Orwell's Grave

October Media Coverage of Domestic Violence Awareness Month

2007-10-24T21:17:00.000-04:00

Thanks to CALCASA for the sourcing...

Lucinda Marshall, from AlterNet, reviewed nine magazine publications this month and compared the amount coverage devoted to breast cancer and domestic violence.
“Although October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM), we’d much rather be aware of breasts, even sick ones, than talk about black eyes and things that aren’t supposed to go on behind closed doors. That point is reflected in women’s magazines, which devote much more space in their October issues to breast cancer than they do to domestic violence.”
All of the magazines Marshall reviewed advertised breast cancer articles on their covers but only two contained information on Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Marshall also pointed out, “that we shrink away from black eyes. Breasts, on the other hand, are highly marketable commodities…Such irresponsible coverage of breast cancer and blindness to domestic violence suggest that many publications are less concerned with women’s health than with making a buck.”
This story highlights how difficult it is to get effective coverage of both domestic violence and sexual assault in today’s media. Although the media is perfectly happy covering “public health issues” to varying degrees of accuracy, they rarely if ever address the broad societal costs associated with violence against women. Sexual assault in particular is often relegated to stories focusing on sex offenders and “stranger-danger” coverage made common for their ability to “scare up” ratings.
To read the full article, click here.

"Gray Rape"

2007-10-23T08:11:00.001-04:00

There has been a discussion recently about something called "gray rape," a contrivance proposed by author Laura Sessions Stepp that only serves to support men's excuses and explanations for sexually assaulting women. There have been good discussions about this at Feministing .

Any man who has sexual relations with a woman knows, deep in his heart, whether he has coerced her or not, whether she has consented or not, whether she has relented or not, whether he has pressured her or not, whether he has threatened her or not, whether he has assaulted her or not. Any man who says he was confused or not sure is prevaricating. There is no gray area about it.

Spend some time talking with men in court-ordered batterer intervention programs. Almost every one of them has sexually assaulted his female partner, under the influence or not. Being drunk is a disinhibitor, not an excuse or an explanation. Neither party is having "consensual" sex when he or she is drunk. But every batterer will tell you that they knew exactly what they were doing. The fact that they are batterers, of course, makes drunken sex just as non-consensual as sober sex.

Scary People in America

2007-10-23T07:37:00.000-04:00

One of the scariest slideshows I have ever scene.

http://www.alternet.org/stories/63710/

Hat-tip to BAGNewsNotes

The Amazing Grace Paley

2007-08-25T09:08:00.000-04:00

Grace Paley died this week at age 84. What follows is quite possibly the last interview with her and major story written about her (full disclosure: Rickey Gard Diamond is my partner).

The Amazing Grace Paley
Vermont's Poetic Conscience

By Rickey Gard Diamond

It wasn't easy for Thetford writer Grace Paley to find time for this interview. Nearing 85, Paley has been fighting breast cancer for a number of years and, the month before, she'd finished a new round of chemotherapy. Yet she and poet husband, Bob Nichols, had just collaborated on a new book, Here and Somewhere Else, out the same week I visited. She looked thinner than when I last saw her, but put me at ease, beginning our talk the way women often do: she admired my sweater.
I complimented her beret, worn at a jaunty angle, and she took it off to show me how short her hair is now, and darker - no longer snowy white. "It's beginning to grow back now," she said, running her hand over her head. "I was bald." Blunt, her voice still hails from the Bronx, edged with kindliness.
Paley first began spending summers in Vermont in the early 1970s. I asked her how she liked living here now, a place still snowy in April, and so different from her home town. "I feel lucky to be here," she answered. "But I was lucky to live in New York City, too. Both places are so different and both exciting to me. I wouldn't be who I am if I hadn't had both these places."
I told her I had made my decision to move to this state about the time I discovered her stories, 25 years ago. I was a working single mom with three kids. Poor, I dreamed of being a writer. Knowing that Paley was living in Vermont, I thought that breathing the same air she breathed might help my writing. Her stories had already changed my world.
Before reading Paley, I'd never seen my "secret woman's life" made visible, made literature. Her early path, like mine, looked conventional. Paley and I had both married by age 19; she a generation earlier, in 1942. I surely recognized what she said about it in her biography: "The whole atmosphere in the house was that if you didn't get married, you were in trouble."
Grace Goodside was born in New York City in 1922 to Russian Jewish immigrants (the family name altered from Gutseit). Her parents had expected their bright, pretty, funny, strong and determined child to excel, writes biographer Judith Arcana in Grace Paley's Life Stories. "But it never entered their minds she wouldn't also be a wife and mother."
"[My parents] were radical people in Russia," Paley told me, crediting them for her disposition and her politics. Paley carried that legacy into her college days, befriending an African American woman at Hunter College, according to Lucy Nichol, a childhood friend who attended college with Paley and now lives in Montpelier. Hunter College's fairly sizeable population of black students sat separately at lunch. "We were pretty radical, but it was a little unusual for Grace to pal around with an African American," Nichol said.
Paley remarked on her own education in Arcana's Life Stories. "Something happened to me at school. After junior high I just sort of went inside myself. I became desperately unhappy." When Paley was 13, her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. When she was only 15, she graduated high school and entered Hunter College in 1939. Not surprisingly, for someone so young, she cut classes and dropped out after a year. She worked at clerical jobs until she married Jess Paley.
Later Paley tried more classes, including one with poet W.H. Auden. She had begun writing poetry. Her friends and family recognized Paley's talents. In fact, two years ago, at a special Vermont event in Paley's honor, Lucy Nichol read an early poem Paley had written for a mutual friend in the Bronx, who had saved the poem for 60 years. Could any of them have imagined Paley would one day be named Vermont's poet laureate, as happened in 2003?
Paley's early adult life was shaped by World War II. She followed her soldier husband across the nation, and lived with a friend when he went overseas. When Jess returned, the young Paleys settled in Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan.
In 1948, Paley's mother died, just a year before Paley's daughter Nora was born. A son, Danny, came in 1951, and in 1952, ill and exhausted, Paley had an illegal abortion, about which she later wrote in Just as I Thought. She was becoming deeply concerned about women's lives, though the greatest changes still lay ahead.
Writing in Secret
Paley's son Danny told Judith Arcana that by the time he was six, he knew his mother was a writer. He recalled Paley "typing away, I always saw her typing….I read her first book when I was eight or nine." That book, The Little Disturbances of Man, established his mother's reputation, not for poetry, but for short stories.
Paley had begun writing in secret. She later said she regretted not sharing her work with others sooner; friends reported it was hard to get her stories out of her clutches. When I asked her why, she said, "Because in those days, women's lives weren't considered to be interesting. That was the common thought. We [later] found out, it was interesting. I feel very lucky to have lived and written in these times when there was a great woman's movement, the greatest political movement of the 20th century."
Paley's material was her life-rich material. She worked with parent organizations at the school, went to meetings at the Peace Center she helped found in the neighborhood, took part in demonstrations and stood on street corners, handing out leaflets. Meanwhile, she wrote and managed a busy family. Children played a central role in all these realms.
I was given a glimpse of this period in Paley's life from another Montpelier woman, Fran Krushenick, who lived for ten years in the same apartment building as Paley in the Village. It was a dilapidated old apartment building, Krushenick said, even in 1962 when they first moved in. It was near Public School 41, the neighborhood full of the sounds of children. Krushenick's kids were much younger than Paley's, so the two mothers never met in nearby parks for those intimate talks famous in Paley's fiction, but she said Paley still visited regularly.
"She was constantly forgetting her key. I'd hear a knock, and there would be Grace, and I'd say, oh, you've forgotten your key again, and Grace would nod and go right through the apartment, into my son's bedroom and out his window to climb down the fire escape to her apartment below. She kept a window unlocked."
Krushenick's daughter, Andra, always looked forward to Paley's Halloween Haunted House, renowned in the neighborhood. Krushenick recalls a sweet story Paley once told her about her own girl. Out of milk, Krushenick had put a dollar bill in a little purse for her six-year-old's first solo trip to the grocery store, around the corner. Andra was very proud, said Fran. Streets were safer then. Plus neighbors, like Paley, paid attention.
Paley told Krushenick she'd then noticed Andra looking very forlorn. What's wrong? Paley asked. Andra had opened the purse to find it empty. Let me look, said Paley. The purse clicked open to two different compartments, and Paley found the dollar and showed Andra how the closure worked. Paley kept a look-out until Andra returned, beaming with success-but where's the milk? Paley asked, seeing she'd forgotten it in her excitement. Paley sent Andra back to the store, later sharing a laugh with Krushenick.
Keeping the Family Close
Today, the youngest four of Paley's grandchildren live very close by, and they visit her every day, she told me. Her house in Thetford is as scruffy as that old apartment building. In the center of her living room is a support beam, tacked with dozens of curling photos of the children in her life. She rose from her chair to show me each picture, and sympathized when I confided that my grandkids live far away. "That's hard," she agreed. Her phone rang, as it had several times, and she answered it in the next room. This time there was pleasure in her voice when she recognized the caller - it was the grown granddaughter, whom she'd already mentioned when I asked her if we really lived in a post-feminist age: were we all done?
"That's not really true," she answered, "but in my own family, for my granddaughter, who's in her mid-20s-she's going to law school. And for her, it's just natural. It's not the biggest thing anymore." She shrugged but then added, "I think young women shouldn't lose what the women's movement has gained. Don't make light of that sisterhood we found. They should keep their loyalty to each other, as women, and not give it away."
I heard her talking to her granddaughter. "I'm in an interview. I'll call you back, but first I want to know how you are. No, right now." She listened, gave encouraging hmms, then said, "While I have you, give me your new address, yeah, right now. Okay, pussy cat-kiss you."
When she came back in, I said, gesturing toward the childrens' photos, "You've been involved in the politics of social change for a long time. What do you dream of for these little ones?"
She sighed and took a moment. "It would be a world where all of my grandchildren-you saw two of them are black, not white-could feel at home in their world. I know when those children grow up, they're going to face some hard things. So it would be a world without militarism and racism and greed-and where women don't have to fight for their place in the world."
Paley's second book, the short story collection Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, was released in 1975 and included a wider cast of outspoken women. Grace and Jess Paley had divorced 1972. She'd begun teaching writing some years before that to help support her family. That same year she had married Bob Nichols, who had a home in Vermont.
That book and another story collection, Later the Same Day, published in 1985, reflected a changing world and included divorces, careers, arguments, always arguments, and black and lesbian voices, along with familiar women's friendships. About the change in her later stories, she told me, "There has to be some political movement before there can be a literature. Black literature came because first there was a black political movement. Women's literature came with a women's movement."
I asked her what she thought about contemporary women's writing. "I look for women in publications and I count how many women are being published. I consciously support publications that publish women because it's easy not to-like The New York Times Book Review sometimes. Women's writing needs to be supported by women."
Long-Distance Runner
Poet Susan Thomas, who lives in Marshfield, was one of Paley's students at Sarah Lawrence College, a short commute north of the city, where Paley taught writing for 22 years. "I knew Grace, first as an undergrad, from political stuff," Thomas said. "We were starting to march against the [Vietnam] war. Then I was with her for graduate school, 1977-1980. Now I've been her friend for longer than I was her student."
I'd already noticed Paley values relationships that last. In the forward to her autobiography, Just as I Thought, she thanked both of her husbands for their friendship and support. This seemed unusual, I commented, but she shrugged, matter-of-fact. "I was married to the other guy for 25 years and I've been married to Bob for 35. I'm just a long-distance runner." I laughed, recognizing the title of one of her best-known stories.
"Her writing class was not hierarchical," Thomas told me, emphatic. "We'd sit in a circle and listen to each writer read her story. Grace wanted us to hear the voice. We had to listen, because everyone had to say something. Then Grace would say something-like 'You don't have to talk so fancy about that story.'" Thomas laughed. "You know how she likes to dumb it down, but she's brilliant; she has her own cadences, her own language. She told us the process of editing is when you take out the lies. She said, you have to give all your characters integrity, including the bad ones."
Once, when Paley was away, a new teacher filled in, fresh from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where reputations are still made or destroyed. "She pitted us against each other, until we were all miserable," said Thomas, "so I told her, we don't do it that way here. We don't backbite. Everyone gets an equal amount of time and consideration." Thomas ran into that teacher years later, and they both remembered. "Paley taught us not only to be generous but to accept everyone's work as [being as] important as ours. There was no feeling of competition or hierarchy; we were all behind each other very, very strongly."
I experienced something similar in 1982, when Paley gave a reading at Vermont College in Montpelier. I was a student in the MFA in Writing program and Paley had recently been elected to the National Academy of Arts and Letters, an august post. My move to Vermont had obviously been wise, because there I was, not only breathing the same air, but sitting in the same room with Paley, a witness to her straight, strong posture. Surprisingly short, Paley carried a full head of bright, white hair and, out of her friendly-looking face, I now heard the voice that had jumped off the page at me so many times before. Her language rolled triple somersaults that took my breath away, more intimate than ever, speaking to me. Okay, there were other would-be writers in the group, too, listening-but she has a way of talking to each one, and personally.
Paley's story that day made us laugh and cry, and I noticed things I hadn't intended or understood could be in a woman's story. Afterward, she said to us, "Every story should be about the whole world." Her stories did seem that large, I saw, and from then on, mine wanted to be. But first, in the question period afterward, I tried to show off, disparaging Donald Barthelme, a writer very different from Paley. My tone gave away my scorn, as I'd learned was "done" in literary circles.
Paley surprised me, saying she valued his contributions, and that every writer has to find an authentic voice, however different. I didn't know at the time that Barthelme lived in her New York neighborhood and had been one of her earliest encouragers. But she didn't sneer at me in return. It was just as Thomas said: with Paley, everyone's words counted.
After the reading, I found the courage to invite Paley to my home, where an informal writers' workshop was meeting. I told Paley my writer friends would be honored to have her join us. She came and listened to our stories with interest, openly enjoying what everyone read. When she left, she kissed me on the cheek, thanking me. I've since tried to imagine Ernest Hemingway or John Updike mentoring this way-and the contrast always makes me smile.
Gender, Art and Politics
Paley's work continued to be published widely. In 1985 she penned a first book of poems, Leaning Forward, and the next year she helped organize a Women's Committee for PEN, the national writers' organization that advocates freedom from censorship. She and other women writers had noticed that only 16 of 117 speakers at PEN's 48th Congress were women.
Then-President of PEN, novelist Norman Mailer publicly explained it was because the speakers had to be of "real distinction." This was an intellectual event, and the only woman intellectual in America was Susan Sontag, he joked, and she couldn't attend. I've been told he later said from the podium that real writers had to have balls, and one of the women writers in the rear of the audience raised a hand to nicely ask him, "In what color ink does he dip them?"
This sounded so much like a comment Paley might have said that I asked her about the story. She laughed, but couldn't remember who it was, "maybe Nadine Gordimer."
"I don't know why he said such dumb things; it'll stick to him," she mused about Mailer. "I used to feel like I could talk to him, maybe, since both of us came from the Bronx. So I said once, Norman, don't talk that way! It's very upsetting to the women. And he said, they're just getting older and uglier, that's all. That was the end of my trying, so now when I see him at things, like at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and he's older, I think to myself, hey, look, Norman, you've lost your neck."
Paley's friendly protests for inclusion, for peace, cannot be separated from her art. Her wide-armed participation in life translates into stories and poems and actions and talks. Her political life is expressed as boldly as her literary one, the two a kind of yin and yang, nesting together, curling into a beautiful round shape that comes full circle.
Childhood friend Lucy Nichol reconnected with "Gracie" Goodside Paley at a Montpelier rally in 1979, and they have since worked together with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). Both of them have sung with the Raging Grannies, a chorus group whose funny lyrics disarm conventional thinking about violence, war and commercialism.
Burlington activist and WILPF member Robin Lloyd told me, "Every time I hear her speak or read her poetry, she's able to cut through the jargon, the politically correct way of looking at things, which is often tedious. She gets to the kernel of it and describes it in a way that reaches your heart, with simplicity, directness, and this nitty-gritty realism that's so appealing. Her poetry is one with herself - and how she looks and how she dresses, there's no artifice."
Paley has worked with and founded dozens of organizations that give voice to those silenced by economic and military violence. They include The War Resisters League, the Women's Pentagon Action, The Clamshell Alliance, Resist, The Feminist Press, The Writers and Teachers Cooperative, and her and husband Bob's own Good Day Press. In 1979, she helped organize the first feminist environmental conference, "Women and Life on Earth," while just this March, another international women's group she sponsors, Madre, produced a report on the devastating effects of Iraq's government on women, a topic seldom reported.
I said, "When I look at the long perspective you have, Grace, your span of experience - like being a young girl and seeing firsthand the Depression, and then being a young woman, married and hanging out with soldiers during WWII, and then you worked a long time to end the Vietnam war and the wars in Central America - I wonder what advice you might have for Vermont women today."
"Advice? I don't give advice. It's not what I do," she said, voice curt. "If anything, the important thing is to remain interested in the world. It's a natural thing, I think, to be interested in different people and different cultures. And if you're not, well, that's too bad. It's important to pay attention to what's going on in the world."
"What do you think is most important now?"
"The war! It's so horrendous. I can't believe we've ended up going there. How can mothers bear it, to send their children off to this war in Iraq? There was no build up to it, no way it had made itself real to us, we're just suddenly there."
"Did you notice that hyper-masculinity during the last presidential campaign?" I asked. "I wonder what you think of this American posture-being so tough, so strong?"
"It's always been that way. That's how they make a war happen. They have to turn it into some big, exciting thing that will make all the boys feel like they should fight, and that they can be successful. But I have the sense that they're not getting their way this time." She paused a moment, then said. "I hope," a wry smile lifting one corner of her mouth.
Wrapping up our interview, I learned that Paley and Nichols were planning to make the two-hour drive to Burlington the next day for a sit-in at Congressman Peter Welch's office.
Sure enough, I read the following day that Paley had taken part in the protest, among those refusing to leave until Welch personally explained why he had voted to fund the Iraq war, when voters had elected him to help end it. Six Vermonters, including 87-year-old Bob Nichols, had been arrested. Paley decided to forego arrest this time. But through her stories and her actions, she continues to inspire many to speak up and refuse silence.

*******
Contributing Editor Rickey Gard Diamond has earned her living by writing, publishing a novel, Second Sight, and other fiction, and editing Vermont Woman from 1985 to 1988. She now teaches writing at Union Institute and University's Vermont College campus. She would like to thank Paley's daughter Nora and her stepson Duncan for their kind assistance with this article.

Like A Rat.....

2007-08-19T09:50:00.000-04:00

If I were George Bush, I would be pretty ticked off at Karl Rove. After having his manipulative fingers in my brain for all these years, having led me into the morass of all my failures and disasters, I would be outraged that he would CUT and RUN before the end of my presidency. Like a rat from a sinking ship, Rove is leaving his doo-doo behind, his presidential Frankenstein drowning in the stinking stew of their mutual creation.

Karl Rove will wink on his way out the door, letting Bush and Cheney and the rest of us know that the joke is on us. He must be gulping hard, knowing that he won't have to be there at the end, waving to a thoroughly discredited George Bush slinking away on a helicopter out of Washington, headed back to his Texas ranch to continue to play his little boy cowboy games.

The disloyalty and cowardice of Karl Rove's decision is immensely disrespectful to Bush. It boggles my mind how none of his supporters view that way. Nevertheless, it does underscore how little respect he has actually had, all along, for Bush the man. And it certainly reflects the level of disrespect he has had for the American people throughout his dominion of fraud, trickery, lies and mercenary behavior.

All I can hope for is that justice will catch up with him as a private citizen.

Finish Ratifying the ERA

2007-01-17T07:09:00.001-05:00

Remember the ERA? Here's an update. For more go to: www.4era.org Thanks to WomensENews

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ERA Has Nothing to Do With Same-Sex Marriage

Run Date: 01/17/07

By Idella Moore, WeNews commentator

Opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment have for decades depicted it as a proxy case for same-sex marriage. Idella Moore calls it a 30-year case of propaganda and says recent court cases have caught perpetrators coming and going.

Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Last month Maryland's Court of Appeals agreed to review lower court Judge Brooke Murdock's ruling that the state's ban on same-sex marriage violated the state's Equal Rights Amendment, adopted in 1972.
As a longtime ERA proponent I hope the Maryland Appellate Court will follow other recent higher courts in deciding that same-sex marriage and the ERA are two completely separate issues.
Advocates for a constitutional guarantee of legal equality for women have been working since 1923 for an ERA to our U.S. Constitution.
We have watched as other countries have added similar gender equality language to their constitutions. We have cried "foul" as the U.S. government shamelessly insisted that a statement giving men and women equal rights be included in the new constitutions of Afghanistan and Iraq while denying that same right to American women.
Our campaign is seeking to add these simple words to our constitution: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex." Yet today we must battle not only long-time opponents of the amendment, but defend this amendment against misinterpretation by those whom most would consider our natural allies.
Maryland's state ERA has the same wording as the proposed federal amendment, yet in reaching her ruling Murdock decided to side with gay marriage lawyers' claims that the reference to "sex" includes "sexual orientation." This interpretation of the ERA has been tried before and has been consistently rejected in higher court decisions since 1974.

Ban Applies Equally

Again and again, higher state courts have said that a ban on gay marriage does not constitute sex discrimination because the ban applies equally to women and men causing no inequity on the basis of gender, since neither men nor women are allowed to marry members of their same gender.
The connection between the ERA and gay marriage began in the 1970s, when STOP ERA activists employed it as one of several scare tactics. They depicted the amendment as a threat to the structure of our entire society that would cause social upheaval and destroy the family unit.
Enough lawmakers believed--or purported to believe--the claims that the ERA ratification deadline came and went on June 30, 1982, with only 35 of the 38 required state ratifications.
Now, 24 years after the 1982 ratification deadline, a new campaign to finish ratifying the ERA is well underway. We want to gain ratification in three more states and then challenge the 1982 deadline. Ratification legislation has been introduced in several states--such as Illinois, Missouri, Florida and Arkansas--that never ratified the ERA.
The renewed ERA campaign has riled up opponents who are taking advantage of the same-sex marriage issue's high profile to once again claim the ERA is a backdoor route to legalizing same-sex marriage.

Strange Allies

In a case of strange political allies, anti-ERA and anti-gay marriage activists are teaming up with same-sex marriage lawyers to make the same erroneous claims about the ERA. In early 2005, for instance, gay marriage lawyers in Washington argued before their supreme court that the state ERA rendered a ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Who did they find agreeing with them? None other than arch-social conservative Phyllis Schlafly, founder of STOP ERA, who for 30 years has been declaring the ERA will grant same-sex marriage.
In July of last year, after 18 months of deliberation, the Washington State Supreme Court reaffirmed its 1974 decision and ruled that the state's ERA has no bearing on gay marriage because the ban on gay marriage affects women and men equally.
This echoed decisions handed down in Vermont in 1999 and in Massachusetts in 2003. Although both those courts found other reasons for siding with gay marriage couples, they both explicitly rejected arguments that a ban on same-sex marriage constituted gender discrimination.
But despite these decisions Schlafly and her Eagle Forum nonprofit group continue to argue that the ERA is a same-sex marriage initiative in disguise.

Cracks Appearing

Cracks in this anti-ERA strategy, however, are beginning to appear.
The Family Research Council, a staunch Schlafly ally, publicly continues to support the spurious proposition that an ERA equals gay marriage. But it is furtively arguing just the opposite.
In the wake of the Washington ruling this past summer, the Family Research Council, based in Washington, D.C., filed a brief in the Maryland case accusing Judge Murdock of using "flawed Equal Rights Amendment analysis" and offering the Washington state decision as proof that the ERA cannot be used to legalize gay marriage. Yet in November, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins wrote an article saying that Schlafly is correct when she says the ERA is "an excuse for legalized same-sex marriage."
Unfortunately for our campaign, the ERA is so far off the media radar that no journalists have bothered to connect the dots enough to find Schlafly siding with gay marriage attorneys in one state and the Family Research Council both supporting and not supporting the Equal Rights Amendment in another.
If any were watching, they'd see clearly enough that ERA opponents are in a state of legal inconsistency and getting caught, finally, in their own trap.
******************************************

Idella Moore is founder of 4ERA.org, a national single-issue, non-partisan organization working to finish ratification of the federal Equal Rights Amendment.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.
For more information:
4ERA.org:http://www.4era.org/

Rape Used as Major Weapon in Darfur

2006-12-11T07:34:00.000-05:00

A group of international women leaders has called for sending peacekeepers to Darfur to protect women from an onslaught of rapes committed by the pro-government Arab Janjaweed against mostly black African women and girls. Other than murder, rape is a favored, ultimate tool used by men to exert power and control over women, not just in Darfur, but in the United States as well.

We continue to behave like bystanders, watching the murders and rapes in Darfur and doing absolutely nothing to protect the women, children and men there. We learned nothing from our failure 12 years ago in Rwanda, despite all our crocodile tears and our earnest commitments to never let it happen again.

If you want to help, go here or here

What is the Bush Administration Thinking?

2006-12-10T07:41:00.000-05:00

Juan Cole asks the obvious question about how serious the Bush administration is about Iraq being the epicenter of our fight against terrorism: How can we be serious about such a fight if only 33 out 1000 people who work at our embassy speak Arabic, and only 6 of them speak it fluently?

From Reuters

- Among the 1,000 people who work in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, only 33 are Arabic speakers and only six speak the language fluently, according to the Iraq Study Group report released on Wednesday.
"All of our efforts in Iraq, military and civilian, are handicapped by Americans' lack of knowledge of language and cultural understanding," the bipartisan panel said in its report. "In a conflict that demands effective and efficient communication with Iraqis, we are often at a disadvantage."
The report, written by five Republicans and five Democrats, recommended the U.S. government give "the highest possible priority to professional language proficiency and cultural training" for officials headed to Iraq.

Protect Corporations, Not Children!!!

2006-11-23T07:33:00.000-05:00

SAN FRANCISCO'S RIGHT TO PROTECT ITS CHILDREN IS CHALLENGED AGAIN

By Peter Montague

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) -- formerly known as the Chemical Manufacturers Association -- on November 16 filed a second lawsuit against the City of San Francisco, aiming to prevent the City from protecting children from toxic chemicals in toys. San Francisco passed a law in June prohibiting the sale of toys containing six toxic chemicals called phthalates (tha-lates) and another toxicant called bisphenol-A.

In October, the ACC and other corporations sued the city in California state court, claiming that state law preempted the city's right to protect children by controlling toxics in toys. The second lawsuit was filed in federal court and it claims that federal law preempts the city's right to protect its children from toxic chemicals in toys. Specifically, the ACC's complaint says theFederal Hazardous Substances Act, plus decisions by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, make it illegal for municipalities to pass laws to regulate toxic materials in toys.

This is a definite trend -- corporations trying to prevent local governments from passing laws to protect citizens against hazards and dangers created by corporations. In many instances the federal Congress is passing laws that prevent local governments from passing laws to curb corporate abuses. It's called "federal preemption."

We can draw three conclusions from this second lawsuit:

1. This is a major attack on the precautionary principle. The American Chemistry Council has hired a fancy-pants law firm to pursue this case. Clearly the ACC is putting a lot of money behind its effort tostop San Francisco from taking a precautionary approach to protecting children.

2. This lawsuit is a sign of just how powerful and bold corporations have become that they would sue San Francisco, asserting that corporations have the right to expose children to known poisons and there's nothing local governments or individual citizens can do about it. They are thumbing their noses at the Moms of the world and at everyone else who may try to protect children from chemical trespass.

3. There is one benefit from a lawsuit like this: It allows us to see clearly that the system we call "regulation" was set up not to protect citizens from harm, but to protect corporations from citizens who try to curb corporate power. The regulatory system doesn't regulate polluters -- it regulates citizens, by strictly limiting how they are allowed to respond to corporate abuse.

From www.rachel.org

Happy Thanksgiving.

Minimizing Male Violence

2006-11-16T07:01:00.000-05:00

[I wrote this piece for publication as an op-ed in Vermont newspapers, in response to a recent upsurge here in murders by men of their girlfriends, and some minimizing coverage by media covering the stories.]

October was National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If you didn't know that, it wasn't your fault. For the most part, the media chose to ignore the issue.

So, perhaps it was not surprising that, in some of the press reports about the murder of the woman in Lyndonville by her boyfriend, this murder/suicide was described as a "domestic dispute." Think about it. She wanted to break up with him, and in an act of ultimate power and control, he kills her and then himself. If a man rapes a woman on a date, is this a "dating dispute?" If a man rapes his wife, is this a "marital dispute?" If a man doesn't let his wife work, or have money, or see her friends, or drive a car, or he regularly threatens her, can this possibly be a "domestic dispute?" The "domestic dispute" characterization minimizes and normalizes what is actually an ongoing epidemic of male violence against women.

Every 15 seconds in America, a man beats his wife or girlfriend. Every 45 seconds, a man rapes a woman or girl, most often one he knows -- a wife, a girlfriend, a co-worker, or a family member. In the last ten years in Vermont, half of the murders of women by men were directly related to domestic violence. In the last few months, that figure has gone up, because of the murders in Lyndonville and Essex.

Women have led the way in America working to bring the issue of violence against women to the attention of our media, our community organizations, our governments, our schools, and our religious institutions. The time has come for men to stop being bystanders.

Most men in this country are not violent, most do not beat their wives and girlfriends. Despite that fact, domestic violence is really a gender issue. Men commit 90 to 95 percent of domestic violence acts. I think most men instinctively know this is true, but most men find it really hard to talk about it, think about it, or much less do anything about it. Some men believe that because he is not violent or it's not happening in his family, he needn't do anything. Some men believe it is a "woman's" issue, so he can really ignore it. Some men can't imagine talking about this issue with other men, some of whom he might suspect are abusing women in their lives.

Let's face it. This is an embarrasing issue for men. It's much easier for us to simply let women try to take care of this problem. It's really hard for most men to admit that this is our problem. Violence against women is men's violence. Can we find a way to help men own this problem and work together to solve it? How can we end the pervasive silence? How can we help our communities get past the attitude that this happens someplace else, certainly not where we live?
Given the prevalence of male violence against women, why has this not been a very public men's issue. Isn't it really in men's self-interest to address gender violence? Don't most of us really care about the women and girls in our lives?

Most men have a woman or girl in his life who has been a victim of male violence, a mother who was beaten, a co-worker who was abused, a sister or daughter who was raped or killed, a friend whose daughter was attacked, a friend whose wife was battered in a previous marriage. How would things change if our male governmental leaders, our male religious leaders, our male media leaders, our male teachers, our male business leaders, all of us began to speak out, identify male violence around them, and begin working to end it? How can we empower men to learn more, stand up and be heard on these issues? Knowledge is the first step.

In conjunction with Meg Kuhner of Battered Women's Services and Shelter in central Vermont, I co-facilitate a program in the schools about domestic and dating violence issues. Some schools have invited us, some have not. The information we bring to junior high school and high school students, girls and boys alike, is challenging and gives the students an opportunity to talk and ask questions. It really is encouraging to see how well most of these young men and women respond to learning about and talking about dating and domestic violence. It's almost as if they feel some relief to be able to talk about it.

The important institutions in our daily lives -- including our newspapers -- can be among the first places where men begin to address men's violence issues. Knowledge, information and understanding are the first steps. Maybe one day enough men will say that letting a ten-year old boy take a baseball bat and beat to death a black female prostitute might not be something we want in our video games. Maybe one day enough men will say to boys that calling each other names using denigrating terms for women and female body parts is not creating a good image of women in their heads. Maybe one day enough men will know that it takes more strength and courage to speak out than it does to remain silent.

What to Do About Mexico

2006-11-12T12:15:00.000-05:00

Here is one reason of many why Mexicans want to come to America to live and work.

Editor Found Dead After Running Corruption Stories

Published: November 11, 2006 10:00 AM ET

ZIHUATANEJO, Mexico -- A newspaper editor was found dead in a hotel room in this Pacific resort city, a day after running stories about organized crime and corruption in the city government.

Misael Tamayo Hernandez, editor of El Despertar de la Costa, was found early Friday nearly naked, with his hands tied behind his back, in a room at the Venus Motel, Zihuatanejo police officials said.He was lying on a bed, covered only with a sheet, and investigators found three puncture marks on his body, one in his right hand and two others in a forearm. The cause of death was a heart attack, forensic investigators said.

Tamayo Hernandez, who was well-respected in the local journalism community, published a story on Thursday alleging that city officials gave illegal discounts on water services to individuals and businesses. The same edition also contained stories on organized crime.

Workers at the motel said they saw the editor arrive in a gray Volkswagen Jetta about 1:25 a.m. local time Friday, and that the car left at 2:30 a.m. Tamayo Hernandez's body was found at about 7:30 a.m., District Attorney Raciel Gonzalez said.

Numerous journalists have been attacked or killed in recent years in Mexico, presumably as revenge for unfavorable reports on criminals, including drug traffickers and corrupt government officials.

In some parts of Mexico, prosecutors go to work, do absolutely nothing, and then go home safely to their families. Corruption, greed, murder, and threats are everyday occurrences in Mexico. Essentially gangs are terrorizing Mexico.

Unemployment is rampant, despite all the vaunted NAFTA and CAFTA promises. And despite Rush Limbaugh's uninformed protestations to the contrary, millions of migrant Mexican workers, illegal and legal, work in jobs almost all Americans don't want. In fact, some American companies are leaving Mexico because they have found cheaper labor elsewhere.

Instead of focusing on how to keep these millions of people out, perhaps we should be focusing on how we can help them survive and thrive in their own country. Unfortunately, that would take more creative thinking, courage and compassion than this current US administration has.

Is There a Limit to Corporate Rapacity?

2006-11-12T08:37:00.000-05:00

The corporate mentality that motivates tax breaks for the rich is itself richly reflected in the new advertisement from Lexus touting its new system that permits the car to park itself. The wealthy (the Lexus is not for the average worker) are too busy watching stock quotes on their Blackberrys to bother with parking the car themselves. This is a kind of wanna-be limousine driver for the not-yet super-rich.

Another delicious example of corporate rapacity can be found in a recent story and editorial from the New York Times. Here's part of the story by Stephen Labaton:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Frustrated with laws and regulations that have made companies and accounting firms more open to lawsuits from investors and the government, corporate America — with the encouragement of the Bush administration — is preparing to fight back.
Now that corruption cases like Enron and WorldCom are falling out of the news, two influential industry groups with close ties to administration officials are hoping to swing the regulatory pendulum in the opposite direction. The groups are drafting proposals to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms from criminal cases brought by federal and state prosecutors as well as a stronger shield against civil lawsuits from investors.
Although the details are still being worked out, the groups’ proposals aim to limit the liability of accounting firms for the work they do on behalf of clients, to force prosecutors to target individual wrongdoers rather than entire companies, and to scale back shareholder lawsuits.
The groups hope to reduce what they see as some burdens imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, landmark post-Enron legislation adopted in 2002. The law, which placed significant new auditing and governance requirements on companies, gave broad discretion for interpretation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The groups are also interested in rolling back rules and policies that have been on the books for decades.

Here's part of the editorial from today's edition:

It seems almost unbelievable, then, that corporate America would pick this moment to beg for relaxed regulation and enforcement, as well as more protection from investors’ lawsuits. But as Stephen Labaton reported recently in The Times, industry groups are seeking broad new protections for corporations and accounting firms, not through legislation but from the Bush administration through agency rule changes.

Corporate profits are never high enough. Corporate protections are never strong enough. Corporate personhood must be protected above and beyond any individual American's protections or rights. Whatever can be done to protect, serve, soothe and bouy corporations must be done. And while we're at it, let's not force the human agents of the corporatocracy be forced to park their own cars either.

Observations and Cautions

2006-11-10T07:24:00.000-05:00

Have you noticed that, in the wake of the elections, Rumsfeld and Bush, among others, have been talking about how "complicated" the war in Iraq is, and how not many people really understand all the complexities? How odd to hear this from two men who had so little insight into the social, cultural, religious and political complexities of a country they decided they were going to invade. What hubris from two men who ignored the warnings from a slew of people who actually did understand the complex nature of Iraq and warned against the invasion. And what a convenient excuse for two men to employ in the face of defeat and rejection, as if they are saying "if only more people understood what we were trying to do."

*********************

Bush II is now looking to some personnel resources from Bush I whom he has ignored. Brent Scowcroft was one of Bush I's chief policy advisors, but he was not brought into the inner circle of Bush II advisors. Scowcroft has been critical of Bush II's Middle East policy of neglect, Bush II's "failing venture" in Iraq, and Bush II's unilateral approach around the world which has hurt our relations everywhere. Now, Bush II is looking to Scowcroft's former chief assistant, Bob Gates (and former Bush I CIA head), to help correct the course of the Iraq war and lead America out of this mess as the new Secretary of Defense.

**********************

The Democrats need to be careful about how they celebrate. If they begin to behave like Republicans did when they took over the House and Senate, they will just show themselves to be only another form of legislative bullies. They have a chance to set an example. The Democrats ought not to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and they ought not to seek revenge against arrogant and anti-democratic behavior toward Democrats while Republicans ruled Congress.

***********************

Have you heard much from Karl Rove or Dick Cheney in the aftermath of their "thumping"? Not much, huh? Maybe we have seen a demotion of these two ideological creeps, and a muzzle on their ceaseless sneering, bragging, and disdainful words. Maybe I am wrong, but I think we will see less of them. Bush realizes he must, some how, some way, save whatever he has left of his legacy. Cheney and Rove are probably not the ones who are going to save his bacon. I think it's going to be his daddy.

***********************

Let's not expect too much. There will be some Congressional hearings and investigations that the Republicans have killed up to this point -- and that's a good thing. But what Congressional Democrats can accomplish is really limited. They do not have a veto-proof majority and are at the mercy of the process they fought to preserve -- the filibuster.

There is no "good" decision on the Iraq war. As one pundit put it, it's a choice among bad, worse and catastrophic. I will be surprised if anything even approaching a good resolution comes in the next two years. The next President will spend an enormous part of her or his time cleaning up this horrible mess.

What Would Karl Rove Have Done?

2006-11-02T10:07:00.000-05:00

John Kerry is pilloried, hoisted on his own petard, ridiculed -- and all unnecessarily so. Why? Because he waffled. Because he hedged. Because he shuffled his feet and then apologized. All for something he did not need to apologize for.

Kerry's initial instincts were right. He got tough and stood up for himself.

What exactly did he say? Here it is:

"Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.”

Why, in heaven's name, did he feel he needed to apologize for that remark? Here is the spin Karl Rove would have devised were he a Democratic Party strategist:

Rove would have turned it into an advantage. He would have had Kerry ask: "What's the matter with you all? Don't you get it? Bush didn't study, Bush isn't smart, Bush is intellectually lazy....and look where it has gotten us! The disaster in Iraq. All you have to do is ask most Americans who now disagree with the Bush Iraq war. He is stuck in his own mess. Let me repeat -- didn't study, isn't smart, and is intellectually lazy. How did we get in this horrible mess? George Bush. Need I say more?"

"And any convoluted inference that I am dissing American troops is ludicrous and insulting. And those who attempt to misuse my words are the ones who are insulting our troops, not to mention insulting the intelligence of the American people."

Karl Rove would not have let Kerry apologize for anything.

Don't the Democrats have anyone who could have turned this to their advantage?

I despair when I see something like this happen.

A Liberal Screed Fails to Inspire

2006-11-02T09:11:00.000-05:00

Thomas Jefferson and his fellow revolutionaries spent a great deal of time enumerating the crimes of King George, but once understood and felt intimately by most colonists, they then offered some very specific "political imagination" and inspiration that created a new country.

Bruce Ackerman and Todd Gitlin, along with 44 other "distinguished" liberals, have issued a joint statement in The American Prospect, defending and defining their idea of what it means to be a liberal. Starting off employing Bush's words "stay the course" and ending with his words "hard work," the authors offer almost nothing in the way of political imagination, nor much in the way of specifics. The online version of the statement refers to it, promisingly, as a "manifesto."

I was disappointed by the statement's concentration on "liberal" opposition to the Bush administration's war on terror and the war in Iraq. The statement never misses an opportunity to focus on the delusion and incompetence of the Bush administration and the "conservative movement." And as early as the second paragraph of the statement's substance (following two paragraphs of introduction), the authors feel compelled to take a gratuitous shot at Israel in a statement about "a moment for liberals to define themselves."

In one paragraph, these liberals give short-shrift to some heavyweight issues by declaring that they "believe passionately" in equal treatment under the law, rights to housing, affordable health care, equal opportunity for employment and fair wages, physical security, and a sustainable environment. Egads, it sounds like some planks from the platform of the Democratic Party. So what's new? And big deal.

Given an opportunity to defend and define liberalism, the signers, instead, obsess on the crimes of Bush and Cheney and, thus, miss the chance to illuminate and educate Americans in favor of alternatives.

For instance, there is no mention of corporate personhood and the catastrophic influence of corporate money that has corrupted our entire political system. There is not a word about trade policies that have denigrated the workforce in this country, resulting in the loss of substantial and rewarding jobs, and creating a service economy of underpaid and underskilled Americans by the millions -- essentially, millions who work and eat at fastfood joints, work and shop at Wal-Marts, and sit and watch reality TV and violence for hours at a time.

There is not a word about the huge budget deficit which sits like an anvil on the backs of future generations of Americans.

There is no imaginative solution offered to address the crisis of health care, or the inequitable tax system, or the corruption of the electoral process, or the challenges to social security. What do liberals stand for? This is more a statement of what liberals stand against.

There no mention of the ceaseless war that has been waged on trade unions and the right to organize, and what to do about it. No mention of the war on secular education, and what to do about it. No mention of the incessant attack on a woman's right to her own sovereign health decisions, and what to do about it. No mention of the male culture of violence, of a hyper-masculinity, indeed, of a cult of misogyny in America which has transformed our country into the most violent, gun-obsessed, most heavily-policed industrialized nation in the world, and what top do about it. No mention of a smaller and smaller concentration of media ownership and control which ignores anything that does not serve the bottom line and which promotes, among other things, a national obsession with emaciated women who are silent and submissive, and what to do about it. And no mention of a country which has more people in prison than most totalitarian states in the world, and what to do about it.

Nowhere could I find a word about the current genocidal slaughter in Darfur. How many of the signers of this statement wrote about Rwanda 12 years ago?

There is a great deal of substantive criticism in this statement of what the Bush administration has done wrong, and not enough of what could have been done right.

The authors conclude:

"We must engage in large acts of political imagination and inspire a new generation to take up liberal principles and adapt them inventively in a new century."

Unfortunately, the authors had an opportunity to perform an act of what they called "political imagination," but they didn't. They could have inspired, but they ended up mostly offering pablum and warmed-over pieties.

Yes, yes, you can only say so much in a short statement that you want alot of "distinguished" people to sign, but these liberals might have taken a look at some of the conservative messages that are replete with specifics about what they want to do. The Republican Contract with America is a good example of that. While some Republicans tried to fulfill all of the goals contained in that statement, in fact, many were not achieved. But at least it was a specific agenda behind which they recruited support, sufficient enough eventually to gain control of the Congress, White House, and the Supreme Court.

It would have been nice to see such clarity and specificity from Ackerman, Gitlin, et.al.

Cutting and Running from the Oil Companies

2006-10-31T08:01:00.000-05:00

When it comes to collecting Americans' fair share of royalties owed the American people from oil companies, the Bush administration cuts and runs from its responsibility to collect them.

The New York Times today reports how the Bush administration's Interior Department has dropped its efforts to collect full royalties due the American government from oil companies for its leases, royalties which these companies have consistently underpaid.

According to the Times, "the agency had ordered Chevron to pay $6 million in additional royalties but could have sought tens of millions more had it prevailed. The decision also sets a precedent that could make it easier for oil and gas companies to lower the value of what they pump each year from federal property and thus their payments to the government."

As usual, this administration gives away the American people's money to corporate interests, whether they are no-bid contractors in Iraq, or oil companies taking oil on American land.

The Republican Tough Guise

2006-10-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

How many times have we heard from Republican Party strategists, policymakers, officeholders, and other Party "true believers" that it is only the Republican Party that has kept us safe and can keep us safe in the future. How many times have we heard this in the context of denegrating the Democratic Party as the party of "cut-and-run" and surrender.

The essence of the claim that only Republicans can protect us ignores the fact that it was a President who brags that he does not read very much who ignored warnings, in writing, from the Clinton administration, as well as from his own intelligence community about impending Al-Queda attacks. Three thousand American are dead in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Bush's watch, 3000 Americans dead in Iraq on Bush's watch, 20,000 plus Americans wounded on Bush's watch in Iraq. And in the face of this, Republicans are actually convincing a large percentage of Americans that we are safer under their rule. It defies logic, but logic apparently doesn't count when it comes to Republican braggadocio.

It is true that since 9/11 we have not had another attack in America like 9/11, but it has nothing to do with the Republican Party. It has to do with hard working Americans, by the tens of thousands, who work every day for the FBI, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the United States Coast Guard, US Customs, the Border Patrol, along with every police force in the country. These are the people who protect us, not Dick Cheney's tough-guy sneering, or George Bush's awkward cowboy posturing.

The fact is that these Americans would still be doing their jobs protecting Americans regardless of what party is on power, and the suggestion by Republicans that the Democratic Party would be any less dedicated to protecting Americans is purely shameful and reprehensible.

What Drives the Know-Nothing 33% of Americans

2006-09-23T13:18:00.000-04:00

Here are two disturbing facts to ponder, and taken together, they lead me to an understanding of how Bush has a solid one-third, unwavering support for his Iraq war.

Fact # 1 --
As reported by the Associated Press on September 22, 2006, the number of Americans killed in Iraq now outnumbers the number killed on 9/11. This does not count the tens of thousands of wounded, maimed, emotionally and mentally wounded, and those poisoned by the huge amount of depleted uranium our troops have been exposed to. Nor does it count the 6,599 violent deaths among Iraqis reported in July and August alone. Nor does it count the estimated 40,000 to 100,00 plus Iraqis who have died as a result of the US invasion in 2003.

But then again, who important enough is really counting?

Fact #2 --
According to a New York Times/CBS poll, one in three Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 -- proof positive of how well the Bush administration's repeated lies have worked. Imagine it. Thirty-three (33%) percent of Americans believe what is a bald faced lie about why our American men and women are dying in Iraq. These are the dittohead Americans, those whose heads bobble in unthinking, uncritical belief.

In light of these two facts, I can understand how this 33% (one-third) of Americans can justify to themselves all of the deaths in Iraq, American and otherwise. It is a righteous war against a man that attacked us, he had it coming, and the terrible price is worth it. Because Saddam attacked us on 9/11, this war is just.

If you believe a lie, you can justify almost anything.

W is Not for Wobble, Indeed.

2006-09-17T13:57:00.000-04:00

Rich Lowry of the National Review has some interesting takes on George W. in his face-to-face interview with him.

"He has a restless energy when he sits in a chair..."
"He exudes an easy self-confidence."
(He) "... asks what the correct expression is..."
(He) "...makes fun of himself."
"Bush’s confidence goes well beyond comfort in his own skin."
"He exhibits a sincere, passionate, and uncompromising conviction in his principles."
"He is arguably losing a war in Iraq that could destroy his hopes for the Middle East and sink his party’s hope in the midterm elections." (Did Lowry wink when he wrote this line?)
"But there’s no wobble in Bush. If anything, the opposite."

And there it is, in a nutshell -- Bush's unshakeable, what-me-worry, head-in-the-sand, don't-confuse-me-with-the-facts, everything-is-black-and-white mindset and Lowry's unswerving admiration for it. It's as if Bush's boyish pluck and obstinacy was some kind of virtue, an icon of American patriotic fervor worthy of a kind of Republican mythology of manhood and doing the right thing.

Here is Bush in his own words:

“Let me just first tell you that I’ve never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions. I firmly believe — I’m oftentimes asked about, well, you’re stubborn and all this. If you believe in a strategy, in Washington, D.C. you’ve got to stick to that strategy, see. People want you to change. It’s tactics that shift, but the strategic vision has not, and will not, shift.”

Lowry emphasizes it by repeating and italicizing never more convinced. Lowry then reports that Bush memorializes his obdurate thinking by claiming that it is "essential to meaningful governance." Lowry suggest that it is this kind of thinking that "drives Bush's critics batty." No kidding.

Lowry's National Review piece goes on to emphasize that when Bush talks about "principles" these days, he really is talking about THE WAR ON TERROR. Lowry has that right. That's about all Bush is thinking about these days -- THE WAR ON TERROR. 9/11 was Bush's saving grace, and he has exploited it to his every partisan advantage. It energized his presidency in ways he could only dream about before. Had it not happened, he likely would have been a one-term President, having accomplished nothing other than cutting taxes for his wealthy friends.

But it is THE WAR ON TERROR that has concretized his thinking about things in his your-with-us-or-with-the-terrorists' bunker mentality. It consumes him in ways most Americans can't imagine. And as Bush's legacy has fallen apart, it eats at him even more. He can do nothing else other than sink deeper and deeper into his one-track world where there are no grays, no complicated issues, no compromises, and no ifs, ands, or buts.

Rich Lowry merely helps reinforce Bush's simplicity and reaction with his puffery.

Crocodile Tears for Ford Motor Company

2006-09-17T11:51:00.000-04:00

The name, the Ford Motor Company, conjures up the historic American automotive pioneering spirit and a proud heritage. But is anyone feeling the slightest bit of sympathy for Ford Motor Company these days? Who can sympathize with corporate decision-makers who have brought this once proud company to this level of incompetence, bad planning, poor design and thoughtless forecasting? Why have they not resigned or been fired long ago? Whatever happens to them, you can be sure they all have their golden parachutes.

To be sure, it is the Ford workers who will suffer the most. It is their jobs that are being eliminated. Eventually, it will probably be their pensions and benefits that will be reduced or lost entirely. It's particularly insidious how the trade union jobs are the main target. How does the reasoning go? Well, we wouldn't be in this trouble if it weren't for all those overpaid union workers. See how easy it is to blame someone else? Especially union employees?

Watching C-SPAN this morning, I was struck by the vast majority of people calling up telling how shoddy their Ford vehicles are, and how they would never buy another one. I pass by my local Ford dealers and what do I see? Their parking lots are filled with huge SUVs and F-350s, F-250s, and F-150 pickup trucks. I saw a local TV ad pushing the Ford Expedition, a 9 seater, 14 miles per gallon (the reality is probably less), over two-and-a-half ton tank, as a family car. This is the insanity that has been governing the American automobile industry for years.

American car companies have been the walking dead for years and they are only just discovering it. They will soon be sitting on the biggest pile of automotive scrap metal and plastic in history and will maintain it wasn't their fault.

Republican Fascism Revealed

2006-09-11T13:53:00.000-04:00

Thom Hartmann, writing at Common Dreams, helps us understand through the words of Henry Wallace, among others, how we have come to the Republican fascism of 2006.

Read this essay.

Reclaiming The Issues: Islamic Or Republican Fascism?
by Thom Hartmann

In the years since George W. Bush first used 9/11 as his own "Reichstag fire" to gut the Constitution and enhance the power and wealth of his corporate cronies, many across the political spectrum have accused him and his Republican support group of being fascists.
On the right,The John Birch Society's website editor recently opined of the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretap program: "This is to say that from the administration's perspective, the president is, in effect, our living constitution. This is, in a specific and unmistakable sense, fascist."
On the left, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. specifically indicts the Bush administration for fascistic behavior in his book "Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and his Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy."
Genuine American fascists are on the run, and part of their survival strategy is to redefine the term "fascism" so it can't be applied to them any more. Most recently, George W. Bush said: "This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation."
In fact, the Islamic fundamentalists who apparently perpetrated 9/11 and other crimes in Spain and the United Kingdom are advocating a fundamentalist theocracy, not fascism.
But theocracy - the merging of religion and government - is also on the plate for the new American fascists (just as it was for Hitler, who based the Nazi death cult on a "new Christianity" that would bring "a thousand years of peace"), so they don't want to use that term, either.
While the Republicans promote the term "Islamo-fascism," the rest of the world is pushing back, as the BBC noted in an article by Richard Allen Greene ("Bush's Language Angers US Muslims" - 12 August 2006):
"Security expert Daniel Benjamin of the Center for Strategic and International Studies agreed that the term [Islamic fascists] was meaningless.
"'There is no sense in which jihadists embrace fascist ideology as it was developed by Mussolini or anyone else who was associated with the term,' he said. 'This is an epithet, a way of arousing strong emotion and tarnishing one's opponent, but it doesn't tell us anything about the content of their beliefs.'"
Their beliefs are, quite simply, that governments of the world should be subservient to religion, a view shared by a small but significant part of today's Republican party. But that is not fascism - the fascists in the US want to exploit the fundamentalist theocrats to achieve their own fascistic goals.
Vice President of the United States Henry Wallace was the first to clearly and accurately point out who the real American fascists are, and what they're up to.
In early 1944 the New York Times asked Vice President Wallace to, as Wallace noted, "write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"
Vice President Wallace's answers to those questions were published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan:
"The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
In this, Vice President Wallace was using the classic definition of the word "fascist" - the definition Mussolini had in mind when he claimed to have invented the word. (It was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it.)
As the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary noted, fascism is: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." (The US dictionary definition has gotten somewhat squishier since then, as all the larger dictionary companies have been bought up by multinational corporations.)
Mussolini was quite straightforward about all this. In a 1923 pamphlet titled "The Doctrine of Fascism" he wrote, "If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government." But not a government of, by, and for We The People - instead, it would be a government of, by, and for the most powerful corporate interests in the nation.
In 1938, Mussolini brought his vision of fascism into full reality when he dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the "Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni" - the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations. Corporations were still privately owned, but now instead of having to sneak their money to folks like John Boehner and covertly write legislation, they were openly in charge of the government.
Vice President Wallace bluntly laid out his concern about the same happening here in America in his 1944 Times article:
" If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. ... They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead."
Nonetheless, at that time there were few corporate heads who had run for political office, and, in Wallace's view, most politicians still felt it was their obligation to represent We The People instead of corporate cartels. The real problem would come, he believed, when the media was concentrated in only a few hands:
"American fascism will not be really dangerous," he added in the next paragraph, "until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information..."
Noting that, "Fascism is a worldwide disease," Wallace further suggested that fascism's "greatest threat to the United States will come after the war" and will manifest "within the United States itself."
In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated "conservative" radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy as anti-American. When Windrip becomes President, he opens a Guantanamo-style detention center, and the viewpoint character of the book, Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup, flees to Canada to avoid prosecution under new "patriotic" laws that make it illegal to criticize the President. As Lewis noted in his novel:
"The President, with something of his former good-humor [said]: 'There are two [political] parties, the Corporate and those who don't belong to any party at all, and so, to use a common phrase, are just out of luck!' The idea of the Corporate or Corporative State, Secretary [of State] Sarason had more or less taken from Italy." And, President "Windrip's partisans called themselves the Corporatists, or, familiarly, the 'Corpos,' which nickname was generally used."
Lewis, the first American writer to win a Nobel Prize, was world famous by 1944, as was his book "It Can't Happen Here." And several well-known and powerful Americans, including Prescott Bush, had lost businesses in the early 1940s because of charges by Roosevelt that they were doing business with Hitler. These events all, no doubt, colored Vice President Wallace's thinking when he wrote in The New York Times:
"Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after 'the present unpleasantness' ceases."
Thus, the rich get richer (and more powerful) on the backs of the poor and the middle class, giant corporate behemoths wipe out small and middle sized businesses, and a corporate iron fist is seizing control of our government itself. As I detail in my new book "Screwed: The Undeclared War Against The Middle Class," the primary beneficiaries of this new fascism are the corporatists, while the once-outspoken middle class of the 1950s-1980s is systematically being replaced by a silent serf-class of the working poor.
As Wallace wrote, some in big business "are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage." He added, "Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself."
But American fascists who would want former CEOs as President, Vice President, House Majority Whip, and Senate Majority Leader, and write legislation with corporate interests in mind, don't generally talk to We The People about their real agenda, or the harm it does to small businesses and working people. Instead, as Hitler did with the trade union leaders and the Jews, they point to a "them" to pin with blame and distract people from the harms of their economic policies.
In a comment prescient of George W. Bush's recent suggestion that civilization itself is at risk because of gays or Muslims, Wallace continued:
" The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination..."
But even at this, Wallace noted, American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation's largest corporations - who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media - they could promote their lies with ease.
"The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact," Wallace wrote. "Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy."
In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism the Vice President of the United States saw rising in America, he added:
"They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."
Finally, Wallace said, "The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels."
This liberal vision of an egalitarian America in which very large businesses and media monopolies are broken up under the 1890 Sherman Anti-Trust Act (which Reagan stopped enforcing, leading to the mergers & acquisitions frenzy that continues to this day) was the driving vision of the New Deal (and of "Trust Buster" Teddy Roosevelt a generation earlier).
As Wallace's President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, said when he accepted his party's renomination in 1936 in Philadelphia:
"...Out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties.... It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.... And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man...."
Speaking indirectly of the fascists that Wallace would directly name almost a decade later, Roosevelt brought the issue to its core:
"These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power."
But, he thundered in that speech:
"Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!"
In 2006, we again stand at the same crossroad Roosevelt and Wallace confronted during the Great Depression and World War II. Fascism is again rising in America, this time calling itself "compassionate conservatism," and "the free market" in a "flat" world. The RNC's behavior today eerily parallels the day in 1936 when Roosevelt said:
"In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for."
President Roosevelt and Vice President Wallace's warnings have come full circle. Thus it's now critical that we reclaim the word "fascist" to describe current-day Republican policies, support progressive websites that spread the good word, and join together this November at the ballot box to stop fascist election fraud and this most recent incarnation of Republican-fascism from seizing complete and irretrievable control of our nation.

Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author, and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show carried on the Air America Radio network and Sirius. http://www.thomhartmann.com/ His most recent book, just released, is "Screwed: The Undeclared War on the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It." Other books include: "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight," "Unequal Protection," "We The People," and "What Would Jefferson Do?"

Bush National Security Policy Failures Abound

2006-09-06T07:55:00.000-04:00

In spite of all their macho talk, in spite of their claims to be the only men the American people can trust to fight global terrorism and radical Islam, the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld triad has actually failed when it comes to defending America. The Third Way National Security Project has just released a detailed study of the policies of the Bush regime and its national security failures. Here is a summary from the study:

• Iraq: The numbers show that the security situation is deteriorating rapidly – a chart shows that the number of average weekly attacks has risen steadily since the invasion, and the estimated number of insurgents in the country has gone from 5,000 in 2003 to more than 20,000 in April 2006. The report also compares the cost of Operation Desert Storm to the estimated costs of the Iraq War ($61.1 billion in 1991, compared to $549 billion-$1.27 trillion today). And the data show that indices of Iraqi quality of life have plummeted and our alliances have suffered significantly under the Bush Iraq policies.
• Terrorism: Despite the Bush claim that his administration had “arrested or otherwise dealt with” much of al Qaeda’s command structure, the estimated number of al Qaeda members has jumped from 20,000 in 2001 to 50,000 today, worldwide attacks are up sharply, and 86% of national security experts believe that the world is more dangerous for Americans today.
• Afghanistan: The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating rapidly – the data in the report show that number of Taliban attacks rose from 22 in 2001-2003 to 251 in 2004-2006, and the numbers continue to rise. Moreover, as recent news reports confirm, the unrest and Taliban resurgence have helped the country’s opium production to hit all-time highs.
• Iran: The data show that Iran’s nuclear program has made significant progress during Bush’s terms in office.
• North Korea: Similarly, the data show that North Korea’s nuclear capabilities have skyrocketed – they may have had one nuclear weapon in 2001, but experts are fairly certain they have between 3 and 9 today (and the ability to make many more), combined with a rapidly moving missile production system.
• The US Military: The data show that the Bush stewardship of the military and the Iraq War have had serious dilatory effects on readiness and the overall state of the military, especially the Army, National Guard and Reserves.
• China: While Bush has been focused on Iraq and elsewhere, China has become a powerful regional broker, our largest creditor and an ally of some of our most serious enemies.

The Republican strategy for this November's mid-term elections is a "robust" defense of the status quo policies of an administration whose policies have failed. There can be no other strategy for them, because any other would be an admission of failure, something this President will never allow.

What's Wrong With America

2006-09-04T10:30:00.000-04:00

This horrible story from the Chicago Tribune about the deaths of six children in a fire caused by a candle is just one small example of what's wrong with America. Here we have an immigrant family that has had no electricity since May, much less smoke detectors, in one of our richest cities having to provide light by candle. This family is only one of so many in this country which don't have their basic needs met.

Think how much help we could have provided to our own people in America over the past several years with the hundreds of billions of dollars we have wasted in Iraq, so little of which has gone to the Iraqi people, so much of which has gone to the military-industrial complex.

What's wrong with America? All you have to do is examine the lives these six children were living, without basic needs, to find the answer.

Bush's phony war on terror in Iraq has amounted to a war on America.

Afghanistan Ignored

2006-09-04T10:16:00.000-04:00

Some of you may wonder why I have not been active on my blog. To put it simply, I have been involved in a new business startup and have had no time at all to even think about it. But I hope to spend some more time now
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[Here is a brilliant piece by Rep. Barney Frank on Afghanistan and Iraq, and how wrong the Bush administration has gotten the war on terrorism.]

August 30, 2006, By Barney Frank (Boston Globe)

A WAR is missing. Sadly, it is not missing from the physical location in which it is taking place, and people continue to die as it is waged. But it has largely disappeared from our national debate, and that debate has been sorely distorted as a consequence.
The war in question is in Afghanistan, and it isn't missing because it's no longer of consequence -- in fact, conditions there appear to be deteriorating -- but because of a conscious, unfortunately successful effort by the Bush administration and its conservative allies to ignore it. That's because acknowledging the war there would invalidate their charge that their political opponents are unwilling to take a forceful stand against terrorism.
During the years after World War II, academics popularized the concept of the ``big lie." This is a technique successfully used by some European regimes to manipulate the public perception of reality. It turned out that if enough people in official positions simply repeated things that were not true, and found elements in the media ready to reinforce them, lies would be believed and truths forgotten.
This approach surfaced in Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that the defeat of Senator Joseph Lieberman in Connecticut's Democratic primary, largely but not entirely because of his support for the Iraq war, demonstrated that Democrats were unwilling to use appropriate force against terrorism. The theme has been a constant in this campaign season, repeatedly asserted by the administration and its congressional allies, and elaborated on by media figures. Their argument is that the refusal of many Democrats to support the war in Iraq shows that President Bush's opposition is unwilling to use force against terrorism.
There is, of course, one factual refutation of this partisan distortion. Every Democratic senator and representative but one voted for the war in Afghanistan. It is this war that represented America's reaction to the murders of thousands of Americans on Sept. 11 . It was the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that was sheltering Osama bin Laden. The reaction of the overall majority of Americans, including virtually all Democrats, was to support the Afghan war as a necessary act of self-defense.
But the fact that the Bush-Cheney claims that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks have been totally repudiated does not stop the administration and its allies from equating willingness to combat terror with support for the war in Iraq.
Not only does support for the Afghan struggle demonstrate our willingness to resort to war in self-defense, but one of the reasons why the Iraq war does America so much harm is that it has diverted attention, resources, and support from Afghanistan. Violence is rising there, along with the drug trade, and support is eroding for what we had hoped to establish as a democratic regime.
I feel particularly strongly about this effort to obliterate the Afghan war from the national debate because I sat in a church in Raynham early last month and watched a family grieve over the death of a brave young man who had been killed there. I do not regret voting for the war in Afghanistan. But I very much regret the necessity of having to do so. The fact that I voted for the war in which that young man was killed weighs heavily on me as a reminder that while war is sometimes necessary, it is an instrument to use only with strong justification, and when alternatives are not available.
Whether or not one subscribes to the geopolitical aims that motivated the Bush administration's intervention in Iraq, it is clearly invalid to assert that support for that war is the indispensable badge of one's willingness to confront terrorism. Only by adopting the techniques of the big lie can the vice president make his case that those opposed to the Iraqi war fail to understand the importance of a firm response to terrorists. In fact, given the deleterious effect it has had on our effort in Afghanistan, and the enormous boost it has given to anti-American forces around the world, the big truth is that the Iraq war has damaged our ability to fight terrorism.
Americans were united in their response to the mass murders of 9/11. The war in Iraq has weakened the United States internationally and divided it domestically, while draining needed resources. It is precisely because the Iraq war is not defensible on any other terms that the Bush/Cheney approach uses the big lie to defend the war in Iraq on grounds that in fact describe the war in Afghanistan.

US Representative Barney Frank serves in Massachusetts' 4th Congressional District.

Detestable Behavior

2006-08-06T09:21:00.000-04:00

How can we continue to stomach the actions of men like Senator Bill Frist who holds the poorest paid in our society hostage to tax breaks for billionaires? Frist is one of many Senators who supported the detestable idea that minimum wage workers cannot get a raise in the hourly wage until, and unless, millionaires and billionaires receive more tax breaks.

Of course, Frist and his other fellow misanthropic greedy-guts never mentioned that since the last raise in the minimum wage ten years ago, the Senate has seen fit to give itself several raises totalling $35,000.

How have we come to a time in America when we are led by such men?

Running Scared

2006-08-06T08:54:00.000-04:00

If you have not read Frank Rich's column today , stop what you are doing and take a few minutes to read it.

A few weeks ago, my friend and I wrote a piece in this blog about the "occupation" of Iraq. This is no longer the war in Iraq -- we won that war against Saddam Hussein -- or the war against terror -- the people who are killing Iraqis and Americans in Iraq are Iraqis, not Al-Queda, deadenders, or Saddamists. Quite simply, it is a failed occupation that is getting worse every day.

Because it is a failed occupation, Rich writes, the American people are turning off the TV news on Iraq, and, as a result, turning off caring about Iraq. The TV news people are helping this by covering Iraq and our failure less and less. Just how much bad news can we stomach? It has become a sinkhole of an occupation from which the only possible extraction is another "defeat" for America. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld know it and they are running scared.

Bush's failure in Iraq has undermined America's power for years to come. I also agree with Frank Rich's assessment that Bush has undermined the one democracy in the Middle East that we have supported - Israel. I have always contended that George Bush and his "Christian" base are Israel's worst enemies. He and his base hate the very idea of Islam, its foundations and beliefs, and they can't escape their conclusions. Bush has made the war on terror an all-consuming, undefined, boundless battle against Islam. Let's face it, that's what it is, despite the rhetoric about tolerance. In so doing, Bush has created circumstances that hold Americans responsible for waging a world war against an entire religion.

Just why are we in Iraq now? What purpose are we serving? Just how much more hollow and meaningless can words coming from Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's mouths be about "freeing the Iraqi people," "promoting democracy in the region," and securing a stable supply of oil from the Middle East? When will we stop listening to this ideology of ignorance?

High Mileage Hard to Find

2006-07-27T07:17:00.000-04:00

I have been looking around for a high mileage vehicle, because I am going to be driving 50 miles a day to my new business. What a revelation! High mileage cars are few and far apart. Honda, Toyota, and a few others have Hybrid vehicles, but for the most part, the parking lots that make up most automobile dealers are overflowing with cars and trucks that guzzle gas like American kids guzzle Big Gulps.

I found one car that intrigued me, the VW Wagon TDI, which has a diesel engine. This car gets almost 50 miles per gallon on the highway, 43 mpg in the city. I can't buy it in Vermont. In fact, I can't buy it in any of the northeast states because it doesn't meet emission standards. Imagine that. One of the most efficient cars can't be bought. I visited a VW dealer who said they can sell the TDI used, with over 8000 miles on the odometer. The salesman said when the owner announces he has bought one at an auction, the dealership contacts a list of people who then rush to the dealership to bid on the TDI.

The sales manager suggested I look at a Jetta or Passat (nice cars) which get 23 mpg in the city. He spoke admiringly of the 23 mpg figure and I couldn't help laughing. Here we are 30 years after the oil embargo of the early 1970s with long lines at the gas stations, and we haven't learned a thing. Gas mileage is less efficient now than it was then. 23 mpg in the city is awful. We've had 30 years to make technicological advances in mpg and we have done almost nothing. How pathetic. And now here we are with automobile dealers' parking lots overflowing with huge gas-eating vehicles baking in the heat of global warming.

Being Taught A Lesson in Iraq

2006-07-23T08:44:00.000-04:00

Difficulties for Iraq's Battered Women

The issue of domestic violence is a difficult one to face in Iraq. According to women's advocates and victims, the conservative values and weak protection laws discourage victims of domestic abuse to come forward to authorities who often do not take them seriously.

"According to Iraqi law, a woman can take legal action against her husband when there are marks on her body or when there are witnesses to the abuse, which makes it hard to get a conviction, say women's advocates and victims.

Some lawyers are pressing for protection laws that rely on personal testimonies rather than physical or witness evidence of abuse.

Rewas Fayaq, a lawyer, said witnesses are particularly difficult to find because beatings often take place in private. She said the law needs to be changed and that there should be greater awareness of domestic violence.

"The laws have not been successful in stopping abuse against women," she said.
But not all in the judiciary think like Fayaq. Gashaw Mohammad, a female judge with Sulaimaniyah's personal status court, said, "If the beating hasn't broken a bone and there isn't a mark on [the victim’s] body, then it's not a beating. It's being taught a lesson." [more]

Several women's organizations say they are making efforts to help decrease domestic abuse cases, but more efforts are needed. However, many women who have family support rely on their relatives rather than on outside organizations for help in domestic abuse cases.

The above is from EPIC and Institute for War and Peace Reporting

Meanwhile, in Iraq....

2006-07-23T08:38:00.000-04:00

From EPIC -- Education for Peace in Iraq Center

While the international spotlight has focused on the conflict in Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, sectarian violence in Iraq has escalated sharply increased. "The human rights office of the U.N. mission in Iraq reported Tuesday that more than 14,000 civilians had been killed during the first half of this year, including more than 3,000 in June (Washington Post, 9/20/06)."

Last month, the death toll averaged more than 100 Iraqi civilians a day. So far in July, that average appears to have continued to go up. On July 9 in Baghdad's al-Jihad neighborhood, Shiite militiamen went door-to-door systematically killing Sunni families. The next day, Sunni gunmen openly massacred innocent civilians in a Shiite market. Each new attack leads to bloody retaliation, fueling a cycle of violence that has engulfed much of Baghdad.

Desperate to escape the attacks, Iraqis have begun fleeing from their homes, including at least 1,000 Iraqi families in the past week alone. The violence is affecting millions of Iraqis, including EPIC's friends and colleagues.

In Baghdad, the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is working to implement a national reconciliation plan to end the sectarian violence engulfing the country. Maliki urged members of his government and the Iraqi population to embrace his reconciliation plan as the "only bridge and the basic crossing to the shores of peace."

In today's dispatch, EPIC releases two press statements regarding U.S. military abuses at Mahmudiyah and regarding the Bush administration's belated decision to recognize the applicability of the Geneva Conventions to all foreign detainees in U.S. custody.

We feature links to the best analysis on Iraq, including International Crisis Group's new report about Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army, believed to be responsible for some of the sectarian violence.

We also include a guide to the Members of Prime Minister Maliki's Government, our latest PolicyWatch, and EPIC's Top Ten Summer Book list for 2006.

Eating His Words

2006-07-17T07:08:00.000-04:00

Another argument holds that opposing Saddam Hussein would cause even greater troubles in that part of the world, and interfere with the larger war against terror. I believe the opposite is true. Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region, extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of jihad, moderates throughout the region would take heart, and our ability to advance the Israeli/Palestinian peace process would be enhanced.

Vice President Dick Cheney speaking before the VFW 103rd Convention on August 26, 2002 , wherein he sets up an argument against the US invading Iraq and then proceeds, in his mind, to demolish it with his seering logic, now proven utterly foolhardy and wrong. Had he asked most Middle East experts in the CIA, he would have gotten different advice.

During that speech he also offered Mideast "expert" Fouad Ajami's assessment that there would be "joy in the streets" of Basra and Baghdad as soon as US would bring about regime change in Iraq.

So did anything Cheney say come true? Simply put, the answer is no. Extremists are rethinking their strategy of jihad, recruiting more fanatics than ever in the face of the US quagmire in Iraq; moderates are not taking heart, but are worrying more than ever that the folly of US policies are giving rise to even more terrorists; and the Israeli/Palestinian peace process is anything but.

Will Dick Cheney ever have to eat his words? Perhaps the better question is: are there any words about the Iraq war that Cheney has spoken that he should not be eating?

Restore Your Manhood

2006-07-16T21:44:00.000-04:00

Have you seen the Hummer ad on television? The one with two guys standing in a grocery line, with the one in front buying tofu, while the guy behind him is buying mounds of beef and ribs? The guy in front seems so embarrased when the guy behind him sees his tofu, that he is forced to immediately rush to a Hummer dealership where he buys a Hummer and restores his manhood. He is now sitting behind his big fat Hummer in control!!

This is the ad for the guy who has no self-respect, no self-esteem, and, of course, has no idea what it means to be a man. This is the ad for the guy who wants to be as dull and stupid as men can be, as insecure as I worry most of them are. This ad is not funny, although some puerile ad writers probably thought it was.

What Iraq War?

2006-07-15T19:45:00.000-04:00

[I am pleased to post a piece co-written with an old friend, a fellow who introduced me to my radical roots in 1972. It is especially significant because this is Orwell's Grave 500th post since I started it early last year]

by P.J. Baicich and F. S. McArthur

There are mighty good reasons to be disturbed over the level of discussion on the situation in Iraq, especially with patriotic-sounding Republicans regularly rallying behind their President. Just consider the situation last month where they would insert the phrase "cut-and-run" into every third or fourth sentence they uttered. It was painful to watch as the clueless Democrats squirmed to avoid being painted as "sell-outs" and near-traitors to our troops.

Of course, as long as the Democrats talk about "withdrawing from the war" and fight among themselves over the degree to which they should embrace an "anti-war position," they will never extricate themselves from the Republican patriot-trap. As long as the Republicans accuse any opposition to the Bush administration as a capitulation and a "cut-and-run" policy, the American people will equivocate or will confuse patriotism with holding fast to an increasingly untenable position in Iraq.At the same time, the American people seem to be stuck in the endless memory-loop of Vietnam, and they are increasingly presented with the Iraq situation from the viewpoint of a nation still wounded from its Vietnam experience - by both sides in the American debate. The "insurgency" is discussed in Vietnam-like terms, and the opposition "alternative" is, thus, shoe-horned into the brilliantly orchestrated Republican "cut-and-run" mantra. This is a losing proposition for Americans - and for the Iraqi people.

The cycle must be broken.

This can only be done by facing the reality: The war in Iraq is over.

What is a classic state-to-state war, anyhow? How does one measure "victory" of one side over the other?

Well, for starters, one historically gauges a victory as the defeat of the opponent's military; next, the seizure of the main cities (often with the capital as being the most crucial); and, finally, the elimination of the top political/military leadership of that enemy nation.By those classic criteria, America won the war and Iraq has been soundly defeated.

Whether you supported the invasion of Iraq or opposed it is now totally irrelevant. The fact is that the war is now over. Laughable as it may seem on the surface, the war has been over since about the time that George W. Bush stood in front of that memorable "mission accomplished" sign.

So, what actually remains?

What remains is a devastated physical and political infrastructure in Iraq; what remains is a factional, near-civil-war between Sunni and Shiites; what remains is a self-appointed international jihadist mini-faction (only loosely self-identified with Al-Qaeda) that is stirring up trouble. What remains are American troops in-between.

Ultimately, what remains is not the U.S. in a war, but the U.S. in an occupation.

Post-war occupations - particularly if they persist for long periods - are often debilitating, ugly, demoralizing, and even dehumanizing for the occupying power. Take examples in recent world history: the Soviets in Eastern Europe or the Israelis in the administered territories.

Alas, the U.S. public has no recent memory of such an experience, so the disastrous Vietnam War is often brushed off and superimposed onto the Iraqi situation. It simply doesn't fit for many reasons too numerous to recount here. Suffice it to say, without alternate American examples in immediate memory, media commentators, the military, and politicians alike all slip into Vietnam analogies. This occurs for both defenders and opponents of the American involvement in Iraq, sometimes with a desire to ‘do it right this time,’ and colored by the proponent’s view of the now long-gone Vietnam experience.

What might fit better is the history of the American occupation of the Philippines after the quick and quasi-imperialist Spanish-American war, when a disorganized, vicious, and fanatic "insurgency" was a response to an American occupation that became increasingly ugly and debilitating. That occupation also demoralized and dehumanized the U.S. troops at the time. But the Philippine experience is a century old, too far off in our collective memory to be a helpful lesson to Americans easily prone to historic amnesia.

So it is far simpler to re-visit the Vietnam experience, even domestically, with everything but the phrases "hawks and doves" re-constituted anew and with opposing sides in the U.S. practically forced to play their pre-assigned roles once again, having many Democrats insist that the U.S. "get out of the war," and many Republicans wave the bloody shirt of American casualties piling up in a far-off foreign land.

Unfortunately, the pliant and short-sighted American media is a smug party to perpetuating the confusion. No less culpable is an official "anti-war movement" which has an institutional investment in simply repeating what it is most comfortable with - viewing much of the U.S. role in Iraq through old Vietnamese-style anti-war lenses.

What to do under these circumstances?

We must stop talking about getting out of "the war" and start talking about getting out of "the occupation"! Only then will we be able to redefine the tasks facing all Americans and do justice for Iraq.

A world power engaged in a war must bring to bear certain weapons and necessities; a world power in an occupation must employ other tools altogether. The choices facing a country in war are far different from the choices facing a country in an occupation.

If the real issue is "the war" then the answers are always to be couched in military terms: boots on the ground, security, re-establishing the Iraqi army as the first priorities. These are never-ending, self-perpetuating, and, ultimately, losing issues, simply because they don’t address the current situation.

If the issue is "the occupation" and getting out of it, the answers will revolve around generating a degree of economic and social infrastructure in Iraq (based on such standards as the re-establishment of increased electrical power, a loose but functioning transportation network, more secure oil production, some increased health care, reopening more schools, and assembling a recognizable legal system). Perfection and a full-blown civil society may not be possible, but a modicum of stability is. America and Iraq need a timetable to make at least some of those goals possible. Moreover, it is the U.N. that may ultimately have a real role here, not the U.S.

Furthermore, American troops need to re-deploy out of Iraq: for the sake of being able to address real Islamic fundamentalism elsewhere (e.g., Afghanistan) and for the sake of addressing our own bloated and Republican-driven federal budget.

A more simple economic and social timetable or deadline is, indeed, possible: start with one year to help repair a fragile Iraqi economy rather than one year to build a parasitical Iraqi army. Set modest civil goals, attempt to restore parts of self-governance, and then simply get out.

Ultimately, the Iraqis must repair the country for themselves. They need help, but they also need a deadline.

Is it possible?

We only need point to the situation in the north of Iraq, where there is a Kurdish majority, to illustrate that, indeed, this is no illusory pipe-dream. There we see a level of popular participation, economic stability, and functioning civil society. It is more than imperfect, certainly, but it is also admirable and workable nonetheless.

Of course, there is also no hint of irony if the issue of Iraq is transformed from one of "war" to one of "occupation." In such a case, the issue of "defeatism" is completely removed from the equation. There can be no defeatism since victory has already been achieved!

Finally, the way to extricate the U.S. from the current Iraq situation is to seize at least one vestige of our painful Vietnam experience: to take the advice of then Senator George Aiken (VT) in 1967 to "declare victory and get out." The ultimate lesson might be that when Senator Aiken uttered these words they could not reflect reality, but if they were followed today they would hit the mark perfectly.

Bush World -- One Day in The New York Times

2006-07-01T04:56:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, June 28, one day's coverage in The New York Times, conveys a clear sense of how solidly the Bush ideology has infected America and its social, economic and political life.

Story #1 [front page by Carl Hulse] -- The flag amendment was defeated by one vote -- an amendment to the US Constitution to make the desecration of the American flag a federal crime. Not an amendment to protect burning copies of the US Constitution itself, or an amendment to protect the burning of the Declaration of Independence -- two documents which certainly contain the essence of America more than any cloth or some silly flag pin found in abundance on the lapels of all those hundreds of Republican draft dodgers and chickenhawks. And then, of course, when you have a President who refers to the US Constitution as just a "goddamned piece of paper," it's not surprising the Republicans use the flag as a loincloth to protect their manhood. What really stinks is that Democrats like Diane Feinstein and Harry Reid voted for it.

Story #2 [page A16 by Kate Zernike] -- Republican Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is "riled" by Bush's use of what are called "signing statements, memorandums issued with legislation as he signs it..." In effect, Bush uses these statements to reserve his right to interpret them as he wishes. If he chooses not to enforce them, Specter argues, he can justify doing so by issuing the signing statements. Specter maintains that Bush has exercised this abuse of power on over 750 laws enacted since he has become President. This tactic, of course, effectively eliminates the checks and balances of the government established by our founding fathers. At least there is one Republican that is paying it lip-service.

Story #3 [front page by Reed Abelson] -- This is a good investigative report which clearly shows the links between physicians hired by medical device makers to do research on their products in development and the money that comes from non-profit organizations owned or controlled by either the doctors or the device makers. The interconnections of all these self-serving interests demonstrate little regard for ethics and conflict of interests, while, to the contrary, rfeflect great regard for making lots of money. This story is the tip of the iceberg and, of course, applies equally (although the money is even bigger) to the relationships between "researchers" and drug companies.

Story #4 [page A8 by Scott Shane] -- Senator Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is launching a study to determine the extent of damage caused by the press disclosure of American counterterrorism actions related to money transfers by terrorists through the SWIFT consortium. Roberts, in a tour de force of hypocrisy, claims that the media is not acting responsibly and cannot be persuaded to "protect the means by which we protect this nation." While Roberts is anxious to pillory America's media, he refuses to hold hearings on or undertake investigations of the Bush administration's misuse of intelligence, fabrication of intelligence, and failures of intelligence on a whole range of issues.

Story #5 [page C3 by Edmund L. Andrews] -- Pity poor Henry M. Paulson, Jr., testifying before the Senate Finance Committee regarding his nomination to become secretary of the Treasury. He says: "Having good ideas is one thing. Having good ideas that are doable is another thing." What challenges he must face with all his good ideas -- he wants to keep taxes low, put restraints on the budget, increase American competitiveness, and use persuasion with China rather than threats. He is leaping into bed with a Bush administration that has cut taxes for the wealthy (to the detriment of everyone else), exploded a budget beyond anyone's wildest imaginations, decreased American competitiveness (the American automobile industry, for example, is tanking), and, finally, which has used threat and military menace more than persuasion in most of its international relationships. According to the story, Paulson offered no hints (much less details) of his own economic priorities. Unless he surprises us all, he seems to fit well into the Bush silence, tell-them-as-little-as-possible, keep-your-mouth-shut, frame of mind.

Contemptuous and Disgraceful Greed

2006-06-28T07:19:00.000-04:00

The Republican House of Representatives has, once again, rejected increasing the minimum wage. In the last nine years, Congress has given itself a total $15 per hour raise (amounting to over $31,000), but it has refused to support Democratic attempts to raise the minimum wage for poor working Americans from $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour.

The Republicans call the New York Times "disgraceful" for revealing the Bush monitoring of SWIFT bank account money transfers. Who is more disgraceful?

Cowards and Traitors

2006-06-28T06:57:00.000-04:00

The Republican Party has its campaign together for November. It is going to attack Democrats as cowards and traitors all the way through the 2006 elections.

It's going to be up to a sufficient number of Americans who have had enough of this crap to reject their distortions and propaganda. But here's the gist of their campaign: The liberal Democratic Party, as represented by anyone who criticizes the Bush administration in particular, or Republican policies in general, is a traitor or a coward.

Republicans are patriotic Americans fighting a global war on terror, supporting our troops, protecting the flag, not cutting and running like cowards. Republicans monitor terrorist telephone calls and terrorist money transfers. Democrats don't care. If you are not with us, you are with the terrorists.

Burning the flag is traitorous and Republicans, the real Americans, the real patriots, are going to do something about it. Democrats are flag-burners.

Cutting and running in Iraq is cowardice. Republicans, patriots all, will stay the course and win the battle for democracy. Democrats are cowards.

Terrorists are making telephone calls planning attacks and transferring money through banks to be used for those attacks, and Republicans are going to discover their plans and stop terrorist attacks. Democrats are traitors by criticizing these patriotic actions, and they will be the cause of terrorist attacks in the future. They are disgraceful and traitorous, not to mention cowards.

How the Democrats respond to this onslaught will determine, in great part, how Americans vote in November. Unfortunately, in the face of this kind of determined attack, Americans may forget just how bad the Republicans have been for most of them, for America, and for the rest of the world.

Had Enough?

2006-06-24T07:05:00.000-04:00

A recent speech by Barack Obama is well worth the read.

Here is some of what he had to say:

You know, you probably never thought you'd hear this at a Take Back America conference, but Newt Gingrich made a great point a few weeks ago. He was talking about what an awful job his own party has done governing this country, and he said that with all the mistakes and misjudgments the Republicans have made over the last six years, the slogan for the Democrats should come down to just two words:

"Had enough?"

I don't know about you, but I think old Newt is onto something here. Because I think we've all had enough. Enough of the broken promises. Enoughof the failed leadership. Enough of the can't-do, won't-do, won't-even-try style of governance.

Four years after 9/11, I've had enough of being told that we can find the money to give Paris Hilton more tax cuts, but we can't find enough to protect our ports or our railroads or our chemical plants or our borders.

I've had enough of the closed-door deals that give billions to the HMOs when we're told that we can't do a thing for the 45 million uninsured or the millions more who can't pay their medical bills.

I've had enough of being told that we can't afford body armor for our troops and health care for our veterans and benefits for the wounded heroes who've risked their lives for this country. I've had enough of that.

I've had enough of giving billions away to the oil companies when we're told that we can't invest in the renewable energy that will create jobs and lower gas prices and finally free us from our dependence on the oil wells of Saudi Arabia.

I've had enough of our kids going to schools where the rats outnumber the computers. I've had enough of Katrina survivors living out of their cars and begging FEMA for trailers. And I've had enough of being told that all we can do about this is sit and wait and hope that the good fortune of a few trickles on down to everyone else in this country.

You know, we all remember that George Bush said in 2000 campaign that he was against nation-building. We just didn't know he was talking about this one.

...I don't think that George Bush is a bad man. I think he loves his country. I don't think this administration is full of stupid people - I think there are a lot of smart folks in there. The problem isn't that their philosophy isn't working the way it's supposed to - it's that it is. It's that it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do.

The reason they don't believe government has a role in solving national problems is because they think government is the problem. That we're better off if we dismantle it - if we divvy it up into individual tax breaks, hand 'em out, and encourage everyone to go buy your own health care, your own retirement security, your own child care, their own schools, your own private security force, your own roads, their own levees...

It's called the Ownership Society in Washington. But in our past there has been another term for it - Social Darwinism - every man or women for him or herself. It allows us to say to those whose health care or tuition may rise faster than they can afford - life isn't fair. It allows us to say to the child who didn't have the foresight to choose the right parents or be born in the right suburb - pick yourself up by your bootstraps. It lets us say to the guy who worked twenty or thirty years in the factory and then watched his plant move out to Mexico or China - we're sorry, but you're on your own.

It's a bracing idea. It's a tempting idea. And it's the easiest thing in the world. But there's just one problem. It doesn't work.

[Thanks to PJB for the link]

Recalling Orwell

2006-06-22T18:32:00.000-04:00

[Originally published by Nieman Watchdog April 25, 2006 Reprinted with permission from Wick Sloane]

Recalling Orwell: “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

By Wick Sloane

“Detainee.” “Rendition.” “Water-board.” “Enemy combatant.”

These evasions have slipped their quotation marks and entered the language, garroting forty percent of the Bill of Rights on the way.

Take a two-click refresher. First, go to the Bill of Rights itself.

Then to George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

Over-quoted and seldom read, the Bill of Rights and Orwell’s essay shout at us all as our president and his protectors in our grand Washington, D.C., buildings, torture the values of the nation, using stilted, evasive language as one of their weapons. Both the Bill and Orwell are easy reads. In spite of what equivocating Supreme Court nominees suggest about complexity, the Bill of Rights is barely one page long, written in English that requires no translation today.
The Orwell essay is about the vigilance democracy requires from any citizen. “Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

That wind today blows to hide just this: Grabbing a human being, locking him up, pouring water down his throat, jailing him without end or a lawyer or any charges.

The four of the ten Amendments Cheney, Rumsfeld and friends sneer at:

IV – Against unreasonable search and seizure and requiring warrants.
V -- Another over-quoted but seldom read, insists on due process, and wartime variances are regarding offenses by our troops.
VI -- A speedy and public trial, in the district where crime committed (not secret prisons in foreign lands). Informed of the charges.
And VIII – Against excesses including cruel and unusual punishment.

“Detainee.” What about prisoner, inmate, captive, even jailbird?

“Rendition” is a weak rendering of kidnap, abduct, seize, or take hostage.

“Waterboarding?” Why doesn’t CIA Director Porter Goss say “cramming a hosepipe down a man’s throat, turning on the water and then holding his head in a toilet, just to the point of drowning”? The Oxford English Dictionary Online (paid subscription only) offers “water-board” as a noun, a gutter, not as the Abu-Ghrabian verb from the Pentagon. Remember, the U.S. has yet to atone for what history books still call “interning” Japanese Americans in World War II.
Just a year ago, at Easter dinner I asked a poet what she made of “detainee” as a regular word. She had just failed in several tries to visit her undocumented cleaning lady in prison. It seems that local police broke into the cleaning lady’s apartment and took her to a state prison. No lawyer. No visitors. No confirmation for her family where she was. The cleaning lady remained in prison for a month and the U.S. deported her home to Guatemala.

No one disputed her immigration status. Immigration, though, is federal. Local police making arrests? State prisons? How many Pell Grants or child immunizations to imprison a cleaning lady for a month? This was in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, places with some connection to the Bill of Rights. No press interest on the issues of this woman’s detention despite calls to news organizations. Not a peep. Silence. No surprise to Orwell, I fear.

A year later “detainee” has company in common usage. Who’s in charge? I wrote William Safire, “On Language.” No reply. Nothing doing with two consecutive Public Editors at The New York Times. Even Amy Goodman, always-outraged host of Democracy Now, who should know better, uses “detainee.” No reply from anyone on why they let the politicians bend us with the “detainee” winds. Silence, too, from The Nation magazine. So what?

I agree with Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch executive director, in the group’s (poorly copy-edited) annual report: “Any discussion of detainee abuse in 2005 must begin with the United States, not because it is the worst violator, but because it is the most influential.”
This turned my mind to President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright, stretching in all directions to avoid the word “genocide” for murder, slaughter, killings, massacres in Africa. Carnage neither would tolerate in Times Square. Thinking of that, I clicked back to the OED. “Genocide” itself came to life in the euphemism ward.

From the OED, quoting the Sunday Times in October 1945: “The United Nations' indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders has brought a new word into the language – genocide. It occurs in Count 3, where it is stated that all the defendants ‘conducted deliberate and systematic genocide – namely, the extermination of racial and national groups…’”

“Genocide” is not exactly easy on the ear or soul, but it’s not as jarring as “slaughtering,” “shooting,” “starving,” “gassing,” and “hanging” six million human beings. Or people.
I checked with my friend Eric Freedman, a Constitutional scholar at Hofstra University, who is working on establishing rights for the people locked up at Guantanamo. Can verbal evasions cost lives?

“Yes, ‘genocide’ does invoke lots of treaties,” Eric wrote. “And, BTW, ‘enemy combatants’ is a portmanteau phrase made up by the administration to cover up the fact that they are not applying the Geneva Conventions to the purported war (the correct legal terms are things like ‘privileged’ and ‘unprivileged’ belligerent, ‘prisoner of war’).”

“To portmanteau” is to combine words. Lewis Carroll may have been the one to invent the term. A Constitutional question crossing paths with Alice in Wonderland makes me miss Al Haig’s formulations, such as, “That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation.” In spite of his evasive language, Haig, by comparison, really wasn’t up to much mischief.

Orwell reminds us in closing Politics and the English Language that linguistics at home are important. If words today aren’t as important as Kevlar vests in Iraq, they are important nevertheless. In our courts and in our polling booths, on our computer keyboards and from our own solitary voices.

“One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.”

Or the local police may break down our door next.

************************************************
Wick Sloane is Chief Operating Officer of Generon Consulting in Massachusetts and a visiting fellow on higher education finance at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
E-mail: wsloane@well.com

Where Workers Come Second

2006-06-20T06:57:00.000-04:00

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
June 15, 2006 Thursday
Late Edition - Final

Where The Hogs Come First

By BOB HERBERT
DATELINE: TAR HEEL, N.C.

Think pork. Sizzling bacon and breakfast sausage. Juicy chops and ribs and robust holiday hams.

The pork capital of the planet is this tiny town in the Cape Fear River basin, not far from the South Carolina border. Spending a few days in Tar Heel and the surrounding area -- dotted with hog farms, cornfields and the occasional Confederate flag -- is like stepping back in time. This is a place where progress has slowed to a crawl.

Tar Heel's raison d'etre (and the employment anchor for much of the region) is the mammoth plant of the Smithfield Packing Company, a million-square-foot colossus that is the largest pork processing facility in the world.

You can learn a lot at Smithfield. It's a case study in both the butchering of hogs (some 32,000 are slaughtered there each day) and the systematic exploitation of vulnerable workers. More than 5,500 men and women work at Smithfield, most of them Latino or black, and nearly all of them undereducated and poor.

The big issue at Smithfield is not necessarily money. Workers are drawn there from all over the region, sometimes traveling in crowded vans for two hours or more each day, because the starting pay -- until recently, $8 and change an hour -- is higher than the pay at most other jobs available to them.

But the work is often brutal beyond imagining. Company officials will tell you everything is fine, but serious injuries abound, and the company has used illegal and, at times, violent tactics over the course of a dozen years to keep the workers from joining a union that would give them a modicum of protection and dignity.

''It was depressing inside there,'' said Edward Morrison, who spent hour after hour flipping bloody hog carcasses on the kill floor, until he was injured last fall after just a few months on the job. ''You have to work fast because that machine is shooting those hogs out at you constantly. You can end up with all this blood dripping down on you, all these feces and stuff just hanging off of you. It's a terrible environment.

''We've had guys walk off after the first break and never return.''

Mr. Morrison's comments were echoed by a young man who was with a group of Smithfield workers waiting for a van to pick them up at a gas station in Dillon, S.C., nearly 50 miles from Tar Heel. ''The line do move fast,'' the young man said, ''and people do get hurt. You can hear 'em hollering when they're on their way to the clinic.''

Workers are cut by the flashing, slashing knives that slice the meat from the bones. They are hurt sliding and falling on floors and stairs that are slick with blood, guts and a variety of fluids.

They suffer repetitive motion injuries.

The processing line on the kill floor moves hogs past the workers at the dizzying rate of one every three or four seconds.

Union representation would make a big difference for Smithfield workers. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union has been trying to organize the plant since the mid-1990's. Smithfield has responded with tactics that have ranged from the sleazy to the reprehensible.

After an exhaustive investigation, a judge found that the company had threatened to shut down the entire plant if the workers dared to organize, and had warned Latino workers that immigration authorities would be alerted if they voted for a union.

The union lost votes to organize the plant in 1994 and 1997, but the results of those elections were thrown out by the National Labor Relations Board after the judge found that Smithfield had prevented the union from holding fair elections. The judge said the company had engaged in myriad ''egregious'' violations of federal labor law, including threatening, intimidating and firing workers involved in the organizing effort, and beating up a worker ''for
engaging in union activities.''

Rather than obey the directives of the board and subsequent court decisions, the company has tied the matter up on appeals that have lasted for years. A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling just last month referred to ''the intense and widespread coercion prevalent at the Tar Heel facility.''

Workers at Smithfield and their families are suffering while the government dithers, refusing to require a mighty corporation like Smithfield to obey the nation's labor laws in a timely manner.
The defiance, greed and misplaced humanity of the merchants of misery at the apex of the Smithfield power structure are matters consumers might keep in mind as they bite into that next sizzling, succulent morsel of Smithfield pork.

With "Friends" Like These.....

2006-06-15T07:23:00.000-04:00

...we don't need enemies.

The Real News Project (Russ Baker) has an intensive, in-depth report about 25 so-called Democratic political consultants and how they make their money. Quite frankly, when you take a close look at these machers (Yiddish for "big shots"), they don't appear to be much different from Republican machers. All you have to do is follow the money. Big PHARMA, tobacco, war profiteers (essentially the corporate military world), and all the other usual suspects employ them for a vast variety of promotional and public relations purposes. And they are paid really well.

So the same guys and gals who advise Democrats - liberals, progressives and moderates alike -- on how to win on issues like reforming the corporatocracy, reforming the electoral process, social justice and human rights, are the same guys and gals who work the other side of all these issues on behalf of big money. One perfect example is described by Baker this way:

At the very least, it’s tricky to be the strategy adviser to a Democratic candidate who supports publicly-funded universal health insurance when one has spent years working for insurance interests that vehemently oppose any changes.

But these kinds of conflicts have never stopped the movers and shakers of the world of politics. The presence of conscience or honor is never at issue.

The full story is well worth reading. It describes, in detail, the craven behavior of 25 pretty well known Democratic Party consultants.

Although I did not agree with Ralph Nader that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000, or between John Kerry and George Bush in 2004, it's becoming increasingly more difficult to make that argument the more the two parties and their constituent hacks blend into what Russ Baker calls "indentured servants of corporate America."

Unity 08

2006-06-04T09:40:00.000-04:00

I watched a Democrat, Gerald Rafshoon, and a Republican, Doug Bailey, on C-SPAN this morning talk about the organization they have helped to found, Unity 08, which seeks to nominate a unity ticket for President in 2008. What they mean by a unity ticket is either a Democrat for President and a Republican for Vice President, or vice versa. Or, for that matter, an Independent for either position combined with someone from either major party. Or maybe even two Independents.

It was heartwarming (snicker, snicker) to watch these two old political foes sitting in each other's laps and making nice while talking about the good old days when they were top political advisors for President Gerald Ford and Governor Jimmy Carter, battling it out for the Presidency 30 years ago (30 years ago!) in 1976. Each of them made it clear that, back then, there were no personal attacks as part of their campaigns. Rafshoon said the worst he got from Bailey was that Jimmy Carter was "untested." They both agreed that the worst the Carter campaign did was attack President Ford's actual record. As Candace Olson would say: "How divine." (If you don't know who she is, you don't watch enough Home and Garden TV.)

They and their organization want to bring back civility and "unity" to American politics, but I am afraid that they want to do it in a political environment that is far different from what it was 30 years ago. Even though the Republican Right and the Christian ideologues were beginning to forge an alliance that now dominates American politics, it was, then, not yet in control of the Republican Party. What is different today is that religion has blended so intimately with Republican politics that personal Christian beliefs make it impossible for compromise. True believers cannot compromise their personal Christian beliefs. And if one's personal political life is driven entirely by one's personal Christian beliefs, there can never be a political environment that allows for the kind of political civility and unity that Bailey and Rafshoon seek.

And what makes all this much worse than it was in 1976 is that we have a large and influential group of people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and John Gibson who daily spew the kind of lies and hatred that never allows for moderation or compromise. And they do so on behalf of the Republican Party as if they were official spokespeople for the Party, and not one Republican calls them on their bilious lies and distortion.

Worse, we have a press corps whose power to serve the public interest has been dramatically circumscribed and limited by a profit-driven corporatocracy. In 1976, how many of us could imagine an entire news network dedicated to worshipful partisan reporting and commentary on behalf of the Republican Party, 24 hours a day?

As the press has lost its way in American politics and no longer serves as a persistent and effective watchdog over government, Christian fundamentalism has intruded in government in ways we once could not imagine. Religious ideology has increasingly become the driving force of government service.

The icing on this ugly and bitter cake is how our political campaigns have become perverted by money in ways we were only beginning to see in 1976.

Doug Bailey and Gerald Rafshoon can't imagine having treated each other with the level of disrespect that reigns today, but they are not going to bring back the kind of civility and "unity" until three things happen:

1. Americans successfully oppose the unconstitutional impact of religion on our government;
2. the press takes back its independence and starts to serve the public interest once again;
3. and the devastatingly anti-democratic effect of money is removed from the political process.

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-06-04T08:31:00.000-04:00

BY ROGER EBERT, originally from the Chicago Sun Times / Jun 2, 2006

I want to write this review so every reader will begin it and finish it. I
am a liberal, but I do not intend this as a review reflecting any kind of
politics. It reflects the truth as I understand it, and it represents, I
believe, agreement among the world's experts.

Global warming is real.

It is caused by human activity.

Mankind and its governments must begin immediate action to halt and reverse
it.

If we do nothing, in about 10 years the planet may reach a "tipping point"
and begin a slide toward destruction of our civilization and most of the
other species on this planet.

After that point is reached, it would be too late for any action.

These facts are stated by Al Gore in the documentary "An Inconvenient
Truth." Forget he ever ran for office. Consider him a concerned man
speaking out on the approaching crisis. "There is no controversy about
these facts," he says in the film. "Out of 925 recent articles in
peer-review scientific journals about global warming, there was no
disagreement. Zero."

He stands on a stage before a vast screen, in front of an audience. The
documentary is based on a speech he has been developing for six years, and
is supported by dramatic visuals. He shows the famous photograph
"Earthrise," taken from space by the first American astronauts. Then he
shows a series of later space photographs, clearly indicating that glaciers
and lakes are shrinking, snows are melting, shorelines are retreating.

He provides statistics: The 10 warmest years in history were in the last 14
years. Last year South America experienced its first hurricane. Japan and
the Pacific are setting records for typhoons. Hurricane Katrina passed over
Florida, doubled back over the Gulf, picked up strength from unusually warm
Gulf waters, and went from Category 3 to Category 5. There are changes in
the Gulf Stream and the jet stream. Cores of polar ice show that carbon
dioxide is much, much higher than ever before in a quarter of a million
years. It was once thought that such things went in cycles. Gore stands in
front of a graph showing the ups and downs of carbon dioxide over the
centuries. Yes, there is a cyclical pattern. Then, in recent years, the
graph turns up and keeps going up, higher and higher, off the chart.

The primary man-made cause of global warming is the burning of fossil
fuels. We are taking energy stored over hundreds of millions of years in
the form of coal, gas and oil, and releasing it suddenly. This causes
global warming, and there is a pass-along effect. Since glaciers and snow
reflect sunlight but sea water absorbs it, the more the ice melts, the more
of the sun's energy is retained by the sea.

Gore says that although there is "100 percent agreement" among scientists,
a database search of newspaper and magazine articles shows that 57 percent
question the fact of global warming, while 43 percent support it. These
figures are the result, he says, of a disinformation campaign started in
the 1990s by the energy industries to "reposition global warming as a
debate." It is the same strategy used for years by the defenders of
tobacco. My father was a Luckys smoker who died of lung cancer in 1960, and
20 years later it was still "debatable" that there was a link between
smoking and lung cancer. Now we are talking about the death of the future,
starting in the lives of those now living.

"The world won't 'end' overnight in 10 years," Gore says. "But a point will
have been passed, and there will be an irreversible slide into destruction."

In England, Sir James Lovelock, the scientist who proposed the Gaia
hypothesis (that the planet functions like a living organism), has
published a new book saying that in 100 years mankind will be reduced to "a
few breeding couples at the Poles." Gore thinks "that's too pessimistic. We
can turn this around just as we reversed the hole in the ozone layer. But
it takes action right now, and politicians in every nation must have the
courage to do what is necessary. It is not a political issue. It is a moral
issue."

When I said I was going to a press screening of "An Inconvenient Truth," a
friend said, "Al Gore talking about the environment! Bor...ing!" This is
not a boring film. The director, Davis Guggenheim, uses words, images and
Gore's concise litany of facts to build a film that is fascinating and
relentless. In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie
review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film. If you
do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you
decided not to.

Am I acting as an advocate in this review? Yes, I am. I believe that to be
"impartial" and "balanced" on global warming means one must take a position
like Gore's. There is no other view that can be defended. Sen. James Inhofe
(R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Environment Committee, has said, "Global
warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." I
hope he takes his job seriously enough to see this film. I think he has a
responsibility to do that.

What can we do? Switch to and encourage the development of alternative
energy sources: Solar, wind, tidal, and, yes, nuclear. Move quickly toward
hybrid and electric cars. Pour money into public transit, and subsidize the
fares. Save energy in our houses. I did a funny thing when I came home
after seeing "An Inconvenient Truth." I went around the house turning off
the lights.

An Inconvenient Truth

[Thanks to PJB]

Republican Can't Identify American Corporations Anymore

2006-06-03T08:12:00.000-04:00

"I'm telling you, I don’t even know what an American corporation is anymore, frankly. For the most part, these multinational corporations have absolutely no loyalty to a particular country. They have a loyalty to the bottom line, and they couldn’t care less about what happens in the United States. They are looking at their profit margins. I think it’s getting more and more difficult to actually identify an American, quote, corporation."

From an interview conducted by Tavis Smiley with Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo From the Tavis Smiley Show via ConcordiaDis via Five Before Chaos

An interesting fellow, Tancredo's campaign contributions reflect his apparent unhappiness with so-called American corporations. He receives very little in the way of corporate money. An odd Republican, indeed. But don't get too excited, his positions on most other Republican issues are as right-wing as they get.

Iraq is Not a Video Game

2006-06-03T07:05:00.000-04:00

The top coalition operational commander in Iraq has directed his subordinate commanders to conduct training in "core warrior values" for all coalition forces, highlighting the importance of adhering to legal, moral and ethical standards on the battlefield, military officials here announced today.

American Forces Press Service BAGHDAD, June 1, 2006

I can't help wonder whether this kind of training is too late, and too little. American men and women in Iraq are exposed on a daily basis to life-threatening situations. Every Iraqi they look at is someone who might want to kill them. Every car driving by them, at them, or near them is potentially filled with explosives. Every corner they turn in their vehicles represents a possible IED trap.

The American flag waving, grateful Iraqi does not exist (other than as a dream in Donald Rumsfeld's head). Hatred, resentment, and outright opposition are the order of the day. Can any of us imagine how incredibly scary it must be to run a checkpoint, or go on patrol, or drive in a convoy? Can any of us not imagine having our fingers on the trigger ready to blow away anything or anyone that might threaten us? How would we react if a friend was killed standing right next to us and we were so fearful and on edge that we wanted to respond right then and there? For those readers (I presume, mostly male) who have played a personal shooter video game I think you know what I mean.

I am not defending any possible criminal behavior by American troops. I am trying to understand it. Our government has created this nightmare scenario for our American men and women by its foolhardy war. I hold it responsible for placing American men and women in circumstances they should not have to be in.

The Rove Beetle

2006-05-30T07:54:00.000-04:00

Rove beetles are often abundant in habitats with large numbers of fly larvae -- especially decaying fruit, decaying seaweed, compost, carrion, and dung -- where some are important predators of maggots and others prey on mites or nematodes.

The origin of Turd Blossom?

American Idol

2006-05-27T07:42:00.000-04:00

The final vote on the American Idol show involved 63.4 million Americans voting, more votes than for any Presidential candidate in history. There is something deeply embarrassing to me about that fact.

It is especially embarrassing when you realize that the United States ranked 140th in the world in voter turnout in the last decade.
[Thanks to the website YVoteOnline for the chart]

If Americans really cared about having more people vote in our elections, there is one simple thing we can do -- open the polls on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Australia and Belgium have compulsory voting and open their polls for two or three days. Their turnouts are over 90%.

I am not suggesting that we should make voting compulsory, although it might be worth considering. I do believe, however, that in the Greatest Democracy in the World, we ought to broaden the window of opportunity for voting and not make it so difficult for alot of people to exercise their vote.

Attention Deficit Disorder

2006-05-23T22:20:00.001-04:00

It has become apparent to me that Bush himself, if not the entire administration, suffers from some kind of attention deficit disorder. They simply can't keep their minds and attention on one task with the purpose of completing it. Afghanistan is the perfect example.

In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush had us in his hand -- all of us, the world included. His attack on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and the liberation of the Afghan people was virtually universally supported. Over three years later, the Afghan people are under siege from warlord thugs, organized gangs of drug exporters, and a renewed and renascent al-Qaeda and Taliban, and US troops and NATO are trying to figure out what to do.

"The Taliban and Al Qaeda are everywhere," a shopkeeper, Haji Saifullah, told the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, as the general strolled through the bazaar of this town to talk to people. "It is all right in the city, but if you go outside the city, they are everywhere, and the people have to support them. They have no choice." New York Times, May 3, 2006

When Afghanistan was "mission accomplished" in his mind, he went on to Iraq. After that was "mission accomplished," he has been focusing our attention on Iran as the next potential target. But because an attack on Iran would be so foolhardy even Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are probably advising him against it (I suspect the generals have probably been pretty frank about the nuttiness of such military action), he now has his sight set on the peasant terrorists coming up from Mexico. It will be interesting to see how long he can concentrate on trying to accomplish his mission with this new target.

Domestically, he has swept through any number of other priorities like reforming social security (he lost interest when he realized he could not win), a flag-burning amendment (another loser), and now the marriage sanctity amendment(which he will lose interest in soon enough).

His level of concentration is short and probably the reason he doesn't read. George Bush is a dilettante, suffering from attention deficit disorder. He can win arguments, he can bully his way through two Presidential campaigns, he can pretend to "hard work" and Presidential power, but he can't follow through with leadership potential as President, and he can't stay with one thing long enough to make it really successful.

His abject failure in Afghanistan will come back to haunt him more than anything else from his entire presidency. It is the cornerstone on which his entire Global War on Terror has been fought. A failure in Afghanistan against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda will be what he is remembered for the most.

What the Jingo-Xenophobes Fear

2006-05-19T08:33:00.000-04:00

In his heart of hearts, George Bush has a vision of America that scares the hell out of him. It's an America where most people don't speak English or, at the very least, don't speak it as their first language. While George Bush plays at being the Texas cowboy ranchero who speaks a smattering of Spanish badly, he remains true to his Brahmin Yale culture of privilege, black tie events, and patent leather shoes. It's fun playing cowboy, but he really does not want to mingle too much with the Indians.

If you think about it, George Bush's God is not the God of all those Spanish-speaking Catholics, the blood of his Christ not the same blood of their Christ. Despite his lip-service to the contrary about religious tolerance in America, the Papacy and Roman Catholicism bother him. He knows Republicans need as many Catholic votes as they can get. But if he were to speak his mind honestly about the difference between what he believes and what they believe, Catholics would not be very happy.

So he fears an America overrun by Spanish-speaking Catholics from South of the Border. And he is not alone. There are plenty of other Republicans and Democrats who have the same uncomfortable notions about illegal immigrants, migrant workers, and legal immigration itself. The worst of them are the jingo-xenophobes, trying to figure out how to stem the tide of an alien culture and language. While many moderate politician try, yet again, to figure out what to do, the jingo-xenophobes know exaclty what to do. But at the root of it, is a challenge that is not new, nor much different than it was in the mid-1970s when I worked in Washington DC and saw how Congress dealt with these same issue on Capitol Hill.

The Congressman I worked for, Rep. Jim Scheuer (D-NY), chaired the Select Committee on Population. He held a series of hearings on many issues including illegal immigration and the long-term effects on America's population. We heard from experts about how to stop it, how to increase border protection with more patrols, a big 3000 mile fence, guest worker programs, better working conditions for migrant labor and their families, and the list goes on. A significant Report was written and recommendations were made. It all sits on a shelf somewhere in the Library of Congress.

Back then, we covered almost all the same ground we are now hearing about yet again. Except this time, there are two major differences that overwhelm the debate -- the Global War on Terror, and the increased population of Hispanic people.

For the jingo-xenophobes, in a perfect world, with a perfect border, no one would be allowed in. Some of their colleagues who know that couldn't possibly sell, we would import as many of "those people" as we need to do the "jobs Americans won't do," but we would maintain strict control of them, and send them back occasionally so they don't get used to living here. In this age of the Global War on Terror, the jingo-xenophobe ideal is a perfectly controlled border to protect our white Christian population. Of course, other than the most viscious hatemongers like Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson, most of them would never admit to any such convictions.

One of the great ironies is that these same self-avowed fighters in the Global War on Terror don't seem as concerned about the porous border to the North, nor the fact that almost all the cargo coming into the United States is not secure. But when it comes to protecting us from our brown brothers to the south, we need to spend billions and send thousands of American troops to help protect us. Can anyone imagine a more overt racialist (if not actually racist) act?

I heard the Mayor of Calexico, California speak on NPR this morning about the great relationship he and the people of Mexicali, Mexico have -- sister cities, right across the border from each other. They work together on immigration problems, migrant worker problems, family reunification problems, economic development, and even drug trafficking. The Mayor of Calexico says that the arrival of American soldiers will have a serious negative impact on that relationship. What can the Mexicans possibly believe about such a development? How could Mexicans not believe that Americans view them as a threat equal to any terrorist threat America might fear?

It's one thing to have a border patrol, it's quite another to be stationing American soldiers on our border. What makes it all the more reprehensible is that it is being done to assuage the right-wing base of the Republican Party, create a new fear in the minds of the American people, and construct a new threat that Bush can be perceived as "dealing with" with all his "hard work." This dog-and-pony show Presidency continues unabated. Without ever once confronting the realities of his failed Global War on Terror and his Iraq debacle, he pushes on relentlessly, headlong in his pursuit of more enemies and more phony battles.

Soft Drinks Out of the Schools

2006-05-13T06:11:00.000-04:00

Bill Clinton and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, in cooperation with the American Heart Association, announced an agreement with soft drink producers and distributors to remove all sugary soda pop from schools around the country. This one act by Clinton and Huckabee has the potential to do more for the future health of Americans than most anything I can think of that has been accomplished in recent years. What has the Bush administration done comparably? complicated Medicare beyond comprehension? limited women's access to health care? given breaks to the drug industry? How about the Bush administration's policy of preventing African women from receiving any advice on contraception or birth prevention?

Bush in the Bunker

2006-05-12T06:44:00.000-04:00

Investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) into National Security Council (NSA) warrantless wiretapping has been stymied because, for the first time in its history, security clearances have been denied to OPR personnel by the National Security Agency, itself. The Bush administration can take credit for the first-ever refusal of this kind. This action begs the question of how this government can ever be held in check.

This is not the only instance of the Bush administration blocking investigations and denying access to information. As Bush's poll numbers drop into the 20% range for the first time, he seems to be hunkering down even more in his bunker, not simply refusing to face reality, but actually spitting in its face.

Bush's aggressive and arrogant behavior on a whole range of issues can be tied fairly clearly to his stated beliefs about how he makes decisions on foreign policy. In his own words:

I base a lot of my foreign-policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty. And secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

With God as his chief advisor, how can we expect Bush to listen to anyone or anything else?

ENVIRONMENT IS TOP PRIORITY FOR ONLY 2% OF AMERICANS

2006-05-12T06:42:00.000-04:00

By Peter Montague, from Rachel's Democracy and Health News #854

For Earthday, the New York Times reminded us on April 23 (Section 4,pg. 14) of something uncomfortable but important: the general public no longer has "the environment" high on its list of worries or concerns.

Of course, the Times had done its part to lull everyone to sleep about such things. For example, the Times reported April 23 that "water pollution and toxic waste" are "both now largely controlled." Oh? And what of the 4.24 billion pounds of 650 different toxic chemicals released into the U.S. environment during 2004?

In that same story, the Times reported the results of two nationwide telephone opinion surveys, one by CBS News and one by Gallup. The results could help us all to realize how isolated and out of touch with the mainstream many of us [in the environmental movement] have become.

Here are the general public's ranking of "most important problems facing the United States:

War in Iraq -- 27%
Economy and jobs -- 13%
Immigration -- 7%
Terrorism -- 6%
Health care -- 5%
President Bush -- 4%
Gas/heating oil crisis -- 4%
Poverty & homelessness -- 4%
Education -- 3%
Moral and family values -- 2%
Environment -- 2%
Military & defense -- 2%
Budget deficit/national debt -- 2%

These numbers add up to only 82% and the Times did not explain the missing 18%. At first glance, the numbers may make "environment" look like a loser as a basis for building a social movement. But look again. If environmentalists were to form an alliance with people concerned about jobs (13%) and health (5%) -- that would boost the troops to 20% of the public -- more than enough to pull off a full-scale revolution (non-violent, of course). If you add to that the people whose top priority is the energy crisis (4%) and poverty (4%) you've got 28% of the public in your camp -- essentially 1/3 of everyone.That's about a hundred million people.

So environmentalism isn't dead. It's just lonely and needs more friends. Let hope this can become a wake-up call to us all. It's time to climb out of our bunkers, rub our eyes and look around, then set off to find likely friends and allies, send out ambassadors from our group (whatever group we're in) to other issue-groups, then forge ways to work together and support each other. Is there any other way to build a movement?
************************

Orwell's Grave believes that the "environmental movement" can only overcome the obstacles it faces through alliances with others. Standing alone as a chorus of disparate voices in the wilderness, its calls to action, its warnings of dire consequences (many of which I believe are based on scientific fact) are falling on deaf ears. Perhaps the only way the 2% figure will begin to rise is as Americans begin, literally, to feel the heat.

Big Brother Bush Bullies Bureaucrats

2006-05-09T07:33:00.000-04:00

The Bush administration has become so panicked about its obvious failings in Iraq that it not only is sending out a repetitive, droning message from the top (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld), it now wants even mid-level bureaucrats at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to peddle the "rosy" picture it is trying to paint in Iraq, as reported by Al Kamen in the Washington Post (Monday, May 8).

How disturbing it must be for officials at USDA to receive email instructions requiring them to parrot administration jabberwocky on Iraq in every speech they give on behalf of the USDA. Repeat after me: "The President has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq." Say it over and over again, until you have it memorized, then repeat it out loud everywhere you go until your eyes glaze over. Spin is too mild a word for this kind of propaganda. This is Big Brother stuff. This stinks of lies, hoodwink and subterfuge.

The May 2 email came from "Heather," a speechwriter at USDA, and said: "The President has requested that all members of his cabinet and sub-cabinet incorporate message points on the Global War on Terror into speeches, including specific examples of what each agency is doing to aid the reconstruction of Iraq." Remember when it was just the War on Terror? Now it's GLOBAL. It's such an insider term now, they abbreviate it -- GWOT. Like WWII.

Not only are these people being asked to spout this garbage, they are asked to report on it. According to Kamen: Another attachment "contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips , USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

Not only is the administration asking for reports, it is recommending the following:

If it looks like the audience is with you, try to slip in the old Iraq/al-Qaeda/terrorism link and say Americans are helping build a country "that will never again be a safe haven for terrorists."

The Bush administration can't help itself. The "old Iraq/al-Qaeda/terrorism link," indeed.

Not only does all this bring to mind the rich undercurrent of Orwellian thinking and behavior in this Bush regime, but it also brings to mind that wonderful definition of insanity, namely, doing the same thing over and over again expecting the outcome to change.

Kamen ends his piece with:

Let's say you're talking about U.S. agricultural productivity. Try this: "I'd like to take a moment to talk about a nation that is just now beginning to rebuild its own agricultural production. "Iraq is part to the 'fertile crescent' of Mesopotamia," the sample script says. "It is there, in around 8,500 to 8,000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat, there that agriculture was born. In recent years, however, the birthplace of farming has been in trouble." Probably want to pause here and give the audience a chance to catch its breath. It's hard to travel 10,500 years that quickly. "But revitalization is underway. President Bush has a clear strategy . . ."

Don't forget to send that weekly e-mail to Harry.

The Most Powerless President of All Time?

2006-05-08T09:24:00.000-04:00

A man and a woman sit in front of an unlit fireplace in the White House. The woman is Germany's most well known TV presenter. The man is the most powerful man in the world -- or at least that's how he's introduced before the interview begins. And yet what we're shown on German ARD public television Sunday night is really a trans-Atlantic misunderstanding. Sabine Christiansen, who asks George W. Bush about one pressing global issue after another -- and who is relatively insistent when it comes to human rights issues -- isn't really talking to the most powerful man in the world at all. In the spring of 2006, one-and-a-half years after Bush's triumphant re-election, she may in fact be speaking to the most powerless US president of all time.

From Der Spiegel Online English Site

From his failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, to his bungling Iran response, from the growing anti-USA sentiments in Latin America to the abuses of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, Bush's mistakes and missteps have made him the least powerless US President in history, according to Claus Christian Malzahn, Berlin bureau chief of SPIEGEL ONLINE. Malzahn does not address any of Bush's domestic blunders or his narrow economic favoritism. Bush's foreign policy screwups seem to be enough to make his case. Of course, depending on how you define "power," he may be right.

On the other hand, I worry that Bush has all too much power at his disposal, even as a lame duck, even as a discredited leader. After his 2004 electoral victory, he talked about how much political capital he had to spend. Whether he did or not, he certainly has not spent any of it wisely.

Nevertheless, he does have power of the sort that bullies can use when they feel like rats trapped in a corner. He still can lash out, he still can employ American power in furtherance of his deluded world vision, great enough to cause dangerous mischief and great sorrow. He has proven his capacity to do this and the potential threatens us all. If he chooses to try to prove how powerful he is, in the end, it will manifest a much-weakened President leading a much-weakened America. And whoever is left to pick up the pieces in 2008 will be seriously challenged.

Women's Work is "Off the Books"

2006-05-05T18:44:00.000-04:00

Last week, Member of the Second Chamber [of the Dutch Parliament] Sharon Dijkstra, announced a plan to force women with a university education who don't go to work or work part time, to repay part of their educational expenses. But the problem of capital destruction amongst highly-educated women is not the only issue. These women also keep bread out of the mouths of the less educated. Here in the U.S., things are arranged better.

So begins an article published April 27 in NRC Handelsblad, a Dutch newspaper, by Heleen Mees, a Dutch attorney, economist and journalist living in the United States.

She asks: "Are Dutch women really that much lazier than American ones?"

Her answer: "Not really, at least not if you account for the hours they spend keeping house."

Mees points out that American women farm out enough domestic work to maids to save themselves 10 hours each week. American women, she adds, dine out more often and use shopping services and nannies more often. She says that in the U.S., as contrasted with Europe, women can, at any time, have their nails manicured and their shoes shined. In New York, for instance, during the weekend, she describes how American women "can get cooking assistance to prepare the meals for the coming week in your home. The visiting culinary expert makes the purchases and assists in preparing the dishes. That way during the week, two-income families can conjure up meals as nutritious as they are tasty." She concludes: "By working more hours per week and by taking shorter vacations, Americans have enough money to purchase these services. Because they work fewer hours and take longer vacations, women in The Netherlands are forced to do the housekeeping in their "leisure time," and at the end of the day they have to paint their nails themselves to boot. Forget about their preferences for leisure time. When you come right down to it, Dutch women work just as hard as American women."

Mees explains that because the American labor market model creates more affluence than the Dutch model, as a result, "highly educated women in the United States don't need to choose between children and career." She maintains that they can have it both ways, "just like men." And she adds, all that additional money can be spent on domestic help and personal services.

In the Netherlands, however, the poor Dutch woman, highly educated with children don't work, or they only work part-time. Unlike American women , the poor things "do the household chores themselves, and are otherwise busy bringing the children to and from music lessons or soccer field." In the meantime, a lot of the less educated are out of the loop. The compensation they receive keeps the pressure of payroll taxes high, which in turn discourages highly educated women from going to work full time.

And then Mees concludes that the Netherlands ought to adopt a plan that obligates "schools to provide after-school care." In addition, she supports lowering taxes on labor, especially working women with children (I assume she means the uneducated ones). She also supports "granting these women, exclusively, a full tax deduction for the expenses of domestic help and child care." She wants them to live in the same kind of luxury that American women experience. She must be talking about a certain class of American women, because most of them I know have no such luxuries.

The choice Mees poses -- Dutch women get alot more time off vs. American women have more domestic help and more money -- may not be the real question at hand anyway. Perhaps the real question is how Western society (any society, for that matter) values domestic (women's)work. There is no pay for it, there is no tax deduction for it, and there most certainly is not any economic value tied to it when we figure our GDP. And when domestic work is "waged," it is usually paid as cheaply as possible, in cash under the table, looked down on, and definitely not covered by labor laws.

It is worth taking a look at how New Zealand, both its government and people, is facing this issue. Here is a report from 1999 entitled Measuring Unpaid Work which was prepared by Statistics New Zealand. In it, among other things, the government determines the average annual unpaid work per person by principal function and activity, determines an actual worth for this work (what it would be paid using prevailing wage statistics), and it sets the stage for creating an actual government "satellite account" for budgetary purposes.

One of the major inspirations for New Zealand's interest in this subject came from Marilyn Waring who is famous for her international bestseller Counting for Nothing (whose subtitle is What Men Value and What Women are Worth) which was also the basis for the Canadian documentary Who's Counting.

Because I can't possibly go into all the details of Waring's considerations and conclusions here, let me just say that I recommend both her book and the film highly. In a nutshell, she demonstrates how women are economically exploited the world over, but to make it even more obscure and mysterious, it is done "off the books." "Women's work" not only does not count, there is no apparatus, no technical means, by which organized society is able to determine the value of women's work even if it wanted to.

Waring studies the evidence, finds all the ways in which women and their value is ignored by NGOs and governments alike, and then proposes ways in which we can transform that sad reality and begin to count the value of women's work in our society, in our communities, and in our homes. New Zealand is one of the few countries taking steps in that direction.

The Blonde Threat to Islam

2006-05-05T07:03:00.000-04:00

Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi's Conditions for Muslim Men Who Want to Marry Christian and Jewish Women in the West

Following are excerpts from a lesson given by Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, which aired on Qatar TV, on March 12, 2006.

Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi: A Muslim in Europe or America can marry a Christian woman or a woman from among the People of the Book, under four conditions:
The first condition is that she is, in fact, of the People of the Book. In other words, she must not be a heretic - for example, a communist or a Bahai. She must be a believing woman from among the People of the Book.
Some people say a woman is Christian because her father is Christian, while she does not believe in any religion whatsoever. She doesn't believe in God, in the prophet, in Judgment Day, in any values, or in worshipping God. Such a woman is not Christian, even if she is regarded as Christian. We have to make sure that she's really of the People of the Book.
The second condition is that she must be chaste, in other words, honorable and pure - not a woman who sells her body to any man.
[...]
Is there a single honorable, chaste woman left in these countries? Don't they reprimand a girl who is still a virgin at the age of 14? They say: How can this be? She becomes undesirable. Where are her boyfriends?
[...]
The third condition is that she must not belong to those who are hostile to Islam. That is why I say a Muslim is not allowed to marry a Jewish woman from Israel, or from among the Jews who support Israel.
[...]
Therefore, [one must not] marry a Jewish woman, unless she belongs to the Jews who are hostile to Israel.
In London, I have seen Jews who say Israel will annihilate the Jews. They believe that [Israel] runs counter to God's desire to disperse the Jews, as punishment for their sins.
With the exception of these, a Muslim is not allowed, these days, to marry a Jewish woman, because he would be marrying a spy. He would be bringing a spy into his home.
The fourth condition is that this marriage would not cause harm to him, to his children, or to Muslim men and women. Sometimes, he is personally harmed, because she influences him. If one is weak in his faith, he might agree to have alcohol in his home, to have pork eaten there, to have moral depravity there, and then he might be affected without realizing it. This is dangerous for him.
Sometimes it is his children who are at risk. His children receive a non-Islamic upbringing, especially if he is preoccupied with his work or studies, and returns home only at the end of the day, and the wife does what she wants with the children. In this case, the children are lost, their faith is lost. They are not brought up as Muslims. This is dangerous.
Islam permits marrying a woman from the People of the Book, or a Christian, so that she will enter the Muslim family and society.
There is also a danger to Muslim women. Some religious authorities in Muslim communities have forbidden Muslims to marry out of the Muslim community. Why? If a Muslim marries a non-Muslim woman, and since a Muslim woman is only allowed to marry a Muslim man - who will she marry? If all the men go off and find themselves Western blondes [emphasis added]to marry, our own daughters - Fatma, 'Aisha, and so and so - will find no one to marry.

Translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI)

Deep Thoughts by Orwell's Grave

2006-05-04T18:51:00.000-04:00

Ok, I thought I would stick with the somewhat "mushy" side of things and share this advice from down-under. If you want to know what "boffins" means in the headline below, just click here.

Disagree and stay married, say boffins
Reprinted directly From: news.com.au
April 26, 2006

NEXT time you and your partner cannot agree, agree to disagree and move on. Research shows that couples who compromise the least usually stay together the longest.Research shows that couples who compromise the least usually stay together the longest.
In the US, marriage counsellors are being retrained in the way they counsel couples.
"A lot of therapies focus on empathy and the idea that if your partner has done something you should be empathetic," Sydney University mathematician Clio Cresswell said.
"Mathematics is showing in fact that the people that stand their ground in conversations ... that stick to their guns or high standards are actually fighting for a better outcome."
Dr Cresswell will explore this theory, and whether there is a formula for the perfect orgasm next month in a free public lecture as part of the 2006 Sydney Science Forum on May 17.

Don't you just wish you could be there? I have searched all my life for the perfect orgasm.

The Donkey in the Well

2006-05-04T09:05:00.000-04:00

And I am not talking about the Democrats, although there probably is a lesson in here for them.

I don't know where I first heard this story but it is worth considering again.

******************************
One day a farmer's donkey fell down into a well. The animal cried for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally, she decided the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway, it just wasn't worth it to retrieve the donkey. She invited all her neighbors to come over and help. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well.

At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone's amazement, he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer was curious and looked down the well and was astonished at what she saw. With every shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was shaking it off and taking a step up. As the farmer's neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and trotted off.

Life is going to shovel dirt on you, all kinds of dirt. The trick to getting out of the well is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping stone. We can get out of the deepest wells just by not stopping, never giving up. Shake it off and take a step up.

Five things that can help:

1. Hate less.
2. Worry less.
3. Live simply.
4. Give more.
5. Expect less.

Mainstream Media Prove Stephen Colbert Right

2006-05-03T08:25:00.000-04:00

So far, all indications are that the Mainstream Media has ignored reporting what Stephen Colbert had to say about Bush, Cheney and the Mainstream Media at the White House Press Association annual dinner. And probably for good reason. Besides skewering Bush himself, to his face, he looked at everyone of those journalists in the audience and told them what an awful job they were doing. He directly questioned their integrity as reporters and challenged their inadequate and inaccurate coverage of news events and administration blunders.

Columnist Dan Froomkin has written a piece entitled "The Colbert Blackout" in which he reports one White House aide's remarks this way:

"Colbert crossed the line,' said one top Bush aide, who rushed out of the hotel as soon as Colbert finished. Another said that the president was visibly angered by the sharp lines that kept coming.
" 'I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry],' said a former top aide. 'He's got that look that he's ready to blow.'

It is apparent that George and Laura, and many others Bush apologists, went away angry that night. Stephen Colbert probably ought to make sure his accountant is double-checking his tax returns for the last few years.

To be honest, I really did not laugh much at what Colbert said. So much of it was all too real and serious. And there was something about knowing that George Bush sat only a few feet from Colbert and was being spoken to his face, in a way that he so rarely experiences, that made the whole thing, at least for me, a catharsis.

Colbert spoke truth to Bush's fearmongering and failures, and he pointed to the emperor and revealed he had no clothes. It was a much longer version of the Harry Taylor story, another American, like Colbert, who spoke truth to Bush's face.

Even though the Mainstream Press will not cover what Colbert had to say, I believe reports will get out in other ways. How ironic is it that one of the few places we see this kind of language about what is happening to America is on shows like Colbert's and Jon Stewart's on the Comedy Channel? The only thing we need to determine is whether the joke will be on them, or on us.

Here's a link to Colbert's speech. If you missed it, it is worth every minute.

I have changed the link so it works now!!!!

Violence On Every Page

2006-05-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Week, the magazine that has a really hard time putting as woman's image on its front cover, other than beautiful entertainers, has a section in the magazine called "People." These kinds of sections in newspapers and magazines used to be reserved, for the most part, for fluff, for titillation, for good news about famous people. The front page, the commentary section, and all the news sections was where all the bad news went. Today, stories about violence can pervade any section, any story.

In its recent issue, May 5, 2006, there are seven short stories that all, in some way, reflect a form of violence in American life, as a common undercurrent we face today. The seven stories are all about famous "people," of course, and are accompanied by the ubiquitous stock Hollywood photos with the come hither looks and toothy smiles.

Tom Cruise's abusive father beat him, which resulted in his mother working three jobs and taking care of him while they moved so frequently that Tom went to 15 schools in 12 years, and "was frequently bullied;" Robin Williams cocaine addiction, a form of self-violence, apparently brought on by his being famous; Evangeline Lilly, an actress in a TV show called Lost, came to terms with the "curse" of being beautiful. after she was made to feel guilty as a child and teen, made to feel like a slut, and wishing she was ugly; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's bodyguard has essentially told any and all paparazzi that he will put them in the hospital if they try to take photos of Angelina while she is pregnant; Charlie Sheen has been served with abuse prevention order requiring him to stay at least 300 feet away from his wife, Denise Richardson, who filed a 17-page document alleging threats of violence by Sheen; David Lee Roth was fired from his spot to replace Howard Stern, and he will be replaced by shock jocks Opie and Anthony who were fired by CBS radio for broadcasting a sex act inside St. Patrick's cathedral in New York City; and Lewis Alsamari, one of the stars of the TV movie United 93 was not allowed a visa to attend the premiere because he is an Iraqi citizen who had served, under force, in the Iraqi army.

Whether it is the violence of muscle-bound bodyguards, or the violence in a child's home, or the violence of drugs or peer shame and bullying, or the violence of governmental abuses, American society seems to feed on these stories, or at the very least, publications like The Week seem to thrive on telling these stories. I am not suggesting that we ought not to be told these stories, or that magazines or newspapers should only feed us fluff.

What I am suggesting is that we need to take a close hard look at how much violence plays a role in our daily lives, in our common stories, and in our culture. We can't begin to do anything about it, until we recognize its prevalence and oppressive influence.

Demicrats.com

2006-05-02T07:22:00.000-04:00

No, that's not a typo.

I have recently been taken to task by a reader for the use of certain language in my writing that expresses more anger than reason, and which provides more smoke than light. I hope that fairly characterizes the criticism (which, by the way, I regard as constructive, not malicious).

I mention that because not long ago, I had an unfortunate experience with my own criticism of some language I found on a website that I regard, for the most part, as an ideological ally, Democrats.com (hence, my little twist in the headline).

I wrote a comment on Democrats.com, criticizing one of their leading writers on his use of the words "media whores" to describe certain people working for CNN, the Washington Post, the NY Times and a few other leading news outlets. I suggested that we might find more defined and detailed ways to criticize each and every one of those writers than the generalized use of such a phrase as "media whores." I felt that it was insufficient to simply throw those words at them. I suggested that we actually show (notice the use of the word "we") how they have prostituted themselves to corporate interests with specific examples. I was offering what I thought was a different tactical approach. Well, that was not the right thing to do.

The opprobrium that descended upon me was absolute (with one small exception). I was basically scolded, told that I had alot of gall "attacking" one of the founders of the site, that who was I (an ignorant outlander, I presume) to be so bold as to criticize anything offered by the President and a Moderator of Democrats.com. It was really pretty amazing stuff from people I thought were allies. I responded to one person who acted as if I didn't have a clue as to what I was talking about, and who lectured me, with specifics (no less), about bad journalists and media personalities and how they have prostituted their profession. I lauded this fellow for saying exactly what I had proposed. I told him that was exactly what I had suggested and complimented him on his examples. But then I received more piling on, and I responded again about being less strident and about the use of generalizations. Can you guess what happened?

I was banned from Democrats.com.

No, seriously, stop laughing or choking. I was banned.

I simply had no idea that Democrats.com was a website for an exclusive elite of the Democrats, an elite which claims to oppose the close-minded, recalcitrant, and wrongheaded strategy of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), but which allows no room for disagreement on its own site. The one exception I mentioned above was one wise commentator who suggested that perhaps the leaders of Democrats.com should chill just a bit. He says: "We are fellow travellers. Let's quit eating our young, and marginalising our feisty old curmudgeons." I think he was referring to me, a feisty old curmudgeon?

Are these people so brittle they prefer to associate only with a group of people who worship at their feet and offer no criticism whatsoever?

Now what group of people does that remind me of? Hmmmm, let me think.

You can read the entire exchange that did make it onto the site here if you want to wade through it all. The "media whore" discussion was part of an overall discussion of the Samuel Alito process in the Senate. So, just scroll down until you see my comment entitled "Language."

George Bush Lectures on the English Language

2006-04-30T08:39:00.000-04:00

George Bush has declared that the National Anthem ought to be sung in English (only, it seems), and that legal and illegal immigrants need to learn to speak English. He is upset with a Spanish-language variation (not a version) of our nation's song that is spreading among the Hispanic community protesting new immigration restrictions.

A great irony, if there ever was one, Bush never misses a chance to use his halting Spanish to speak to an Hispanic audience. So it is even more of an irony that he, our most illiterate and inarticulate President ever, who butchers his own "native tongue" is lecturing people on not speaking their native tongues, in a country where English, most certainly, was, originally, not the native tongue. Of course, Bush is as unaware of history as he is of the rules of grammar.

There are still large numbers of Vietnamese, Cubans, Cambodians, Russians, Armenians, Chinese, Koreans, and other nationalities and ethnic groups who do not yet speak English. For decades and, in some cases, for generations, there were Germans, Italians, and Poles who did not speak English after emigrating here. This is part and parcel of our heritage and history, and what has made us such a wonderfully strong mixture of peoples.

It was impossible to find anywhere on the internet (this morning) any full translation of the lyrics in question. The best I could find of this "variation" of the National Anthem, in Spanish, goes like this:

Verse 1

Oh say can you see, a la luz de la aurora/Lo que tanto aclamamos la noche al caer? Sus estrellas, sus franjas flotaban ayer/En el fiero combate en senal de victoria,/Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada,/Por la noche decian: "Se va defendiendo!"

Coro: Oh, decid! Despliega aun su hermosura estrellada,/Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?

Chant:

It's time to make a difference the kids, men and the women/Let's stand for our beliefs, let's stand for our vision/What about the children los ninos como P-Star

These kids have no parents, cause all of these mean laws.

See this can't happen, not only about the Latins.

Asians, blacks and whites and all they do is adding

more and more, let's not start a war

with all these hard workers,

they can't help where they were born.

Verse 2

Sus estrellas, sus franjas, la libertad, somos iguales

Somos hermanos, es nuestro himno.

En el fiero combate en senal de victoria,/Fulgor de lucha, al paso de la libertada,/Por la noche decian: "Se va defendiendo!"

Coro: Oh, decid! Despliega aun su hermosura estrellada,/Sobre tierra de libres, la bandera sagrada?

All the howls of protest from the Right about this song are not surprising. What is somewhat funny about the whole thing is that our National Anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, is, perhaps, the most jingoistic national anthem on the planet, and was based on an English drinking song, To Anacreon in Heaven.

It is remarkable how brittle some people are about their patriotic self-image that they cannot tolerate an alternate interpretation of a song, really a pop version, that is being used by hundreds of thousands of Spanish-speakers as an expression of respect for a country they admire and in which they have dedicated their lives to doing our scut work with the hope for a better future.

Can't You Just Feel the Diss?

2006-04-28T07:34:00.000-04:00

BAGNewsNotes has this photo, and another photo (see below) of Bush paling around with a white soldier on his site April 25, but this one, at left, struck me as absolutely stunning.

I somehow get the strong feeling that the black soldier has just said to Bush:

Get back, white boy. You ain't gonna suck me into to your oil war propaganda and use me to pretend you got black dudes for friends, especially this black dude who would really rather whip your sorry ass.

Look closely. Is there any respect, awe, reverence, deference, or submission of any kind in the soldier's facial expression, in his posture, or anything else about his demeanor? I sure don't see it. And I do see Bush's discomfort and embarrassment.

In contrast, the picture below shows two white, good ol' boys having a fine joke together. Doesn't Bush look so much more comfortable and, even, relieved?

Scott McClellan as Gandalf

2006-04-27T07:02:00.000-04:00

When the press asks what could actually be a good question, Scott "The Gandalf" McClellan subtly waves his staff in front of their eyes and "answers" their questions. Here is a good example of that.

One reporter asked a good question at yesterday's White House press briefing:

Q Thank you. Scott, the President's four-point plan to lower the price of gas is being criticized as merely window dressing. And most of what he proposes will take years. Is there really anything he can do to ease the pain now?

Here's what the White House press thought they heard MR. MCCLELLAN say in response (the official White House text), contrasted with what SCOTT THE GANDALF actually said as he waved his staff:

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, the President actually yesterday talked about every little bit can help. Now, you bring up a very good point -- the underlying problem is that we are dependent on foreign sources of energy. We are dependent on foreign oil. And the President made it very clear that we have got to address that root cause of why we have high gas prices. This is something that has been building for decades. And that's why the President outlined a four-point plan yesterday.

SCOTT THE GANDALF:Any little bit we do now won't matter at all in the larger scheme of things because it is all owned and operated by forces way beyond our control, many of which are large donors to the Republican Party. The underlying problem, as you know, is that Big Oil, a very important part of the Republican Party base, has been taking huge profits at the expense of the American taxpayer. The President made it very clear that we need to continue to deflect any interest you might have in that issue onto our dependence on foreign oil. Right now, foreigners are a good target for us to concentrate on. This is something we have been doing for decades. And that's why the President outlined his silly little four-point plan that he and Karl scribbled on the back of a napkin at lunch yesterday just so we could feed you folks something you might report.

MR. McCLELLAN: We're taking a number of actions on the short run side of things because we can provide some help. But, ultimately, this is a problem that must be solved in a comprehensive way. And that's why the President outlined his advanced energy initiative to really transform the way we power our cars and homes, and lessen our dependence on foreign sources of oil -- by making use of ethanol and hydrogen and pursuing other ways to promote alternative sources of energy. And that's what we have to do in the long run.

SCOTT THE GANDALF: We're doing a number of little piddly things but we really need to concentrate on ignoring this in as comprehensive a way as possible. And that's why the President's Advanced Energy Initiative (AEI) which pretends to transform the way we power our cars and our homes could not possibly develop any real solutions for decades to come, long after the President and Vice President are dead and gone. Quite frankly, as any real scientist can tell you, ethanol and hydrogen don't amount to a hill of beans when it comes to solving anything now, or even in the medium term. Of course, it won't matter by then because global warming, which, by the way, does not exist, will have already taken its toll and no one will remember the AEI at all. And of course, foreign sources of oil won't be an issue either, because the Saudis and Iranians and Venezuelans will have run out of the stuff, and we will all be in deep doo-doo.

MR. McCLELLAN: In the short run, again, there are steps that we can take to help, but we also have to continue acting on solving the root cause. This is a supply and demand problem. We have tight supplies right now, and that's pushing the price of gas up -- it's pushing the price of oil up, which pushes the price of gas up. So that's why the President announced several steps that we're taking to help address the supply side in the short-run. But this is a problem that we see recur year after year, and it's because of our increasing dependence on oil, particularly foreign sources of oil.

SCOTT THE GANDALF: So, in the short run, we will continue to throw pixie dust into your eyes, because most of you don't know supply from demand, and couldn't possibly understand the economic forces at work that control your lives every minute. We now have tight supplies, pushing gas up, because oil is pushed up by some unseen and unknown force, and we are addressing this unseen and unknown force (some call it profit, but that's not something you guys know much about anyway), and we are laughing all the way to the bank. Our base is very happy, also, by the way. As I told you, the President has announced several steps we are taking to help address the supply side in the short-run, none of which will make even the slightest dent in solving this problem for the American taxpayer, but these little things all look good. You are all going to dutifully tell the American people about these little steps the President is taking, and not have a clue what you are talking about. They won't either, but it all sounds great.

Next question.

Misogynist Comes Out of the Woodwork

2006-04-26T09:38:00.000-04:00

My blog entry from March 16, 2006, entitled Why I Saved My First Kiss for Marriage, has resulted in quite a few comments and responses which continue to the present. If you are not familiar with this entry, and don't want to click on the link and read about it, this entry was about the "Purity Ball" held in South Dakota, sponsored by the Abstinence Clearinghouse, partly in celebration of South Dakota's ban on abortion, and partly to celebrate girls and their male role models. The keynote address was entitled "Why I Saved My First Kiss for Marriage." The latest comment, from "Fred Z" is a really good example of the kind of language used by misogynists in talking about women and girls.

My wife pointed out to me, rightly so, that she noticed, while reading through all the comments in response to my piece that the women tended to comment on issues of substance and content, while the men, including myself, while also commenting on substance, also tended to jockey for position, a common male tendency. Looking back in hindsight, I agree with her. In my haste to respond to certain of the male comments, I wish I had avoided the personal and stuck to the substantive.

So, let's stick with the substantive in understanding the comment from "Fred Z" about the Purity Ball and his language describing women and men. [You can read Fred Z's full comment at the end of the comments section in the link above.] But I will summarize it here below.

Right off the bat, Fred Z establishes that I am "a real ass," suggests that I was conceived by my father sexually abusing my mother, that I hate all men, that I am one of Gloria Allred's "girlfriends," and that I get laid more often, with young college-aged women because I have "cool" and "progressive" and irresponsible views of sexuality. He then asks rhetorically: "How am I doing?" All I can say is that, at age 57, even though I am still a handsome devil, I haven't noticed young college-aged women banging down my door.

He then suggests that, in my world, there is no difference between men and women and yet I believe that men are terrible evil creatures while women are pure innocent beings. Of course, I said no such thing, but it is important for him to establish this falsehood, so he can describe his view of women coming up in the next paragraph. And it is here that he gives himself away with such stunning obviousness.

"Fred Z" begins by talking about how women let their breasts and asses hang out, act provocatively "like...sluts in every situation, no matter what the occasion, tease and lure men sexually (especially when there's money to be made/gifts to be received), and provoke perfectly healthy and normal men into a state of lust by appealing to their very healthy and normal biological drive to procreate." He goes on to describe how women abuse their natural gifts and beauties (he talks more about their "nice breasts and asses") by selling themselves on TV and in commercials, while "real men" are doing "physical labor," what he calls "real work to earn a living."

What Fred Z fails to acknowledge is that it is not women who have had the idea that showing tits and ass in advertising campaigns sells cars, or beer, or NASCAR racing, it is men who have created those concepts. It is his "real men" who have the obsession with those breasts he keeps talking about, men who control the media and exercise the power to create the ads and the images we are fed. Whether it is a "Purity Ball" or a sexy ad for Victoria's Secret, it is men who are making these decisions and setting the course for their vision of how women should be and how they should behave. They are equally exploitative.

At one point, Fred Z actually talks about how women use "their feminine charms" and can't keep their legs closed. He accuses women of "blackmailing men in the workplace, the bedroom, and everywhere else." Can we imagine a more perverted view of womanhood than this?

He, then, concludes by saying that he is offended by my remarks "as all 'real men' should be- unless they are so whipped by radical, ultraliberal women, (or their mommies?) that they don't have the balls to stand up for themselves." Here he gets down to his gut level about this whole thing. He establishes that I am "whipped" (read: pussy-whipped), and that "real men" have balls and I don't. I find it amusing that he has a hard time distinguishing between ultraliberal women and "mommies." Are they, perhaps, all the same in his mind?

With respect to the issue of abortion, he says this: "It's not about 'her body', but the completely SEPARATE body that happens to be growing inside of her." We could probably argue about the abortion issue till the cows come home, but suffice it to say I find it interesting that almost everything he says about women's bodies is about their lustful ways, their abuse of their sexuality, their breasts and asses, their slut-like behavior -- except when it comes to a woman's pregnancy -- then, all of a sudden, it is not her body, but some community property that men need to have control over.

Fred Z's language feels like testosterone-laden, schoolyard bully talk. It feels to me as if he wants desperately to establish his dominion, over me and over women. Both the mother/whore dichotomy and the virgin/whore dichotomy are common variants of misogynistic characterizations. It seems to me that Fred Z illustrates both these dichotomies pretty well.

A Different Class of People

2006-04-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

We have all read stories about how George Bush's base is the rich, how he curries their favor, and how he rewards them as often as possible. We have read stories about the tremendous benefit the tax cuts for the rich have been for, well, the rich. Just today, in a CNN poll about gas prices, a small number of Americans (around 20%) is saying that the $3.00 plus gas price is not having any appreciable effect on them. Everyone else is saying that it is hurting them financially. Guess who those 20% are.

So when we hear that oil companies are making record profits, and that CEOs are making record salaries, bonuses and receiving mammoth golden parachutes, just what does this tells us about how rich the rich are actually getting?

Here are some examples of just how rich George Bush's base is getting.

In 1985, the Forbes 400 were worth $221 billion combined. Today, they are worth $1.13 trillion -- more than the GDP of Canada.

In 2005, there were 9 million American millionaires, a 62% increase since 2002.

Only estates worth more than $1.5 million are taxed. That's less than 1% of all estates. Repealing the estate tax (which rich Republicans euphemistically call the "death" tax) will cost the Federal government (that's us, the taxpayer) at least $55 billion a year. In other words, we'll have to make up the shortfall.

This year, Donald Trump will get $1.5 million an hour to speak at Learning Annex seminars.

Public companies spend 10% of their income compensating their top 5 executives.

ExxonMobil's 2005 profit of $36.13 billion is greater than the GDP of 2/3 of the world's nations.

When companies are in trouble, top executives still get rewarded. For instance, 10 former Enron directors were forced to agree to pay shareholders only a $13 million settlement which is a mere 10% of what they made by dumping stock while lying about the company's health.

And while United Airlines, as a result of its reorganization bankruptcy, has cut the pensions and salaries of most employees, 400 of the top executives have been promised 8% of the shares of United stock which will be issued upon emerging from bankruptcy. United's top 8 executives will also get a bonus of between 55% and 100% of their salaries.

1,730 Board members of the nation's 1,000 leading companies sit on the boards of 4 or more other corporations. Half of Coca-Cola's 14 member board is an example.

The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, and it has everything to do with whether you are a member of the right class.

American Express, in their exclusive magazine, Departures, gives us an idea how rich the rich actually are getting these days:

-- David Smith's stainless-steel sculpture Cubi XXVIII (1965) was sold at Southeby's for $23.8 million, making it the most expensive contemporary work ever sold at auction;

-- an oak-and-glass table made in 1949 by Italian designer Carlo Mollino sold at Christie's for $3.8 million, double the previous record for a piece of 20th century furniture;

-- a 14th century porcelain Yuan jar sold a Christie's London for $27.7 million, eclipsing the previous record for an Asian work by $18.5 million;

-- a painted Pennsylvania candle box (estimated at $8000 to $12000) soared to $744,825, becoming the highest-priced piece ever sold by Freemans, a 200-year old auction house in Philadelphia;

-- Edward Steichen's vintage photo The Pond-Moonlight sold at Sotheby's for $2.9 million. No single vintage photo had even brought $1 million prior to this;

-- Edward Munch's painting Summer Day went for a record $9 million at Sotheby's London.

It is worth noting that this issue of American Express' Departures magazine is The Culture Issue. In a section entitled, Culture Watch, the editors begin with this Prosperity Index that reports on record setting auctions listed above. The section is sub-titled Special Edition - The State of the Arts Around the World. Another feature piece in The Culture Watch section is entitled So You Want to Buy a Rembrandt? Some people's idea of "culture" is other people's idea of extravagance and rarity.

Doesn't this all make sense? The rich have got to do something with the windfall they are reaping from the Bush/Cheney regime.

[Thanks to Mother Jones magazine for part of this data]

Another Nail in the Bush/Cheney Coffin

2006-04-24T08:28:00.001-04:00

Another significant intelligence officer of the United States has confirmed that the White House "fit" the intelligence to its desire for war against Iraq. Bush/Cheney used the excuse that WMD were all over Iraq, based on "slam dunk" intelligence, and we had to protect ourselves from it. When no WMD was found, Bush/Cheney blamed faulty intelligence.

According to CBS News' 60 Minutes yesterday, Sunday April 23, 2006:

Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year veteran of the CIA, says he saw how the Bush administration, time and again, welcomed intelligence that fit the president's determination to go to war and turned a blind eye to intelligence that did not.

"It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure. It’s an intelligence failure. This was a policy failure."

Hillary Clinton vs. Al Gore

2006-04-23T08:44:00.000-04:00

There is a theory floated by some Democrats like Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) that Hillary Clinton can win the Presidency if she carries the Kerry blue states (250 electoral votes) and then only picks up one other state like Ohio (22 votes) or Florida (27 votes). You need to win 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency.

The flaw in this thinking is that Hillary could carry the Kerry blue states. In the same way that many Democrats were cooled off by a McGovern candidacy in 1972, many Democrats would also turn away from a Hillary candidacy (or sit on their hands), especially if the Republicans run an apparent moderate like McCain.

Worse, Hillary could not possibly rise above the din of invective, distortions, partial truths, and uproar that would accompany her everywhere she would go. The onslaught against her would make the entire Bill Clinton Presidency look like a tip toe through the tulips. Her personality, her abrasive style, her husband, her feminism, her record -- all would work against her in a country that is, at heart, worried about security, which is naturally conservative (small "c") and not given to revolutionary political decisions. And let's face it, her very femaleness would not be an asset for the majority of voters especially in what is perceived as a time of war. It would be very unlikely for American male and female voters to elect a non-military serving woman to the Presidency under these circumstances. It just is not going to happen.

It simply is not time for a female Democratic President like Hillary Clinton, no matter how much liberals and progressives may think it is, or how much Rep. Rahm Emmanuel wants it to be. Condoleeza Rice would stand a much better chance as a female Presidential candidate for the Republicans, but I don't think even that will happen.

If, through some wierd set of circumstances, it became a Condi vs. Hillary race, I think Condi would win, given the perception of her eight years of service on the battlefront in the war on terror. That is how significant I believe Hillary's feminism and lack of military service would adversely affect her campaign. The American people, by 2008, may believe, in even more significant numbers than now, that the Iraq War was a mistake, but they will also still believe we need to be strong in the face of terror and other real threats. Hillary will not make them feel safe.

There simply is no one as powerful as Al Gore to run as the Democratic candidate in 2008. He has all the experience of serving as a United States Senator, of serving as the Vice President, and of already having run once for the Presidency and, thereby, learning from his mistakes. Although he should not personally exploit it, the increasing view that he had the Presidency taken away from him by a biased Supreme Court in what is now widely believed to be a questionable Presidential election in 2000, would also work in his favor. Many Americans could easily look back on the last eight years and imagine much better things for America than George Bush has given us.

Gore has stayed on message about the environment, he has been consistently opposed to the Iraq war and has offered concrete approaches to resolving American involvement there, and he has raised the esteem in which he is held throughout the world, a Presidential characteristic even many Republicans realize is needed for America in the years ahead. Hillary has had a muddled, lukewarm pro-Bush Iraq position that convinces no one. She tries so hard to straddle some issues (like flag-burning), it is obvious to everyone and is reminiscent of the Kerry waffling.

Gore would bring to a campaign beautifully aged and ripened political positions and voice. There is no Democrat who would be as formidable. Just on the one issue of global warming, which the American people are beginning to see with their own eyes and feel with their own skins, he would be utterly unbeatable. Over the next two years, the increase in tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters will amplify this realization. Gore can talk about these coming crises like no other candidate could.

Here is what Al Gore has said, in an interview after giving a speech at an economic forum in Sweden, about how his Presidency would have been different from the Bush years:

We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us... We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families....We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media... We would not be routinely torturing people.

In this interview, he does shy away from any Presidential aspiration, but he also does not rule it out.

Hillary Clinton, as the Democratic Party Presidential candidate, would be a monumental mistake.

Fun with Dick (No Jane) at White House Easter Celebration

2006-04-22T08:19:00.000-04:00

Here's a news film clip, in case you missed the fun at the White House Easter Egg Roll.

(Tip of the bunny ears to PJB)

W and Hu in Group Therapy While Dick Sleeps

2006-04-22T08:05:00.000-04:00

While Dick Cheney nodded off, and Rumsfeld studied the shine on his shoes, W and Hu apparently got along splendidly.

According to President (I am the Decider) Bush:

"He tells me what he thinks and I tell him what I think and we do so with respect." Doesn't that sound so cozy and group therapish? Dr. Phil would be proud.

I suspect neither one of them can stand being in the other's presence and there is about as much respect between the two of them as a cat has for a dog.

This photo below probably reflects the real feelings between the two more than any I could find. It is from the BBC and Getty Images.

U.S. and China on Collision Course

2006-04-22T06:57:00.000-04:00

Jeff, at True Blue Blog, in commenting about my post yesterday Bush Apologizes for Free Speech, referred us all to a link to a piece in the Asia Times about the U.S. and Chinese economic "bubbles" and their possible disastrous mutual explosions. Even though the article was written January 23, 2004, it is still very timely, lucid and explains a great deal about the inter-relationship of the Bush economy with the bureaucratic Communist capitalist system now in place in China. The warnings about the dangers of the coming collision are even more pertinent now.

The unspoken truth in this global relationship between the US economy and the Chinese juggernaut is that Bush's cheap words about free speech are not one of the profitable commodities, and never will be. It is useful pretense, it serves his core of delusional patriots, but it has no more real purpose than when he talks about helping Katrina victims, or preserving our natural resources, or solving the AIDS crisis.

The Asia Times article is a really important one in helping to understand what is at stake and how dangerous a game George Bush is playing.

As an update to this 2004 piece, the Asia Times has a piece just today entitled China GDP Figures Revive Overheating Fears .

Check out True Blue Blog. I love the sub-title quote to his blog name:

"Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved" Aristotle

The Fourth Stooge

2006-04-22T06:27:00.000-04:00

(Tip of the Stetson to Dicky's Doodles & Scribbles)

Bush Apologizes for Free Speech

2006-04-21T08:15:00.000-04:00

The conflicted nature of George Bush's relationship with China could not have been more clearly illustrated by what happened on the White House lawn yesterday when he greeted Communist Chinese President Hu. In his welcoming speech, Bush called for, among other things, more freedom of speech and religion in China, and then, when a woman in the audience shouted to Hu for more freedom for the Falun Gong, she was arrested.

Here's what Bush said:

"I'll continue to discuss with President Hu the importance of respecting human rights and freedoms of the Chinese people. China has become successful because the Chinese people are experience the freedom to buy, and to sell, and to produce -- and China can grow even more successful by allowing the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship.

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Here is how CNN reported it:

She shouted in English, "President Bush, stop him from persecuting the Falun Gong!" and in Chinese, "President Hu, your days are numbered."
The Chinese government condemns the spiritual movement Falun Gong as a cult. China began a crackdown on the group in 1999. The Epoch Times, which disavowed the protest, is affiliated with the Falun Gong movement.
The Secret Service identified the woman as Wang Wenyi, 47, a naturalized U.S. citizen who is working as a journalist for The Epoch Times and who had a one-day press pass that gave her access to the platform.
She was charged with disorderly conduct and could face additional federal charges, said service spokesman Eric Zahren.

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Having her arrested must surely have felt familiar to Hu. How ironic that Bush would urge Hu to allow "the Chinese people the freedom to assemble, to speak freely, and to worship" and then arrest a Chinese American for speaking out against Hu, and follow it all up with an apology to him. I suppose we can be happy this did not happen in China, because she probably would already have been shot.

Just how seriously can Hu take Bush's call for more free speech in China, when Bush does what Hu would have done in China. It's one thing to remove the woman, but it's quite another to arrest her and to have her face possible federal prosecution. Hu will learn precisely the wrong thing from this incident.

Isn't Bush just kidding?

Grover Norquist, the Wonder Bread Boy, Thinks the French Stink

2006-04-17T09:27:00.000-04:00

On this morning's C-SPAN Washington Journal, Grover Norquist, the extremist, loudmouth bully-boy of Washington lobbyists, described how heavily the French people are taxed which, he said, explains "why they can't afford soap." Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he asked the host whether he could say such a thing on the air and the host said: "You just did."

It takes pretty colossal hubris for a man who looks like an unwashed homeless person living on Wonder Bread to make such a comment, but it does illustrate the ignorance at the heart of many Americans' views of other countries.

Pandora's Box in China

2006-04-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

"Chinese President Hu Jintao has expressed concern over the rapid speed of the country's economic development," according to the BBC.

The Chinese Communist Party will do anything to stay in power, including shooting as many of its own people as necessary. In the aftermath of the Tienanmen Square slaughter in 1989, it made a deal with its people: in return for the people staying out of the political sphere, giving up any hope of free speech or freedom of the press, among other things, the government would promote a new capitalist economy to help the people. Shut up and go make money. This has now led to the fastest capitalist economy in the world. So fast, in fact, it is now scaring the hell out of the the thugs in power.

The BBC says the "blistering pace" of the Chinese economy's growth is giving the Chinese leadership a "headache." People worry the economy may be "overheating." President Hu worries that people in the countryside are not sharing in the wealth of capitalism. And the BBC reports that President Hu said: "We are also concerned about saving our resources, environmental protection and the improvement of our people's livelihood." Given all the reports of expanding environmental degradation in China, as well as the increased impoverishment of uncounted millions in the countryside, President Hu is understating reality. The rest of the capitalist world had better listen.

The cat is out of the bag, the chicken has flown the coop, Pandora's Box is open. The Chinese leadership is finally understanding the basic mechanics of capitalist growth. It is voracious when left unchecked, and humans will take every advantage of its power to create wealth that they can.

In the face of this out-of-control capitalist growth, the Chinese government can do one of two things. It can let the forces of capital mushroom out of control, or it can go back on the "deal" and begin a process of political and military restraints which are going to anger tens of millions in China, upset a world economy, and ruin many new global corporate relationships in the process.

The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee made a deal with the devil capitalism. That deal is not only now biting them on the ass, it has the potential to bury them. This is what they are discovering. And if the Chinese leadership persists in its desire to maintain political control of China under any circumstance, an economic and political blowup are inevitable in China.

Rewriting Iraq's History

2006-04-15T10:41:00.000-04:00

George Orwell would easily recognize what is going on in Iraqi classrooms. In the two-year old history textbook used in Iraqi schools, Iraq's history ends in 1968 -- no mention of Saddam Hussein's rise to power, no mention of the Iran-Iraq war, no mention of Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and subsequent defeat and expulsion, and no mention of Hussein's fall to the American invasion. Perhaps this is not so much a case of "rewriting history" as it is just not telling any at all.

Regionally, however, differences are stark and will be hard to overcome. In the Kurdish areas, the history of Hussein's murder of Kurds is taught openly, while in Tikrit, Hussein's birthplace which is heavily Sunni Arab, schools teach about "how the Persians are the enemy and hate the Arabs."

The reasoning behind this complete blank in the history books is that Iraqi officials worried that the traumas of Hussein's reign were too much for the many factions within Iraq to deal with a couple of years ago. Education officials worried that telling one history might offend too many people. A principle at one high school sums it up by pointing out that if you say something good about Saddam Hussein, someone will want to kill you, and if you say something bad about Saddam Hussein, someone else will want to kill you. It's understandable why teachers, for now, have preferred to say nothing at all.

There is now an effort underway to devise a new textbook that tells one acceptable version of the events since 1968. This will be a neat trick, especially in the face of attempts to create a government that is acceptable to all parties and which is having a very hard time getting off the ground. No small challenges, but if these two things can be achieved, Iraq may have some hope. A country united by an agreed-upon government and an-agreed upon history just may have some chance of perservering.

There are, however, several other serious challenges for Iraq's educational system which the Washington Post article cited above (and which inspired this entry) does not address. First, to what extent are Iraq's public school curricula increasingly becoming more religious and less secular? Second, to what extent are girls and women being less tolerated in educational settings? And third, what effect will there be on Iraqi society of a significant increase in male-only religious schools?

When history and religion mix, it can be a volatile combination that has always tended to limit democracy and freedom. In the Middle East, it is more the rule than the exception.

This Is Not Your Country, George Bush

2006-04-15T10:26:00.000-04:00

This is not your country, George Bush.
This is not a country of fear.
This is our country,
Our country of refugees.

This is our country of immigrants,
Our country of slaves, building the Capitol,
Our country of Chinese, building the railroads.
Our country, George Bush, not yours.

This is our country where starving Irish found food.
Our country where Germans and Italians
Spoke no English for a generation.

This is our country, George Bush, not yours.
Our country of boat people from Cuba and Vietnam,
Our country of Asian mathematicians and scientists,
Our country of Korean shopkeepers,
Our country of Croats and Bosnians, of Jews and Kurds.

Can you hear the music, George Bush?
Can you hear Tex-Mex and Polish polka?
Can you hear Delta blues, New Orleans dixieland, and slave hollers?
Have you danced to Eskimo drums and Lakota powwow?
Can you hear New England clogging and hand-clapping games?
Have you heard French cajun and African-tinged zydeco?
Have you heard Puerto Rican music in Hawaii?
Can you hear what a country these have made?

Our country is not a country of fear
And that's the terrible drug you push, George Bush.
Our country is a country of hope, and that's why they come.
And that's why they will always come.

This is not your country, George Bush,
America is our country.

"The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency."

2006-04-14T09:16:00.000-04:00

I can't imagine being Scott McClellan. Can you imagine spending your entire day figuring out how to prevaricate, equivocate, and wink? Surely, he must be on the little purple pill, augmented by occasional Alka-Seltzers and swigs from a handy flask. I have spent some significant time over the past year reading transcripts of McClellan's briefings and gaggles, and writing about some of them when they are particularly outrageous.

Here's a recent one, from the McClellan April 12, 2006 press briefing, wherein he demanded a public apology from the press for its coverage of a story which shows that the administration had information about "biological laboratories" two days before President Bush made his May 29, 2003 statement that "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories."

Specifically, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon, had concluded " ...the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons," a full two days before Bush made his May 29, 2003 declaration.

Whether, in fact, Bush actually had knowledge of this conclusion by his own military establishment, is not the point. What is at issue here is a White House, when confronted with the reality of its mistakes, whether inadvertent omissions or outright lies, never feels compelled to apologize.

Instead of McClellan attacking the messenger, it is incumbent on the Bush administration to correct itself and apologize to the American people for not having shared with them the fact that its own military had concluded the labs had nothing to do with WMD. Even if Bush did not know this two days after the Pentagon reported it, at what point did he know it, and then fail to correct the record, and, thus, his basis for the invasion? Did he find out two days later? a week later? or did he not find out at all, and someone in his administration is guilty of having kept this information from him? Isn't it more likely that he eventually did find out, but, by then, was already so committed that he decided not to share it with us?

No, it is not the press that needs to apologize, or explain, it is Scott McClellan and his boss who need to do all the explaining and apologizing.

Perhaps the most ironic thing McClellan said in this April 12 press briefing, defending the President's apparent lack of knowledge, was this:

"The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency."

Certainly, this White House has not gathered intelligence, despite the fact that the White House is precisely where intelligence needs to gather most so that the president can make informed decisions. If the White House is not the ultimate intelligence gathering site in the government, then who is making decisions and based on what?

Two Nuggets from the Looney Bin

2006-04-14T09:12:00.000-04:00

Charles Colson, convicted Watergate felon who schemed a cool Prison Ministries gig to rehabilitate himself, has now given us the cause of illegal immigration: abortion.

He says that if it were not for the "40 million" American workers (known as babies or fetuses, depending on your science) we have killed since 1973 -- the year women were given the right to choose -- we would have all these jobs that illegal immigrants are coming here for already filled with good, hard-working Americans who would gladly be picking our vegetables in the southern sun and sleeping in shacks stacked like cordwood.

In other words, all these south-of-the-border Roman Catholics are taking advantage of our abortion law to take low paying scut work that good American babies should have had. I can just imagine how all the mothers who chose to end their pregnancies are wishing their offspring were working like immigrant slaves cleaning our toilets and working the dirtiest and lowest paid jobs in America.

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Continuing along the line of good Christian works on behalf of Christian immigrants, legal and illegal, we have the American Family Association leadership revealing their new theory of a conspiracy by the "mainstream media" to promote all the national immigrant rallies and demonstrations that have been happening as a way to strengthen the Democratic Party in the Red States.

On the April 10 broadcast of American Family Radio's AFA Report, American Family Association founder and CEO Don Wildmon, AFR news director Fred Jackson, and AFA Journal news editor Ed Vitagliano claimed the "mainstream media" have a "vested interest" in promoting recent nationwide immigrant rights rallies: to swell Democratic voter rolls and, ultimately, "to weaken the Red States."

Perhaps the "mainstream media" is simply reporting how the Democratic Party has a natural ally in the Hispanic community against the jackbooted Christians in the Republican Party? Just what are the Republican Christians doing to show how much they care about immigrant labor? Could it be that the Democratic Party has an opportunity to show its mettle and demonstrate to the world what it really means to be an American? Let's face it: if guys like Wildmon are whining that "these people" might make a difference in states like Florida, California and Texas, can we hope the Democrats take notice?

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George Bush, The Religious Faker

2006-04-11T08:30:00.000-04:00

Rabbi Dennis Shulman points out the obvious: George Bush, while he talks a good religious talk, really doesn't walk a very religious walk. The man is a fake when it comes to following traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and practices like good stewardship of the earth, helping the disadvantaged and not favoring the rich at their expense, and supporting the powerless against the powerful. Bush is no peacemaker, nor is he charitable. He pretends to piety and acts like a moneychanger. He speaks of God and Jesus, while he sits with the high priests of the corporate world in private rooms of cigar-smoke and deal-making. The man is long past due a good bolt of lightning.

Rabbi Shulman, in his piece entitled George, Please Tell Me, Would You Consider Becoming Religious? published by CommonDreams.org, concludes his piece with the following:

Many have argued that President Bush is too religious. On the contrary, I would argue that the President is not religious enough. This president has not yet fully grasped the vast personal and social implications of taking the great wisdom of our ancient religious texts seriously. This president has not yet appreciated his personal and political responsibility to transform the highest ethical values of the Jewish-Christian tradition into a moral society in which all divine images are treated with respect.

George, please, for our sake, for God sake, it is time for you to find religion!

While I agree that George Bush needs to transform his leadership and take responsibility, both personal and political, embracing the highest ethical values, I think we all know, by now, this will never happen. In the face of history's condemnation of his years of lies and subterfuge, of his disastrous Iraq war, of his pillaging of the American taxpayer, of his wrecking of America's jobs, health and environment, can anyone imagine him apologizing? Can anyone imagine him recognizing any of his mistakes? Can anyone imagine his betraying his class interests?

Crazed Lunatic Attacks Bush with First Amendment

2006-04-08T08:53:00.000-04:00

Every now and then, some crazed lunatic sneaks into a Bush event and gets too near him, sometimes with a grenade, sometimes with the First Amendment. The Secret Service is, of course, appalled by its failure to protect the President.

Harry Taylor is lucky Bush, the Bubble Boy himself, didn’t pull out a gun and shoot him. It’s not the message he is used to hearing, it is not the message he wants to hear, it is not the message his handlers want him to hear, and it is not the message Laura whispers to him each night. And when he looks at himself in the mirror every morning, it is not the message he hears from his god. I am certain Bush thinks Harry Taylor was some crazed lunatic that slipped by the Secret Service. They'll be living this one down for some time to come.

And what exactly was Bush forced to hear? This is what Harry Taylor said:

"While I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice... about whether I can abort a pregnancy... What I wanted to say to you is that--in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened, by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency. And I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself... I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak... That is part of what this country is about."

(Aren't the three reactions of the women to his right amazingly different?)

Understanding The Six Major Economic Problems We Face

2006-04-08T08:40:00.000-04:00

If you don't read Bonddad (who writes on the MyDD - Direct Democracy blog) for economic news and analysis of what is happening to us on the economic front, you are missing some really important insights, as well as facts and figures.

A recent piece is entitled Corporations Have Biggest Share of Income in 40 Years where he informs us that:

U.S. corporate profits have increased 21.3% in the past year and now account for the largest share of national income in 40 years, the Commerce Department said Thursday.

Another is entitled Savings Crisis Continues in which he prefaces his remarks with:

The US Savings crisis continues. Today the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported personal income figures for February 2006. The figure came in at -$43 billion, or -.5% of total personal income. This is the 11th month in a row this figure has been negative. In addition, yesterday the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported revised 4th quarter GDP which includes personal income figures. The savings figure for the 4th quarter of 2005 was -15.8 billion, or -.2% of personal income. The implications of this situation are very important for the economy as a whole.

Every now and then he throws in a zinger like this, entitled Send the Right Wing Noise Machine to Iraq:

For anyone who is a member of the Right Wing Noise machine -- Hannity, Rush, O'Reilly, Hewitt, Laura Ingram the folks at Powerline etc... (you know who you are)...
If you don't like the news from Iraq, go over there yourselves and find the happy stories you claim exist. Until you do that you have no business saying there are good stories over there that aren't being reported. PS Have a nice day.

But one of his longer pieces is well worth taking the time to read in full. It is concise, easily readable, and understandable. It is called The 6 Major Problems of the Current US Economy. Here are the six major problems in a nutshell:

1. Weak Job Growth
2. Low Wages
3. Skyrocketing Consumer Debt
4. Poor Savings Rate
5. Soaring National Debt
6. Widening Trade Deficit

Here's his conclusion:

The US economy's foundations are weak. Current job growth is poor by historical standards. This has lead to weak wage growth, forcing consumers to fund their purchases with a massive increase in debt acquisition. Because consumers have spent beyond their means, they have little savings to help them through economically difficult times. In addition, their increased use of debt makes them more susceptible to insolvency should they experience a financial problem.

At the national level, the federal government has returned to deficit spending, decreasing its effectiveness in the event of a recession. And finally, the trade deficit which is financed by foreign capital inflows could correct violently, spiking US interest rates, slowing the US economy and creating a huge financial problem.

These are foundational economic issues which the current expansion has only made worse.

While I have no prediction when or if a painful correction will occur, should the US experience an economic shock we are ill prepared to deal with it. In fact, the current US economic foundations may make an economic shock much worse.

Bonddad writes about economic issues in lucid, accessible prose, using just enough facts and figures not to overwhelm and obfuscate. I recommend him highly.

This Ship of State "Leaks from the Top"

2006-04-07T13:19:00.000-04:00

Nina Totenberg said on NPR, this morning, in reporting about the continuing Fitzgerald investigation of the CIA/Valerie Plame leak and new information (testimony from Lewis "Scooter" Libby) that may show that President Bush, although he has repeatedly says he does not tolerate leaks, actually ordered the leak :

"The ship of state is the only one that leaks from the top."

Wal-Mart and Other Huge Retailers Oppose American Port Security

2006-04-07T07:45:00.000-04:00

UnCHECKED: How Wal-Mart Uses Its Might to Block Port Security
A SPECIAL REPORT FROM THE AFL-CIO TO THE U.S. CONGRESS

Almost every press story written and news show aired since the Dubai Ports World battle began has trumpeted the gaping holes in our seaports’ security systems. But few ask: Why are U.S. ports so poorly protected nearly five years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? Why has the government spent just $630 million—less than 4 percent of the $18 billion-plus we have spent since 2001 on airport security—to make our ports safer?

The stock answer is that port security hasn’t been a priority for Congress and the Bush administration because the United States hasn’t suffered a catastrophic attack on one of our ports. But anger over the Bush administration’s support for the Dubai Ports World deal prompted the chairman of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), to reveal another significant reason:

[While we] talk about having strong homeland security, checking 100 percent of cargo containers…In the end, our commercial interests get ahead of us, and here we are, years after 9/11, still with a relatively small percentage [of cargo containers] being checked.
The people who should pay for [better container security] are…the trading companies and the commercial companies that are moving the cargo containers into this country, and that means we’re going to have to tax them or put a fee on them for inspection….It’s part of a cost of doing business today when you’re moving large cargo containers into the United States while we’re pursuing this war against terror.

The "commercial interests" are led by the world’s largest retailer and America’s biggest importer, Wal-Mart. The Wall Street Journal, in a "Washington Wire" blurb March 24, made it plain:

"Wal-Mart resists efforts in Congress to dramatically tighten port security in wake of Dubai-ports furor. The company argues examining all containers, or even a fixed percentage of them, could impede shipping and boost costs."

Rep. Hunter and the Journal let slip what is surely Wal-Mart’s dirtiest secret: The company and its Washington, D.C., lobbyist, the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), have systematically under-mined our security by working to defeat and water down rules designed to make America’s seaports and far-flung supply chains safe from terrorist attacks. And Wal-Mart and RILA have invested heavily in the members of Congress with the most sway over ports and supply-chain security issues, as well as the Bush administration and the Republican National Committee.

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In other news from Wal-Mart, here's a piece from Bloomberg News / Boston Globe April 6, 2006

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A Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive who suggested last year that the world's largest retailer should avoid hiring unhealthy workers has been promoted to head its human-resources division.
The world's largest retailer yesterday shifted five executives to new posts, moves that the chain said would help train a new crop of leaders. Wal-Mart, which has a history of shuffling top executives so they can learn how different parts of the business operate, named Susan Chambers executive vice president of the unit that oversees human resources and diversity. She succeeds Lawrence Jackson who was promoted to president and chief executive of global procurement.

In October, advocacy group Wal-Mart Watch leaked an internal company memo from Chambers that said Wal-Mart's healthcare costs were rising faster than sales because its workers are ''sicker than the national population." Labor groups, US lawmakers, and community organizations have accused the company of offering inadequate pay and benefits.

Chambers, who joined Wal-Mart in 1999 from Hallmark Cards, also wrote that Wal-Mart would ''dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work" by requiring physical activity with jobs. This could include requiring cashiers to gather shopping carts, she wrote. Chambers was then executive vice resident for risk management and benefits.

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Bush Administration Proposes Eliminating Equal Opportunity Survey

2006-04-07T07:28:00.000-04:00

One of the ways we, the people, can monitor corporate behavior and hold corporations accountable for their actions is through governmental regulation. Another way is to encourage them to be more open in reporting to the public their actions with respect to issues like fair employment. When corporations operate more in the sunshine and less in the dark, there is an assumption they will behave more socially responsible.

The Bush administration is now proposing to eliminate a useful tool which helps keep corporations more open and responsive. The Equal Opportunity Survey provides data from the corporate workplace on affirmative action performance, and pay by gender and race.

From the proposed rule change:

Executive Order 11246, as amended, requires that Federal Government contractors and subcontractors ``take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.'' Section 202(1). Affirmative action under the Executive Order means more than passive nondiscrimination; it requires that contractors take affirmative steps to identify and eliminate impediments to equal employment opportunity. The affirmative steps include numerous recordkeeping obligations designed to assist the contractor, in the first instance, and also OFCCP in monitoring the contractor's employment practices.

This survey was created within the Clinton administration and supported by an across-the-board group of civil rights and fair employment groups, and social justice organizations. The Bush administration began the process of dismantling the Equal Opportunity Survey as soon as it took office.

"Of course I oppose the elimination of the EO Survey," said a source closely tied to the Department of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). "This was the first time in history that the federal government had obtained compensation data on the establishment level. The real intent of the survey was to 'encourage' contractors to police themselves and to correct any disparities they found that were unexplainable before the government found them--I called the survey 'EEO-EZ,' like the tax form," the source said. "The survey was strongly supported by the Labor Department and the Clinton Administration as part of the Equal Pay Initiative, but when the Bush Administration arrived, they made efforts to limit the survey by sending out only 10,000 surveys a year, in lieu of the 50,000 that we envisioned sending out to contractor establishments--roughly half of the non-construction contractor universe." [From SocialFunds.com]

Poisoning the Poor in Massachusetts

2006-04-02T08:00:00.000-04:00

This is reprinted, with permission, from Rachel's Democracy & Health News #848, published by the Environmental Research Foundation.

This is data from only one state. Multiply this by 50 states, with many variations on these numbers, and you will have some idea of the degradation of our environment, and how the poor and minorities bear the brunt of our increasingly poisoned world. We are all being poisoned, some faster than others.
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THE DANGERS OF BEING POOR AND NONWHITE

Environmental Injustice in Massachusetts
By Tim Montague

Our government agencies may not know the true full extent or impacts of industrial pollution in the U.S. but they certainly recognize that pollution disproportionately impacts the poor and communities of color. As Carol Browner, former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) openly admits when speaking about air pollution, "Poor communities, frequently communities of color --suffer disproportionately." She goes on, "If you look at where our industrialized facilities tend to be located, they're not in the upper middle class neighborhoods." To the contrary, the EPA's little known risk screening environmental indicators project -- reveals very clearly that the poor and minorities are living with far more than their fair share of toxic pollution.[1]

Using similar data in Massachusetts, Daniel Faber and Eric Krieg recently published a detailed study of how working poor and minority communities are disproportionately affected by industrial pollution from landfills, hazardous waste sites, incinerators and factories. [2] People are forced to live in polluted communities by their economic circumstances. In Massachusetts, more than 25 percent of all workers are "the working poor" -- they earn less $8.84/hr or $18,387/yr ($18,400 was the federal poverty line for a family of four in 2003). And over three quarters of these families spend more than one-third of their income on housing. According to Faber and Krieg a family of four has to make at least $64,656 in Boston ($6,000 more than in New York) to "pay for basic necessities," and many families are forced by economic necessity to live in the least desirable, most industrialized communities.

For purposes of their study, Faber and Krieg define low- income communities as having a median income of less than $39,524/yr for a family of four; and communities of color as those with more than 15% nonwhites.They documented big disparities between rich and poor and between white and minority communities. And they trace the root causes of this disparity stem to the lack of political power.

"In order to bolster profits and competitiveness, industry typically adopts pollution strategies which... offer the path of least political resistance. The less political power a community possesses, the fewer resources a community has to defend itself; the lower the level of community awareness and mobilization against potential ecological threats, the more likely they are to experience arduous environmentaland human health problems at the hands of business and government. Asa result, poorer towns and communities of color suffer an unequal exposure to ecological hazards."[2, pg.1]

"The poor and communities of color face exposure to:

(1) greater concentrations of polluting industrial facilities and power plants;
(2) greater concentrations of hazardous waste sites anddisposal/treatment facilities, including landfills, incinerators, andtrash transfer stations;
and (3) higher rates of "on the job" exposureto toxic pollutants inside the factory."[2, pg. 1]

EXPOSURE TO HAZARDOUS WASTE SITES

According to Faber and Krieg, Massachusetts has over 30,570 known hazardous waste sites. If all towns were of equal area, the average community would have 117 hazardous waste sites in it. But poor communities have an average of 203 hazardous waste sites per town --double the state average. Medium and high income towns average just 66 and 71 hazardous waste sites per town. Even the wealthy few are poisoning themselves with hazardous waste, but poor communities are three times more likely to have a hazardous waste site in their community than the wealthiest communities. Low-income communities have four times the density of hazardous waste sites compared to high-income communities (19.2 vs. 4.6 sites per square mile).[2, pg. 2]

White communities (95% white) have an average of 39 hazardous waste sites per town. But communities of color have a whopping 297 sites per town -- 7.6 times that of white communities. And on a per-square-mile basis, communities of color average twenty-three times as many hazardous waste sites per square mile compared to predominantly white communities (48.3 vs. 2.1 sites per square mile).

EXPOSURE TO LANDFILLS AND INCINERATORS

It's well known that landfills and incinerators pose many serious health risks and that the people living near them suffer abnormal rates of cancer[3, 4, 5, 6] birth defects[7, 8, 9, 10, 11], and lowbirth weight[12, 13]. Landfills contaminate the local environment with volatile organic compounds and heavy metals (see Rachel's #617). Incinerators release cancer-causing and toxic chemicals from their smoke stacks, including heavy metals, herbicide residues, polycyclicaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and dioxins and furans (see Rachel's#592). The leachate (garbage juice) produced by landfills is extremely toxic.

Brown and Donnelly at Texas A&M University studied the leachate of 58 landfills and concluded that "...the leachate from some municipal landfills may be similar to the carcinogenic potency of the leachate from the Love Canal landfill."[14] Love Canal, of course, was the notorious toxic waste dump that alerted the nation to the dangers of toxic waste back in 1978.

Faber and Krieg found few differences in the number or density of landfills across socioeconomic class but they found that communities of color have nearly three times as many landfills per square mile as white communities (.35 vs. .13 landfills/sq. mile). They say that while "communities of color make up just 9.4 percent of all towns in the study, they are home to 27.8 percent of all incinerator ashlandfills, 41 percent of all illegal sites [not defined], and 45.9 percent of all inactive municipal incinerators."[2, pg. 5]

EXPOSURE TO INDUSTRIAL POLLUTION

According to data collected by the government of Massachusetts, from1990-2002, industry in that state "released over 204.3 million pounds of chemical waste directly into the environment... an amount equivalent to over 2,550 tractor-trailer trucks each loaded with 80,000 pounds of toxic waste."[2, pg. 5]

Faber and Krieg explain that we're talking about nasty volatile organic compounds like... "benzene, 1,3-butadiene, formaldehyde andacrolein -- chemicals which are known to cause numerous adverse health effects, including neurological disorders, birth defects, reproductive disorders and respiratory diseases..."[2, pg. 5]

If you live a poor community you have an average of 9.9 industrial polluters in your back yard, and your community absorbs an average of1.6 million pounds of chemical wastes (107,034 pounds per square mile). In contrast, if you live in a wealthy community you have just 2.2 major polluters in your community spewing an average of 246,428pounds of chemicals (12,656 pounds per sq. mile). Clearly, everyone in the state of Massachusetts is getting dosed with toxic chemicals, but the poor are getting 8.5 times the dose of their wealthy compatriots.

But Faber and Krieg don't stop there. They break down the exposure by lethality."Low income communities are also over-exposed to the most dangerous families of chemical releases. Although they represent just 10.2 percent of all towns, low income communities received 23.7 percent of all carcinogens; 30.8 percent of all organochlorines; 27.8 percent of all persistent bioaccumulative toxins; and 45.8 percent of all reproductive toxins."[2, pg. 6]"Communities of color are also overburdened. High minority communities(25% or more people of color) average 11.4 TURA [Toxic Use Reduction Act] industrial facilities per town and 1.28 TURA facilities per square mile, compared to an average of just 1.5 facilities and .08 facilities per square mile for low minority communities (less than 5%people of color).[2, pg. 6] (TURA is a Massachusetts law.)

We see that poor and minority communities are exposed to greater volumes of industrial chemicals, nastier chemicals and chemical combinations. If you're poor, you receive twice the burden of carcinogens, three times the burden of bioaccumulative toxins and four times the burden of reproductive toxins. And if you live in a community of color, you have "...ten times as many pounds of chemical releases per square mile."[2, pg. 15]

The report details similar injustices around exposure to coal and oil-burning power plants, "Although communities of color comprise just 9.4 percent of all communities in the state, they are home to 29.6 percent of all active power plants."[2, pg. 8] and "...while low and medium-low income communities comprise 47.9 percent of all towns, they are home to 66.7 percent of all power plants and 73.6 percent of all releases of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and volatile organic compounds. In contrast, the wealthiest populations (with median income of at least $65,876) comprise 23.8 percent of all communities but are home to only one power plant, and 0.2 percent of these emissions."[2,pg. 16]

DANGEROUS TO BE POOR -- TOTAL ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE

Faber and Krieg tallied up all the various toxic exposures for each of the 250 cities and towns (and 12 neighborhoods of Boston) in the entire state of Massachusetts and divided them by the land area of each community. The resulting 'exposure index' is an estimate of how contaminated each community is and takes into account different types of exposure -- recycling centers are more hazardous than closed landfills, which are more hazardous than small industry. Not surprisingly, poor communities and communities of color scored much higher (more toxic) than wealthy and white communities. These communities averaged 35.3 points while the wealthiest communities averaged just 8.5 points. Communities of color averaged 87.7 points compared to just 4.3 points for white communities. So its four times as dangerous to be poor and twenty times as dangerous to live in a community of color. Faber and Krieg sum it up this way, "...if you live in a white community, then you have a 1.8 percent chance of living in the most environmentally hazardous communities in the state... However, if you live in a community of color, then there is a 70.6 percent chance that you live in one of the most hazardous towns. In short, if you live in a community of color, you are thirty-nine times more likely to live in one of the most environmentally hazardous communities inMassachusetts."[emphasis added; 2, pg. 10]

The authors continue, "The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that the communities most heavily burdened with environmentally hazardous industrial facilities and sites are overwhelmingly low income towns and/or communities of color. Clearly, not residents are polluted equally -- working class families and people of color are disproportionately impacted. Governmental action is urgently required to address these disparities." [2, pg. 10][1]

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[1] http://www.rachel.org/library/getfile.cfm?ID=550#EPA_Admits_Blacks_and_Hispanics_Live_with_Excessive_Pollution

[2] Daniel Faber and Eric Krieg, Unequal Exposure to EcologicalHazards 2005: Environmental Injustices in the Commonwealth ofMassachusetts. Northeastern University, October 2005. Availablehere.

[3] State of New York Department of Health INVESTIGATION OF CANCERINCIDENCE AND RESIDENCE NEAR 38 LANDFILLS WITH SOIL GAS MIGRATIONCONDITIONS, NEW YORK STATE, 1980-1989 (Atlanta, GA: Agency for ToxicSubstances and Disease Registry, June, 1998).

[4] M.S. Goldberg and others, "Incidence of cancer among personsliving near a municipal solid waste landfill site in Montreal,Quebec," ARCHIVES OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH Vol. 50, No. 6 (November1995), pgs. 416-424.

[5] K. Mallin, "Investigation of a bladder cancer cluster innorthwestern Illinois," AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY Vol. 132 No.1 Supplement (July 1990), pgs. S96-S106.

[6] J. Griffith and others, "Cancer mortality in U.S. counties withhazardous waste sites and ground water pollution," ARCHIVES OFENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH Vol. 44, No. 2 (March 1989), pgs. 69-74.

[7] H.M.P. Fielder and others, "Report on the health of residentsliving near the Nant-Y Gwyddon landfill site using routinely availabledata," (Cardiff, Wales: Welsh Combined Centres for Public Health:1997).

[8] G.M. Shaw and others, "Maternal water consumption during pregnancyand congenital cardiac anomalies," EPIDEMIOLOGY Vol. 1, No. 3 (May1990), pgs. 206-211.

[9] S.A. Geschwind and others, "Risk of congenital malformationsassociated with proximity to hazardous waste sites," AMERICAN JOURNALOF EPIDEMIOLOGY Vol. 135, No. 11 (June 1, 1992), pgs. 1197-1207.

[10] L.A. Croen and others, "Maternal residential proximity tohazardous waste sites and risk of selected congenital malformations,"EPIDEMIOLOGY Vol. 8, No. 4 (July 1997), pgs. 347-354.

[11] M. Vrijheid and H. Dolk [EUROHAZCON Collaborative Group],"Residence near hazardous waste landfill sites and risk of non-chromosomal congenital malformations [abstract]," TERATOLOGY Vol. 56,No. 6 (1997), pg. 401.

[12] Nancy E. Reichman, Low Birth Weight and School Readiness, TheFuture of Children, Vol. 15, No. 1, Spring 2005. pgs. 91-116.

[13] B. Paigen and others, "Growth of children living near thehazardous waste site, Love Canal," HUMAN BIOLOGY Vol. 59, No. 3 (June1987), pgs. 489-508.

[14] Kirk Brown and K.C. Donnelly, "An Estimation of the RiskAssociated with the Organic Constituents of Hazardous and MunicipalWaste Landfill Leachates," HAZARDOUS WASTES AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS,Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pgs. 1-30.

Reprinted from

The Sunnis Made the Trains Run On Time

2006-03-28T07:21:00.000-05:00

A new analysis from democracyarsenal.org posits the question of whether the United States is actually now undermining the Shiites in what might be called a "Second Betrayal." Some of them actually accuse the US of wanting civil war. After reading this, and reading what Juan Cole has to say about it all in his entry today (March 28), it makes one wonder.

In contrast to the last three years of anarchy, incompetence and bumbling attempts at democracy, could it be that the Bush regime is now looking fondly on the level of stability and peace which Saddam Hussein and his Sunni minority once maintained?

To be sure, events are still unfolding. But the ultimate purpose of the Bush government in Iraq -- namely the strategic placement of American troops next to Iran and Syria, within view of the Saudi oil fields, and near central Asia's pipelines -- will be served by whatever developments the Bush government sees working in its favor. If it takes a military regime to control the country, so be it. That is what will happen. It really doesn't matter who the personalities are in power if they are serving our national interests.

"Dangerous Prosecution"

2006-03-28T06:36:00.000-05:00

No matter where you come down on the Middle East conflict and the US relationship with Israel, the Bush government's basis for its trial against two former AIPAC staff members has huge import for anyone concerned about open government, a free press, academic freedom, and the tradition of lobbying the government (which, in and of itself, is a good one).

AIPAC is known as the Israel lobby and, as you may know, two of its staff have been charged by the government for receiving and disseminating classified information, and the Defense Department official who gave them the information has plea bargained his case.

But the primary basis for the government's case against the two AIPAC staffers rests on, according to the Washington Post in an editorial on March 23, "an old and vaguely worded law that prohibits people in possession of such information from disclosing it further."

The Post continues:

The reach of this law, which dates from the World War I era, has never been clear. By its terms, it would seem to require every person to protect the government's secrets -- a principle hardly in keeping with the American system of robust public debate. While it is reasonable for the government to demand that its employees and contractors protect the information it entrusts to them, it's not okay to criminalize discussions among people who do not work, directly or indirectly, for the government.

Like the Washington Post, I do not defend the alleged actions of the AIPAC staffers who the government has accused of knowingly receiving classified information from Franklin and passing it on to the Israeli embassy. But the government is not trying to prove spying charges in this case. "Instead, prosecutors have proceeded under a legal theory that must alarm anyone who values open debate."

I guess what it comes down to is whether the government can unilaterally create an Official Secrets Act like the Brits have, and bypass Congress. I believe they should not be allowed to do so. As a writer and blogger, among other things, I recognize what an enormously chilling effect this would have on any conversation between government officials and private citizens. Wouldn't this also effectively dissuade many government whistleblowers who possess any kind of classified information from talking about wrongdoing at all to anyone? And given the inclinations of this government to classify far more documents than it predecessors did, it makes it even more difficult to imagine the free exchange of ideas between government officials and journalists.

I find it particularly ironic that this government is bringing this charge in court while it is sending messages to Congress like this one:

Message to the Congress of the United States on Information Sharing

December 16, 2005

TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:

"The robust and effective sharing of terrorism information is vital to protecting Americans and the Homeland from terrorist attacks. To ensure that we succeed in this mission, my Administration is working to implement the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) called for by section 1016 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA). The ISE is intended to enable the Federal Government and our State, local, tribal, and private sector partners to share appropriate information relating to terrorists, their threats, plans, networks, supporters, and capabilities while, at the same time, respecting the information privacy and other legal rights of all Americans."

What "tribal" leaders, what "private sector partners" are going to have access to the "plans, networks, supporters and capabilities" of terrorists? How can the White House announce that it will share this kind of information, much of which must be classified, with private citizens and yet, at the same time, bring prosecution against people for merely "receiving" such classified information?"

Among the many organizations that are seriously concerned with the government's attempt to limit discourse and dialogue, the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News has spoken clearly on this issue:

As for Secrecy News' interest in the case, it stems from the fact thatwe also gather and disseminate "national defense information," a term that encompasses both classified and unclassified defense information. We have "unauthorized" conversations with government officials. Sometimes we deliberately pose questions about matters that we knowto be classified ("Psst...How big was the total intelligence budget 50 years ago?"). If the government's unbounded new interpretation of the espionage statutes were to prevail, much of our research and publication activity could arguably be considered illegal.

For the sake of full disclosure, I worked for AIPAC in the 1970s. I was hired by the founder of AIPAC, Si Kenen, and I spent a significant amount of time talking to people inside and outside the government, as well as with foreign governments. Our stock in trade was "information."

Had this kind of government pall existed then, no one would have talked to anyone. Journalists, academicians, lobbyists, whistleblowers -- all would have effectively been muzzled if what the Bush government is trying to do now was in place back then.

Michael Schiavo Speaks

2006-03-27T06:52:00.000-05:00

Last night, on Dateline NBC, Matt Lauer interviewed Michael Schiavo, who spoke publicly for the first time at any length about his wife Terri Schiavo and the battle with her family over her fate. It was not an overly friendly interview, by any means. Lauer never failed to bring up the accusations made against Michael by Terri's family, at every point possible.

Essentially, what it all came down to was that Michael Schiavo was accused of wanting to murder his wife by disconnecting the feeding tube so that she would die and never revive to tell everyone how he tried to kill her in the first place all those years ago. Terri's family was willing to keep her vegetative life going by artificial means for as long as possible, in spite of there being no hope whatsoever for her recovery. In fact, in one instance of family testimony in court, Michael reported that her father said that if she developed gangrene he would be willing to cut off all her limbs to keep her alive.

What made all the family accusations into hideous lies, however, was Michael's obvious, long-term commitment to Terri. He never left her. He continued to care for her right to the end. He took all the money ($750,000) awarded to her from a lawsuit against the doctor who was treating Terri for failing to diagnose her for bulimia and set up a fund to continue her care. He was there at the end when she died. It was obvious he loved her and wanted the best for her.

Michael Schiavo was in charge of the money. He could have found a way to use it to his benefit. He did not. Michael Schiavo could have turned his wife's legal care over to her family, and gotten on with his life. He did not. And yet, he was accused of the most horrible crimes by wanting to disconnect her feeding tube after 15 years, and let her die in peace, according to her own wishes.

What was also striking about the coverage on Dateline NBC was the section which recounted how President Bush and Congress got involved. It was with alacrity. Bush actually cut short his vacation and came immediately back to Washington to deal with the issue.

What a contrast to see his fervent, almost fanatic, response to Terri Schiavo, in comparison to his stuporific, leaden response to hundreds of thousands of Americans threatened by Katrina.

Perhaps the most irritating thing was Matt Lauer's disbelief (it actually felt like he was objecting) that a 22-year old woman could utter words expressing to her husband that she would not want to live like a vegetable (referring to the state her uncle was in at the time.) In fact, it is such a likely thing for people, young or old, to say to their spouses when they see someone in that condition: "Don't let me live like that." Lauer was just trying to find one more issue on which to question Michael Schiavo's veracity. He did his best to take up the family's cause against him.

Throughout the interview, Michael Schiavo's love for Terri and his commitment to her came through. It contrasted starkly with Terri's family's response which was all about their beliefs, about what they wanted. At one point, in court, family members said that were it true that Terri said she would not want to be kept alive under these conditions, they would have done it anyway. This was all about them. Michael was able to keep this about Terri.

Andrew Young Becomes Private Dancer for Wal-Mart

2006-03-25T14:46:00.001-05:00

Andrew Young, aide and close confidante to Martin Luther King, long-time civil rights activist, and former Mayor of Atlanta, has gone to work for Wal-Mart.

It's so embarrassing I have a hard time expressing how much. That Andrew Young is pals with these first class oppressors and exploiters of the world's impoverished is enough to make Martin Luther King roll over in his grave. He should be on the front line of protest against them, describing to the American people what is wrong with this corporate robber baron, rather than bending over for their cash, kidding himself and trying to make me believe he can really accomplish a damn thing. He should be ashamed. He has basically flushed whatever legacy he might have had right down the toilet.

I don't care how much he rationalizes it. I don't care how much he explains and defends his actions. It is simply beyond reason for him to believe that he will have the slightest effect on a corporation that thrives on the low wages it pays its workers and on the products that slave labor makes for its customers.

I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
I'll do what you want me to do
I'm your private dancer, a dancer for money
And any old music will do

From Tina Turner's Private Dancer, composer, Mark Knopfler

(image: Ric Feld/A.P. March 22, 2006. Decatur, Ga. Via YahooNews, via BagNewsNotes. Thanks to BAGnewsNotes for the inspiration)

The Foxes Guarding the Hen House?

2006-03-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

Is there something someone is not telling us about the Bush administration?

How can an administration that wears the American flag on its sleeve figuratively and on its lapel permanently be the same administration that hires a Middle East country that supported the Taliban and has had ties to Osama bin Laden to administer America's ports?

It's the same American government, the same flag-waving, uber patriotic White House that now proposes, through a no-bid contract, to hire a Hong Kong company, based in Communist China, to direct the use of nuclear inspection equipment for cargo coming to the United States through the Bahamas.

Is there some odd tear in the time-space continuum that I haven't heard about?

How is it that this administration, that has spoken uncountable words about how it is indispensable when it comes to protecting Americans, can so faciley, on two separate occasions, hire foreign corporations to "protect" America, corporations that might reasonably be perceived by many thinking Americans as somewhat suspect?

Were there no alternatives to looking foolish?

Overworked and Dumbed Down

2006-03-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

I'd have to get a grant and take a year off if I were to list and describe all the ways that corporate America is overworking and dumbing down Americans and ruining the country. But I do have the help of Molly Ivins and Barbara Erhenreich who, in recent columns, have summarized two of the more egregious ways corporations are keeping us uninformed and distracted.

Barbara starts us off with a piece entitled Those Corporate Homewreckers by describing how corporations underpay millions of Americans, force them to work overtime (often unpaid), force them to seek extra jobs, and, as a result, now install the American worker ahead of their Japanese counterparts as the world's top (unwilling) workaholics. In the process, our family lives suffer.

The irony is that these corporate policies are supported wholeheartedly by right-wing politicians, knee-jerk pundits like Kate O'Beirne, and Christian fundamentalists like Focus on the Family's James Dobson -- all uncaring about how effectively these corporate muggers are robbing the American family. Ehrenreich concludes:

From 1979 to 2000, Japan reduced the average annual hours worked by 305, whereas the United States reduced its annual hours by a whopping total of four, according to The State of Working America, 2004-2005. All variety of things suffer when work expands to fill evenings and weekends -- health, for example, and citizenly participation. How can you frame an opinion on the issues if you never get a chance to read or have long discussions with friends?
But families -- and especially children -- take the worst hit. It's just not possible to be a responsible and responsive parent or spouse if your work leaves you with barely enough time to shower.

This brings us to Molly Ivins' column entitled The Slow Death of Newspapers which chronicles the decline in the amount of news in our "newspapers." Molly describes the recent acquisition of Knight Ridder by McClatchy Co. and lets us in on how profitable newspapers actually are -- "In 2005, publicly traded U.S. newspaper publishers reported operating profit margins of 19.2 percent, down from 21 percent in 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal." Not a bad profit margin.

But she also reminds us that Wall Street is not high on the newspaper business, and that's why McClatchy Co. got Knight Ridder "for a song". And why is Wall Street not excited about newspapers? Because circulation is down 2% in 2004, and 13% since the 1985 peak.

So what is the corporate world doing to stem the tide of newspaper readership, Molly asks?

So we're looking at a steady decline over a long period, and many of the geniuses who run our business believe they have a solution. Our product isn't selling as well as it used to, so they think we need to cut the number of reporters, cut the space devoted to the news and cut the amount of money used to gather the news, and this will solve the problem. For some reason, they assume people will want to buy more newspapers if they have less news in them and are less useful to people. I'm just amazed the Bush administration hasn't named the whole darn bunch of them to run FEMA yet.

What better solution to the circulation problem than to reduce the amount of news coverage in newspapers? One of the brilliant advantages to this is that fewer people will actually know what's going on in the world and thereby reduce the risk that someone might actually get ticked off by what the corporatocracy is doing to us at home and overseas.

The exact same thing is happening in television and cable news. How can anyone not notice that there is less news, more ads, and more advertorial, entertainment, and product stories on both cable and network news shows?

Why inform when you can sell more ads?

So there you have it. Exhausted, underpaid American workers, unhealthy and overeating, flopping themselves down in front of television, watching tone-deaf idiots sing, ignoring television news unless there's a good story about Jessica Simpson, and only looking at newspapers for the store coupons.

Corporate America wins, the American family loses. Freedom of the press and democracy decline.

The Real Story Behind Jill Carroll

2006-03-23T07:40:00.000-05:00

Charlotte Dennett, freelance journalist and former reporter for the Beirut Daily Star, reports this story in the current March issue of Vermont Woman .

The story that most of the mainstream press has not told the American people about Jill Carroll's kidnapping has been told by one "lonely Associated Press writer by the name of Charles Hanley..."

Television networks, for instance, have pounded us with stories about the desperate plight of Jill Carroll, and the pleas of her family and friends, as well as stories about her natural affinity for the Iraqi people and her sympathy for their situation. They have also told the American people about the kidnappers demands: release of all women prisoners in Iraq.

What the networks and most of the mainstream press have not reported is that the United States military has taken captive two wives of suspected insurgents as "bait to get the insurgents to turn themselves in."

This puts an entirely different light on the kidnapping of Jill Carroll, doesn't it? There is greater context to the story than simply a journalist kidnapped.

As Dennett reports, Iraq has become an awful killing ground for journalists and Jill Carroll may become yet another fatality in the long list. But the least our television and other mainstream news outlets can do is give us some greater understanding of why Jill Carroll, in particicular, may have been taken. Knowing about the Iraqi wives of suspected insurgents being held by the American government as bait is important information that Americans ought to know about.

Sniffing Our Shoes Does Not Make Us Safe

2006-03-22T07:47:00.000-05:00

Airport security makes certain you give them your shoes to sniff, but they haven't a clue what's happening to our bags.

USA Today reports that 10,000 bags a day were lost by airlines last year. That means over 30 million bags were mishandled by the airlines. About 240,000 never made it back to their owners at all. I can only assume this means either these bags were stolen or somehow never identified

Think about it. 30 plus million bags gone astray. We don't know where. We know someone has them. What are they doing with them? What could they be doing with them? One thing for sure -- if the airlines don't know where they are, and transportation security people don't know where they are, they can't possibly know whether they are secure or not. In the end, this means that 30 plus million bags a year are potentially insecure.

What about the 200,000 bags that don't get back to their owners? How many of these are as a result of theft? One thing the article did not address, and I had a hard time getting any statistics on, is pilferage of luggage, airline employees who steal personal belongings out of our luggage. So while we know that crooks are taking possessions out of luggage, I would like to know what they might be able to put into bags without anyone knowing. Doesn't that bother anyone?

How can we possibly feel safe if the airlines and TSA have no idea where 3.5 million bags are during the course of the travel year? How can Americans feel safe if thieves are able to get into baggage at airports around the country without any surveillance of any kind?

Don't even get me started on the huge amount of airline freight that sits below our seats that is not ever inspected.

9 Years Without a Pay Raise

2006-03-21T07:25:00.000-05:00

In the past nine years, workers making the minimum wage have not gotten a single raise.

Not one.

In the meantime, the President and Congress of the United States have given the ownership class hundreds of billions in tax breaks. The reasoning has been that all that money all those rich people will be saving is going right back into the economy and is helping all those low income, poor, and other working American stiffs to have a better life. Can't you feel it? Can't you just see how your savings account is filling up? how much more secure you feel in your employment? how your credit card debt is shrinking? how your children's college fund is growing?

Can the lie of this reasoning get any more obvious? We only have to look at Americans earning the minimum wage as example.

While the wage of $5.15 an hour has stayed the same, its value has dropped dramatically because of inflation, putting workers further and further behind. Worse, the minimum wage ties millions of other low income workers to a wage floor that is a national disgrace.

It’s long past time for Congress to do something about it. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) has introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act, and you can help by signing on as a citizen co-sponsor of the bill.

Since 1997, Congress has voted eight pay raises for itself but not one dime for workers making the minimum wage. Think about that.

The annual salary for members of Congress has gone up by $31,600 in that time, while a minimum wage employee working full-time has continued to earn just $10,700 a year.

Just this year, Congress gave itself a $3,100 raise.

It’s time for Congress to stop working for itself and start working for America’s families. Sign on today to be a co-sponsor of the Fair Minimum Wage Act.

The Fair Minimum Wage Act would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in three steps:

$5.85 60 days after enactment.
$6.55 one year later.
$7.25 one year after that.

Even so, raising the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour would mean only an additional $4,370 a year for a full-time worker. But that would be enough to pay an average of nine months of rent, pay 18 months of heat and electricity, or a full year’s tuition for a community college degree. While an extra $31, 600 for members of Congress has probably meant that they can fly first class more often, or take nicer vacations, or have more expensive dinners in Washington DC, $4,370 more for low income workers can make a huge difference in the quality of their lives. And this increase would have an immediate, direct impact on more than 7 million workers and an indirect impact on millions more, because the "floor" would be raised.

Right now, there are 37 million Americans—including 13 million children—living in poverty in America, and raising the minimum wage is the easiest thing we can do to stop the rising tide of poverty.

Please take action today and sign on to become a citizen co-sponsor of the Fair Minimum Wage Act.

Take Action Now

Thanks to UnionVoice.org

On The Third Anniversary of the Invasion of Iraq

2006-03-20T09:36:00.000-05:00

Close to half of Iraqis are unemployed.

Iraqis must keep away from their "liberators," the Americans, because they are all too often killed by American troops afraid of anyone who gets too close to them.

Everything is expensive.

Malnutrition and infant mortality are still disturbingly high.

Baghdad has only 5.8 hours of electricity each day.

Iraq is producing 700,000 barrels a day less than before the invasion.

There is less water, less sewage control, and less gas at gasoline stations than before the invasion.

People are terrified of the enormous rise in criminal activity.

Even though most Iraqis are still happy that Saddam Hussein is gone, there is an abiding anger at the American "liberators" and what they have and have not done in the last three years.

[Thanks to a story filed by John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor, on his first trip back to Iraq since 1991.]

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George Bush's comments on the third anniversary. So much that he left unsaid that the American people, not to mention the American troops, need to hear from him. He is letting all of us down as he buries his head deeper and deeper.

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The former Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said yesterday:

We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.

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According to Iraq Body Count, On 1 March 2006, it put the total number of civilian dead at 31,599 to 35,712 and the number of police dead at 1,914. The number of civilian dead is more than 5,000 higher than in February, partly because data from the Baghdad morgue for 2005 has been included.

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Retired US Army Major General Paul Eaton, who was in charge of training Iraqi military forces from 2003 to 2004, described Mr Rumsfeld as "incompetent" and urged him to resign.

Orwell's Grave Interviewed By South Dakota Newspaper

2006-03-19T09:06:00.000-05:00

Perhaps this is a little self-promotion, but I bring to your attention an article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper, which interviewed yours truly for a piece published in today's Sunday edition.

Nestor Ramos, Argus Leader reporter, who says he reads my blog, has a good wrap-up entitled Abortion Lands S.D. in Nation's Psyche. Here is how he reports his interview with me:

Like every political Web log worth it's [sic] links, "Orwell's Grave" took note of South Dakota's new law. Steven [sic] McArthur, who writes the left-leaning blog from his home in Montpelier, Vt., said he was familiar with the concept of tarring whole states over an issue. His home state's image recently took a hit when right-wing commentators took issue with what they thought was a light sentence for a convicted pedophile, he said. Vermont was casually referred to in some circles as "the pedophile state."In South Dakota, McArthur said, "I haven't seen as much reaction, but if the left is doing the same thing as the right did on Vermont, then they're just as stupid as the right are."McArthur, unlike many bloggers, says he is not going to condemn the whole state."There are people of good faith in South Dakota who believe they are doing the right thing," he said.

I said this last in the context of talking about how every state projects many sides to an issue and that we should not condemn an entire state on the basis of just one side, or one group of people. I also talked about how the South Dakota abortion law was the creation of a small group of men in the South Dakota Senate and House, pushed by radical interest groups, who want to control women's lives and women's health choices. They may believe they are doing the right thing, but that does not make them right.

Ramos asked me what I thought about some people's image of South Dakota swinging far to the right with this decision and how it might make South Dakota look bad if Roe v Wade is overturned. I said that if the people of South Dakota fail to invalidate the law through the referendum process this November and it ends up in the Supreme Court and Roe is actually overturned, then South Dakota will go down in history as the state that started the ball rolling towards a catastrophe for women's rights. I said it would be an inescapable conclusion, although if it weren't South Dakota it probably would be some other state that sparked such a Supreme Court reversal.

I asked Ramos if he was aware of the Purity Ball 2006 which is taking place on April 7 in Sioux Falls. He was not, but promised to look into it. I referred him to my piece in Orwell's Grave.

America's Medical Delivery System Mediocre

2006-03-18T08:19:00.000-05:00

How many times have you heard the mantra from the right, from conservatives, from corporate medical and pharmaceutical interests that "socialized" medicine, government-controlled medicine -- the national health insurance programs of Canada and Europe -- cannot deliver the high quality of care that American medicine does? How many times have you heard the corporate health interests claim that American medicine is far superior to any nationalized system anywhere?

"Startling research from the biggest study ever of U.S. health care quality suggests that Americans -- rich, poor, black, white -- get roughly equal treatment, but it's woefully mediocre for all." [my emphasis added]

This is the opening sentence from a front-page article in my local paper, the Barre-Montpelier Times-Argus, written by Jeff Donn of the Associated Press about a survey reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The article goes on:

The survey of nearly 7,000 patients, reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, considered only people in urban areas who sought treatment, but it still challenged some stereotypes: Blacks and Hispanics in the study actually received slightly better medical treatment than whites.

On the other hand, the findings don't counter previous studies that found wide disparities in access to health care for minorities and low-income people.

While researchers who conducted the newest study acknowledged separate evidence that minorities fare worse in some areas of expensive care and suffer more from some conditions than whites, their study found that once in treatment, minorities' overall care appears similar to that of whites.

"It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor, white or black, insured or uninsured," said Dr. Steven Asch, who helped conduct the study for the Rand Health research institute in Santa Monica, Calif. "We all get equally mediocre care."

...The survey examined whether people got the highest standard of treatment for 439 measures ranging across common chronic and acute conditions and disease prevention. It looked at whether they got the right tests, drugs and treatments.

Overall, patients received only 55 percent of recommended steps for top-quality care — and no group did much better or worse than that. A well-functioning health-care system should provide recommended levels of care 80 to 90 percent of the time [my emphasis added], the study's authors said.

Americans cannot have a sensible conversation about revolutionizing our health care system unless we understand the inequities of the current system. We cannot begin to reform our health care system until we loosen the death-grip of the corporate interests on human health. As long as profit is the central motivating factor for delivery of health care, Americans won't receive what they deserve.

21 Airports Fail Security Test

2006-03-18T07:56:00.000-05:00

NBC has just reported that government investigators got homemade bomb making materials through the security checks at all 21 airports they tested.

I, for one, felt some sense of safety and security going through all the hassle of the airport security process, led to believe that my fellow passengers were fully screened and that somebody was not going to jump up with a bomb or gun and take over the plane. And even though I knew that the freight below my seat was not fully screened, I had some increased sense of security since 2001. I could rationalize the freight.

But how does this news make you feel now? Do you feel alot safer knowing George Bush, The Incompetent, is at the helm? Doesn't America feel so much safer with this faker running things?

Why I Saved My First Kiss for Marriage

2006-03-16T07:48:00.000-05:00

In honor of the small group of men who have made abortion illegal in South Dakota, the Abstinence Clearinghouse is sponsoring A Celebration of Purity for Daughters and Fathers , April 7 in Sioux Falls. This organization, which supports state anti-abortion legislation, opposes all birth control efforts of any kind, and fights against women's choices in health care, is ecstatic with the new law. For them, it lays the groundwork for overturning Roe v Wade. And because the anti-abortion movement has always been about controlling women, this group also works against any family planning because its idea of contraception is indoctrinating young women against kissing before marriage. Yes, I said "kissing" before marriage.

Here is the message on the brochure promoting the Purity Ball 2006:

Studies show fathers hold the key to a better future for their daughters. Showing your love today will help her be a better-adjusted person, with a successful life and family tomorrow. This night is a dinner and ballroom dance event which celebrates your "little girl" and her gift of sexual purity. This night will help you impress upon your daughter that abstinence until marriage is the expected standard of behavior. It is a lifechanging, life-shaping experience!

Who should attend?

This event is for fathers and daughters aged 11 and older. Stepfathers, uncles, godfathers, grandfathers and other significant male figures may bring the young lady in their life.

Think about that. All these men, some of them "significant male figures" (does that mean brothers, boyfriends, pastors?) are bringing their "little girls" to a dance to celebrate (perhaps "worship" is a better word) her "gift of sexual purity." I don't know about you, but that gives me the creeps. (As a friend of mine has noted, for the astonishingly large number of girls who have been abused by fathers, step-fathers, uncles, brothers, grandfathers, godfathers, and other significant males, the idea of all these men bringing their 11-years olds to a "Purity Ball" that focuses on their little girl sexuality is quite more than creepy.)

Amber Davidson is the keynote speaker whose address is entitled Why I Saved My First Kiss for Marriage. Apparently, abstinence now includes kissing. No more cute little boys kissing little girls on the cheek at birthday parties. No more making out anywhere at all for anyone not married. It's a world of imagination and a perversion of reality that boggles the mind.

I wonder if anyone at this conference is going to answer the question I can't seem to get an answer for from anti-abortion activists: namely, if they are successful in overturning Roe v Wade, what kind of criminal penalties do they propose for all the tens of thousands of women who will continue to find ways to have abortions, in violation of federal and state laws? I doubt the subject will even come up.

Will any of these daughters ask their father why a young woman who is raped by her father or uncle or brother or grandfather, or even by a stranger, should be forced to carry such a fetus to term, why she should have no choice, why men do the choosing for her?

Will any of these daughters ask their fathers, or uncles, or grandfathers about why young men are not being held responsible for their behavior, why young men don't have purity balls?

Will any of these daughters wonder why their mother was not invited to celebrate their sexual purity? why the men in their lives have left out the very person on whom most 11-year old girls depend?

Will any of these girls ask why it is mostly men who are telling them what they can do with their bodies, how they should behave, and what kinds of health choices they can make?

Organizations like Abstinence Clearinghouse are the ones which will rejoice when Roe v Wade is overturned. It is one of the organizations which will find comfort in a world where girls and women are behaving as they should in a patriarchal dominated society. "Purity" will be the driving force in a world where girls and women are judged harshly for not conforming, a world where intact hymens are sacrosanct, where men are able to direct their daughter's lives and development to suit their own aims, where "purity" will be the only measurement of young women's lives. A world not unlike the one the Taliban built.

It is not an accident that organizations like Abstinence Clearinghouse concentrats its efforts on young women, not young men. Even the artwork on their main page reflects this focus: a pretty young woman, large and clear, with an unfocused smaller young male image in the background. There is the female, right up front. She is the one responsible, she is, foremost, the one who must conform and carry the pure and chaste image. It's also revealing how they have a website with a link, for members only, to what they call their War Room, sounding much like any fundamentalist jihadist organization. Their war on women is as real as it gets. Their advertising slogan says Networking people for abstinence, but it is clear their target is girls, not "people."

This is the fundamentalist Christian idea of how to make society work. If you can control the women, in this case girls, you can make the Christian family (read: the American family) work the way they think it should.

Who sits on the Advisory Council of the Abstinence Clearinghouse? Beverly LaHaye of Concerned Women of America, Heather E. Cirmo of Family Research Council, and Peter Brandt, of Focus on the Family are among the many right-wing, fundamentalist, Christian and dogmatic leaders of organizations that work against women's rights.

Isn't it time that Americans, who believe in democracy and freedom, send a message to these reactionary forces that we will not allow them to wage war on women's rights and legislate their religious beliefs? The anti-abortion movement in this country has always been about controlling women. This "Purity Ball" is an outrageous example of a male patriarchy at work.

Crocodile Tears for H&R Block

2006-03-16T07:05:00.000-05:00

This morning, on American Morning, Andy Serwer, CNN's unbiquitous business commentator, brought us the story of H&R Block being sued by New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer for "fraudulent business practices involving IRA accounts marketed to its tax preparation customers."

"The suit, filed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, seeks $250 million in fines in addition to refunds from the Kansas City, Mo.-based accounting firm for steering approximately 500,000 customers into IRA accounts that were "virtually guaranteed" to lose money."

So, half a million innocent Americans may have been seriously hurt financially by this corporation which purports to be watching out for American taxpayer money and what does Andy Serwer say? -- It's "tough-sledding" for H&R Block. Tough sledding! Oh, the poor guy. Mr. Block, the corporate personhood that he is, must be really upset and we should feel sorry for him because he is having such a hard time. Forget the half million people who lost god-knows how much money. But let's shed tears for the corporate "person" who is in trouble.

Now there is a perfect example of how corporate personhood gets reported, gets distorted, and has become perhaps the most dangerous reality in our lives.

What Went Wrong?

2006-03-14T07:46:00.000-05:00

The Guardian (UK) reports on a series of memos from Britain's top envoy in which he paints the American administration in Iraq as "an unbelievable mess." John Sawers, Prime Minister Blair's envoy in Baghdad in the aftermath of the invasion, sent a series of confidential memos to Downing Street in May and June 2003 that described the US failures.

According to the Guardian, the mistakes include:

· A lack of interest by the US commander, General Tommy Franks, in the post-invasion phase.

· The presence in the capital of the US Third Infantry Division, which took a heavyhanded approach to security.

· Squandering the initial sympathy of Iraqis.

· Bechtel, the main US civilian contractor, moving too slowly to reconnect basic services, such as electricity and water.

· Failure to deal with health hazards, such as 40% of Baghdad's sewage pouring into the Tigris and rubbish piling up in the streets.

· Sacking of many of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, even though many of them held relatively junior posts.

Part of his description of the American presence, in one report entitled "What's Going Wrong?" includes these words:

No leadership, no strategy, no coordination, no structure and inaccessible to ordinary Iraqis.

The buck stops with George Bush. Let's hold him accountable by throwing out his stooges in Congress this November. Let's make it clear to Bush and his incompetent appointees that their mistakes have cost American lives, American prestige, and American economic solvency.