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January 2006 Articles
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DV Articles
November 2003
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While I do not know, as of this writing, whether Democrats will muster a filibuster of the Alito nomination, I have no doubt that this vote will follow senators around, for good or for ill, for the rest of their lives, in the same way that Colin Powell’s infamous powdered-sugar presentation to the UN will follow him to the grave -- and for similar reasons. When Alito gets in, things are going to change. Our whole way of life, in fact. The New York Times seems to have realized this at the eleventh hour, for whatever mysterious but welcome reason. The Times, along with the rest of the media, has, up to now, done everything they could to assist the administration in the gradual accommodation of the American people to new ways and new views. Milton Mayer, who wrote about the Nazi takeover of Germany from the point of view of the average citizen (They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1938-45 University of Chicago Press, 1955), described it so perfectly it’s eerie....(full article)
On January 1, Congress allowed two tax breaks that benefit the wealthy to become effective. The cuts eliminated current provisions of the tax code that limits the amount of personal exemptions and itemized deductions that Americans with high incomes can take. Over the course of the next five years the tax cuts will cost approximately $27 billion, according to a study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Ironically, Republicans in Congress, only two weeks before the cuts took effect, voted to reduce domestic spending on programs affecting the poor and the middle class by $39 billion over the next five years....(full article)
For some people, universal principles can always be safely applied, without reference to the historical passage of time, to sort out an ethical, acceptable position because... well, because they're universal. Thus -- universally -- it has been, and remains to date, unacceptable to approve or comply with the destruction of entire peoples. Keeping this in mind, and reviewing what is historically specific (and what is historically generic) about the European Judeocide, a number of questions arise. Curiously, the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian legislative elections last week coincided with commemoration of the first International Holocaust (= European Judeocide) Memorial Day. Some believe this moment particularly propitious to strike out, in Tony Blair fashion, onto some "third way," neither "Holocaust" exploiting nor "Holocaust" denying. Does it assist the cause of Humanity today, however, to equate exploiters and deniers of the Judeocide? Or, does it undermine that section of our collective Humanity which remains burdened with having to resist another genocidal attempt on its Right to Be? (full article)
January 27 was marked by a special session of the United Nations General Assembly: the first observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust. Kofi Annan spoke via satellite transmission to the UN General Assembly. The UN secretary general’s prioritizing of which events to attend conveyed a strange symbolism. Annan ostensibly chose to hobnob with the economic “elites” in Davos, Switzerland rather than attend the special commemorative session in the General Assembly. Nevertheless, Annan was in feisty form to mouth, via satellite transmission, the banalities of the interests he so grandiloquently serves....(full article)
Imagine, if you will, that you are fielding a baseball team. You are a player on a team that possesses immense talent. Your opponent has never lost a game. The opposition is undefeated not because its players are superior to your own, but because it makes the rules of the game to assure its own victory. It wins because your team has to play by a fixed set of rules that it does not. Although you have an excellent pitcher on the mound, the strike zone is microscopic and in constant flux. Your opponent’s pitcher, however, enjoys a huge strike zone. Your opponent also owns all of the umpires officiating the contest. Who but a fool would play such a game with the expectation of competing, much less winning? The outcome of that game, no matter how well your team performs, has already been determined. To participate in such a charade is an exercise in futility. Those of us who demand a better America find ourselves the unwitting participants in just such a game. We are in good faith trying to operate in a system that is inherently unjust. Corporate lobbyists have overrun the capitol, as well as every branch of government, including the judiciary. Corporations lord immense power over both people and process, when they should be servants to the people. Legislation is sold to the highest bidder. Workers, comprising some ninety percent of the populace, have no representation or protection against the industry predators that exploits them. We are bound by rules that our rulers are not. We cannot possibly compete in this system; much less create democratic freedoms and equality. The system operates on monetary capital, not moral capital. The system does not deserve our loyalty or our participation. The time has come to create a new game with a level playing field. Working people are weary of serving “The Man.”....(full article)
A certain piquancy in the phrasing hints that the author of Point of No Return is not a native speaker. This is Czech-American journalist Andre Vltchek’s first novel in English and the fact adds to the color of an unpretentious but supple narrative that takes us swiftly through the underbelly of the New World Order....(full article)
Elections results in the Occupied Territories show that Fatah has lost its majority in the Palestinian parliament by a stunningly large margin. This is a transformational event with lasting geopolitical importance, for Hamas and Fatah, for Palestinians and Israelis, and for the world.....(full article)
In the January 24, 2006 edition of the LA Times, Joel Stein made the incredibly relevant point that when we say we support the troops but not the war, we give “soft acquiescence” to the politicians who started this war under false pretenses and continue to conduct it shabbily (at best). For this reason, Stein posits, he doesn’t support our troops. It goes without saying that this gutsy conclusion is drawing fire from every corner of the country. Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin classified Stein “one of the most loathsome people in America.” People are threatening to beat him up, telling him to leave the country, calling him slime, etc., etc. But dog-piling Stein isn’t going to change the logic of his thoughts. Lauding the efforts of the troops in a war we simultaneously condemn is blatantly non sequitur. It’s safer and more patriotically correct, but it’s ambiguous, hypocritical and politically spineless. They say the soldiers of Nazi Germany were whisked up by a spell of nationalism that approached a communal neurosis, that they were just doing what they were told, serving their country. Did doing their duty for their country and their fellow countrymen absolve them of the social, political and moral results? (full article)
The cornerstone of America’s strength is its system of universal public and private education. America’s education system is the true melting pot of America. It brings together Americans from all walks of life: parents, guardians, students, educators, first generation Americans, the rich and the poor, the bright and challenged. The education system houses America’s greatest resource -- its youth. The industry most deserving of the moniker critical infrastructure/vital to national security is not some power company or defense contractor, it is the American system of education. It produces America’s greatest product: informed and tolerant, open-minded young citizens. But that’s collapsing too. And if that is allowed to happen, the country will surely perish from within....(full article)
As we head into Black History Month, corporations and their advertising arms will once again pledge their allegiance to cultural diversity in a continual effort to strategically target the estimated $852 billion (2007) African American marketplace. However, there's also a thriving sub-segment of the African American community that has scarcely been acknowledged and rarely marketed to as a lucrative market niche: the black gay community. Currently this segment is experiencing an explosion of black gay themed books, magazines, movies and television shows; hence, America's black gay presence is beginning to make waves within the world of advertising and beyond.....(full article)
In mid-January, the Associated Press published a report on the controversy currently brewing between America's religious right and families headed by gay parents. The issue? Whose children should be allowed to participate in the White House's annual Easter Egg Roll this April? The Family Pride Coalition invited its members to attend and numerous religious fundamentalist groups sprang into action. Even the White House has weighed in.....(full article)
With few people being aware of it, the state of Israel has established key outposts in Boston, Massachusetts. It is customary for other countries to maintain embassies and consulates in large cities in the US, but in Boston, Israel, in addition to its consulate, and on top of its Anti-Defamation League and its Combined Jewish Philanthropies, also has two unique, nationally known organizations working especially for its interests. They are CAMERA -- the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America -- and the David Project Center for Jewish Leadership....(full article)
It is still an
unanswered question who ginned up the fake Niger “yellow cake” memorandum
that underlay the case for invading Iraq, and who outed Valerie Plame is
still not definitively known. Yet barely three years after America invaded
and occupied Iraq on the false pretense that it was developing atomic
weapons, the Administration, once again, is clanging the nuclear alarm
bells. . . . There are at least five reasons why the West, and America in
particular, fears a nuclear Iran, even if it is only pursuing nuclear
power generation.....(full article)
Grasshoppers, Oxen, &
Coconuts:
Grassroots Responses to Peak Oil This essay was intended to be serious, but with a lighter touch than most writing on Peak Oil. Perhaps we can develop more creative writing about oil descent and even Peak Oil humor. With its own unique ways of talking story and local humor, perhaps Hawaii’s contribution to the growing global discussion and activism around oil depletion will include looking at them with some island humor.....(full article)
Ever since the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA operative in July 2003, prominent Democrats have denounced that leak -- often with some kind of rhetoric about the sanctity of classified information. But reverence for keeping such information secret is dangerous. And so is the claim that sometimes the government should put journalists in jail to ferret out leakers....(full article)
In the name of fighting the “war on terror,” the Bush administration says that it has to take steps here at home to protect us. Fighting terrorism comes before protecting civil liberties, goes the argument. As White House strategist Karl Rove told the Republican National Committee last week, “President Bush believes if al-Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why.” But as each new scandal about secret spying and government targeting of immigrants and peaceful protesters comes to light, it’s clearer than ever that the government’s idea of “protecting” U.S. citizens at home involves shredding our civil liberties. Nicole Colson looks at what’s at stake in the Bush administration’s attack on our rights....(full article)
On the rare occasions when the issue of civilian casualties is discussed in the mainstream media three words are invariably mentioned: Iraq Body Count (IBC). IBC describes itself as a project which maintains “the world’s only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies.” IBC is often described as an “anti-war” website -- the home page shows an ominous photograph of a Stealth bomber dropping a stick of bombs. The words above the picture were spoken by General Tommy Franks: “We don’t do body counts.” Below, we find US General Mark Kimmitt's advice to Iraqis who see TV images of innocent civilians killed by coalition troops: “Change the channel.” This does indeed suggest an intense critical focus on suffering caused by British and US forces. . . . IBC is also important because its figures for civilian deaths in Iraq have been used by the British and American governments, and by the media, to attack or dismiss higher estimates in other studies....(full article)
The Iranian
government is by no definition a model of democracy or human rights, in a
region that in its entirety fails to present such a model. However, aside
from occasional and emotionally charged pronouncements, Iran’s behavior
since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 provides little evidence that could
explain the US-led panic over the country’s nuclear program....
Secretary of State Condi Rice doesn't think the United States and European Union should continue talking to Iran about their potential nuke development. Diplomacy should end and the UN Security Council must now take action, she says. Rice admitted to reporters on January 23, that dialogue between Iran and the international community had come to a "dead end." "I don't see much room for further discussion in any format," Rice huffed. Of course, the US's true intentions for going after Tehran may have more to do with what’s hidden beneath Iran's arid soil than their nuclear ambitions....(full article)
On August 1, 1966 David H. Gunby was a 23-year-old engineering student at the University of Texas, studying at the campus library. When he finished studying and went to leave, he realized he’d left a book behind. He went back to get it and then exited the campus library into the Tower courtyard. As he crossed the courtyard, he became one of Charles Whitman’s first victims. Whitman shot him in the lower left side of his back. As he lay on the ground wounded, he could see Whitman up in the Tower. When other students attempted to run out and help him, Gunby waved them off. He knew Whitman would fire at anyone else that appeared out in the open.....(full article)
The great hidden scandal in Washington is the disastrous debut of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. When it was pushed through Congress in 2003, its Republican sponsors -- along with plenty of Democrats -- promised that recipients of the federal government’s Medicare health care program for seniors would finally be protected from skyrocketing drug prices. But even with two years to get ready, the new system broke down following its January 1 launch date. Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have showed up at pharmacies and discovered that their old drug benefits were cancelled, but the new program doesn’t have them listed. More than two dozen state governments have taken emergency action to try to help seniors being forced to choose between buying food and paying for prescription drugs. Chris Murphy is a social worker in Rhode Island who aids senior citizens and low-income families in accessing federal and state pharmaceutical assistance programs, as well as volunteer opportunities, entitlements and other social service programs. Here, Chris gives a front lines report on the catastrophic launch of the prescription drug benefit -- and explains that this “reform” legislation was written by drug companies to pump up their profits....(full article)
On January 19, the London Guardian published an article on a right-wing organization at the University of California-Los Angeles and its project to monitor and profile “radical” professors. The group’s website, www.uclaprofs.com, explains what is required of spies for a $100 payment: "Full, detailed lecture notes, all professor-distributed materials, and full tape recordings of every class session, for one class: $100 (Note: lecture notes must make particular note of audience reactions, comments, and other details that will properly contextualize the professor’s non-pertinent ideological comments. If the class in question is ongoing or upcoming, UCLAProfs.com will provide (if needed) all necessary taping equipment and materials.)".....(full article)
My new calendar has a picture of an ice-covered Alaskan wilderness preserve. My throat catches every time I glance at its breathtaking beauty, and I make a mental note to go see this beautiful place soon, before the ice melts. It is no longer possible to relegate global warming to a theoretical possibility. It is reality. It is 60-degree days in January when it should be six degrees above (in the city where I live, temperatures are running more than ten degrees above normal this month). It is the slowing Gulf Stream, the melting ice. It is the droughts in Africa and Oklahoma, in the Himalayas and the Amazon. It is the rising seas and hurricanes and tsunamis that decimate cities and villages in Indonesia and Louisiana. It is the highest carbon dioxide levels in 650,000 years and the fish and plankton that are dying in the warming seas....(full article)
The question: “What’s the matter with Munich?” was posed by a Los Angeles Times Calendar cover story. The answer to the newspaper’s query and accompanying article is very simple; Steven Spielberg and playwright Tony Kurshner chose to make the wrong film. When it comes to all things critical of Israel western media in general and the American media in particular become extremely defensive even to the point of libelous at times in their counter-attacks on the subject and its author. The legal and censorship attacks on award winning British playwright Jim Allen by Zionist organizations which ultimately had his play Perdition banned from performance in England in 1987 is one of the best examples of a well orchestrated effort to keep a work of art critical of Zionism and Israel from being viewed by the public.....(full article)
OK, let's try to puzzle out together some recent political events. The unifying thread will appear; it always does because it's always there, even if sometimes out of conscious reach. 1. Why would the Bush Administration deliberately break the law by engaging in electronic surveillance of Americans without getting the required court warrants? (full article)
Retired General William Odom, who served as a national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, spoke last Thursday to the Committee for the Republic in Washington, DC. He described the Iraq War as a historic blunder that the United States should end. Most of General Odom's presentation dealt with his new book The Unintentional Empire published by Yale University Press. This academic book focuses on the role of the United States as an empire. General Odom sees mainly good coming out of the U.S. empire and evidenced this by highlighting how countries want to be part of the empire, share in the wealth we create and the liberal democracy we have developed. He describes the U.S. empire as an ideological empire, not a territorial one. And, unlike other empires in history, it is a moneymaking not a money-losing empire. He sees other institutions, like the WTO, IMF and World Bank as part of the system and notes that they were created by the U.S. Finally, he sees the role of the U.S. military as projecting our power and influence as well as keeping peace among our allies. “The military umbrella,” according to Odom, “is critical to sustaining the empire.”....(full article)
Over the years, our
attention has been drawn to the close proximity of the village of Deir
Yassin to the Jewish Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem. Jews have been
encouraged to visit Deir Yassin, the symbolic starting point of nearly six
decades of Palestinian dispossession, and from there to look across to Yad
Vashem. Palestinians (if only they could!) have also been asked to visit
Yad Vashem -- the symbol of Jewish suffering -- and to look across the
valley toward the birth site of their own tragedy. Everybody was happy.
Jews of conscience were of course pleased to see Jewish suffering again at
the centre of the discourse but also happy to extend their narrative of
suffering to include Palestinians. Palestinians were perhaps less pleased
at having -- yet again -- to acknowledge Jewish suffering in order to help
achieve their own liberation, but they recognized the importance of the
publicity that the link between Deir Yassin and Yad Vashem brought to
their cause.....(full article)
January 24
Riding the Tale of the
Elephant: Michael Schrage, a former Washington Post columnist and current MIT security studies maven recently penned a column in the Outlook section of the Washington Post about the US strategy of paying Iraqi journalists to place stories favorable to the US in the media. The strategy, originally revealed by the LA Times on December 2005, provoked condemnation from journalists as far apart as Christopher Hitchens, leftist addition to the militerati, and Alexander Cockburn. An egregious breach of journalistic ethics was the consensus view. “Enough already,” says Schrage in his Post piece. “Securing positive coverage for our troops in Iraq can be as important to their safety as "up-armoring" vehicles and providing state-of-the-art body armor. The failure to wage the media war is a failure to command.” To the extent that Schrage is arguing that massaging the news is not a recent development for the military, he is right. Fake news is not new. It’s been part of military offensives since Neanderthal man first tricked his neighbor and clubbed him over the head....(full article)
Having come to
understand that mainstream media are in the business of selling fried
chicken and cars, giving Wall Street head, and stealing bandwidth from the
public’s airwaves, none of us expect them to question anything afoot in
the empire. We quite understand they cannot be wasting profitable air time
on a nation whose collective memory is 30 seconds long. So we watch them
pull their punches and wait for the commercials, which are their whole
point anyway. If, god forbid, you are the pointy-headed type interested in
details, turn on NPR. And if you consider yourself hipper than the couch
taters out here in Budland, go onto the net and visit Salon.com. Or
if you are so worldly and hip that you are a downright commie, then
subscribe to Mother Jones. That’s the way it used to be. But now we
are seeing what were once considered the more intelligent and, in some
cases, more principled media such as NPR, Salon and
Mother Jones distancing themselves from meaningful controversy --
pulling the few wimpy punches they have. (Bullshit controversy, however,
is still in fashion.) We are talking about Mark Crispin Miller’s new book,
Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election and Why They’ll Steal
the Next One, Too (Unless We Stop Them). Miller has become a known
and respected progressive figure, one of the few in-your-face bespectacled
lefty author types with any credibility. But when it comes to promoting
Fooled, the guy can’t even get arrested. No interviews, nothing. In
fact, these days even his cash bounces -- Miller can’t even buy a spot on
National Public Radio for his book. Now you may be saying to yourself:
“Public Radio doesn’t sell advertising.” Which would make you one of those
delusional souls who believe that shameless brand hawking by the oil
companies and the financial establishment on NPR is not advertising. I
mean, after all, ADM and Wal-Mart? NPR has sales people out chasing these
sponsors. They sell these damned announcements. The only difference
between NPR’s “paid sponsorships” and the puke jock shows’ commercial
radio ads is that the NPR folks don’t have a real rate card. Which is
either stupid or brilliant, I’m not sure....(full article)
Iran’s Oil Exchange Threatens the
Greenback
The Bush
administration will never allow the Iranian government to open an oil
exchange (bourse) that trades petroleum in euros. If that were to happen,
hundreds of billions of dollars would come flooding back to the United
States crushing the greenback and destroying the economy. This is why Bush
and Co. is planning to lead the nation to war against Iran. It is
straightforward defense of the current global system and the continuing
dominance of the reserve currency, the dollar....(full
article)
Tre Arrow and ELF:
Radical Environmentalism on
Death Row The government drops bombs on kids in the Middle East, while a handful of activists torch some yuppie ski resort in Colorado: Bush gets reelected and the radical environmentalists are issued warrants. Where the hell is the justice? On Friday, January 20, eleven environmentalists accused of acting on behalf of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) were named in a 65-count Federal indictment that included numerous charges of arson and destruction of an energy facility. The events described in the indictments took place in Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, California and Colorado. The FBI had infiltrated them....(full article)
According to a Congressional report on the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the agency made an estimated $1.4 billion in improper payments in 2003, the last year for which financial records are available. The report found that $896 million was made in overpayments, and $519 million in underpayments, as a result of systematic errors at HUD. The overpayments could have subsidized housing for more than all the homeless in New York City. Although the Government Accountability Office (the bipartisan investigative unit of Congress) advised the Bush administration in 2001 that owing to “waste, fraud, and abuse… HUD’s rental assistance programs [are at] high risk,” the administration failed to take action. It appears that as the Bush administration focused increasingly on the war in Iraq, America’s homeless suffered.....(full article)
An article by JoAnn Wypijewski entitled, “What is an Antiwar Movement” (CounterPunch, January 14-15, 2006), shows clearly a few blind spots of the US Left. It is therefore necessary to address these blind spots. Wypijewski starts her article with all guns blazing against Lenni Brenner who, in an earlier article on CounterPunch, “The War within the Antiwar Movement” (January 10, 2006), had suggested that some meaningful discussions regarding Zionism and Imperialism were needed in order to give the antiwar movement a clearer direction. I will not make a comparison here between what he said versus what she said. Instead, I want to concentrate on how Wypijewski pursues her specific line of argument. I believe that some major problems that are common to a large segment of the U.S. Left are crystallized well in her article.....(full article)
Not only is it a disgrace that a nation endowed with the enormous wealth of the US neglects the working class and the poor -- it is morally reprehensible, even criminal. Some of our founding fathers did not believe in equality -- a fact they neglected to tell us in history class. There was much debate about whether or not non-property owners would have the right to vote or to govern. The original intent of some was to create a plutocracy in which those with wealth and property would govern those without. The first inhabitants of what is now America were never included in the equation; nor were non-whites or women. How could this be called democracy? (full article)
The year 2005 was a good one for the Maoist movement, the most vigorous trend within what remains of the communist movement that transformed the globe in the twentieth century. Four episodes in the four countries most affected by Maoist organizations should suffice to establish that Marxism-Leninism its Maoist form not only remains a factor in global affairs, but also is rapidly gaining in strength and significance.....(full article)
The Cochabamba water revolt -- which began
exactly six years ago this month -- will end this morning when Bechtel,
one of the world’s most powerful corporations, formally abandons its legal
effort to take $50 million from the Bolivian people. Bechtel made that
demand before a secretive trade court operated by the World Bank, the same
institution that coerced Bolivia to privatize the water to begin with.
Faced with protests, barrages of e-mails, visits to their homes, and years
of damaging press, Bechtel executives finally decided to surrender,
walking away with a token payment equal to thirty cents. That retreat sets
a huge global precedent....(full article)
Hamas: Sharon's Legacy? Both the Israeli and Palestinian political arenas are in turmoil. In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke has left the country and his newly established party, Kadima, in disarray. In the Palestinian territories, the ruling Fatah party is rapidly losing popular support, and the Islamist party Hamas is gaining ground. Paradoxically, Hamas' steady ascent is part of Sharon legacy, while its imminent victory in the upcoming elections will help Israel's new leader transform Sharon's political vision into reality.....(full article)
The Palestinian elections are just one small move in the bigger game in the Middle East with deadly consequences that go beyond the people in this troubled part of the world. The majority of Palestinians are ironically excluded from this vote: the 1.3 million Palestinians inside the so-called Green Line and the millions of refugees outside of Palestine/Israel. The minority of Palestinians voting are those living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. President Bush said once that elections under foreign occupations are meaningless. He was referring to Lebanon and the presence of Syrian troops. He was not challenged to explain Iraq and Palestinian “elections”. 450,000 colonial Jewish settlers are interspersed among the 3.5 million native Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) allowed to “vote”. There are also tens of thousands of Israeli troops manning some 300 checkpoints and gates in walls and fences that encircle ever-shrinking Palestinian cantons....(full article)
All right, maybe you’ve heard enough about James Frey and the whopping, wicked lies he told about himself in his mega-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces. Frey’s was the ultimate confessional blockbuster, an “Oprah’s Book Club” pick and blazing ray of hope to untold numbers of recovering alcoholics, addicts, ne’er-do-wells, soul-searchers and narcissists -- at least 3.5 million people, which is how many copies A Million Little Pieces is reported to have sold in hardcover. What Oprah herself had sanctified as “a gut-wrenching memoir” turns out to be a tissue of … er … untruths. Or maybe you haven’t heard anything at all about James Frey. Maybe you’ve been too busy keeping your eye on your job, the kids, your credit rating, Judge Cashman, that pervert down the street and those ever-rising gas prices. Maybe you’re old or disabled, and you’ve been too worried about your new, improved Medicare drug benefits to concern yourself with fancy “literary” scandals. Either way, I’m sick of the story. So much media wind has been expended on Frey and his shocking crimes against the Truth that I can't keep up with all the commentary. And what difference does it make? Most Americans, it seems, don't mind being lied to....(full article)
“I can’t stand it anymore, being lifted up
and then smacked down again, just when we were all trying so hard to
experience hope,” a friend tells me. She was one of several people I know
who were bystanders to Saturday’s shootings in New Orleans. Last weekend,
revelers filled the streets for one of our city’s most vital cultural
traditions, the second-line -- a roving street celebration put on by New
Orleans community institutions known as Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs.
This second-line was the biggest anyone I spoke to had seen, put on by 30
different Clubs. Many people came from out of town just for the day, and
during the parade thousands were chanting, “we’re back, we’re back!” The
day of hope and celebration was shattered when, towards the end of the
route, three people were shot in three separate incidents on Orleans
Avenue between Claiborne and Broad, in the Treme, a Black neighborhood
with a long history and culture of resistance....
20 Questions for Judge Alito: The Hearing
the People Didn’t Hear
Setting: Inner Sanctum of Senate Chambers.
The Hearing has just convened. Characters: The usual gaggle of senators
and their hangers-on; Judge Alito and his wife; no photographers, no
recording devices. Microphones are decorative only....(full
transcript)
In Defense of Progressive Values Make no bones about it -- I am a bona fide dyed in the wool progressive. I make no apologies. I am proud to be a progressive. It was progressives, not the party of big business that gave us social security, Medicare and unemployment insurance. It was progressives who championed virtually every increase in the minimum wage. It is progressives who are fighting for a living wage law. We must allowing neo-conservatives to define who we are. Progressives know who we are and what we stand for. If we are not overtly proud of the contributions of progressives to society we are not worthy of the name.....(full article)
2005 has been a terrible year for the human rights of African Americans in the United States. Facing assaults on livelihoods, falling incomes, rampant police violence and brutality, cuts in social spending and a generally cruel and undisguised contempt from the reactionary Bush administration, African Americans will remember 2005 as the year that saw the destruction of the great city of New Orleans, first by the hurricane (made possible by years of neglect and siphoning of levee funds to the “war on terror”), followed by the cruel racism of the state, media and mainstream white society as survivors were classified as “looters”, “holdouts” and “thugs”, which opened the way for a full-scale forcible displacement of the African American population of the city. To date, the city’s whiter and affluent residents have received far more generosity and care from the government, corporations and mainstream media than have African Americans. Worse, most of the city’s poorest residents, overwhelmingly African American, are being deliberately kept out of their city, their homes and residences targeted for bulldozing and sale through the use of nefarious means reflective of the worst legacies of racist America. This means then that the struggle of African Americans for equality and justice in America is not a historical event lodged in the past but an ongoing and present reality necessitated by institutionalized racism and oppression. This is where the comparison between African Americans and immigrant communities becomes a problematic issue. As bad as any form of racism is, it is a stretch for instance to suggest that the treatment of Indian Americans is comparable to the oppression of African Americans. But it is a bizarre departure from reality when a supremacist movement represented by a well-funded, very affluent section of the immigrant Indian American community claims to be oppressed like African Americans, especially when this claim is couched not in the aftermath of some terrible episode of racial violence or institutionalized brutality, but in the context of an effort to rewrite middle-school history textbooks in California.....(full article)
Legalized killing requires official justifications. The execution of Clarence Ray Allen was no exception. A prosecutor explained that “he masterminded the murders of three innocent young people and conspired to attack the heart of our criminal justice system.” And California’s governor was stern when he denied a clemency request for the 76-year-old prisoner....(full article)
The Bush Administration and their Democratic allies believe that the war in Iraq and now Iran is in Israel’s interest. “If you're a supporter of Israel, I would strongly urge you to help other countries become democracies,” President Bush was quoted as saying in the Forward on December 16, 2005. “Israel's long-term survival depends upon the spread of democracy in the Middle East.” Democracy by gunpoint that is....(full article)
The 38-year Israeli military occupation of Palestine and 57 years of ongoing Palestinian dispossession at the hands of the State of Israel has brought us to a point of total despair. Today, in 2006, Palestinians have been condensed into pockets of caged-in communities, taking on varying shapes and forms. Over 50 percent of the Palestinian population lives in exile and squalid pockets called refugee camps. Having being forced out of their homeland in 1948, again in 1967, and again in 2002, they eke out a meager existence in the land and countries surrounding Israel (West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, etc) and yearn to return home. All of the political activity in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip completely ignore these pockets of people living outside of Israel/Palestine. The end result will be that the majority of Palestinians, those living as refugees and in exile, will not be part of any organized process of governance, and thus the chance for any stability at all has been reduced dramatically....(full article)
Since quoting Marx makes a writer appear both more educated and more serious, I figured I'd start this piece about Iran with a bit of Marxism...from "Duck Soup." Ambassador Trentino: "I am willing to do anything to prevent this war." President Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho): "It's too late. I've already paid a month's rent on the battlefield." Now I'm not trying to imply the reasons America goes to war are this frivolous but...WMDs? Hussein connected to 9/11? Spreading democracy? Even Harpo would be laughing out loud....(full article)
Meet the “gulliberals” (pronounced GULlibruls): prominent Democrats, liberals, and progressives who have ears to hear but hear not, eyes to see but see not, and brains to understand but will not. Included among the gulliberals are Al Franken, Paul Begalla, Arianna Huffington, David Corn, Bernie Sanders, some writers for Salon.com and Mother Jones; admirable individuals all, who are laboring valiantly to overthrow the GOP in the next (alleged) election. Yet they are also unwitting allies with the Republican National Committee, as they say, with the GOP, “the elections were honest, so get over it!”.....(full article)
“Shallow
Throat” joined me at a mostly-deserted park in Virginia, bursting with
anger. I didn't even have to ask a question before the rage exploded out:
“I can't believe your Democrat friends are blowing it once again! The
Bushies are imploding in one scandal after another, it's dictator-time,
the Republicans are tarred by the Abramoff corruption brush, more attacks
on Mideast countries are coming soon, Bush ordered spying on Americans
with no court permission, impeachment momentum is in the air -- and the
Dems have let the President off the hook once again! How many times are
you going to push that boulder up the steep hill to the top and then let
it roll back down again? Do you liberals really have a death-wish?” (full
article) January 17
Nothing is more stultifying than one-party rule. It’s a simple rule of perception that unchanging sameness -- they always win, no matter what -- dulls the senses. My feeling is that right now the American people are taking a little breather. They got through the war on Christmas and that’s enough for now. The Dow Jones hit 11,000 for the first time since 9/11. People are drinking more, smoking more, sleeping. Burrowing into their families. Going to see Brokeback Mountain (I highly recommend it). Working. Above all, they are ignoring. They are tuning out the political process, because it is nothing but nonsense and stuff they can’t do anything about. They same is true for activists. Constant focus on the puppets who are out front can only lead to feelings of futility. We have to start thinking about the players behind the scenes. It’s time to go back to the beginning and try to understand our enemy. Time to consider the question, who is the enemy.....(full article)
Three Hawaiians have sued Wal-Mart, their
former employer. The class-action suit alleges that “Wal-Mart deleted
thousands of hours of time worked from employees payroll records… a
practice known as time shaving.” The complaint takes the world’s largest
retail store to task “for its knowing and systematic failure to pay its
hourly employees for all time worked.”.....
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was born on the brink of the Great Depression and died fighting for the right of workers to earn a decent living. On March 18, 1968, days before his murder, King told striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn., "It is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis…getting part-time income." King said, "We are tired of working our hands off and laboring every day and not even making a wage adequate with daily basic necessities of life." Two years earlier on March 18, 1966, King had called for Congress to boost the minimum wage. "We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage," he said. "A living wage should be the right of all working Americans." King did not dream that in the year 2006, he would be remembered with a national holiday, but the value of the minimum wage would be lower than it was in the 1950s and '60s. At $5.15 an hour, today's minimum wage is nearly $4 less than it was in 1968, when it reached its historic high of $9.09, adjusted for inflation.....(full article)
As I write to you from the heart of the Midwest, the epicenter of one of history's most egregious and shameful genocides, I watch with horror and moral revulsion as the US military industrial complex underwrites and supports a similar act of social extermination in the Middle East. CNN informed me yesterday that the mighty US military had killed eighteen civilians in Pakistan due to "bad intelligence" in the ongoing "war on terror." As an ally in this "war on terror", Pakistani leaders were justifiably upset. Can you imagine the repercussions if Pakistan had killed eighteen American civilians on US soil in a "strike against terrorists" based on "bad intelligence"? There would certainly be hell to pay. Yet in this instance, the Pakistanis will be lucky to receive an apology. It is NOT terrorism when we do it . . . . While the propaganda, lies, and white-washed accounts in American history books have often portrayed the Native Americans as "savages" who deserved to be "conquered" (while glorifying "how the west was won"), mainstream media frequently inform us of "acts of terrorism" by militant Palestinian individuals and groups. Concurrently, the abhorrent acts of state terrorism committed by the US and Israeli governments are usually presented as "necessary" and "acceptable.”.....(full article)
Earlier this month President Bush took advantage of Congress’ winter recess to circumvent the Senate and appoint 17 individuals to various government positions. Article II of the Constitution allows presidents to make temporary appointments without Senate approval; those appointed can serve until the next Congressional elections. The Founding Fathers granted the presidency the power to make recess appointments because prior to the 20th century Congress was in session for less than six months a year, in many instances, and vacancies couldn’t wait until Congress reconvened. However, since the 1980s presidents have used recess appointments for political purposes.....(full article)
Doubting Muslims, Jews and Christians of the world may now exalt and ululate in their disparate tongues, for the laying low of the wall-eyed ethnic-cleanser known as Ariel Sharon suggests there may indeed be a God progressive monotheists can get behind. Indeed, Sharon's fate seems to fit neatly into “wrath of God” framework in its details; there may be no more a fitting fate for Sharon than to exist in a permanent vegetative state. The Israeli maximalist, who grew fat on a diet of corruption and graft and lived on a ranch built on twice stolen property -- stolen first from Palestinians and then from his own people via a little known homesteader law meant to induce low-income Israeli cannon fodder to populate the outer realms of the new apartheid experiment -- will now waste away before the eyes of all of his supporters, much like, with any luck, their dreams of a greater Israel....(full article)
* * * *
In Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech, he had a dream. But in another of King’s important addresses, he faced the depth of our nightmare. We all know the famous words -- “I have a dream” -- delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” On this day that we mark with his name, all over this country, that speech will be played, as it should be. King articulated -- perhaps more eloquently than anyone had to that point -- the demand that the United States make good on the American dream, for all its citizens. But on April 4, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York City, in a speech titled “Beyond Vietnam,” King spoke just as eloquently of the nightmare that lies underneath that dream. In that speech to Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, King not only made a compelling case for ending the U.S. attack on Vietnam, but went beyond that to diagnose a failed society. On this day that we mark with his name, we owe it to King -- and to ourselves -- to face that failure honestly.....(full article)
“Integrity”,
according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, was the word most
frequently accessed by their readers in 2005. This bit of news has
interesting implications at this particular time when another I-word is
topping the list of many discussions. The report also caught my eye
because "integrity" is one of two words I've had on my mind lately. The
second, because it appears so often in print these days, is "hero". The
definition of "integrity" I find most meaningful comes directly from the
word's Latin root, "integer," meaning "to make whole or complete," an
origin it shares with the word "entire." A person of integrity strives to
model a life of wholeness, to integrate the practice with the preachment,
the ends with the means. "Hero" has gone from meaning "god-like" or
"demigod" to becoming a term more applicable to the everyday person.
Acting with exceptional courage, strength, ability and charity in certain
situations, anyone might be a hero. Heroism can come and go, and it can be
confused with stardom. Paradoxically, heroes often eschew the pedestal and
identify more and more throughout their lives with common people through
shared struggle. Instead of aiming to be gods, heroes seek wholeness and
integration....(full article)
Rev. Jackson -- Pissing on
the Graves of Civil Rights Heroes Andrew Goodman was a 21-year-old Jewish anthropology student from New York who went to Mississippi in 1964 to help register black voters. He joined thousands of activists in Freedom Summer, a non-violent challenge to the institutionalized racism of the U.S. South. Goodman was one of the many people who helped bring King’s dream one step closer to reality. But Goodman’s idealism and dedication to justice cost him his life. He was murdered by a white supremacist mob in Philadelphia, Mississippi together with two other activists, the black Mississippian James Chaney (age 21) and a second white New-Yorker, Michael Schwerner (age 24). Last Thursday, Goodman’s mother received a Civil Rights Award from the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism. Rev. Jesse Jackson spoke at the event, which commemorated Martin Luther King Jr. But not all is well....(full article)
The media has assumed its traditional role of fanning the flames for war by providing ample space for the spurious allegations by administration officials, right-wing pundits, and disgruntled Iranian exiles, while carefully omitting the relevant facts in Iran’s defense. As always, the New York Times has spearheaded the propaganda war with an article by Richard Bernstein and Steven Weisman that lays out the sketchy case against Iran. In the first paragraph the Bernstein-Weisman combo suggest that Iran has restarted “research that could give it technology to create nuclear weapons.” Nuclear weapons? Perhaps, the NY Times knows something that the IAEA inspectors don’t? If so, they should step forward and reveal the facts. More likely, however, they are simply following in the tradition of mentor Judith Miller whose scurrilous front-page articles misled the nation to war with Iraq. There is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. None.....(full article)
There’s been a lot of rubbish written about Iran’s “removing the seals” from its uranium enrichment equipment. The fearmongering Western media have exploited the expression for all it’s worth. Even those who are normally skeptical of the Bush propaganda machine are taken aback by this ominous sounding phrase. What gibberish! How else does one make nuclear fuel for electric power plants if the fuel-producing mechanism is under lock and key? The fear-engendering description provided in the news would have the reader believe that “diabolical” Iranians are ripping off the seals with crowbars so they can quickly assemble their secret nuclear stockpile to bomb Tel Aviv. This is the worse type of demagoguery....(full article)
The Law of Nations was a four-book treatise written by a Swiss legal scholar, Emmerich de Vattel, in 1758. Early Supreme Court cases suggest to me that there may have been several other treatises, by other authors, on the Law of Nations, but the one by Vattel was by far the most prominent and authoritative of the time. In reading it, you will find many of the origins of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. The third book of Vattel's Law of Nations is about how warfare between nations is to be conducted. Reading many sections of the four books of Vattel's Law of Nations has clearly left me with two impressions.....(full article)
On Saturday, January 7, Tom DeLay, the powerful Texas Republican, became the biggest political casualty thus far of L'Affaire Abramoff, as he was forced to resign his post as majority leader of the House of Representatives amid mounting evidence of widespread corruption and influence peddling on Capitol Hill. While not yet specifically named in the ongoing Abramoff investigation, DeLay has been dealing with his own legal troubles. In September, he was indicted by a Texas grand jury for allegedly violating campaign finance laws to help the Republican Party win control of that state's legislature in the 2002 elections. Delay, who will retain his House seat, has already declared his intention to run again in the fall congressional elections. The timing of his resignation as majority leader coincided with the guilty plea last week of longtime associate and friend -- the high-powered GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who over the years has forged relationships with dozens of powerful politicians, mostly Republicans, but a smattering of Democrats as well.....(full article)
Here is the head of
Ahmed the Barber,
In front of the head
of Ahmed the Barber:
Ahmed the Barber has
no harsh words now
The historical record opens east of the Mediterranean Sea in the mid-third millennium circa 2250 B.C.E.
The earth of the Fertile Crescent, the Cradle of Civilization, provided the generating spark
that instigated society's creation.....(full
poem)
January 12
Youthful feminists today who have not themselves experienced the struggles of the 1960s may feel lacking in cultural resources to claim as their own since the once radically differentiating “edge” fueled by free love, political activism and bohemian lifestyles have been incorporated into the bourgeois mainstream. Drawing on the work of Dick Hebdige and Elizabeth Wilson, it seems that the fact that the adjective “bohemian”, in its contemporary usage, conjures images of celebrities like the Olson twins instead of evoking the deviant identities and subcultures of, say, early 20th century Greenwich Village has profound implications for aspiring social activists today, particularly feminists.....(full article)
The U.S. economy is expanding. With such
strength comes new employment, as President Bush noted after the Jan. 6
jobs report from the Labor Department. The president is absolutely
correct. Economic growth does increase total employment. But does this
trend improve the quality of work, meaning wages and benefits? For more
information, we turn to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which
analyzed a quarter-century of robust U.S. economic growth (1979–2004) by
analyzing data from last March’s Current Population Survey. During that
25-year period, Republican and Democratic presidents sat in the White
House. As they governed the nation, the share of U.S. workers with “good
jobs,” defined as hourly wages of at least $16.00 ($32,000 annually), plus
a retirement pension and employer-paid health care remained the same -- 25
percent.....(full article)
Loss and Displacement at the Calliope
The B.W. Cooper Housing Development --
popularly known as the Calliope projects -- was home to 1,400 African
American working-class households in 1,546 units on 56 acres of land. It
is the third largest housing development in Louisiana and the largest
tenant-managed housing development in the country. Most of the complex was
not damaged in Hurricane Katrina or the subsequent flooding. After
Hurricane Katrina, residents were scattered throughout the United States,
including many in shelters and motels here in Louisiana. Although most of
these dispersed residents ache to return to their communities, the Housing
Authority of New Orleans (HANO) posted a general notice in the projects
informing residents that they may not move back, and some Cooper tenants
report receiving notice that they have to clear out their possessions.
HANO has also hired a Las Vegas company named Access Denied to install
16-gauge steel plates over windows and doors at B.W. Cooper and other city
projects, including the Lafitte projects in the Treme neighborhood. One
housing activist remarked, "they finally invested money in the projects,
and it’s to keep residents out.".....
There is a long debate in sociology about the nature and roots of charisma. While Max Weber described it as a special virtue possessed by a gifted person, or conversely as an attribute created by his office, Edward Shills argued that the traits of the person to whom charisma is attributed is irrelevant. Charisma is a basic and desperate need of a deeply troubled society that is seeking a redeemer. My own opinion is that the emergence of a charismatic leader is a conjunction of both a long-lasting state of emergency with a special personal character. This conjunction produces a charismatic situation filled by a charismatic personality. There is no doubt that Israel is a very troubled country, especially since the 1967 war. In spite of the unprecedented immigration of more than one million of Jews and non-Jews from the former Soviet Union, the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River contains about 5 million Jews (and non-Arabs) and 4.5 million Palestinians (both citizens and non-citizens). This demographic reality transformed Israel into a de facto binational country, an apartheid state.....(full article)
After wiping Palestine off the map and expelling over 700,000 Palestinians from their homes, confiscating the land they've lived on for generations, Israel still had a considerable Palestinian minority within its borders. Set to realize the dream of creating a state for Jews only, which had obviously failed, Apartheid laws were imposed in order to make the non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish state to leave. Many leading human rights defenders have correctly referred to the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as Apartheid. Collective punishment, house demolitions, settlements for Jews only, prices on electricity and water several times higher for Palestinians than Jewish settlers; the Apartheid on the occupied territories is obvious. Still, I find it strange that the inequality for the Palestinians within the state of Israel is neglected. In some perspectives, their rights within Israel proper today are more limited than in the territories conquered in 1967. This is due to the way the state of Israel is set up. When people hear Israel being referred to as a “Jewish state,” they tend to interpret it as if Israel is a state with a Jewish majority. That's true. But there's more to it. The principle of a Jewish state says that Israel “belongs to” the Jewish people, meaning that every Jew has a right to immigrate to Israel while non-Jews don't (unless they marry an Israeli Jew). As a result of this, Israel does not “belong to” any non-Jew, not even its non-Jewish citizens....(full article)
President Bush spoke last week to wounded soldiers at Brooke Army Medical Center and uttered these immortal words, indicating a lack of true appreciation for the suffering of the gravely wounded, often permanently disabled soldiers he was speaking to: "As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself -- not here at the hospital, but in combat with a Cedar. I eventually won. The Cedar gave me a little scratch. As a matter of fact, the Colonel asked if I needed first aid when she first saw me. I was able to avoid any major surgical operations here, but thanks for your compassion, Colonel." At a time when the number of severely wounded soldiers is rising, this lack of appreciation is disturbing and portends badly for adequate resources being made available to care for damaged soldiers and veterans over the coming months, years, and decades. This episode was far from the first time Bush uttered bizarre sounding comments in response to the injuries of others. Who can forget his remarkable message to the hundreds of thousands of people, many poor and black, whose lives were devastated by Hurricane Katrina: "Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch." While Bush's comments to wounded GIs were uttered together with the usual platitudes expected on such occasions, these quotes illustrate Bush's greatest strength and also his greatest weakness, his narcissism.....(full diagnosis)
After
winning a landslide election victory on December 18th, Bolivian
president-elect Evo Morales announced plans to nationalize the country’s
gas reserves, rewrite the constitution in a popular assembly, redistribute
land to poor farmers and change the rules of the U.S.-led war on drugs in
What could be more encouraging for the human race than for us “religious animals,” as American author Mark Twain called us, to question why we believe what we believe! Some would suggest that religious beliefs are insignificant and must be private. But, when a religion teaches that God hates those who do not believe “thus and so,” or when a religion seeks to make criminals of those who believe differently by legislating its doctrine into civil law, we humans must demand a dramatic change. It's time for dialogue in courts of law if necessary, utilizing laws of evidence, reason, and logic about the basis and value of religion. Enter Luigi Cascioli! According to a story posted on January 4 by Reuters, an Italian court is being asked to rule whether the Roman Catholic Church is breaking the law. The first criminal charge is Abuso di Credulita Popolare (Abuse of Popular Credulity) m | |
