|
December 2004 Articles
|
||
|
DV Articles
November 2003
|
(A)
That Americans will set aside issues of color, nationality, religion, and
political beliefs and truly care as much about the staggering number of
Tsunami-catastrophe victims as they do about the victims of 9/11. And, in
light of this caring, that the US's 277 billionaires will leap into the
breach left by President Bush's inadequate offering of $35 million dollars
of aid (which was a full $33 million short of the $68 million offered by
the considerably poorer nation of Spain). That each of the said
billionaires will give 10% of their total assets to relief and
reconstruction efforts in India, Southeast Asia and East Africa. Since
this still would leave about ½ of US billionaires with a generous
$900,000,000 each in assets (surely enough for even the most rapacious of
individuals) it seems an eminently reasonable and fair proposition. Given
that the remaining ½ of US billionaires are not billionaires, but, in
fact, multi-billionaires, with assets ranging from 5 billion, 8 billion,
11 billion and up to 48 billion dollars, a 20% gift of each one's total
assets would also be nice. (Credit is due to Bill Gates for having
already coughed up $3 million for this effort, though arguably it's a
modest donation for someone worth $48 billion.)....(full wish list)
The Aftermath in Aceh
Thousands missing, refugee camps lacking
food and water, mass graves: in the aftermath of the 9.0 magnitude
earthquake and tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean basin on December 26,
2004, these images have come to identify Aceh in the world’s eyes. As of
this writing, more than 80,000 Acehnese are reported killed by the
disaster; hundreds of thousands are displaced, facing disease and
starvation. Data from Aceh’s southwestern coast, nearest the epicenter, is
only beginning to emerge due to destruction of already poor infrastructure
in those isolated communities. As the area suffering the most direct hit
from the great quake and the colossal waves, Aceh was strangely missing
from early reports of the catastrophe, although we quickly learned that
Exxon’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants were safe. Only part of this
can be blamed on the international media penchant to zoom in on
English-speaking tourists and celebrities at exclusive resorts, for the
province has been virtually closed to international press and humanitarian
agencies since the Indonesian military occupation of the region began....
As the body count from the tsunami rises, America’s international reputation plummets to new depths, thanks to the Bush administration’s smugly incompetent response....(full article)
As the magnitude of the catastrophe begins
to sink in, there is a danger that we will grow numb to the growing death
toll, the massive destruction, and the daunting need that must be
fulfilled if we are to avoid a health crisis that will surpass the initial
damage. Four
days after the cruelest full moon in recorded history, the dead and
wounded of the Sumatra quake has surpassed the casualties of the Iraq war
and December 26, 2004 has supplanted September 11, 2001 as the date of the
new millennium that will live in infamy. Future generations will ask: How
did we respond in the hour of need? Inescapably, they will judge us by
our answer....(full article)
New Year Bageantry Richard Oxman interviews Joe Bageant, whose evocative essays are among the finest anywhere, and a real American treasure....(full interview)
Are you a donor to Israeli universities?” the anonymous writer asks. “Learn what is happening on Israeli campuses. Be informed about what is being done with your gifts and generosity.” These are the opening lines to a preposterous and dangerous new website called Israel Academia Monitor. Presenting itself as a human rights movement of sorts, it declares that its aim is to bring to light abuses of academic freedom. Its nameless perpetrators consider themselves to be not only defenders of free speech but anti-McCarthyist campaigners. The McCarthyists here are Israeli professors like myself who are critical of Israel’s rights-abusive policies while being inspired by a deep concern for Israel’s population and the occupied Palestinians. Apparently, our offence against free speech is that we do not allow zealous nationalists to voice their views – an absurd allegation considering that for some years now the balance of power within Israel has been tilted firmly towards the right....(full article)
Port au Prince, Haiti (HIP)- The
US-installed regime of Gerard Latortue has begun making compensation
payments to Haiti’s former brutal military in an apparent move to reward
them for their role in overthrowing the democratically elected government
of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide....
Two newspaper vendors flew out of Newark
Airport on 11 September 2001. Gul Mohammed Shah and Mohammed Azmath were
apprehended the next day on a train, allegedly with box cutters. They
reported facing numerous abuses while detained in New York and New Jersey,
including being slammed, shackled, into walls. Prompted by the media, a
government investigation found videos of guards doing essentially what
these detainees recounted. Federal officials would later clear the pair of
terrorism ties and charge them with credit card fraud. Within weeks of the
fatal Tuesday, Long Island convenience store clerk Javaid Iqbal
(originally of Pakistan) and Times Square restaurateur Ehab Elmaghraby (of
Egypt) arrived at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center. They sued,
charging that guards had kicked them, dragged them, slammed them into
walls, cursed them as “terrorists” and “Muslim bastards,” and subjected
them to needless strip-searches, including one during which guards pushed
a flashlight into Elmaghraby’s rectum, then denied him medical help.
Elmaghraby was taken from his Queens flat when agents were investigating
the building’s owner, who had once applied for flight lessons. Iqbal was
arrested by agents apparently following a tip about false identification
cards. In his apartment they found a Time magazine showing the trade
towers in flames and an immigration receipt indicating that Iqbal was in
Manhattan on the 11th of September. Elmaghraby and Iqbal eventually
pleaded guilty to minor criminal charges unrelated to terrorism, they
maintain, only to escape the torment they endured for the better part of a
year. They were then deported....(full
article)
President Bush’s “Appropriate” Response
On Sunday, Dec. 26, an earthquake-triggered
tsunami with an effect of 1,000 miles from its epicenter in the Indian
Ocean near Sumatra devastated 12 countries. Within hours, numerous
countries and private social service agencies had begun massive relief
operations. President George W. Bush, vacationing on his ranch in
Crawford, Texas, made no public statements. His press office, however,
released a 121-word press expressing the President’s “condolences,” and
that the Bush Administration would provide all “appropriate assistance” to
the affected nations. The statement did not directly quote the President.
In contrast, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder cut short his vacation to
return to Berlin. On Monday, Bush’s deputy press secretary indicated that
Bush “received a special briefing” about the tragedy,” that the
administration’s “thoughts and prayers are with all those who are
suffering,” and that the U.S. “will be a leading partner” in relief
operations. On Tuesday, the President bicycled and continued to clear
brush from his ranch. He said nothing to the American public, to the
media, or to the international community. However, the deputy press
secretary did say that the President was “saddened and has extended his
condolences for this terrible tragedy.” When challenged as to why the
public silence, a White House official bluntly stated, “The President
wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn’t want to make a
symbolic statement about, ‘We feel your pain.’” It was an excuse for why
the man who believes he is a “compassionate conservative” once again
failed to speak out during yet another extended vacation.....(full
article)
It took President Bush three days to ready himself to go before the television cameras and make a public statement about Sunday's devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck southern Asia. Even though he was late, and much more money will be needed, the president pledged at least $35 million in aid to the victims of the disaster. But, as of December 30, some of the president's major family-values constituents have yet to be heard from: It's business as usual at the web sites of the American Family Association, the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America, and the Coral Ridge Ministries. These powerful and well-funded political Christian fundamentalist organizations appear to be suffering from a compassion deficit. Organizations which are amazingly quick to organize to fight against same-sex marriage, a woman's right to choose, and embryonic stem cell research are missing in action when it comes to responding to the disaster in southern Asia. None of their web sites are actively soliciting aid for the victims of the earthquake/tsunami....(full article)
How
does one comprehend the magnitude, impact, and context of a disaster that
may claim more than 100,000 lives? But enough about the U.S. occupation of
Iraq. The recent earthquake/tsunami in Asia raises more questions than
answers. Here's a start:....(full
article)
Tsunami Disaster
Highlights Corporate Media Hypocrisy The terrible earthquake/tsunami disaster, along coastlines of the Indian Ocean, left tens of thousands dead and many times more people homeless and weakened. Front pages news stories swept the US corporate media -- 12,000 dead, 40,000, 60,000 and 100,000 made progressive day by day headlines. Twenty-four hour TV news provided minute by minute updates with added photos and live aerial shots of the effected regions. As the days after unfolded, personal stories of survival and loss were added to the overall coverage. Unique stories such as the 20 day old miracle baby found floating on a mattress, and the eight year old who lost both parents and later found by her uncle, were human interest features. Individualized reports from Americans caught in the catastrophe made national news and numbers of Europeans, and North Americans involved were a key part of the continuing story. US embassies set up hotlines for relatives of possible victims to seek information. Quickly added into the corporate media mix was coverage on how the US was responding with relief aid and dollars. In Crawford, Texas President Bush announced that he had formed an international coalition to respond to the massive tsunami disaster....(full article)
Harry Kelber's "Did AFL-CIO's Total Silence on War in Iraq Hurt Kerry's Chances to Win Presidency?" (Portside, December 24, 2004) is an illogical piece. Kelber is of course quite right to point out that the AFL-CIO's virtual silence on the war on Iraq during the election campaign was disastrous. But how can he possibly maintain, as he does in his article, that "Kerry would have received a lot more than his 65% share of the labor vote, if the AFL-CIO had tapped into the anti-war movement, where polls showed that about half of the American people believed the war in Iraq was a mistake and were critical of the Bush administration for not having an exit plan." In fact, the AFL-CIO's silence on Iraq was the perfect companion to its enthusiastic support for John Kerry, since he was totally incapable of tapping into and building popular anti-war sentiment because of his vote to give Bush a blank check to invade Iraq, his repeated intonations that once the invasion took place the U.S. couldn't just "cut and run," and his call for a suppose "exit strategy" based on the vain (and reactionary) hope that other wealthy countries would join in the American imperial venture in Iraq....(full article)
Ralph Nader ran as an independent candidate
in 2004 for US President. Unlike both John Kerry and George W. Bush, Nader
unequivocally opposed the US invasion of Iraq. During his candidacy, Nader
embraced single-payer health care and tackled numerous issues ignored by
the two major parties' candidates, including the proliferation of the
racist prison-industrial complex, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and
increasing concentration of corporate power. If the Democrats continued to
adopt "Bush-lite" policies, argued Nader, they might well lose the
election by alienating their traditional base. Nader's run earned harsh
scorn from Democrats and many of his former supporters in 2000, such as
Medea Benjamin, Norman Solomon, and Jeff Cohen. Yet in light of emerging
post-election commentary partially attributing the Democrats' loss to the
party's tepid economic policies, many of Nader's campaign arguments now
seem utterly prophetic in hindsight. In a recent article blasting John
Kerry's hasty election concession, Harper's Magazine publisher Rick
MacArthur expressed regret over not voting for Nader. This is one of
Nader's first in-depth interviews since the election. In it, he offers his
insights on the election outcome and the future of American politics....
By now you've seen the headline: Kerry Files Motion to Protect Ohio Vote Evidence. Excuse me while I ... I would have said "puke", but there's nothing left to come up. Everyone who is not inside the Kerry/ABB tent who has been following the Kerry campaign and the Ohio recount effort, has already been dry heaving for months. When are all those good, honest-to-a-fault people going to climb out of the trenches of democracy and admit they've been hosed? (full article)
As a California public school teacher, I have witnessed, over the past decade, a gradual evolution in the content standards that govern the teaching of social studies in our state’s middle schools. I use the term “evolution” advisedly here, for no matter how diligently I search these standards, I find in them no evidence of “intelligent design,” human or celestial. There is abundant evidence of something else, however, namely an attempt by state legislators to pack these standards so tightly with historical minutia, as to necessitate the abandonment of broader historical issues, largely due to time constraints. This trend is, I suspect, not entirely accidental....(full article)
I was quite pained to learn just now of the death of Susan Sontag, who left us this morning at 7:00 AM in New York. I first encountered Susan on the page when I was a teenager, through her groundbreaking essays in the Partisan Review--where she helped introduce Americans to European intellectuals of the first rank. . . . We became friends, and I passed many agreeable hours in her company in the years before I left for France. On several occasions we shared a joint together--although I felt rather guilty about giving one to her, as she had already had lung problems and bouts of cancer. Most of the obituaries will undoubtedly speak of Susan's brilliance. But I also remember her humor and wit, her love of gossip, her openness to the new, her capacity for lucid self-analysis, her ravishing smile, and her distinctive laugh....(external link)
By the winter of 2001, hundreds of dark-haired men became immigration detainees, prisoners doing time for a hideous crime that none of them had committed. The domestic roundup was linked to a broader hunt, one of international proportions. Congress hadn’t declared war. “But we are at war with an enemy that has flagrantly violated the laws of war,” the Bush administration responded. “They do not wear uniforms. They hide in caves abroad, and among us here at home.” Thus, George W. Bush issued an order proclaiming that non-citizens, including legal residents, may be taken into military custody to be judged without public trial or jury, but by military commissions that may issue death sentences through a two-thirds vote. Bush’s administration later posited that even a citizen may be classified as a combatant and detained without access to a lawyer or the courts. According to a Newsweek report, Bush administration officials considered dubbing other citizens enemy combatants -- including an Ohio truck driver and a group of people from Oregon. In the summer of 2004, Yaser Hamdi was freed from prolonged detention without being charged with terror-related activity, but through this case the Supreme Court gave backhanded support to Bush’s military order. Most startling of all, Hamdi was obliged to give up U.S. citizenship. Those without citizenship were kept -- pun oddly appropriate -- at bay. It was January of 2002 when U.S. authorities began transporting captives from abroad to a military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to cage them in wire mesh. People from around 40 countries would linger indefinitely; some of them children and teens. The base still holds some 550 captives; only four have been charged with crimes. Former hostage Terry Waite stated: “This continued detention of people in Guantánamo Bay is doing fundamental harm to the image of America overseas, and in fact, in my opinion, ... is likely to increase terrorism by sending more people to the extreme edges.”....(full article)
Chennai, India -- It was my last afternoon in Goa when fellow vacationer Ashwin Sivakumar -- who swapped an arctic Helsinki for family and sunshine -- stumbled upon news of a "hurricane" on the net. I didn't pay much attention and was thinking of the long, intolerable bus trip back. In my case there would be two. In retrospect, it was incredibly surreal that both of us were sitting there at the net café, enjoying the soothing sounds of the rolling waves. Western tourists could be seen browsing for traditional souvenirs. Others were flocking to the famous Calangute-Baga beach yards away for another round of sunshine. A tsunami had already claimed tens of thousands that morning, a large number of them in Chennai, situated right across on the Southeastern coast of India. No one we spoke to in Goa was aware of the incident yet. One of the net operators was confident that the patron saint of Goa, St Francis Xavier, whose mummified body I had peered at on Christmas day, would save Goa yet again....(full article)
1) I will never, ever, let so-called progressive leaders and corporate Democrats tell me I have to vote for a pro-war candidate to end a war and achieve peace....(full resolutions list)
I suspect that many Americans who outwardly support “their” government’s mass-murderous, illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq do so with a certain degree of ethical uncertainty. They line up with the imperial Bush war-crime family only with real limits and ambivalence. In some cases their assent to the imperial state crimes in question are rooted in a fatalistic sense that the “war” on Iraq is a terrible operation we “have no choice” but to continue. Many in this broad category are within some measure of reach for useful dialogue with people who are on the side of peace, democracy, and justice and an end to the occupation of Iraq. But for some Americans of proto-fascist and messianic inclination, things are very different. For them, the criminal U.S. war and the American war crimes currently being carried out in the name of “freedom,” “peace,” and “democracy” in Iraq are part of God’s good and glorious plan to liberate the world from the “spiritually bankrupt” and “ignorant” forces of Islamic, secular, and Marxist evil (i.e. the Devil)....(full article)
On December 17th
Left Hook co-editor M. Junaid Alam met with Professor Noam Chomsky
at his MIT office to get his thoughts on the ideological justifications
and historical realities behind America’s “war on terror.” Professor
Chomsky spent a half-hour taking apart the framework of “civilization”
versus “barbarism,” pointing to Western and particularly US
state-sponsored atrocities, laying out the grave nature of war crimes
committed in Iraq, attacking the intellectual culture which sanctions
massive suffering, and explaining the elite’s knowledge of the roots of
terrorism....
A few years ago, the term “family values” was used to describe decent, caring folk, as opposed to the degenerate values allegedly held by those deemed “other”. More recently, political religion has given us “moral values”, said to motivate those repelled by cultural aspects seen as indecent or debased. But regardless of the partisan nature of such labels, our political economic system demands the practice of socially “immoral values”, however it may program us to observe personal behaviors that contradict social reality. If morality has to do with honesty, respect, consideration for others, and neighborly human relations, our entire way of life is a diseased spit in the face of such notions. The social truth of capitalism is smothered in a blanket of lies to promote individual confusion; people are to act personally responsible, while supporting a social order that is, by its nature, socially irresponsible, and murderously so....(full article)
A moving essay on the holiday "spirit", American atrocities in Fallujah and Panama, and the rot here at home....(full article)
Cities across the U.S. are increasingly turning to criminalization tactics towards homeless people, according to “Illegal to Be Homeless: Criminalization of Homelessness in the United States,” written by the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH). The report is the 2004 edition of an annual series produced by NCH. The research for the report was conducted by a task force convened by NCH called the National Homeless Civil Rights Organizing Project (NHCROP)....(full article)
Santa Claus, Jesus’ birthday, and the Solstice each occur every December as a holiday gestalt. Is Santa the main attraction, is Jesus the “reason for the season,” or is the winter Solstice, meaning “sun standing still” most deserving of our mindfulness? Is there really any difference among the three or are they of equal significance? (full article)
Efforts to encourage a vital, inclusive, and
healthy discussion among the various communities of faith have never been
an especially popular field of endeavor among the clerics of any religion.
That partially explains why, today, much of the truly useful work in
interfaith relations is done at the grassroots level by volunteers, with
only the tacit approval and involvement of religious organizations, and
sometimes despite the interference of organized religion. It is a field in
which success is seldom as noteworthy, newsworthy, or abundant as
the demoralizing evidence of abject failure by the leaders of organized
religion to engage in serious and systematic efforts to promote interfaith
dialog and improve interfaith relations. Among the three Abrahamic faiths,
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, interfaith conversation has long been a
game of odd man out, with most Jewish and Christian clerics viewing
interfaith relations as a more or less exclusive Jewish-Christian dialog.
Much Christian theology and many Christian leaders being thoroughly
steeped in the Judeo-Christian tradition, a truly inclusive conversation
among the representatives of the various religious groups that make
up America's religious tapestry has never really been an option. The very
term "Judeo-Christian" is increasingly seen by many to imply a rejection
of Islam, the third major monotheistic religion, and to imply a rejection
of other religions as well.....(full article)
Best Way to "Support the Troops" is to
Bring Them Home George W. Bush, their commander-in-chief, calls them "the troops." He says they're on a "noble 'n vital" mission in Iraq. When asked about them, Bush says his "thoughts 'n prayers" go out to them. When shrapnel shreds their limbs or they are blown to bits by bombs, he says he "grieves 'n mourns" for them. Because of the troops, Bush says "America and the world are a safer place (sic)." Their boss, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, says although "the troops" might not have been the ones he wished for when he went to war, they were all he had. Recently, when asked about a draft, he even said he'd continue to work with what he had. "God bless ‘em -- because they volunteered," he said. "They want to be doing what it is they're doing."....(full article)
Unless you paid for every piece of software on your proprietary operating system, or received it as a gift for your personal use only, or are using it for work under a license purchased by your employer, you are a criminal. You stole hundreds, perhaps thousands of dollars -- it's their call, they can charge whatever they want and that price becomes the "market value" -- from some of the richest, most powerful people on earth, and for this you must pay dearly. Heavy fines. Jail time. A criminal record. Unless... you're running the GNU/Linux operating system and any combination of its literally thousands of free software programs and applications available for free download off hundreds of websites around the world. Then there's no problem. You're free. But still....(full article)
During the 1970's, the apartheid government of South Africa sought to bolster its claims to legitimacy by allowing elections in the Bantustans -- the equivalent to today's walled in Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The thought was that if people elected local officials, even to hold largely ceremonial offices, then the rest of the world would stop whining about how undemocratic and illegal apartheid was. There were two problems with this strategy. First, the world understood that ceremonial elections do not make a democracy. Second, the major candidate in any election that would be endorsed by black South Africans-Nelson Mandela-was being held in a South African prison. Instead, black South Africans were being offered collaborator candidates that were chosen by the white South African government. Through its policy of "constructive engagement," however, the Reagan administration tacitly endorsed this strategy, even when Congress resisted by passing the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986. How little has changed. Except for the lack of Congressional resistance, the situation in the Israeli-occupied territories mirrors that of apartheid South Africa....(full article)
The brilliant
octogenarian intellectual powerhouse and activist Seymour Melman died last
week at the age of 86. He was an emeritus professor of industrial
engineering and operations research at power-elite factory Columbia
University. During the last years of his life, he was more or less
shunned by the Columbia University establishment, relegated to a basement
in the Mudd building and rejected by five departments to whom he proposed
a semester-long course entitled “The Permanent War Economy” after his
famous 1974 book of the same name. Those interested in self-teaching the
course can do so by downloading a syllabus from Prof. Melman's website,
www.aftercapitalism.com. In The Permanent War Economy
and other works like Pentagon Capitalism, Melman argued that the
supposedly inextricable relationship between economic growth and military
spending is in fact only temporary (if it exists at all), and that such
spending has abominable long-term effects for social services and domestic
infrastructure. He argued further that endless military spending resulted
in a self-rationalizing and perpetual “permanent war economy” that he
spent his life combating....
Following recent
articles in the mainstream press on the Democratic National Committee's
two top nominees, if any doubt still exists within the minds of deluded
liberal-bourgeois reformists concerning the moral bankruptcy of the
Democratic Party, one wonders how much more evidence is going to be
necessary. Last week, the Los Angeles Times reported that the two leading
candidates for the DNC Chairmanship are phony “anti-war” candidate Howard
Dean and former Indiana Congressman and reactionary Tim Roemer. . . . Thus
our attention ought focus on Roemer and the implications of a Roemer
chairmanship. As the Times article notes further, Roemer is staunchly
anti-choice, in their words, “an abortion foe who argues that the party
cannot rebound from its losses in the November election unless it shows
more tolerance on one of society's most emotional conflicts.”....
On September 11,
2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die –
and to kill – for their dream. They died so that their people might live,
free and in dignity. The manner of their death – and the destruction it
wreaked – is not merely a testament to the vulnerabilities that modern
technology has created to clandestine attacks. After all, skyscrapers and
airplanes have co-existed peacefully for many decades. The attacks of 9-11
were in many ways a work of daring and imagination too; if one can think
objectively of such horrors. They were a cataclysmic summation of the
history of Western depredations in the Middle East: the history of a unity
dismembered, of societies manipulated by surrogates, of development
derailed and disrupted, of a people dispossessed. The explosion of 9-11
was indeed a “shot heard ‘round the world.”....(full
article)
Forty Faxes & A Whisper: Texas Election
Scandal “As I look back over the General Election held on Nov. 2, 2004, I know that voting is a ‘right’ that is being taken away everyday,” writes Brenda Denson-Prince. But she is not writing about far away places like Ohio or Florida. She is writing about her own attempt to become the first woman in Kaufman County, Texas to sit on the County Commissioners Court. On the day after Christmas, Denson-Prince faxes me forty pages. For the past three years the 50-year-old Texas native studied up for the position of County Commissioner by going to meetings. And she recruited the outgoing Commissioner, Ivan Johnson, to be her campaign manager. In the Democratic primary, she won handily. And right up to ten o'clock on election night, she felt pretty good about her chances. That's about the time she says she left Democratic Party headquarters in the town of Kaufman to return home to Terrell. With virtually all nine voting boxes counted, she was about 200 votes ahead....(full article)
The year’s end is a good time to pause and reflect. For many of us, at least for a few days, the usual treadmill of clocked obligations has receded. There may be more time to think. And that might involve becoming more dismissive of news media. People who want to keep up with “the news” are apt to become overloaded with too much input and scant insight. Meanwhile, technology doesn’t necessarily supply any solution. For most Americans, checking for the latest on the Web is apt to mean navigating a continually expansive – yet corporately circumscribed -- universe of hyperlinks. A visit to a heavily trafficked site like CNN is scarcely more adventurous than tuning in to the cable network counterpart. The limited content and political outlooks of mainstream media are huge ongoing problems. So are the information -- or, if you prefer, “disinformation” -- overloads. This is not a Luddite complaint. It’s no surprise that many who disclaim interest in utilizing modern technology still end up choosing to rely on it. (One back-to-the-land advocate, a well-known poet, extols the virtues of writing with a pencil. It turns out that his wife types his verses and essays.) That’s our “techno-future,” and most people want to be part of it....(full article)
When Scott Bloch took over at the Office of
Special Counsel (OSC) in January of this year, he was a relatively unknown
figure brought over by the Bush Administration from the Justice
Department's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives. Few could have suspected
that the agency would spend a good part of the year embroiled in, and
responding to, a series of controversies involving charges of
discrimination against gays and lesbians in the federal workplace,
allegations of cronyism in the agency's hiring practices, and charges that
the OSC wasn't paying enough attention to a number of whistleblower
reports of waste, fraud and abuse under President Bush....
The season of resolution-making is upon us but, in the view of many in our community, little is about to be resolved. Not since the 1930s has the world seen such threats to peace and economic security, and we must now add to this imbalance the depletion of the earth’s resources, unraveling of our Constitution, failure of our electoral process, genocide in Africa, and the possibility of extinction of life in portions of the planet through global warming. The delusion in British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s declaration upon his return from Munich in 1938 that conferees with Hitler had achieved "peace in our time" is dwarfed by the present Bush Administration and media distortions of reality. Hitler had made his intentions for conquest and elimination of Jews as clear to the world as Osama bin Laden’s promise to destroy the US economy, should our government not alter its course in the Mideast....(full article)
As the U.S. military was blowing Fallujah, Iraq, to bits to make it safe for elections in January, some pro basketball players fought with some fans who heckled and harassed them in Michigan on November 19. The brawl was shown on TV nationwide. Later, prosecutors filed criminal charges against five Indiana Pacers players and seven fans involved in the melee at the Pacers game against the Detroit Pistons. Mass media generally showered attention on this example of sports violence. In contrast, there was scant information from the same media outlets on U.S. military violence in the streets of Fallujah. U.S. reporters embedded with the American military had few chances to show and tell readers and viewers what really happened in Fallujah. Thus Iraqis – kids, women and men – killed and wounded by the U.S. military were largely hidden from Americans’ view....(full article)
At a meeting in Sacramento this fall, Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, jokingly renamed NOAA Fisheries as “No Fisheries” to describe the damage done to this federal agency by the Bush administration. NOAA Fisheries, a federal agency supposedly “dedicated to providing and preserving the nation’s living marine resources and their habitat,” definitely lived up to its new nickname recently when it released a proposal that would slash habitat protection for endangered and threatened salmon stocks in California and the Northwest. The proposals could reduce up to 90 percent of “critical habitat” set aside for the fish in California and as much as 80 percent of the habitat in the Pacific Northwest, according to Jim Lecky, the assistant regional manager for the Southwest Region of the agency....(full article)
Dear
Fellow Humans:
AIDS Action Jumps Into Bed With Bush and
the AIDS-Phobic Republicans It's mind-boggling: Marsha Martin, the executive director of AIDS Action--the AIDS community's largest, most visible, and wealthiest Washington lobby, with a multi-million dollar budget--has jumped into bed with the Bush-Rove Republicans with both feet. In a perfectly scandalous act of betrayal of the AIDS community, Martin is one of a small committee sponsoring a pricey celebration of Bush's November victory, and that of the Republicans in Congress. And guess who gets the money from this orgy of felicitations to the GOP? A front group for Big Pharma that crusades against giving cheap, generic AIDS-fighting meds to the world's poorest victims of the AIDS pandemic....(full article)
The December 23 Los Angeles Times reports -- under the headline "Democratic Leadership Rethinking Abortion" -- that the national Democrats are seriously debating a shift in their all-out commitment to a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. Both of the Democrats' Congressional leaders -- Nancy Pelosi in the House and Harry Reid in the Senate -- are backing a candidate for Democratic National Committee chair, Tim Roemer, "an abortion foe who argues that the party cannot rebound from its losses in the November election unless it shows more tolerance on one of society's most emotional conflicts." And Roemer "said he would encourage the party to eliminate its 'moral blind spot' when it comes to late-term abortions."....(full article)
Kim Petersen reviews the important new book, A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming by Hume et al, on the dangers of salmon farming and the environmental destruction that accompanies it....(full article)
The practice of choosing only those facts, often out of context, that supports a personal view while blatantly disregarding information contradictory to your position constitutes “cherry picking.” Many Republicans practice this to the extreme when it comes to moral values. Many fundamentalist Christians practice “cherry picking”, as well. In the recent presidential election President Bush received numerous votes cast on the basis of “moral value”, and many of these votes came from the Religious Right. Gay marriage and abortion serve as the two most divisive issues comprising the “moral values” stance. So, let us visit the “cherry tree” and take a Biblical look at these issues, and several others, including the war in Iraq....(full article)
Promoting Mel Gibson's 'Passion of the Christ,' Catholic League head claims secular Jews run Hollywood and 'Hollywood likes anal sex.'....(full article)
Although it pains me to no end, I may finally have to give George W. Bush (or at least his handlers) some positive credit for the first time in his presidency. Call me slow, but I just realized why he plays the "religion" card so often, and how he plays it so effectively. To echo a popular slogan: it's the fear factor, stupid....(full article)
Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush took up with Asian Hookers, caught a venereal disease, stole the wife of a business associate, and sent an email to his wife of 23 years saying he wanted a divorce. I will never understand why the Prince sought a divorce; being married certainly never cramped his style. Neil filed the suit on Aug 26 2002 and cited 'discord or conflict of personalities' as the reason for the divorce. I wonder if that means that Sharon got crabby and unreasonable when she found out about the hookers and VD? During the divorce proceedings, many of Neil’s past business dealings came under intense public scrutiny after he was forced to testify in a deposition on March 3, 2003. For instance, he testified that on July 19, 1999, he made over $171,000 in a single day, by buying and selling shares of stock in Kopin Corp, a small Massachusetts company where he had previously been a consultant. According to the Prince, his good fortune began while he was a consultant for Telecom Holdings, which is part of the Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group), and the firm wanted him to find US companies to invest in. "We searched for a viable fit and found Kopin Corporation," Neil claimed. In a more detailed explanation, he said, "We made introduction of the Asian group to Kopin and they ended up investing a significant amount of money in Kopin," Neil said. "I believe it was in excess of $20 million. They're in Hong Kong and Thailand." Well, actually the deal that Neil arranged was for a tad more than $20 million, it was for $27 million. But then what’s $7 million here or there to a Prince....(full article)
To
the Editor:
Joshua Frank's article about the Ohio recount is rife with lies,
innuendo and inaccuracies. This should come as no
surprise to anyone familiar with Frank's smear tactics, sloppy "reporting"
and his personal vendetta against the 2004 Green Party presidential
campaign. Frank writes that
"something is fishy in the air in Ohio" and that Greens "should be outraged"
over the Cobb-LaMarche campaign's fundraising for the recount....(full
exchange) December 22-23
I am writing to you because you have been elected to serve the people. I am one of those people, my family is one family in America. We are just a family, we care about each other, we work hard and we believe in good things. We have a modest income, not much, but enough to give us what we need. Like most American families, we struggle with the way things are these days. We try to justify that our votes have mattered, our voices are heard, our opinions count, all the while watching decisions being made, unable to recognize the “voice of the people” in the final outcome. I have worked for years serving those whom I felt called to serve, our elderly. I have fought hard for them, to ensure that they receive the respect they deserve, not only from family, but from community as well. But now, I have left my fight for the elderly, to do what I can to help in a more significant effort. My husband works with an equal amount of passion. Everything that he has been asked to do by his employer, he has done. Everywhere he has had to go, he has gone with the trust that the words of his employer are honest, and committed to his needs and the needs of his fellow workers. Lies. My husband has had faith in an employer who cares more about the American lifestyle than its people. My husband is an American Soldier. My husband deserves so much more than what he has been given in return by his country. I deserve more, my children do. The families of all the soldiers who have VOLUNTEERED to serve and now are asked to fight in a war that is not about defending this country deserve more. This country has disrespected them at every turn. This country has and is failing them. It is failing all who have given with faith, who have fought for the right thing, who have been led in their commitment with the false promises and empty words of our leadership. This is the fight I take on now, and my husband joins me. Now, I write to show you some of the specifics of the last year of disrespect that my husband and I have seen, as his unit has prepared for a possible return deployment to Iraq....(full letter)
The same day news came that President Bush had been named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year," Reuters reported that "suicide car bombers struck Iraq's two main Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala... killing at least 62 people and wounding nearly 130, in coordinated attacks," six weeks before elections are scheduled to take place. The other evening, I finally got to see "The Fog of War," last year's academy award-winning documentary. At one point, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara admits that the firebombing of Tokyo toward the end of World War II -- which killed nearly 100,000 civilians -- was a war crime. That wasn't the only war crime that McNamara was involved in during his career. As one of the chief architects of President Lyndon Johnson's escalation of the Vietnam War, McNamara came to know war crimes up close and personal. Nevertheless, seeing him ruminate about those days, and thinking about the more than one million Vietnamese that were killed as well as more than 50,000 US troops killed and hundreds of thousands wounded, put a reality-based face on this holiday season. In that spirit, here's an end of the year inventory of the "Person of the Year's" Iraq War....(full article)
From environmental hazards to sex education, the federal government in the past several years has been twisting science to political ends. The ends are sometimes ideological -- as in the suppression of information about condoms and sexual safety -- and sometimes simply take the form of favors to business interests that would like to see less environmental, public health, or workplace safety regulation. But the pattern has become so pervasive that much of the scientific community is up in arms. The question is, what can be done to stop it? (full article)
Long-time journalist Jonathan Power recently expounded on whether a Palestinian or Israeli state is justifiable. From the title of his piece -- “History does not justify either Israel or Palestine” -- one would assume not. This begs the question of what state -- granting that states established by colonial power are legitimate -- is justifiable in this region? Power did not answer this question. Power began, “To be blunt, there is no Israel and no Palestine. At least not in a continuous historical sense, as there is a France or an Egypt, a China or a Thailand. Without the British there would be neither a modern Israel nor Palestine.” This is not only pure speculation, but also a post-imperialist project aimed at re-interpreting history from a very narrow ideological prism. Likeliest, without Britain, the mandate power over Palestine, Israel would never have come to be, and Palestine would have remained inside Greater Syria as a province. Furthermore, had the British kept their promise to restore sovereignty to the Arabs after World War I, instead of imperialistically imposing a European Jewish immigration upon them, who is to say that a Palestinian state would not have emerged by now? (full article)
On the campaign trail last October, Vice President Dick Cheney created a small stir when, speaking of the Iraq war, he declared: “I think it has been a remarkable success story to date when you look at what has been accomplished overall.” In view of the rampant violence raging in Iraq, the widespread devastation of the country’s human and material resources, and the dim prospects for its future peace and prosperity, Cheney’s statement seemed bizarre, and the Democrats seized on it as still another example of the disconnect between the Bush administration and reality. Yet, on closer inspection, we can see that the war has indeed been a huge success, though not exactly in the way that the vice president intended to claim....(full article)
Behind the brightly colored Christmas decorations and overflowing shelves of marked-down merchandise at the local Kmart, you could see the desperation on people’s faces. “It seems like all I do is work, and I don’t get anywhere,” said one employee at a Chicago-area store. Maria was shopping with her daughter -- and scrambling to take advantage of the store’s huge 50 percent-off sale. Still, she said, “It gets harder every year.” Elizabeth Schulte reports on the face of minimum-wage America, just scraping by during the holiday season....(full article)
Augusto Pinochet, the 89-year-old retired general and dictator of Chile, will face a trial for human rights abuses. Maybe. He may yet evade a conviction -- he has been deemed unfit to face trial on several previous occasions, and this week he apparently suffered another stroke. But Pinochet long ago evaded justice for the thousands exiled, tortured or murdered under his rule, and for the hopes and aspirations he helped to drown in blood. And his arrest is a bitter reminder that war criminals, unlike those they help to strike down in their prime, die in bed....(full article)
Once upon a time, Prince Neil Bush and his business partners from the JNB oil company caused the collapse of the Silverado Savings & Loan by ripping off $200 million. When all was said and done, a bill totaling $1.3 billion was left for taxpayers to pay. Because Neil's father George was the Vice-King of the Kingdom he was able to conceal the news of Silverado's collapse, and its cost to taxpayers, until after he became a full-fledged King in the1988 election. The only thing that Neil seemed to learn from the whole Silverado-JNB fiasco was that taxpayers were easy prey. Being that the scam worked so well the first time around, he decided to give it another shot with a new oil company, Apex Energy....(full article)
Recently, Left Hook co-editor M. Junaid Alam was able to fire off some questions to Stan Goff, a former US Special Forces Master Sergeant with more than two decades of military experience who is now heavily involved in anti-war work with Military Families Speak Out and the Bring Them Home Now campaign, and is also the author of Full Spectrum Disorder and Hideous Dream. Below, he offers his sharp insights on recent tactical, military, and political developments taking place in Iraq, discusses the very real growing signs of discontent within the armed forces, and what the anti-war movement should do about it....(full article)
What? You mean something could go wrong? With a war? “Holy Rumsfeld, Batman!” Let’s give everyone the Medal of Freedom, since the worst people already have theirs -- George Tenet, Paul Bremer, General Tommy Franks, even Barbara and Jenna, for all I know. Just wait: Bush’s disgraced nominee for Homeland Security director, Bernard Kerik, will be next on the list. Why not? Time magazine has just named Ding-Dong its Man of the Year, for ''reshaping the rules of politics to fit his 10-gallon-hat leadership style, for sharpening the debate until the choices bled, for reframing reality to match his design, for gambling his fortunes — and ours — on his faith in the power of leadership.'' This criminal incompetent, this thief of democracy and authentic American values, this mass killer of both people and ideas, is actually described as “a straight-shooter.” But, for all of that, he seems to get an awful lot of other people to do his shooting for him. Please, don’t ask me to be “orderly” or “coherent” about the year just past, 2004, because I can’t do it. I wouldn’t try. A worse or more bizarre 12 months never passed in my lifetime, and that’s saying something. As Paul Harris wrote not long ago on MONUC -- which stands, should you care, for “Mission de l'Organisation des Nations-Unies en République Démocratique du Congo” – George W. Bush “poses the familiar problem of the optimist/pessimist conundrum … is [his] head half empty, or is he half full of it?” (full article)
Thank goodness for the “Defense Science Board” (DSB). According to Associated Press reporter Robert Burns, the “Pentagon advisory panel” recently released a report concluding, among other things, “the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have created a shared anti-American cause among otherwise-divided Muslim extremists...” and that “the root of the problem…is a fundamental misunderstanding of why many Muslims are hostile toward the United States. They ‘hate our policies,’ not our freedom…” I think this same group also produced a paper determining that, on average, fish live longer in water than on land....(full article)
Dear Santa Bush,
There is nothing inherently wrong with budget deficits. From the 1930s to the 1990s, the federal government embraced deficit spending and much good came of it. It all depends upon the size of the deficit, what programs and projects it pays for, and who finances the debt. There is currently a lot of political hypocrisy involving deficit spending. Many of the same Republicans who embrace the Bush administration’s record-breaking deficits assailed the Democrats when they were running far more modest shortfalls....(full article)
A dispatch from Reuters yesterday reports on a new European Union-funded study showing that radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA in laboratory conditions. Mutated DNA cells of the kind reported in the study are seen as a possible cause of cancer. According to Reuters, the study's director, Dr. Franz Adlkofer of Germany, "advised against the use of a mobile phone when an alternative fixed line phone was available." This is not the first such study of mobile phone dangers....(full article)
Growing inequality and social displacement in China have fueled a string of protests, riots and strikes since August. Unlike the 1989 protests centered around Tiananmen Square, which brought out mostly state-employed industrial workers in support of students in the major cities, the current unrest comes from all sectors of the workforce. Peasants in the interior, veteran employees of state enterprises and young workers in the booming coastal “export zones” have all been involved in major confrontations that display a high degree of class solidarity. The explosions of struggle reflect long-simmering anger at the arrogance of China’s rulers --including the Communist Party bureaucrats who routinely cash in their political clout for personal gain....(full article)
When my 12-year old nephew brought home an
“F” on a Math quiz the other day, his mother demanded an explanation.
Johnny scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders. His mother tapped
her foot, folded her arms, scowled. “Well?”
Over 100,000 Dead?
The Likely Death Toll in Iraq The Lancet, the world’s leading medical journal, has published an estimate that 98,000 Iraqis have died because of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This estimate (usually approximated to 100,000 deaths) includes Iraqi civilians and insurgents, and includes all causes of death, both violent and nonviolent. The 100,000 figure is likely to be an under-estimate....(full article)
Charles Bukowski once said: “As we go on with our lives we tend to forget that the jails and the hospitals and the madhouses and the graveyards are packed.” To that list, we can add how we tend to forget how privileged we are. As we walk around consumed with our typically self-imposed problems, how often do we consider those born without a hint of hope? (full article)
If Jolly Rummy has a seasonal message to his amputee elves this year, it's “put up and shut up.” “You go to war with the army you have, not the one you want.” That was the flustered and Defens(ive) Secretary's admonition to the mostly National Guard and Reserve soldiers he recently addressed in Kuwait after being asked by one disloyal grunt why the soldiers themselves had to resort to dumpster diving for scrap parts in order to safeguard their own ill-equipped vehicles. It should be pointed out that approximately half the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq might have had their lives spared if their humvees had been adequately armored against the relatively low-tech explosive devices planted along Iraq's “liberated” highways. If current casualty trends continue, soldiers' family members will likely receive their “present” in a body bag this year. Curiously, the same advice (“put up and shut up”) is now the basis of a bestselling dating guide which applies to single women similarly ill-equipped to deal with the social landmines planted beneath their strappy, Manolo Blahnik stilettos. He's Just Not That Into You make the compelling argument that disinterested men, (like the alluringly aloof Defense Secretary himself) just don't have your best interests at heart, so wouldn't it be better if you just planted your ugly-ass carcass in front of someone who at least cares? (full article)
William Blum on American meddling in the elections in Ukraine, why terrorists terrorize, religion and morality, the hidden intellectual side of President Bush, Princess Di and conspiracy theories, social security privatization, cheerful predictions for the New Year, and more....(full article)
As we navigate the religious holiday season and attempt to psychologically and spiritually prepare ourselves for the “second” (or third or fourth or fifth) term of the current regime, I thought it might be appropriate to examine this fellow Jesus whom the Dominionists of the religious right claim to follow. In doing so, one will notice that the historical Jesus bears almost no resemblance to the Jesus of Dominionism....(full article)
What is urgently needed is a restructuring of the international mediation addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Shuttle diplomacy by world powers unable or unwilling to commit to international and humanitarian law as a foundation for Palestinian and Israeli reconciliation is a waste of time, money and Palestinian and Israeli lives. The US has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that its historic alliance with Israel, an Unholy Alliance as it has often been called, prohibits it from being a fair and impartial mediator. Over the years, the Israeli agenda has become a domestic US issue and is integrally linked to US elections, US foreign policy and aid, and the US's military-industrial complex. The infamous Oslo Peace Process gave the US a historic chance to clean its slate of its historically blind support to Israel. It chose not to do so and thus has lost all creditability as a potential impartial mediator....(full article)
While workers abroad have reined in WalMart, can the American labor movement do the same with the $259 billion retail behemoth? (full article)
Last month, the religious right went after Sen. Arlen Specter and made him cry uncle. While they didn't succeed in stopping the so-called moderate Pennsylvania Republican from taking the helm of the Senate Judiciary Committee come January, there's no doubt now about who's his "daddy." The Christian right's no-holds-barred campaign forced the Senator to pledge not to allow his personal beliefs to block any of President Bush's judicial nominees. While lashing out at Sen. Specter has been a multi-year project for religious right groups unhappy about his pro-choice and pro-gay views, what's up with their criticism of Mike Leavitt, the former governor of Utah who has headed up the Environmental Protection Agency over the past year and was recently nominated to succeed Tommy Thompson as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services? (full article)
There is no doubt that the maneuverability and survivability of the veteran politician Ariel Sharon deserves our astonishment, whereas the pitifulness of Shimon Peres, his partner to recycle the "unity" government, barely deserves our pity. To understand Sharon's success, we have to examine a phenomenon that is odd in itself: That significant segments of the mainstream, on both the right and the left, support the disengagement plan, or at least do not strenuously oppose it. In comparison with the Oslo era, even the reactions by the extreme right are moderate at this stage, even though Sharon's rhetoric in favor of a Palestinian state and his intention to evacuate whole areas of settlement seem at the moment no less far-reaching than the declared intentions and the rhetoric of those who were at the forefront of the Oslo agreement....(full article)
Gary Webb, a courageous investigative journalist who was the target of one of the most ferocious media attacks on any reporter in recent history, was found dead Friday after an apparent suicide. In August 1996, Webb wrote one of the first pieces of journalism that reached a massive audience thanks to the Internet: an explosive 20,000 word, three-part series documenting links between cocaine traffickers, the crack epidemic of the 1980s and the CIA-organized right-wing Nicaraguan Contra army of that era. The series sparked major interest in the social justice and African-American communities, leading to street protests, constant discussion on black-oriented talk radio and demands by Congressional Black Caucus members for a federal investigation. But weeks later, Webb suffered a furious backlash at the hands of national media unaccustomed to seeing their role as gatekeepers diminished by the emerging medium known as the WorldWideWeb....(full article)
*
America's Debt to Journalist Gary Webb by Robert Parry
God has returned to America. His interest in this nation and its people is the subject of much discussion here in this country mainly from those disgruntled Americans who, in the 2004 national elections, lost to God's choice, President George W. Bush. Anyway, the losers can't figure out why God cares about this place. After all, they say, Earth is located in the outer realm of the Milky Way galaxy-the Orion Arm to be exact---along with the 100 billion stars and billions of other objects that make up the Milky Way. The Milky Way is one of at least 125 billion other galaxies that are known at the present time. All of which is to wonder why God bothers with Americans and, more interestingly, how God covers the unfathomable distances between galaxies. God consented to an interview on this matter and visited me at my home in Virginia.....(full article)
Something fishy is in the air out in Ohio, where the presidential vote recount in being led by the Green Party’s ex-presidential candidate, David Cobb, with minimal support from the Libertarian Party. However well-intentioned Cobb’s pains to make every vote count seem, he may well be pulling a fast one on his supporters and Democrats, who have been battling denial since John Kerry’s loss to George W. Bush last month....(full article)
Like one of those punk drug dealers
Bernie "the Bully" Kerik used to manhandle when he was a
tough-talking drug cop with a badge and a gun,
Kerik took a plea bargain because he
didn't have the guts to put his fate in the hands of the jury.
The jury, in his case, was the United States Senate, and--rather than face
the discordant music of his extraordinarily checkered past--Bernie
the Bully copped a plea and withdrew his name from consideration
Friday night....(full article)
Listen to Sharon’s Little Helpers
Ariel
Sharon is surrounded by a coterie of “advisors” who step in to develop,
perfect and sell plans for the continued and inexorable dispossession of the
Palestinians. What is surprising is that these advisors, the intellectual
progenitors of continuing mass crimes, are an outspoken bunch; they don't
shy away from revealing their latest fiendish plans or their true intent.
There is no need for conspiracy theories; their intent and plans are out in
the open. Despite lame denials by the Israeli government or their media
surrogates, the public pronouncements of these latter day Dr. Strangeloves
reveal the plans they have in store for the Palestinians, Iraqis, and for
that matter, the United States. It is therefore instructive to analyze their
latest statements....
Question: How many people does it take to fill a mass grave? No, this is not joke, because although I don’t know the “official” answer, the one thing I do know about mass extermination is that it’s typically not a subject that lends itself well to humor. The question stems not from some ghoulish curiosity but rather from the ongoing slaughter in Iraq, and the reply is also crucial to answering the following (and, really, main) query: Since the Bush administration has reminded us many times that Iraqis no longer need fear being used as filler for Saddam Hussein’s mass graves, might the U.S., by virtue of the number of civilians it’s killed, be in danger of replicating Hussein’s dark deeds? (full article)
| |
R.I.P.
Susan Sontag (1933-2004)
