The Rag Blog

HAVANA (Oct. 14) – Fidel Castro made his first live appearance on Cuban airwaves since falling ill 14 months ago, sounding lucid and in good humor as he exchanged praise and jokes Sunday with the Venezuelan president.

Castro’s telephone call to a television and radio program came minutes after visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez aired a new videotape of their weekend meeting in which he sang revolutionary hymns to Castro and called him “father of all revolutionaries.”

“I am very touched when you sing about Che,” Castro told Chavez during his hour-long call to Chavez’s “Alo, Presidente!” program – referring to revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara, to whom the program was dedicated.

BAGHDAD – The Iraqi government has demanded that Blackwater USA, the private security firm that guards top U.S. diplomats in Iraq, be expelled from the country within six months and pay $8-million in compensation to the family of every civilian its employees are accused of killing last month, Iraqi officials said.

The demands were contained in a report prepared by Iraqi investigators probing the shooting in downtown Baghdad, in which they said 17 Iraqis were killed after Blackwater guards opened fire without provocation. The findings were described by Iraqi officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Sept. 16 incident sparked widespread outrage across Iraq and prompted heightened scrutiny here and in the United States of shootings by foreign security firms that have left scores of Iraqis dead.

Caracas, October 11, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com) – Nobel Prize winning economist and former vice-president of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, praised Venezuela’s economic growth and “positive policies in health and education” during a visit to Caracas on Wednesday.

“Venezuela’s economic growth has been very impressive in the last few years,” Stiglitz said during his speech at a forum on Strategies for Emerging Markets sponsored by the Bank of Venezuela.

Venezuela, the fourth largest exporter of crude oil to the United States, has experienced the highest economic growth rate in Latin America in recent years, with fifteen successive quarters of expansion and looks set to close the year with 8-9% growth. Despite the high rate of growth, high public spending and increased consumer demand have contributed to inflationary pressures, pushing inflation up to 15.3%, also the highest in Latin America. However, Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001, argued that relatively high inflation isn’t necessarily harmful to the economy.

He added that while Venezuela’s economic growth has largely been driven by high oil prices, unlike other oil producing countries, Venezuela has taken advantage of the boom in world oil prices to implement policies that benefit its citizens and promote economic development.

“Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez appears to have had success in bringing health and education to the people in the poor neighborhoods of Caracas, to those who previously saw few benefits of the countries oil wealth,” he said.

In his latest book “Making Globalization Work,” Stiglitz argues that left governments such as in Venezuela, “have frequently been castigated and called ‘populist’ because they promote the distribution of benefits of education and health to the poor.”

“It is not only important to have sustainable growth,” Stiglitz continued during his speech, “but to ensure the best distribution of economic growth, for the benefit of all citizens.”

Although Stiglitz praised Venezuela’s “positive policies” in areas of health and education and policies to promote economic diversification, he assured that Venezuela still faces the challenge of overcoming structural problems associated with an economy overwhelmingly geared towards oil production.

In terms of economic development Stiglitz argued it was not good for the Central Bank to have “excessive” autonomy. Chavez’s proposed constitutional reforms, if approved in December, will remove the autonomy of the country’s Central Bank.

However, Stiglitz claimed, developing nations must strike a balance between public and private control of the market.

“The key to success is to find the correct equilibrium between the private sector and the government, which is different for each nation,” he said.

Stiglitz also welcomed Venezuela’s initiative to create the Bank of the South; due to be founded in Caracas on November 3, saying it would benefit the countries of South America and boost development.

“One of the advantages of having a Bank of the South is that it would reflect the perspectives of those in the South,” said Stiglitz, whereas, he argued, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund often impose conditions that “hinder the development effectiveness.”

Stiglitz also criticized the “Washington Consensus” of implementing neo-liberal policies in Latin America, in particular the US free trade agreements with Colombia and other countries, saying they failed to bring benefits to the peoples of those countries.

The Washington Consensus “is undermining the Andean cooperation, and it is part of the American strategy of divide and conquer, a strategy trying to get as much of the benefits for American companies,” and little for developing countries, he said.

Stiglitz also met with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in Miraflores, where they exchanged points of view on the global economic situation, economic indicators and the behavior of world markets.

OVERVIEW

The dispute over the Abyei region is the most volatile aspect of Sudan’s 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and risks unravelling that increasingly shaky deal. The CPA granted the disputed territory, which has a significant percentage of Sudan’s oil reserves, a special administrative status under the presidency and a 2011 referendum to decide whether to join what might then be an independent South. However, in violation of the CPA, the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) is refusing the “final and binding” ruling of the Abyei Boundary Commission (ABC) report, leaving an administrative and political vacuum. Negotiations between the NCP and the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/SPLM) are stalled, and both sides are building up their military forces around Abyei. The SPLM’s 11 October decision to suspend its participation in the Government of National Unity in protest of the NCP’s non-implementation of the CPA, marks the most dangerous political escalation since the peace deal was signed. The international community needs to re-engage across the board on CPA implementation but nowhere more urgently than Abyei, where the risks of return to war are rising.

On its face, resolution of the Abyei issue appears relatively straightforward. The sequencing of implementation was clearly set out in the CPA’s Abyei Protocol, beginning with border demarcation. However, the situation continues to fester, mainly due to NCP intransigence. Bringing peace to the region will require addressing both the national political dimension between the NCP and the SPLM and the local dimension between the Ngok Dinka and the neighbouring Misseriya communities. The following five steps offer a way forward:

* The CPA’s international guarantors, led by the U.S., which authored the Abyei Protocol, must send a strong, coordinated message to the NCP that it is legally bound by the ABC report and expected to implement it in good faith. Those who signed the CPA, and who all need to become more active again, include Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, the U.S., the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and its International Partners Forum, the Arab League, the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU) and the European Union (EU).
* Crisis Group has argued in past reports for targeted, multilateral sanctions to influence the regime to implement its commitments under the CPA and in Darfur. Given the fragility of Abyei, pressure is urgently needed to obtain acceptance of the ABC report.
* Tension in and around Abyei must be de-escalated. The parties view the key measures – demarcation of boundaries and appointment of the local administration – as determining the likely outcome of the referendum and have dug in accordingly. The international community can help change this dynamic by facilitating independent dialogue between the Misseriya and Ngok Dinka in order to strengthen the guarantees for continued Misseriya grazing rights in Abyei beyond the referendum and by increasing development projects in Dinka and Misseriya areas. These efforts should be led by the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), with the full backing of the CPA’s international guarantors.
* Oil’s role in the impasse must be acknowledged and dealt with in good faith and the wealth-sharing provisions of the Abyei Protocol carried out. While Abyei’s oil is being depleted and revenue estimates beyond 2007 begin to drop significantly, existing fields contain the majority of oil in the North, and revenues from them are critical to the survival of the NCP. Crisis Group calculates that revenue from Abyei’s oilfields was roughly $599 million for 2005 and $670 million for 2006. We estimate it at $529 million for 2007. More generally, oil is tied directly to the CPA’s viability. The parties need to open a new, transparent dialogue on oil issues, including a plan to establish a revenue-sharing agreement between North and South beyond 2011, for the contingency that Abyei votes to join an independent South. The National Petroleum Commission, the joint NCP-SPLM oversight body created by the CPA, must be allowed to play its role and have direct access to all oil production-related data.
* The newly appointed head of UNMIS, Ashraf Qazi, should prioritise working with the parties to establish a demilitarised zone in Abyei in order to separate the militaries and reduce the risk of renewed conflict. Thousands of Misseriya troops have recently opted to join the SPLA, a move resented by the NCP, which led to a recent dangerous confrontation between army (SAF) and SPLA forces. While the focus should initially be on Abyei, a demilitarised zone could eventually be extended along the entire North-South border.

While it may have been common knowledge in the Dittohead universe that Rush Limbaugh was nominated for the Nobel Prize this year, the story went largely unreported out here in the real world.

Even though Limbaugh had no chance of winning, now that Al Gore has won the prize, Limbaugh is in a snit of jealousy:

LIMBAUGH: My lawyers at the Landmark Legal Foundation are looking into the possibility of filing an objection with the Nobel committee over the unethical tampering for this award that Al Gore is engaging in. This is clearly above and beyond the pale. I mean, this might happen in high school class president elections and so forth, but this is shameless.

Rush’s nomination sounds on the surface like a stunt dreamed up by Sascha Baron Cohen. A deeper dig reinforces this perception.

For starters, it appears that Limbaugh de facto nominated himself for the prize. The nomination went out under the letterhead of the Landmark foundation, a rightwing nonprofit for which Limbaugh is an unpaid advisor. (Landmark’s donors include relatives of Richard Melon Scaife, the Pittsburgh heir and newspaper publisher who funded the Arkansas Project, a smear campaign against the Clintons that served as the prototype for what we now know as Swiftboating.)

Landmark’s president, Mark Levin, is a snarling, unappealing ideologue who made his name in the 1990s as a Clinton-basher on cable news. Levin is a Rush acolyte and wannabe who even has his own talk show.

Landmark and Levin are essentially Limbaugh’s lapdogs. Even if the idea to nominate Rush didn’t come from Limbaugh himself, it had to have been done with his approval and guidance.

It is laughable to think that anyone as divisive and hateful as Rush Limbaugh would believe he had the remotest chance of winning a peace prize of any sort. And yet in his nomination of Limbaugh Levin cited Rush’s “nearly two decades of tireless efforts to promote liberty, equality and opportunity for all humankind, regardless of race, creed, economic stratum or national origin. These are the only real cornerstones of just and lasting peace throughout the world.”

Now that is funny.

But the main proof that the nomination was a publicity stunt is the fact that it had no official standing from the getgo:

Nominations for the Prize may be made by a broad array of qualified individuals, including former recipients, members of national assemblies and congresses, university professors (in certain disciplines), international judges, and special advisors to the Prize Committee. In some years as many as 199 nominations have been received. The Committee keeps the nominations secret and asks that nominators do the same. Over time many individuals have become known as “Nobel Peace Prize Nominees”, but this designation has no official standing.

Rush is so busy smearing 12 year olds and wounded veterans that it is doubtful he could have found the time to go to Norway to accept the award had he won. However, we’ll have to see if he and his lapdogs at Landmark will find the time to try to steal the limelight from Gore’s much-deserved win by launching a smear campaign against Gore and the Nobel committee.

So the people of this city have finally had enough of the homeless problem. Good, it’s about time, and let me say to all of you … “Welcome To the Club.” Because you can rest assured that every homeless advocate in this city is just as tired as you, and all of us are delighted that you finally came on board, even if you are about twenty years too late.

It was about that long ago when advocates for the homeless began asking for your cooperation in addressing this tragedy, but at that time all of you were turning your back on the problem because it wasn’t your community being affected by this crisis. All of you who now see the light and are so ready to begin pointing fingers, most likely at the ones victimized by this mess, must first point the finger at yourselves because you were forewarned at a time when it was a much simpler problem and solutions weren’t very far away. Now, unfortunately, it has developed into a nationwide tragedy, and as usual in this country, the ones who count the most (Joe Public) weren’t there when they were needed the most.

You were all kicked back enjoying the comforts of home and family while the less fortunate Americans were falling through the domestic cracks in this nation left and right. Your contention then at that time was to rely on the government to address the matter. It was their responsibility.

Remember when then President Ronald Reagan refused to acknowledge that there was a homeless problem in America? Ain’t that something.

The media, one of the biggest culprits in this mess, who are now fanning the flames of “can’t stand those homeless people,” had an opportunity to cooperate with us in addressing this mess. Yet they choose to play politics with the matter, wouldn’t print the truth, and kept the issue on the back burner so as to not upset whatever agenda was being fed to the public at that time by whoever was in charge.

Now here they are again with more of their hypocritical comments and attitudes concerning this mess, and once again helping to deceive the minds of this society as to the real nature of the problem, and as usual there are those of us living in denial as to our “social responsibility’ to the less-fortunate, which at one time was the ‘great American Way.’ Remember???

What we all must understand is that “homelessness” is America’s greatest failure, and it is a failure that we all must share as true Americans. It is a by-product of greed, selfishness and neglect that reaches far into the moral fiber of this nation. There are homeless families now, and none of you stood up to complain that children were being victimized by homelessness.

Quality of life issues? Defecating, urinating, and sleeping in your doorway? Homelessness is also dehumanizing, and hopelessness is its closest companion. How can we allow ‘hope’ to get lost in a nation as prosperous as America? Keeping hope alive is the ultimate mission of mankind, especially in America, the richest, most resourceful, and supposedly most compassionate nation on the planet.

Would you believe the number of veterans, those who have fought the wars of this nation to preserve our liberties and freedoms, who are homeless in this nation?

You’re fed up? How do you think they feel? How do you think the homeless mothers feel who have to get their kids ready for school in the back seat of her car, washing there faces in gas station restrooms and Mc Donalds? Don’t you think she is also sick and tired?

How do you think homeless seniors feel, who have worked all their lives, raised families, sent the kids to college, paid into the system and then find themselves living on the street or an S.R.O. because their Social Security check can’t pay the high-ass rent in this city because of the greedy landlords?

Don’t forget about adults with disabilities who sleep in ally-ways in their wheel chairs. You’re tired?

Okay, so now we are all tired at the same time…so where do we go from here tired San Franciscans? But hold on for a minute because the game cant began until all the players are on the field. Wait until the problem reaches the doorsteps of those on Russian Hill, Twin Peaks, The Sunset, etc., then we can start talking to one another about a solution. The bringing together of the class structure of this city will be done when everybody wakes up one day and finds poop on one of their corners and someone sleeping in their doorway.

One thing that Mayor Gavin Newsom has been saying to all of you all along is that San Francisco can solve its own homeless problem, and I sincerely believe that. But we have got to work together to get it done. So keep on getting tired, scream at the top of your voice, get frustrated, and throw tantrums.

When you get finished and come back down to earth, stop by and let’s see what we “ALL” can do to address this problem. Until then, “SHUT UP” cause we already told you that one day this day will come.

After reading Stephen Steinberg’s Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Beacon, 1995), I could not understand why he was not more famous. After all, Steinberg’s book so discredited the empirical basis of William Julius Wilson’s prominent work, The Declining Significance of Race, that Wilson publicly conceded his faulty analysis. But after reading Steinberg’s new book, Race Relations: A Critique, his lack of prominence is understandable. Steinberg insists on exposing the hypocrisy, careerism and outright dishonesty of much of the field of sociology, and identifies the individual and organizational offenders. Arguing that sociology has long provided “legitimacy for a racist order,” Steinberg shows how politicians like Bill Clinton touted questionable studies arguing that the African-American community needed only class, rather than race, based solutions. Steinberg’s discussion of ongoing racial injustice may not be popular in today’s allegedly “post racism” era, but he has again written a “must read” book for our time.

In a book of only 147 pages, Stephen Steinberg explained how an academic, foundation, and political “infrastructure” promotes a “racism is not the problem” agenda while urging exclusively class-based solutions to the crisis in the black community.

Steinberg begins by showing how the academic discipline of sociology has long relied on a “race relations” model that ignored—even in the worst days of Jim Crow laws—the racial oppression of African-Americans. He does this in the most entertaining fashion, describing how academics fit their theories of race so as to reaffirm a racist status quo backed by wealthy donors to foundations and influential schools like the University of Chicago.

Steinberg then shows the contemporary relevance of this pattern of building prominent sociology careers by legitimizing racial oppression in the skyrocketing career of William Julius Wilson. Wilson may be America’s best known sociologist, a fame entirely derived from a book — The Declining Significance of Race — whose message that blacks were victims of class rather than race bias warmed the hearts of affirmative action opponents and others uncomfortable with race-based solutions.

One of Wilson’s greatest champions was former President Bill Clinton. Those still romanticizing over the Clinton years should read Steinberg’s account of the President’s 1997 race initiative. Described as a National Conversation on Race, the initiative ignored the continuation of institutionalized racial oppression against blacks, and instead preached “dialogue” to foster racial harmony.

Steinberg points out that the Kerner Commission report issued after the riots of the 1960’s acknowledged institutional racism and called for economic development and assistance to low-income black communities. Thirty years later, President Clinton presided over a report that stressed tolerance and understanding, ignoring the institutional forces—such as racial bias in lending, racial profiling by police etc—that continue to undermine African-American progress.

Steinberg discusses how the theories of Wilson and others are boosted because they provide cover for politicians like the Clintons who do not want to address such issues as affirmative action, school resegregation, and the hugely disproportionate presence of blacks in the criminal justice system (recall that President Clinton endorsed the racial double standard whereby crack cocaine users (disproportionately black) get long mandatory sentences while those ingesting the powdered form of cocaine (typically white and more affluent) get lighter penalties).

Steinberg notes that subsuming race to class served the interest of both the left and right. Much of the left prefers class-based solutions, and views racially-specific programs like affirmative action as dividing the working class.

Conservatives have long opposed measures to address racial injustice. And the removal of race-based measures from the political landscape has not led the right to support universal health care, increased education or housing spending, or a wide-range of other class-based solutions

In addition to setting the record straight about race, Steinberg also tackles ethnicity.

Remember the “Melting Pot”? This was the idea that immigrants came to the United States and were “melted and fused” into Americans. Prior to World War II, the notion that immigrants became fully assimilated into Americans was quite popular, with the maintaining of a distinct ethnicity a “relic of the past.”

But after World War II, the idea emerged that immigrants had not really assimilated. As Moynihan and Glazer’s “Beyond the Melting Pot” concluded, “the melting pot did not happen.”

But as Steinberg shows, this attempt to revive the notion of the “white ethnic” ignored the fact that, other than Native Americans and Chicanos, European immigrants had almost completely assimilated. He describes how “the grandchildren of immigrants had largely forsaken their ancestral language and culture, “ while 1990 Census data shows that only 20% of U.S. born white of immigrant background were married to spouses from the identical ethnic heritage.

Steinberg’s point is that the dominant view that assimilation did not happen and that unique ethnic identities are secure conceals the real and pervasive threats to constituencies seeking to preserve their traditional cultures. In other words, at the same time that the public is told that maintaining one’s Irish, French, German, Polish or Scottish identity is a good thing, there is a push across the United States to ban bilingual education, limit bilingual ballots, and to otherwise force immigrant groups (particularly Latinos from Mexico) to conform to the dominant culture.

Steinberg sees the sociology field as facilitating what he calls “wishful thinking” about assimilation. This phrase might have become the book title, as Steinberg conclusively shows how elite “wishes” for a racially just society have become a substitute for the concrete actions necessary to achieve this result.

Steinberg’s refusal to bend his analysis to the prevailing political and academic winds may not have helped his career, but it makes Race Relations a particularly valuable read. Let’s hope we will not have to wait another decade for his next book, for Steinberg’s voice cannot be heard too often.

If you’re not on the list, you’re not getting on

10/13/07 “The Register” — – Under new rules proposed by the Transport Security Administration (TSA) (pdf), all airline passengers would need advance permission before flying into, through, or over the United States regardless of citizenship or the airline’s national origin.

Currently, the Advanced Passenger Information System, operated by the Customs and Border Patrol, requires airlines to forward a list of passenger information no later than 15 minutes before flights from the US take off (international flights bound for the US have until 15 minutes after take-off). Planes are diverted if a passenger on board is on the no-fly list.

The new rules mean this information must be submitted 72 hours before departure. Only those given clearance will get a boarding pass. The TSA estimates that 90 to 93 per cent of all travel reservations are final by then.

The proposed rules require the following information for each passenger: full name, sex, date of birth, and redress number (assigned to passengers who use the Travel Redress Inquiry Program because they have been mistakenly placed on the no-fly list), and known traveller number (once there is a programme in place for registering known travellers whose backgrounds have been checked). Non-travellers entering secure areas, such as parents escorting children, will also need clearance.

The TSA held a public hearing in Washington DC on 20 September, which heard comments from both privacy advocates and airline industry representatives from Qantas, the Regional Airline Association, IATA, and the American Society of Travel Agents. The privacy advocates came from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Identity Project. All were negative.

The proposals should be withdrawn entirely, argued Edward Hasbrouck, author of The Practical Nomad and the leading expert on travel data privacy. “Obscured by the euphemistic language of ‘screening’ is the fact that travellers would be required to get permission before they can travel.”

Hasbrouck submitted that requiring clearance in order to travel violates the US First Amendment right of assembly, the central claim in John Gilmore’s case against the US government over the requirement to show photo ID for domestic travel.

In addition, the TSA is required to study the impact of the proposals on small economic entities (such as sole traders). Finally, the TSA provides no way for individuals to tell whether their government-issued ID is actually required by law, opening the way for rampant identity theft.

ACLU’s Barry Steinhardt quoted press reports of 500,000 to 750,000 people on the watch list (of which the no-fly list is a subset). “If there are that many terrorists in the US, we’d all be dead.”

TSA representative Kip Hawley noted that the list has been carefully investigated and halved over the last year. “Half of grossly bloated is still bloated,” Steinhardt replied.

The airline industry representatives’ objections were largely logistical. They argued that the 60-day timeframe the TSA proposes to allow for implementation from the publication date of the final rules is much too short. They want a year to revamp many IT systems, especially, as the Qantas representative said, as no one will start until they’re sure there will be no further changes.

In addition, many were concerned about the impact on new, convenient and cash-saving technologies, such as checking in at home, or storing a boarding pass in a PDA.

One additional point, also raised by Hasbrouck: the data the TSA requires will be collected by the airlines who presumably will keep it for their own purposes – a “government-coerced informational windfall”, he called it.

These are the end times for Bush and his rancid brain trust. The White House has crossed the loony tunes threshold into legacy land and you can forget about governance as we toboggan towards November 2008 and beyond. From here on out it will all be magnified photo ops and manipulated mythification as Bushwa seeks to lie his way into history: St. George as the slayer of greenhouse gases; St. George, protector of Buddhist monks; St. George crusading for peace in the Middle East–in the last months of their respective regimes, U.S. presidents believe they have a biblical injunction to settle the Holy Land’s hash.

It’s all such bad magic realism that if Garcia Marquez were really dead, he would be twirling in his sarcophagus.

One of the more bizarre adagios in this dance of death has been MoveOn Dot Org’s “General Betray Us” flapdoodle. After the now notorious ad ran in the New York Times on the eve of the sixth anniversary of 9/11, Bush, who deemed the display “disgusting”, sicced Freedom’s Watch, a Cheneyesque dogpack under the direction of once-upon-a-time White House mouthpiece Ari Fleischer, on anti-war liberals, igniting the bonfires of vanity on the pages of the paper of record.

The Democratic-controlled Senate followed in lock step by condemning MoveOn by a 72 to 25 vote. Despite Hillary’s nay (she would vote yay on bombing Iran a week later), the defeat was even more lopsided than the Dems suffered in their flawed and feeble efforts to cut funding and mess with troop levels in Iraq. As is his custom, Obama abstained on both votes.

If you still think these bozos are going to get “our boys” out of Iraq when they actually do move on to the White House in ’09, you are afflicted with terminal denial.

The Dems’ rationale for crucifying their bosom buddies over at the dot org was that by punning on General Petraeus’s good name, the MoveOners were “personalizing” opposition to Bush’s genocide and moreover gifting the Republicans with “talking points” on the 24-hour news cycle. This is what being against the slaughter in Iraq boils down to here in the end times. Talking Points. Even flaming liberals like Norman (“War Made Easy”) Soloman lipsynched this garbage.

The actuality is that General Betray Us marched up to the Hill on maximum anti-Islam day to hoopla his boss’s doomed surge, spout mendacious, cherry-picked stats, and con a congress only too eager to be conned into giving the Casa Blanca carte blanche to conduct its bloody business as usual in Iraq until Bush hands off the baton of war to Hillary or whoever to sink even deeper in the quagmire.

My most acute quibble with the MoveOn Moment is that the ad enhanced the fatal illusion that Petraeus would present an unbiased report to the American People and therefore he “betrayed us” with his self-serving lies. Even the latest revolving door chief of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral William Fallon was forced to concede to congress days later that Petraeus, the commandant in charge of this catastrophe, was obligated to hype the dubious success of Bush’s surge –and, indeed, would have been fired if he had told the truth. Although the blindman’s vision is permanently shrouded, I could see the Bush-Petraeus sucker punch coming at us from a thousand light years away.

Nonetheless, MoveOn’s dissing of a decorated general, which Bush found so “disgusting”, was a public service. I am thoroughly sickened by the “our boys” syndrome that makes any criticism of the homicidal behavior of U.S. troops from Haditha to Fallujah to Abu Ghraib to Blackwater to army sniper Jose Sandoval’s 44-day sentence for murdering two Iraqi farmers (“I was only following orders”) tantamount to treason.

Now with Hollywood busily transforming these murderers into victims on the big screen–witness this perverse role reversal in Tommy Lee Jones’s “Valley of Enah”–the MoveOn move on Betray Us is fair game for flag-waving lynchmobbers like Freedom’s Watch to buy up full-page NYT same-day display ads by the metric ton.

Tagging middle-of-the-roaders like MoveOn “extremists” is further proof, if ever we needed it, of how far right the center of gravity has shifted here in the homeland. In fact, the General Betray Us ad was probably MoveOn’s most intrepid single act of public defiance since the dot.org was invented by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and bankrolled by George Soros’s tainted millions for the 2004 rollover. Up until Betray Us, MoveOn had an unsavory track record. Its mass text messaging to 3.3 million customers last March urging them to endorse the Dems’ refunding of Bush’s holocaust was a stab in the eye of the U.S. anti-war movement and more pertinently, the Iraqi people.

MoveOn and its unindicted co-conspirators such as Orson Wells look-alike Tom Matzzie who heads up the curiously-named “Americans Against Escalation In Iraq” (sic) hoodwink distracted citizens into feeling good about being against the war by doing a little lite e-lobbying from the comfort of their home entertainment centers before driving down to the mall to consume what’s left on the shelves of America (watch out for the lead-painted Barbies) and destroy the remnants of Planet Earth. MoveOn and its cybernetic ilk drain the passion from protest and sell us yet another degree of separation from the horror.

Of course the big winner in the General Betray Us kafuffle is the New York Times (which is now billing itself as “the center of the universe” in in-house full-page daily display ads.) Not only did Move On shell out nearly $150,000 in tax-deductible alms for the ad but the paper subsequently amassed another seventy grand from the ghoulish Rudy Giuliani who seized this golden opportunity to hook up Hillary and the dot orgers, charging them with subversion and sedition for questioning the General’s bonafides.

His taste for blood still unslaked, Rudy went for the NYT’s jugular, alleging that the Gray Lady of 43rd Street had extended MoveOn a stand-by discount on a same day rate due to ideological coalescence. The Times, reporting on itself, denied the bias in news stories published on its own pages and soothed Giuliani’s vitriol by running a front page profile of the former mayor that was flagrantly uncritical of his performance on 9/11. Meanwhile the NYT continues to clean up on Freedom’s Watch and Save Darfour full pagers. In fact, the Betray Us flap has proven a win-win proposition for all concerned except the Iraqi people–MoveOn itself took in a half million in donations generated by the ad.

U.S. genocide in Iraq will not be staunched by full page displays in the paper of record or e-mailing the warmongers in congress any more than it will be by electing Democrats to high office. Yet this is what’s on the docket for the anti-war movement after five and a half years of butchery in Iraq as the bi-annual protest pageant conflates with the opening salvos of the primary season.

The virtual has obliterated the visceral. MoveOn’s new improved style of no-risk dissent means no one is to blame for the million Iraqis who have been murdered in our name. You won’t smell the stench of burning flesh on YouTube or MySpace.

On November 2nd 1965, Norman Morrison, a fanatical Quaker extremist and self-appointed saint, went to the Pentagon with his baby daughter in his arms, handed her to a passer-by, splashed kerosene upon his person, sat down under Robert McNamara’s window, and struck a match, emulating Buddhist monks in Saigon who had taken to immolating themselves to protest a dictatorial U.S. puppet regime. The scent of Morrison’s sizzling flesh is said to have wafted all the way up to the Secretary of Defense’s nostrils.

Although his suicide did not immediately change McNamara’s dedication to destroying Vietnam, Norman Morrison became an instant martyr amongst the enemy. Poems were written celebrating his act of desperation, streets were named after him in Hanoi, postage stamps printed with his likeness.

Norman Morrison was not the first American to burn him or her self to protest the Vietnam War. Eight months previous, Alice Herz, an octogenarian peace activist, immolated herself on a Detroit street corner. A week after Morrison struck the match, Roger Allen Laporte repeated the act in New York City. Eight Americans would set themselves on fire to try and stop the bloodletting in Vietnam. Only one U.S. citizen, Malachi Ritscher, a jazz musician, has done so to protest the massacre in Iraq. Ritscher burnt himself alive in Chicago November 2nd 2006 to mark the 41st anniversary of Norman Morrison’s immolation.

Modest proposals are a dime a dozen so here’s my two cents worth. Given Tom Matzzie’s Wellsian girth, I think he should consider sauntering over to the Pentagon this November 2nd and throwing himself on the griddle a la Norman Morrison, an act of culinary justice that would certainly make a more impressive statement against this terrible war than one more full page ad in the New York Times or yet another e-mail to the White House or your congressperson could ever accomplish.

The meeting at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 5, 2007 was anything but routine. Seated before Cong. John Olver (D-MA) were twenty seasoned citizens from over a dozen municipalities in this First Congressional District which embraces the lovely Berkshire Hills.

The subject-impeachment of George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney.

The request-that Cong. Olver join the impeachment drive in Congress.

More than just opinion was being conveyed to Cong. Olver, a then 70 year old Massachusetts liberal with a Ph.D. in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These Americans voted overwhelmingly during formal annual town meetings in 14 towns and two cities in the First District endorsing resolutions to impeach the President and Vice President.

Presented in the form of petitions to be sent to the Congress, the approving citizenry cited at least four “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

They included the initiation of the Iraq war based on defrauding the public and intentionally misleading the Congress, spying on Americans without judicial authorization, committing the torture of prisoners in violation of both federal law and the U.N. Torture Convention and the Geneva Convention, and stripping American citizens of their Constitutional rights by jailing them indefinitely without charges and without access to legal counsel or even an opportunity to challenge their imprisonment in a court of law.

Forty towns in Vermont and the State Senate had already presented their Congressional delegation with similar petitions.

Impeachment advocates reported the results to Cong. Olver from each town meeting. Leverett’s vote was 339-1; Great Barrington was 100-3. No vote in any of the towns or cities was less than a two-third majority “yes” in favor of impeachment, according to long-time activist, Atty. Robert Feuer of Stockbridge, Mass.

With three fourths of reports completed Cong. Olver, who voted against the war, raised his hand and said, “Spare me, I know full well the overwhelming majority of my constituency is in favor of impeachment.” He then told them he would not sign on to any impeachment resolution whether against Bush or against Cheney (H.Res. 333 introduced by Cong. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)). He was quite adamant.

In taking this unrepresentative position, Rep. Olver’s position was identical to that of the House Democratic leadership and many of his Democratic colleagues.

The Democratic Party line on impeachment is that Bush and Cheney are the most impeachable White House duo in American history (they believe this privately). The Democrats do not want to distract attention from their legislative agenda, and need Republican votes for passage. Moreover, they do not have the votes to obtain the requisite two-thirds of the members present for conviction in the Senate.

Strangely, none of these excuses bothered Republicans when they impeached Bill Clinton in the House for lying under oath about sex and proceeded to a full trial in the Senate where they failed to get the required votes. Can Clinton’s “high crimes and misdemeanors” begin to compare with this White House crime wave?

The last question to Cong. Olver was from a young veteran back from Iraq and Afghanistan. “What could we possibly do to bring you around to our way of thinking,” he asked?

Cong. Olver’s response, after several seconds of silence, was “You have to prove to me that impeachment will not be counterproductive.”

Members of Congress should apply the same standard to themselves that they like to apply to members of the Executive and Judicial branches-namely to honor their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. That Oath is supposed to transcend political calculations.

Maybe the Democrats think that Bush and Cheney are such wild and crazy guys that a serious impeachment drive in Congress would provoke the two draft-dodgers to launch a military emergency, strike Iran or otherwise generate a crisis, based on their continual fulminations about the “war on terror,” that would engulf the Democrats and throw them on the defensive for 2008.

In short, the Democrats may be viewing Bush and Cheney as being so defiantly, aggressively impeachable on so many counts as to be unimpeachable. That is, with the White House harboring so much political nitroglycerine, don’t even try to remove it.

Cluster B Personality Disorders: 1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder

The essential features of Americanistic Personality Disorder include pervasive patterns of extreme self-absorption, profound and long-term lapses in empathy, a deep disregard for the well-being of others, a powerful aversion to intellectual honesty and reality, and a grossly exaggerated sense of the importance of one’s self and one’s nation. These patterns emerge in infancy, manifest themselves in nearly all contexts, and often become pathological.

These patterns have also been characterized as sociopathic, or colloquially as the “Ugly American Syndrome.” Note that the latter terminology carries too benign a connotation to accurately describe an individual afflicted with such a dangerous perversion of character.

For this diagnosis to be given, the individual must be deeply immersed in the flag-waving, nationalistic, and militaristic fervor derived primarily from the nearly perpetual barrage of reality warping emanations of the “mainstream media,” most commonly through the medium of television. Typically indoctrinated from birth to believe that they are morally superior, exceptional human beings, these individuals suffer from severe egocentrism, a condition further engendered by the prevalence of the acutely toxic dominant paradigm known as capitalism.

Individuals with Americanistic Personality Disorder are generally covertly racist, xenophobic, and openly species-istic. They readily participate in the execution of heinous crimes against human and non-human animals, even if their complicity is banal and limited. As long as they are comfortable, safe, and enjoying the relative affluence and convenience afforded by their nation’s economic extortion, cultural genocide, rape of other species and the environment, and imperial conquests, such individuals display an apathetic disregard for the well-being of other human beings, sentient creatures, and the environment.

Individuals with Americanistic Personality Disorder tend to exhibit unabated greed and an insatiable desire for material goods. Fueled by a compulsion to shop and acquire excessive amounts of material goods, a condition sometimes referred to as consumerism, they have no regard for the misery and destruction caused by their pathological need for “more stuff”. When confronted with the finitude and fragility of the Earth, they frequently react with level one ego defenses by denying that their behavior is a part of the problem or by distorting reality by asserting that concerns about Climate Change, resource depletion, and irreversible damage to the environment are over-blown. Their deeply entrenched sense of entitlement renders excessive consumption a nearly immutable aspect of their behavior.

Individuals with Americanistic Personality Disorder are virtually devoid of empathy or compassion. They view life as a game played by “law of the jungle” rules and co-exist with others in a chronic state of hyper-competitiveness, seeking only to advance their careers and “keep up with the Joneses.” Their desire to win, get ahead and “protect what is theirs” has been so deeply etched into their psyches that their capacity to empathize and experience true concern for the well-being of others is severely stunted or extinguished. The pursuit of property, profit, and power rules their malformed psyches, nearly eliminating their capacity for humane behavior.

Individuals with Americanistic Personality Disorder almost always rely on extortion or violence to get their needs met and to resolve conflict. Believing in their inherent superiority, they eschew laws or rules except when they can utilize them for personal gain or when they fear punishment. Given a choice between a just resolution to a situation and the opportunity to humiliate, subdue, or subjugate the other party, they will choose the latter with a high degree of frequency. They have an amazing capacity to justify their unethical or criminal behavior using false pretexts such as self defense, good intentions, ignorance of the consequences of their actions, or asserting that they were merely carrying out orders.

Individuals with Americanistic Personality Disorder tend to manifest traits indicative of two of Erich Fromm’s personality orientations. They thrive on adding to their possessions (and appreciate their acquisitions more) when they attain them through coercion, theft, or manipulation, thus showing strains of Fromm’s exploitative type. They also exist at a very superficial level, offering the world the “friendly face” of the marketing personality that Bernays and Madison Avenue have taught them is the most effective way of advancing their selfish agenda. Opportunism, careerism, and narcissism poison nearly all of their interactions and relationships.

Specific Culture and Gender Features

Americanistic Personality Disorder appears to prevail in a very high percentage of those in the upper strata of the socioeconomic order in the United States (and to persist tenaciously because these individuals have little motivation to alter their pathological behavior as they are largely immune from the consequences of their actions). While it is epidemic amongst the opulent, this characterological deficiency does not recognize socioeconomic boundaries. Various segments of the middle, working and impoverished classes comprise a notable percentage of those exhibiting this condition, including those practicing deeply conservative Christianity, many residents of reactionary states such as those in the south, Kansas, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming, and many members of the Republican Party.

Prevalence

The overall prevalence of Americanistic Personality Disorder was recently measured at approximately 35% of the overall population in the United States.

Diagnostic Criteria for 1776.0 Americanistic Personality Disorder:

A pervasive pattern of greed, selfishness, and lack of empathy, beginning the moment he or she begins to intellectualize and presented in nearly all contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. lacks empathy due to an excessive degree of self-absorption
2. believes that he or she is exceptional and morally superior
3. frequently engages in exploitative behaviors
4. requires frequent acquisition of goods he or she doesn’t need
5. usually resorts to some form of overt or covert violence, coercion, or extortion to resolve conflicts
6. perceives others as obstacles to his or her “success”
7. disregards laws and rules except as a means to achieve his or her agenda
8. demonstrates deep hypocrisy by projecting a righteous, benevolent image while committing reprehensible acts
9. refuses to accept the consequences of his or her actions