin … but then they are such an ungrateful, dawdling lot.

The term “middle class” does not mean anything. There can be no sense of cohesion among members of a group jostling to climb the social ladder. The possessors and the dispossessed can be described as antagonistic social classes. But those in between, those hooked to the dominant ideology of possession and power, have no class structure of their own. They are neither nor and are condemned to perpetual schizophrenia.

Plutocracy depends on mercenary intermediaries. The wealthy few cannot rule alone. They would be submerged by the sheer weight of numbers. So the citizen guards the slave and the freeman guards the serf. Guard and guarded necessarily lead quite similar lives, but they are separated by an ideological chasm. The slave sees his chains, knows he is chattel and dreams of being free. The freeman resents his bondage, realises he is nothing and dreams of being Caesar. The one aspires to human rights, the other to dominion.

Like a Dantean hell, power is a structure of widening concentric circles, the Outer Circle being the most infernal. The interface between the have and the have-not is a place where power is brutal and ideas are radical. But it is also the place where transfers occur. Deserving slaves are emancipated and rebellious deviants are enslaved. These passages blur the boundary so completely that it can only exist in the mind. The Outer Circle of power needs the strongest convictions to compensate its meagre material benefits.

The most important element of the power structure, the base of the pyramid, the interface with the rest of humanity, is neglected materially and must be bolstered morally as a consequence. The ideology of power needs to be as total as possible. When there is no alternative, the system is secure. And, when an alternative does seem possible, it is denied, divided, turned around and finally destroyed or integrated. Protestantism and socialism were historic alternatives. Both were the products of their times. Neither restrained power, wealth or oligarchic rule. But, as past examples, they highlight the difficulties of opposing a totalitarian organisation that is backed by unlimited means.

The power structure depends mainly on ideology to maintain its base. The control of ideas and knowledge is essential. This in turn means controlling the media that circulate words, images and concepts. Technology, however, follows its own unpredictable path and some media are more difficult to control than others. Throughout the Middle Ages, publishing had been the absolute monopoly of monastic workshops. But the arrival of the printing press and paper from China, and the invention of movable type by Gutenberg (42-line Bible, 1448) produced a new medium that was uncontrollable. It coincided with the siege (1422) and fall (1453) of Constantinople and a back surge from Byzantium carrying oriental flotsam, Greek, Hebrew and Arab books, materialism and mysticism, the crafts of state and war, astrology and al’jebr, the art of interpreting the scriptures. The printing press became a guarantee that ideas could be circulated without the consent of authority. The freedom of expression brought about by printing was behind all the major social upheavals of the following centuries, from reformation to revolution. Until the late 19th century, when rotary printing, the telegraph and the railways produced the first mass medium, the popular press.

Mass media give a level of control unequalled since the times before Gutenberg. When millions read, hear (radio) and see (TV) the same thing at the same time, the effect can be compared to that of church rituals in medieval Europe. The mere communion of so many gives credence to the ideology being propagated. The 20th century saw the multiplicity of opinions competing for attention on a fairly level playing field that was the result of the printing press, replaced by a top down totalitarian mass culture, with central offices pontificating for readers, listeners and viewers in ever greater numbers. But, when personal computers plugged in to the telephone network creating the World Wide Web, centralised media suddenly seemed meaningless. This coincided with the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the end of the USSR. And the resulting culture shock is as intense as that produced by printing five hundred years ago. Except that the “Gutenberg Galaxy” only concerned Christianity, whereas the Internet galaxy is global.

The church re-formers of the 16th century were fundamentalists. They preached a return to the teachings of the Gospels and the Old Testament, to the instructions of Paul and Augustine. They abhorred the pomp of ecclesiastic dignitaries, the superstitious worship of saintly relics and the selling of indulgences. Muslim radicals to-day sound much the same as Zwingli, Luther and Calvin would have sounded to their contemporaries. And what of the “Protestant Rome” in Geneva protected by mountains and hordes of fierce Swiss halberdiers, or the short lived “New Jerusalem” in Münster, or the insurgency in Flanders? These events were perceived by the Catholic power structure to be threatening its values and existence. And the backlash was horrific. Islam is going through the throes of re-formation surfing on the web medium, and its tribulations can be compared to those of the Christian Reformation carried by the print medium. In both cases, it is the Outer Circle voicing its doubts as to the First Circle’s moral right to hold power and wealth. But this can only happen at historic moments, when a new medium makes expression possible.

We, who have received a European cultural heritage, have gone beyond religious reform, though the passage was a continual blood bath. And, with even more bloodshed, we have constructed secular nation states. These two transformations were the consequences of printing and mass media. The first movement was fuelled by freedom of expression. The technologies of printing and of paper making were simple enough to be set up anywhere and everywhere in an anarchic manner. This movement went on to social reform, as the more radical Protestant churches and budding proletarian organisations often intermingled (1). The printing press had given a means of expression to the Outer Circle of power. Mass media replaced this mosaic of convictions with centralised modes of expression. Thoughts, beliefs and ideas were no longer exchanged, they were received. The voice of the elite who knows repeated endlessly, by press, radio and TV. Giving a total control that invites and supports tyranny. But this splendid propaganda machine is now on the verge of redundancy.

The Outer Circle’s questioning comes from its intermediary situation. Does it identify itself with the dispossessed on the basis of a common humanity? Or does it identify itself with the First Circle on the basis of a possible social climb (if not I, my children or my grandchildren). This positioning depends on the level of ideological control and its material credibility (hence the symbolic importance of economic growth). But, more importantly, it depends on the actual perception of a human identity with the dispossessed. For the Outer Circles of the Western World, the dispossessed are in other countries, on other continents, while the relatively few local ones are kept off the streets and out of mind, by robust policing and harsh sentencing. This makes identification difficult. As was the case with slaves brought to America from Africa, the otherness is extreme enough to seem unbridgeable. How can a car driving, card toting, electricity dependent, overfed Westerner imagine that his aspirations are shared by forlorn creatures whose only possessions are a loin-cloth and a hoe? “Are they really human?” he asks himself, as they gibber away in uncouth tongues, whose conceptual poverty mirrors the material deprivation of their users.

The once blurred boundaries between the Outer Circles of the Western World and the dispossessed have become national frontiers, with border patrols, concrete walls and razor wire. The once meritorious lawful passage has become a surreptitious criminal activity. Those who pass the boundary are illegal and must live in the crannies of society. They become invisible. Unseen and unknown, here in the darkest shadows, over there in vast sunlit throngs, the dispossessed seem ever more menacing. And, as fear gains on empathy, the violent path seems to beckon with a martial gesture. And, no doubt, that is the way it must be, having always been so. In times of doubt, power must divest itself of all its fancy trappings to expose the naked reality of dominion. These brutal demonstrations attract and repulse. But their essential function is to show that there is no alternative to power, other than greater power. (2)

For the time being, we have a media struggle for the minds of the Outer Circle, between the prime-time talk-show and the bloggersphere, on air or on line. In some post colonial nations, where mass media have not been fully developed, the First Circles of power already seem to have their backs to the wall. Being unable to identify with the dispossessed, the Outer Circles of the Western World could perhaps identify with the Outer Circles of the post-colonial nations, who are urging for religious and social reforms. The tools of expression are on hand, the web medium and universal English, but this identification entails turning against the First Circle and contesting its legitimacy. At present, this seems an unlikely eventuality. If, however, the unpopular and costly wars in the East are coupled to a contracting economy, a global link-up may take place. Unless war, recession and growing discontent manage to turn fear into hate. In that case, the counter-reformation of the 21st century may just be warming up.

Kenneth Couesbouc can be reached at kencouesbouc@yahoo.fr.

NOTES

(1) See the Anabaptists and the Baptists, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, etc. In Catholic and Orthodox countries, social movements had no such church support and were generally anticlerical and less consensual.

11/17/07 “Lew Rockwell” — — In response to Ron Paul’s phenomenal fundraising successes and his widespread, national popularity, the neocon establishment has commenced a smear campaign. One such smear artist is John C. Fortier, a “research fellow” at what Lew Rockwell has called the Supreme Soviet of Neoconservatism – the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

Writing on the AEI website, Fortier complained that Congressman Paul “sometimes displays a sinister conspiratorial aspect, implying that those who disagree with him are the vanguard of dictatorial government.” The Congressman and his supporters, says Fortier, think they “are there to stop such a dictatorship.”

Fortier is especially incensed at the fact that Congressman Paul asked him many hard questions, and opposed some of his recommendations, when he was executive director of something called the “Continuity in Government Commission.” In particular, the congressman was suspicious of the neocon commissioner’s recommendation that the president appoint members of Congress in the aftermath of some kind of “emergency” that incapacitates Congress. (Leaving the definition of “emergency” up to Washington, D.C. politicians is always dangerous to liberty, as anyone with any concern about constitutional government would know.)

Well, the work of Fortier’s Continuity in Government Commission is now finished, and the results of its efforts are seen in something called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20/51, also known as the “National Continuity Policy.” This is another one of those presidential “directives” that was sneaked in under the media’s radar screen that does indeed grant the president dictatorial powers. Judge Andrew Napolitano describes the meaning of this “directive” in his brilliant new book, A Nation of Sheep (pp. 74–76).

The White House published the directive on its website after it was already signed by the president. Most Americans who have actually read and studied the directive, writes Napolitano, “are terrified by its implications.” They are terrified because presidential “directives” as such can be issued without any oversight by any other branch of government. The “National Continuity Policy” directive “concentrates power into the office of the president to coordinate any and all government and business activities” in the event of a “catastrophic emergency,” writes the judge.

The problem this creates for the American public is that “the pliable language in the directive creates the ability for a vast scope of executive authority without the checks and balances of the other branches of government,” writes Napolitano. It creates dictatorial powers, in other words.

“Catastrophic emergency” is defined so broadly that it could include an economic downturn, an environmental catastrophe, large-scale protests against the Iraq war, a power blackout, a bridge collapse such as the one on the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis last summer, a tsunami, a volcanic eruption such as Mount Saint Helen’s, and, says Napolitano, possibly even if “a plague of fire ants invades Crawford, Texas.”

The president gets to decide what constitutes a “catastrophe” that allows him to enforce his own directive and assume dictatorial powers over the government and the economy. If the president does declare such an emergency, writes Napolitano, “he can take over all government functions including the Congress and the federal courts and direct all private sector activities.” Moreover, “the emergency exists until the president decides it is over.” The question is not, why was Ron Paul suspicious of the government “commission” that dreamed up this dictatorial nightmare, but why wasn’t every other member of Congress?

It gets even worse. The Bush administration, thanks to the work of John C. Fortier’s Continuity in Government Commission, was emboldened to simply ignore the federal National Emergencies Act, passed in 1976, that was intended to prevent a perpetual state of national emergency “and formalize Congressional checks and balances on presidential emergency powers.” They just thumbed their collective noses, figuratively speaking, at the Congress and the American public, and broke the law – again. But then, the president’s lawyers have argued for years that anything he does is legal and constitutional. The Constitution doesn’t say this, mind you; Republican Party hacks with law degrees do.

All of this is why, of all the former Trotskyites and other assorted neocons who hang their hats at AEI, it was John C. Fortier who took the lead to smear Ron Paul on the Institute’s website. It was Ron Paul, almost alone among members of Congress, who understood the potential devastating dangers to American liberty that might come from a commission such as the one that was directed by Fortier.

The “National Continuity Policy” was put in place in secret, without the knowledge of even very many members of Congress. Fortier must be in a state of panic. He understands that, because of his exponentially-growing popularity, Ron Paul has the ability to expose this atrocious attack on American liberty to the entire nation, which may come to understand that AEI – the Supreme Soviet of Neoconservatism – is best thought of as the American Dictatorship Institute.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, (Three Rivers Press/Random House). His latest book is Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe (Crown Forum/Random House).

11/17/07 “ICH” — – Introduction. There are two mutually exclusive means of livelihood. One is to work and earn from production and exchange. This has been called the “economic means.” The second is to seize the labor product of others through force and violence. This has been called the “political means.” Sociologist Franz Oppenheimer defined the State as the Organization of the Political Means. It is the systemization of the predatory process within a given territory.

· “There are two distinct classes of men… those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon taxes.” ~ Thomas Paine

· “The State enjoys a monopoly not only on the lawful use of violence, but on the power to define the extent of its authority.” ~ Butler Shaffer, 17 March 2006

· “You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it.” ~ Isabel Paterson, New York Herald Tribune

“Thought Crimes,” HR 1955 Passed With 404 Votes.

Submit, Ye Citizens, Silently to State Murder.

.
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955, titled the
Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007.
The full text is available at www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=110-1955. It was passed with 404 votes in favor.

A close reading within an historical context – keeping especially in mind the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and Presidential Executive Orders, pursuant to which the government has engaged in massive surveillance of its own citizens, as well as detentions, extraordinary renditions, assassinations, and torture – leads me to the following conclusions:

· This is a “Thought Crime” bill of the type so often discussed in an Orwellian context.

· It specifically targets the civilian population of the United States.

· It defines “Violent Radicalization” as promoting any belief system that the government considers to be extremist.

· “Homegrown Terrorism” and “Violent Radicalization” are defined as thought crimes.

· Since the bill does not provide a specific definition of extremist belief system, it will be whatever the government at any given time deems it to be.

A few extracts of the Bill are presented below to show you its tone or “flavor.”

“(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization’ means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system… to advance political, religious, or social change.”

SECTION 899B. FINDINGS.

“(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.”

“(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions.”

Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. This will be an institution affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security. It will study and determine how to detain thought criminals.

THIS LEGISLATION ENDS THE POSSIBILITY OF A CULTURE OF REASON.

It is an attempt at legislative lobotomy of conscience. It aims to eviscerate ethical sensibilities of an entire culture.

Having usurped the power of war and peace, life and death, the Corporatocracy now bludgeons even the thought of speaking for conscience. This is State murder of the mind.

It is just too awesomely obscene for words. It exceeds not only the scope of my vocabulary, but my imagination as well.

The minions and hired agents of politicians are free to murder, rape and pillage on government hire using our money, but to imagine alternatives to them and the degraded, psychopathic political “leaders” who design and perpetrate these atrocities is legislated as a thought crime!

This is the legislated, politically promulgated end of man as a thinking, self-directed being. Surely this must be the outer limit of “positive law,” that is, statutory laws passed by “Lawmakers.”

It further entrenches the Power Elite as separate from and above their “subjects.” It clearly demonstrates the paranoid delusions of the Establishment, pursuant to which it legislates a massive defense mechanism to protect itself from the populace that it subjugates.

I use these terms deliberately, because the so-called freedom of the vote has turned out to be a big con game. It is only the “freedom” to choose one set of thieves over the other. The blue suits or the red suits… all of them manufactured suits of the corporations.

Following in the train of this legislation will doubtless be internal travel documents, body tracking by subcutaneous RFID chips, neighborhood snoops and spies, rewards granted for turning in politically incorrect thought criminals, mass civilian detention centers – in short, the whole totalitarian control mechanism that we associate with the SS, KGB and other code words of criminal regimes. There will be “re-programming / rehabilitation” centers to correct errant free thinkers.

The infrastructure for this – especially mental conditioning – is essentially already in place. We have become accustomed to birth certificate (the government’s initial warehouse receipt), driving license, social security number, business and professional licensing, the Corporate Warfare State control of media, and recently announced, Google’s navigation to your house by keying telephone number into the web. Take note that the Department of Homeland Security already has more than 750,000 persons on its watch list.

For a glimpse of past as prologue, read Solzhenitsyn.

Who Will Be Thought Police and Under What Standards?

Who will define radical thought, and by what standards? For example, how about the reported millions who believe that 911 was an inside job, citing a mass of evidence from eye witnesses, physicists, engineers, and recorded statements such as “We pulled it,” essentially a confession by the building’s owner of the planned demolition of Building 7?

Will the writings of John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire be thought crimes? Will this very essay be a thought crime?

What about Operation Northwoods, pursuant to which the Joint Chiefs of the United States planned for innocent people to be shot on American streets, for boats carrying passengers to be sunk on the high seas, for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched within the country, and for other depraved acts conceived in the minds of government-hired psychopaths? Previously top secret documents about this were released on 18 November 1997 and can be researched at www.wikipedia.org. Evidently, members of the Establishment will be permitted to engage in thought crime.

Soon enough, we will all be killing each other, and the statement of Mohandas Gandhi will be borne out: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Will thinking about cleansing the national soul of our atrocities – of Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, the advanced plans underway to nuke Iran, the crimes of Blackwater murders, the government’s domestic coercion and violence – be “Thought Crimes?”

Will it be thought crime to conceive of a domestic Truth and Reconciliation Commission pursuant to which high government officials are brought to book for crimes against humanity?

Will it be “radicalization” to think of alternatives to a government of, by, and for the Corporatocracy, which accumulates its vast wealth through the blood money of endless war?

What about imagination-consideration of a non-coercive society of free individuals acting in voluntary cooperation, what is commonly referred to as anarchy?

Would Thomas Jefferson be liable for saying, “Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it …”

Will it be radical to conceive of preventing the Cheney-Bush cabal from launching WWIII and the incineration of earth through a false flag operation against Iran?

Would the likes of Mohandas Gandhi be jailed for saying, as he did, “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless and corrupt.”

11/17/07 “ICH” — — The Pentagon has been concealing the true number of American casualties in the Iraq War. The real number exceeds 15,000 and CBS News can prove it.

CBS’s Investigative Unit wanted to do a report on the number of suicides in the military and “submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense”. After 4 months they received a document which showed–that between 1995 and 2007–there were 2,200 suicides among “active duty” soldiers.

Baloney.

The Pentagon was covering up the real magnitude of the “suicide epidemic”. Following an exhaustive investigation of veterans’ suicide data collected from 45 states; CBS discovered that in 2005 alone “THERE WERE AT LEAST 6,256 AMONG THOSE WHO SERVED IN THE ARMED FORCES. THAT’S 120 EACH AND EVERY WEEK IN JUST ONE YEAR.”

That is not a typo. Active and retired military personnel, mostly young veterans between the ages of 20 to 24, are returning from combat and killing themselves in record numbers. We can assume that “multiple-tours of duty” in a war-zone have precipitated a mental health crisis of which the public is entirely unaware and which the Pentagon is in total denial.

If we add the 6,256 suicide victims from 2005 to the “official” 3,865 reported combat casualties; we get a sum of 10,121. Even a low-ball estimate of similar 2004 and 2006 suicide figures, would mean that the total number of US casualties from the Iraq war now exceed 15,000.

That’s right; 15,000 dead US servicemen and women in a war that–as yet–has no legal or moral justification.

CBS interviewed Dr. Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the Department of Veteran Affairs. Katz attempted to minimize the surge in veteran suicides saying, “There is no epidemic of suicide in the VA, but suicide is a major problem.”

Maybe Katz right. Maybe there is no epidemic. Maybe it’s perfectly normal for young men and women to return from combat, sink into inconsolable depression, and kill themselves at greater rates than they were dying on the battlefield. Maybe it’s normal for the Pentagon to abandon them as soon as soon they return from their mission so they can blow their brains out or hang themselves with a garden hose in their basement. Maybe it’s normal for politicians to keep funding wholesale slaughter while they brush aside the casualties they have produced by their callousness and lack of courage. Maybe it is normal for the president to persist with the same, bland lies that perpetuate the occupation and continue to kill scores of young soldiers who put themselves in harm’s-way for their country.

It’s not normal; it’s is a pandemic—an outbreak of despair which is the natural corollary of living in constant fear; of seeing one’s friends being dismembered by roadside bombs or children being blasted to bits at military checkpoints or finding battered bodies dumped on the side of a riverbed like a bag of garbage.

The rash of suicides is the logical upshot of Bush’s war. Returning soldiers are traumatized by their experience and now they are killing themselves in droves. Maybe we should have thought about that before we invaded.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) — It may have been 28 years since the last Eagles studio album — yes, “The Long Run” came out in 1979 — but, in terms of sales, it’s as if the famed band has never left.

The group’s new CD, the double-disc set “Long Road Out of Eden,” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album charts with more than 700,000 copies sold in its first week. This –despite its being available only at Wal-Mart.

That relationship with America’s biggest merchant has also raised eyebrows. Wal-Mart’s reputation does not seem to dovetail with the interests of the Eagles, particularly the band’s Don Henley, an outspoken environmentalist.

In a rare interview, Henley addressed those concerns, along with the idea of patriotism, the changing music business, and why “Long Road” may be the group’s last album. Watch the Eagles perform “How Long” »

CNN’s Denise Quan spoke to Henley at the Country Music Association awards last week, and said that Henley was a “true Southern gentleman,” ending the interview by sending the crew on its way with plates of mashed potatoes, corn and biscuits.

CNN: Don Henley, congratulations on the first-week sales of this album. I think it exceeded everyone’s expectations.

DON HENLEY: More than 700,000 in this country. And I’m told it has sold 3 million worldwide. So we’re delighted.

CNN: Somewhere, Kanye West is quaking in his boots, I would imagine.

HENLEY: I doubt it. (Laughs)

CNN: You made us wait 28 years for this new CD.

HENLEY: Yeah. Well, we don’t like to rush into things.

CNN: I was surprised when it was announced you had gone with a Wal-Mart deal exclusively. Why did you do that?

HENLEY: Our deal with the major label expired several years ago, and we just decided we wanted to try something new. … Everybody’s been calling for a new paradigm in the record industry. Some people have gone to the Internet and haven’t had a lot of success with that.

Some people have decided to go with the indie labels, who are mostly distributed by the major labels. Some people have signed with major coffee companies with varying degrees of success.

So Wal-Mart came to us, and they made us a really good offer. And they told us about their green initiative, and how they’re trying to make their company more ecologically responsible. And we were impressed by their programs in that regard, and what they’re trying to do. And a lot of our fans are customers of Wal-Mart, so we thought it was a good fit.

CNN: There are two discs in “Long Road Out of Eden.” One disc is full of romantic ballads with those harmonies the Eagles are known for, and the other disc is full of satirical, witty, kind of biting —

HENLEY: (Interrupts) Thank you. Thank you for not using the word “cynical.” (Laugh) Which has become a real cliche.

Protest songs are an old tradition that seems to be coming back now. People writing about government has been going on since the Middle Ages. … But to hear some journalists tell it, this is like it’s never been done before, and it’s outrageous!

If people don’t agree with us, they can hit the skip button. We are ticked off about some things, but we also do some of it with humor. People seem to miss our humor. A lot. It seems to go (brushes side of his head with his hand).

CNN: The Eagles have long been associated with the country sound — only you brought the rock element to it when you first appeared on the scene.

HENLEY: Yeah, yeah.

CNN: But your politics are different than a lot of people in Nashville, who are more conservative than I would say you are.

HENLEY: Yeah. Well, Nashville is changing. Nashville is not nearly as conservative as it used to be.

CNN: People just don’t talk about it, perhaps.

HENLEY: It’s just like you don’t talk about religion and politics. This country was founded on rebellion. We believe that we are patriotic. We believe that everyone has the right to speak out. In fact, we believe that it’s unpatriotic not to speak out.

Lord knows, we’ve been criticized enough during our career. When we were younger, (adopts Bugs Bunny voice) it hurt our widdle feewings. But now we have no feelings! We had them removed. Surgically. This is probably the last Eagles album that we’ll ever make. So we decided to just say whatever we felt like saying. And let the chips fall where they may.

CNN: But doesn’t the success of this album spur you to make more music? Obviously, people want to hear it.

HENLEY: I can’t sit here and tell you for certain that there will never be another Eagles album, but we got 20 songs on this album. You know, we got a lot of things off our chest, so to speak.

I don’t know if everybody’s going to want to do another one. If we do a world tour, that’ll take at least two years. We’re all pushing 60. Well, some of us are 60. …

Anyway, we’ll see. But we all have some solo plans still. I still have a contract with a major label for a couple of solo albums. I think parenting is one of the highest things on our agenda right now. We all have young children. So making another album is not our first priority right now.

CNN: It seems like you’ve mellowed quite a bit. Is it fatherhood that’s changed you, or perhaps just turning 60?

HENLEY: I think we’ve all mellowed in this group. I think having children was really good for all of us. And you supposedly get mellower with age. However, as some of the songs will indicate, we’re not too mellow. (Pauses)

CNN: What are you thinking?

HENLEY: I hate that word “mellow,” actually. We’ve been saddled with that word since the very beginning of our career, you know. It has something to do with Southern California. I wish they would find a new word. We’re either “mellow” or we’re “cynical.” They can’t make up their minds. It’s sort of a contradiction.

CNN: But I think you’ve been sort of a contradiction. Certainly an enigma to a lot of people.

HENLEY: Well, good! (Laughs) Yeah, well, this band is a contradiction. This album is. But life is a contradiction, isn’t it? There are good things, and there are bad things going on in the world simultaneously. There’s love and hate. There’s war and peace. There are all kinds of things happening at the same time. And so that’s reflected on this album, I think.

CNN: So how are you guys all getting along these days?

HENLEY: The same. (Laughs)

CNN: For better or worse?

HENLEY: All that stuff has been exaggerated. You ask any band if they get along all the time, and they will tell you, “Of course not.” But we get along, I’d say, as well as any band does.

There’s something we’ve created called the Eagles that’s more important than any one of us individually. And we serve that. You know, we call it “The Mothership.” We can all do this, that and the other, but we always come back to the Mothership. It’s something that we all built together.

And all this stuff about fighting in the band, and brawling, and fistfights and all that stuff has been grossly exaggerated. When it gets reprinted, and our publicist says, “Well, where’d you get that information,” they invariably say, “I read it on the Internet” — as if the Internet were some source of truth! The Internet is no more accurate than the New York Post, you know.

AUSTIN — The Texas Department of Transportation, working to fend off a funding shortfall from the federal government, intends to cut hundreds of millions of dollars budgeted for everything from consulting engineers to right-of-way purchases.

The plan wouldn’t affect existing road projects, and it’s “difficult to say” what future projects would be delayed as a result, agency spokesman Randall Dillard said Friday.

Projections show that if existing plans for awarding contracts and expenditures were to go forward, the department would have at least a $1.8 billion deficit by 2012 and at least $3.6 billion by 2015, agency deputy executive director Steve Simmons said in remarks prepared for Thursday’s commission meeting.

“We in the transportation world cannot wait until then to address the problem,” Simmons said in the remarks.

The move comes as TXDOT staff is poised to recommend to the Texas Transportation Commission a separate $1 billion cut this fiscal year for new roads and expansion projects. Officials say funds aren’t keeping pace with needs and must be focused on key areas like maintenance.

The chairman of the budget-writing House Appropriations Committee said a call from a reporter was the first he’d heard of the agency’s move.

“I’m kind of surprised they didn’t talk to us about that,” said Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa.

“It’s almost to the point you wonder if the agency hasn’t got so big, they’re another branch of government we’re not aware of,” said Chisum, who previously has taken issue with such agency decisions as its projected expenditure of $7 million to $9 million to promote the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor plan and toll roads.

That Keep Texas Moving campaign, while not cited by Simmons in his prepared remarks, could be cut along with other agency programs, Dillard said.

“Everything’s on the table,” he said.

Dillard said agency officials had sought to stir a public discussion on the funding issue and had called some lawmakers Thursday.

The chairman of the Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee was aware of the agency’s position on cuts and is supportive in light of the funding situation, said Steven Polunsky, committee director.

Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, is “in complete agreement about prioritizing maintenance. He believes there is no project in the state of Texas that is worth risking a Minneapolis bridge incident,” Polunsky said.

The agency has an $8.3 billion budget this fiscal year, including $3.3 billion in federal money. Texas is getting less federal transportation money than previously expected, Simmons said. Another funding source that transportation officials had turned to was affected when lawmakers this year sought to rein in state partnerships with private entities on toll roads.

Carona worked for $5 billion in additional authority for road bonds approved Nov. 6 by voters, and he has talked up the need to raise the state’s gasoline tax and for a constitutional amendment to prohibit highway funds from being diverted to other sources.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The accidental airing of a closed OPEC session Friday provided a surprise glimpse into a sensitive debate over the weakening U.S. dollar, with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister warning that even talking publicly about the currency’s decline could further hurt its value.

The high-profile blunder ahead of a rare OPEC summit revealed the debate as Iran attempted to convince other member countries to express concern over dollar depreciation in the meeting’s final declaration.

Oil is priced in dollars on the world market, and its depreciation has concerned oil producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and has eroded the value of their dollar reserves. Cartel officials have resisted pressure to increase oil production to ease prices.

“The reality is that we have this problem. I think we should draft the declaration to reflect our concerns,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during a pre-summit meeting here with fellow ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

But Saud al-Faisal, foreign minister of U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, came out against the proposal with unusually frank comments.