People Before Profit blog

Atlantans Rally against Police Brutality

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:53:00 +0000

10-30-09, 10:29 am

Original source: The Atlanta Progressive News

(APN) ATLANTA -- A group of nearly 70 students, community activists, and victims of police brutality rallied at downtown's Woodruff Park and marched to the Atlanta Detention Center on Thursday, October 22, 2009, as part of the annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation.

Similar events took place in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Kansas City, and elsewhere.

Atlanta organizers highlighted recent incidents of police brutality in Georgia, including the Atlanta Police Department (APD) raid on the Eagle, a gay bar, in September; the APD killing of Montellis Clark with 39 bullets in July; and the APD's point-blank shooting of Tramaine Miller in May while he was in his car.

'Police murder and brutality is a national epidemic,' Justin Carter, a leading activist, told Atlanta Progressive News. 'We're not going to accept any more stolen lives.'

Dean Steed, an activist with the Georgia State University chapter of the Revolution Club, argued more and more Americans have to contend with a 'rigged' legal system which does not give ordinary people a fair chance.

'If you let this go on, next time it might be you,' she said.

During the rally and after the march, people had a chance to share personal police harassment stories.

Felicia Kennedy, a West End resident, said she witnessed APD officers 'stomping and beating' an unarmed suspect 'multiple times' outside her home.

'It was the most gross display of human behavior I have ever seen,' she said.

After retrieving her camera, Kennedy began taking pictures of the incident. According to Kennedy, one of the officers 'forcefully' confiscated the camera and 'manhandled' her into handcuffs.

'These are the people we're paying to protect us,' Kennedy said.

The incident led Kennedy to join with neighbors to form the West End Community Initiative, a group that is on the watch for police brutality.

'Don't let... little ideological differences stop us from banding together to stop this brutality,' she said.

Omari Khalfani, a veteran of the U.S. Army and Snellville resident, shared with APN a letter he sent to President Obama in which he recounts a January run-in with two officers.

According to his letter, two White police officers had a Black man in handcuffs bent over the back of a squad car when Khalfani drove by slowly. One of the officers 'angrily' urged him to move along.

Khalfani returned a short time later and asked the officer why he had motioned him on.

'To my surprise, he began angrily yelling at me and showing his agitation with my questioning him,' Khalfani wrote. 'I told him that I had a right to ask questions and I was going to leave before this situation got out of hand.'

As he began to drive away, the officer grabbed Khalfani by the neck and arm through the open car window, told him to get out of his car, and placed him under arrest.

'After being at the jail for several hours, I learned they were charging me with not wearing a seat belt, obstructing traffic, not showing my driver's license, and a claim by the policeman that jumped on my car that I ran over his foot,' Khalfani wrote.

Khalfani maintains he 'always' wears his seatbelt and that the officer 'never asked me for my license.'

Police released Khalfani on bond later that night. Khalfani has hired an attorney and is awaiting trial.

'What are we going to do to change things?' he asked the crowd Thursday. 'There's no respect for us in this country. If you see something going on, speak up, say something.'

For more photos and information about this event, including President Obama's response letter to Khalfani, visit www.atlantaprogressiveblog.com.

--Jonathan Springston is a Senior Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News and is reachable at jonathan@atlantaprogressivenews.com.

Labor Report Hits Union Busting by Immigration Agency

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:50:00 +0000

An important report by the AFL-CIO, American Rights at Work and the National Employment Law Project paints a shocking picture of how, under the Bush administration, ICE, (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) ran roughshod over the rights of immigrant workers and blocked enforcement of labor law.

The authors of the report, “ICED OUT: How Immigration Enforcement has Interfered with Workers' Rights”, are Rebecca Smith of the National Employment Law Project, Ana Avendaño of the AFL-CIO, and Julie Martinez Ortega of the American Rights at Work Educational Fund. It can be read online at

The 44 page report is based on a detailed examination of the experience of immigrant workers around the country, whose vulnerability caused by their undocumented status was used by employers as a pretext to violate wages and hours and occupational health and safety laws, as well as break up union organizing drives.

In too many cases, ICE not only failed to respect the rights of workers, but actually targeted worksites where union organizing or labor disputes were going on. Workers who stood up for their rights found themselves arrested by ICE, or by local police and handed over to ICE. The authors claim this is part of an anti-union strategy on the part of employers and of the Bush administration.

Undocumented workers whose rights have been violated on the job or who have been victims of human trafficking are supposed to be eligible, in some cases, for special visas which would allow them to stay in this country and testify against their employers. But ICE often hustles people out of the country before they can be helped to get such visas. Also, ICE is not supposed to carry out raids in the context of a labor dispute, but the report lists case after case in which it has done precisely that. In other cases, immigrant workers injured on the job have been arrested and whisked out of the country by ICE, letting the employer and the Workers Compensation insurance carrier off the hook for paying for medical treatment.

In 2006 Latino immigrant workers at the Woodfin Suites Hotel, in Emeryville, California went public with a complaint that the hotel was not obeying a local living wage law. The management fired 21 workers, ostensibly because they had received “No-Match” letters from the Social Security Administration questioning the authenticity of these workers' Social Security numbers. But the workers went to state court and got their jobs back.

Then the management got in touch with U.S. Representative Brian Bilbray (R-CA), an ultra-right, anti-worker and anti-immigrant loudmouth. Bilbray “sicced” ICE on the workers. This resulted in the firing of 12 workers and the harassment of workers at their homes by ICE agents.

In 2008, the Iron Workers Union was trying to organize residential construction workers employed by subcontractors of Sun Coast-Gold Canyon. A union organizer was driving a group of five Latino workers to a picket line, when four patrol carloads of Pinal County Sheriff's deputies stopped him and demanded to see the IDs of the workers. The deputies told the organizer that they were there to check immigration status because of the labor dispute. All five workers were arrested, and four were processed for deportation.

The report summarizes a number of other such incidents.

The incidents cited occurred in the last years of the Bush administration. Since the Obama administration came in, there have been far fewer big workplace raids and some other improvements, but a number of Bush-initiated practices have continued and the number of people deported so far continues to be very high. For example, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, though she has ordered a tightening-up of the 287 (g) program which involves local police in immigration enforcement, has added eleven new police departments to the program. This is worrying, because the report shows clearly that local police sometimes collude in union busting activities, especially when immigrant workers are concerned. The targeting of employers is also disturbing because when a major employer is busted for employing undocumented immigrant workers, the workers do not benefit and like as not end up working for even lower pay and under even worse conditions.

The report adds a valuable list of recommendations to the Obama administration, too long to be summarized here. The gist is if you don't want unscrupulous employers of undocumented workers to keep on their abuses, enforce labor law but protect immigrant workers from persecution.

I Thought it was a Promotion

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:40:00 +0000

10-30-09, 10:17 am

An example of the moral and political qualities of some 'Cuban-Americans' who have placed themselves at the service of the enemies of the land of their birth is offered in an interview in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo with one of the so-called 'plumbers' who became famous as participants in the Watergate scandal that led to the ouster of President Richard Nixon.

The interview, which appeared on July 19, 2009, was conducted by journalist Manuel Aguilera Cristóbal with Eugenio Rolando Martínez who, 'at 86 years of age does not regret his past as a Watergate plumber although he laments having lost this and many other battles.'

'I wanted to overthrow Castro and unfortunately I overthrew the president who had been aiding us, Richard Nixon,' the mercenary told the journalist.

On June 17, 1971, at 2:30 in the morning, Martínez was arrested inside the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate building complex in Washington, D.C., along with James McCord, head of security for the Committee to Re-Elect the President [Richard M. Nixon], and three other plumbers hired, as Martínez had been, in Miami: Virgilio González, Bernard Baker, and Frank Sturgis. All had previously worked for the CIA.

Exactly two months earlier, on April 17, 1971, Bernard Baker, Martínez's best friend, found a note on the door of his house: 'If you are still the man that I knew, come and see me.' The note was signed Howard Hunt, whom both had know for a long time through his role as the CIA's principal organizer of the Playa Girón landing. The day marked the tenth anniversary of that unsuccessful attempt to invade Cuba through that point at the Bay of Pigs, on the island's south coast, using 1500 counter-revolutionary exiles, a large portion of whom were identified with the bloody Batista dictatorship that had recently been defeated on the island. Already in Hunt's criminal dossier was the key role that he had played in the 1954 overthrow Guatemala's president, Jacobo Arbenz.

'We are going to be active again,' Hunt said tersely when they all met. The proposal was to form part of a White House unit personally directed by Richard Nixon. Hunt assured them that the CIA was in on the creation of this group of agents working on the president's orders.

After 12 years working for the Agency doing infiltration, sabotage, kidnappings, espionage, and other terrorist misdeeds, Rolando Martínez felt flattered: 'I thought it was a promotion for me.'

Initially, the group's job was to investigate people who wanted to interview Nixon. But then other much dirtier missions came along, like when they broke into the office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg (former military analyst at the RAND Corporation), 'who had leaked to the New York Times documents from the Pentagon about the Vietnam war and we wanted his psychiatrist's notes to corroborate if he had also passed information to the Soviet embassy and to learn what his motives were,' the miscreant stated.

On May 2, 1971, a month before the break-in at the Democrats' office, the body of J. Edgar Hoover, who had been director of the FBI since 1935, was laid out in the Capitol rotunda. It was feared that left-wing groups opposed to the war in Vietnam would demonstrate nearby. Fifteen Cubans were hired in Miami to dissuade the demonstrators. Martínez recalls with a smile how they broke up the demonstration, in which the actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland took part: 'I remember how we provoked them. We took a Vietcong flag from them and broke it up.'

At the Watergate building 'we went to steal documents that would show that Fidel Castro was financing the campaign of the Democrat McGovern, who everyone knew sympathized with Castro, had traveled to Cuba on various occasions, and had been seen together with him attending baseball games. We were looking for evidence of a foreign country's interference in the election of a president of the United States.'

Martínez maintains that he and his comrades were victims of a trap sprung by James McCord, the only one of the five plumbers who was not an undercover agent but was rather a formal part of the CIA. 'He betrayed us!'

In January 1973, the four plumbers pleaded guilty in order to avoid a trial and so as not to have to testify about the details of the operation. They were convicted of conspiracy, robbery, and violation of federal communications laws. Two months later, McCord wrote a letter to the judge and with that he precipitated the political scandal that ended with the resignation of President Nixon. McCord received immunity and Martínez served only 15 months of the 40 years he had been sentenced to.

Yes, justice in the United States is generous, for some!

Rebuild America with Good Jobs

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:30:00 +0000

Remarks by Richard L. Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO, Building the New Economy: Making It in America Conference October 29, 2009

Thank you. And thank you to our allies, the Alliance for American Manufacturing and the Campaign for America’s Future for sponsoring this important and timely meeting.

Over the next decade, America is poised to invest $2 trillion in infrastructure, health care and a greener economy. The big question is this: Are we going to just spend this money? Or will we invest it strategically in a new economy? We’re together in this room today because we’re committed to the latter. And this is exactly the group that needs to be talking and working together—unions and businesses, government, economists and progressive activists.

Our economic crisis has been so severe that it needs all of us to resolve it. Issues that once may have divided us now bring us together. We’re united against the common enemy of U.S. economic failure.

For decades, manufacturing provided U.S. workers a solid ladder into the middle class—with job security, decent paychecks, health care and retirement with dignity. Manufacturing built the middle class because workers built unions—unions strong enough to see to it that workers got a fair share of the wealth they created. But then the United States entered the world economy with policies designed to attack workers’ standard of living and without a strong manufacturing policy. Instead, we indulged in the illusion that the United States, a nation of 300 million, could live off of finance and money borrowed from our trading partners. The resulting financial bubble and economic crisis has pushed the world to the brink of global depression and revealed a U.S. economy in structural crisis.

But fortunately, this is a new day. We have national leaders as committed as we are to investing, not just in rescuing our economy from the brink of a second Great Depression—but in rebuilding it, restructuring it, making it work for us and for our country’s future. We need it.

In the past 10 years, more than 50,000 U.S. manufacturing facilities have closed and we’ve lost more than 5 million manufacturing jobs, including about 1 million professional and technical jobs. We’ve run up record trade deficits, driven by manufactured goods deficits. The 2008 goods trade deficit of $800 billion included $565 billion in manufactured goods. And China—a country that routinely violates international trade and human rights norms, and that has a strong industrial policy, linked with a trade and currency strategy—now accounts for 75 percent of our non-oil goods deficit. At the same time, affluent high-wage countries with manufacturing policies like Japan and Germany are running trade surpluses by selling high-end capital and consumer goods to many emerging markets.

Meanwhile, all of America has been rocked by job loss, home foreclosures, bankruptcy and loss of health care and retirement security. But the industrial Midwest has been crippled. The auto crisis of the past 18 months has left the state of Michigan with effective unemployment approaching 25 percent. We should be looking at the Midwest as an incredible resource of skilled autoworkers, machinists, steelworkers, industrial engineers, designers, scientists, technical capacity, innovation and facilities available for retooling. But our ongoing failure to invest in manufacturing means that the next innovation, the next best idea, the next process improvement, the next breakthrough may well be made in some other country, not ours.

Instead of paying workers to innovate and to make things we could export, the business of America has become finance. Wall Street and transnational corporations have been defining U.S. financial and trade policy to fit their will. Their push for short-term profits has undermined domestic manufacturing and helped drive it offshore in a global race to the bottom, where U.S. manufacturers compete with companies in affluent countries that benefit from national health care and mandatory employer funded retirement, and with companies around the world that take no responsibility at all for their employees’ health and retirement, and in countries that have no respect for workers’ rights or the environment so their labor and environmental costs are low.

This short-termism has pushed investment not into what America can produce and supply to build a prosperous and jobs-based economy, but into speculation, exotic financial gimmicks and dangerous gambles that failed and almost destroyed us. The result? The United States has ended up with 22 percent of our GDP tied to the financial sector—which makes nothing except credit pyramids and obscene wealth for a very, very few. Instead of exporting financial crisis, we can and should be exporting technology and world-class goods.

The one good thing about the economic collapse is that it lets us—quite frankly, it requires us—to think big, not tinker at the edges of recovery but rebuild and restructure our economy, with a revitalized manufacturing sector at its core.

Shortly, I believe, we will have accomplished a key element in rebuilding our economy: health care reform. We simply can’t have a robust economy when health care costs are sucking it dry, leaving little room for other investments and threatening the health and learning ability of the next generation to enter the workforce.

Our next priority will be passing the Employee Free Choice Act, so every worker who chooses to do so can have the freedom to join a union and bargain collectively for a better life. This is a crucial piece of lifting living standards and building a stable middle class.

Meanwhile, we are fighting for trade law enforcement, new tax policies that support investment in manufacturing, and financial reform that will crack down on predatory lending, credit card trickery and mortgage rip-offs. The financial reform I am convinced we’ll win will address systemic risks that threaten the entire financial system, regulate the shadow markets like derivatives and hedge funds before they do further damage, and reform corporate governance and CEO compensation to protect working people who are long-term investors, not speculators.

The AFL-CIO, the Industrial Union Council, the entire union movement and our allies have been working on these priorities for a good long time. Now it is time for us—labor, management, government and our environmental allies like the Apollo Alliance and the Blue-Green Alliance—to draft a national economic policy and manufacturing plan that will allow us to prosper in the world economy.

All of our competitor nations have strategies and policies that bolster manufacturing and target key industries and technologies for development and domestic employment. Their factories are humming. In this way, at least, it’s time for us to begin thinking and acting like our competitors.

As we plan and decide how that $2 trillion is going to be invested, our goal must be to develop the best technology and industries that will convert our economy to a greener future fueled by good jobs here in America. If the best technology is elsewhere, let’s use our financial leverage to capture it and have it made here. Congress and the Obama administration must target resources to the industrial heartland, where we have the skilled workers, the engineering talent and the idled capacity.

Let’s look at some of the opportunities we have for investing $2 trillion to build the kind of economy we need:

Three decades ago, the United States led the world in energy technology. Today, we are home to only two of the 10 largest solar photo-voltaic producers, one of the top 10 advanced battery manufacturers and two of the top 10 wind turbine producers. Last year, less than half of the record 8,300 megawatts of wind turbines installed in the United States were made in this country. In 2008, the United States ran an overall green trade deficit of $8.9 billion, including a deficit of $6.4 billion in the critical category of renewable energy. Our immediate goal must be to convert this trade deficit into a trade surplus.

In new transit systems such as high-speed rail, the rest of the world leads the way and we have just one firm, Maglev Inc., that is engaged in one of those technologies. With the right investments in mass transit and high-speed rail, we should capture the best technology in the world and have those trains and rails made right here.

Earlier this week, President Obama announced the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history—an $8 billion public-private program expected to create tens of thousands of jobs while reducing energy consumption and costs for consumers in 49 states. And Vice President Biden announced a closed GM plant in Delaware will be reopened to build plug-in hybrid electric cars.

These are the kinds of opportunities we have to seize to create good green jobs and green products here in America. We have done this kind of big thinking and large-scale change before—and there is no reason to believe we can’t do it again. To win World War II, we turned America into the biggest defense producer and industrial power the world has seen—and we can do it again. We need that same sense of wartime urgency.

How large are the stakes? If we fail to act, I do not believe we can remain a middle-class society for long. If we fail to act, I cannot imagine how we will make the technological change that is our only hope of addressing the threat of climate change.

If we do act, we can and we will leave our children the kind of country we want them to have. We need to dedicate ourselves to do it together. We are joined here today by congressional leaders. We have friends like Ron Bloom in the administration, with the mission of reviving manufacturing.

My challenge to these fine public servants on behalf of the labor movement is this: Our country needs action to redress decades of policies that destroyed manufacturing. We need you to think big and bold. We are ready to work with you every step of the way, but we need your leadership to make a national manufacturing strategy a reality, a strategy that uses the tools of trade— tax and currency policy, workforce training, health care reform, and the freedom to form unions—to rebuild the ladder to the middle class.

For too long we have had no strategy as a nation other than making Wall Street rich by shuttering Main Street. That didn’t work. This will.

Thank you, and I look forward to taking the next steps with you.

New Hybrids Out in 2010

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:22:00 +0000

10-30-09, 9:59 am

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Celebrities and billionaires are shelling out big bucks for cutting edge green-friendly cars like the Tesla Roadster. But what are the rest of us—who live in the budget-constrained real world—to do about buying a new car that does right by the environment? -- M.G., Stroudsburg, PA

With so many new energy efficient cars in showrooms today, there’s never been a better time to go green with your next car purchase. A few years ago the Toyota Prius was the go-to model for those with an environmental conscience and up to $30,000 to pay for the privilege of getting 35-40 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 45-55 on the highway. But today there is such a wide selection of fuel efficient and low-emissions vehicles that even those on a budget can afford to go green.

To wit, Honda’s new Insight is the first hybrid gasoline-electric car available new for less than $20,000 (starting at $19,800). With fuel efficiency ratings of 40 miles per gallon (mpg) in the city and 43 on the highway, the Insight surely won’t cost much to operate either.

There are plenty of other hybrids to choose from today, too, though most cost at least a few thousand dollars more than equivalent non-hybrid models. Toyota’s Prius, which is only available as a hybrid, still leads the pack as the world’s top selling and most fuel efficient hybrid. Its cost has dropped some, now starting at $22,400, and the “3rd generation” Prius 10 now claims an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) combined city/highway rating of 50 mpg. This most recent edition even features a whimsical solar panel on the roof to power a ventilation system that keeps the interior of the car cool even on scorching hot days. Hybrid versions of Honda’s Civic ($23,800), Nissan’s Altima ($26,780), Ford’s Fusion ($27,625) and Escape SUV ($31,500), Mercury’s Milan ($31,590) and Mariner SUV ($29,995), Toyota’s Camry ($26,150) and Highlander SUV ($34,700) are also in showrooms in dealerships across the U.S.

Many smaller cars with regular gasoline engines also get great mileage with low emissions for even less money. Some examples include the Corolla ($15,350), Matrix ($16,550) and Yaris ($12,355) from Toyota, Honda’s Fit ($14,900), the Mazda 3 ($16,045), Chevy’s Aveo ($11,965) and Cobalt ($14,990), the Hyundai’s Accent ($9,970) and Elantra ($14,145), Pontiac’s G3 ($14,335), the Kia Rio ($11,495), the MINI Cooper ($19,500), Ford’s Focus ($15,995), and the Smart Car ForTwo ($11,990).

Diesel fuel is now cleaner than ever, and a few automakers are going down that road. Volkswagen’s Jetta TDI ($22,660), Audi’s A3 TDI ($29,950) and BMW’s 335d ($43,900) are three examples of high performance vehicles with solid green credentials regarding fuel efficiency and emissions. An added bonus is that such cars can run on carbon-neutral biodiesel as well as petroleum-based diesel fuel.

Consumers just starting their search for a new ride should check out GreenCar.com, which provides detailed information on the many greener vehicles available today as well as those on the horizon. Also, the federal government’s website FuelEconomy.gov provides detailed mileage and emissions information on dozens of new cars every year, and provides users with an easy and free way to compare different vehicles along the lines of environmental impact.

CONTACTS: GreenCar.com, www.greencar.com; FuelEconomy.gov, www.fueleconomy.gov.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Preview of Ramzy Baroud's 'My Father was a Freedom Fighter'

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 03:17:00 +0000

10-30-09, 9:54 am

Ramzy Baroud is a veteran Palestinian-American journalist and former Al-Jazeera producer. He also taught Mass Communication at Australia's Curtin University of Technology, is a frequent speaker, a regular media guest, and is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Palestine Chronicle, a leading resource for information on Israel/Palestine and much more.

He's also written numerous articles, commentaries, short stories, and authored several books, including 'The Second Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle,' and his latest and topic of this introductory review, 'My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.'

Baroud knows his subject well, having been born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp where he saw Israeli soldiers regularly oppress, harass, humiliate, and attack young Palestinians like himself in an attempt to crush their spirit and break their will to resist, to no avail no matter how hard they tried.

What follows is a snapshot of Baroud's forthcoming book titled, 'My Father was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story.' As distinguished Palestinian author, historian, activist and founder and president of the London-based Palestine Land Society, Salman Abu Sitta, explained in the forward:

Ramzy is Mohammed Baroud's son, a heroic 'freedom fighter, (and himself) a gifted writer (who) eloquently unearthed the recent history of Beit Daras' village, chronicled his family's struggle in exile, and recounted their determination to survive and endure under siege and assaults that continue to this day.

Many books covered the early years, but most were in Arabic. Baroud's is one of the few in English 'about the life, depopulation and (literal) struggle for survival of the people of a Palestinian village in southern Palestine.' In spanning over seven decades of history and survivor recollections, 'it stands out as an unblemished depiction of their plight' as only those who experienced it can describe.

As a freedom fighter's son, Baroud's book is proof of a people's persistence to survive, endure, and ultimately prevail in their historic quest for liberation, because of heroic men like father and son Baroud who'll accept no less. Nor should anyone wanting everyone to be free, especially the long-suffering Palestinians and oppressed peoples everywhere.

Born in Beit Daras, Mohammed Baroud's beloved village was conquered, leveled, and erased, except from the memory he took to his grave. One of seven children, he was born during the 1938 turmoil that erupted a decade later in merciless war that destroyed Beit Daras, 530 other villages, 11 urban neighborhoods in cities like Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem, and slaughtered or displaced about 800,000 Palestinians with tactics reminiscent of Nazi WW II ruthlessness.

Mohammed and his family survived, were exiled to the Gaza Nuseirat refugee camp, dreamed always of going home, as a young man joined the Palestinian unit of the Egyptian army, later fought heroically for the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) in the Six Day War, was wounded, and was horrified that historic Palestine was gone, its people captives on their own land, forced to endure Israeli occupation viciousness, that, for Gazans, is in the world's largest open-air prison.

Throughout his life, he endured decades of struggle, conflict, violence, occupation, oppression, what Edward Said called 'a slow death,' shattered hopes, and the incalculable horror of it all. It took its toll. Yet he raised six children, used his resources to educate them, believed occupation and poverty killed his young son Anwar, and then his wife Zarefah at age 42.

In his early 50s, he grew frail, needed two canes to walk, was weakened by various ailments by the late 1980s, and became increasingly disillusioned and impoverished.

Ill, in pain, and incapacitated, he was dying. The end came on March 18, 2008. Thousands turned out for his funeral, oppressed people like himself who shared his vision, struggles, and plight. 'The resilient (freedom) fighter had finished the battle for a well-deserved moment of peace' while those left behind continue his courageous struggle, his son Ramzy one of them through his heroic work the way many others are equally committed and will be until Palestine is again free.

(The book is available for pre-orders at Amazon.com)

--Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago. Contact him at: lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Honesty, Honor and Universal Health Care

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:04:00 +0000

10-28-09, 9:41 am

Original source: The Rag Blog

The Machiavellian maneuvering in the United States Congress continues. As a keen observer of the complexities involved in health care legislation I am confused.

Granted there are a few forthright, honest elected representatives such as Rep. Alan Grayson on the scene; however, there is much conflicted double talk arising from our elected representatives in general. How can the general public ever understand? Just what is a 'public option'? Hopefully, it would be a program akin to Medicare available to all. Apparently not. During a recent discussion on MSNBC it was pointed out the program may well be limited to those currently without insurance, or for employers to provide employee benefits when they find commercial insurance overly expensive.

It would seem that those who have found their insurance to be too expensive, or those who would turn to the public plan for more humane, more intensive, or more honest, coverage, may well be excluded. One still feels the evidence of Faustian arrangements between certain Democratic Senators and the insurance/pharmaceutical/medical equipment alliance.

The drumbeat of opposition to universal health care continues. Reasonably new on the scene is an organization interestingly named AmeriPac – the American Political Action Committee – whose motto is 'No Obama Care!' These folks have amassed every lie, misrepresentation, and distortion into one central location, producing pamphlets, bumper-stickers, e-mailings, the works.

An interview with ex-senator Dr. Bill Frist on Fox News October 18, 2009, makes one appreciate the well funded efforts that the health insurance cartels employ to hoodwink the public. It brings to mind Josef Goebbels’ credo: 'There is no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway yield to the stronger, and this will always be ‘the man on the street.’ Arguments must therefore be crude, clear, and forceable, and appeal to the emotions and instincts, not to the intellect. Truth is unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.' According to The Washington Post on October 10, The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drugmakers' main trade group, shattered records by spending nearly $7 million on lobbying July through September. The outlay brings PhARMA's total so far this year to nearly $20 million, just shy of the group’s entire lobbying budget for 2008. Other big spenders for the third quarter included Pfizer, Inc. ($5,42 million); the American Hospital Association ($3.8 million); the AMA ($3.95 million); Amgen, Inc. ($3,0 million; Bayer Corporation ($2.45 million) and Americas Health Insurance Plans ($2.4 million). Many of Washington's broader interest groups have also ramped up their lobbying efforts. The powerful U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is at loggerheads with President Obama on health care, climate change and other key issues, spent a stunning $35 million on lobbying in the third quarter. When we have a prescription filled at an outlandish price we are indirectly paying for the lobbies that are working to defeat efforts to establish price control on prescription drugs. The pharmaceutical industry spends much more on advertising than on research. It seems like every other commercial on television is for a pharmaceutical product.

Finally keep in mind that, when you are paying a health insurance premium, 40% of it will not go to pay your medical bills, but will provide for multimillion dollar executive salaries, lush stockholder dividends, and payments to your elected representatives aimed at defeating universal health care for you and your family. Universal health care would provide insurance without exclusions, high co-pays, and denials of preexisting conditions. Universal health care would be akin to Medicare, where you can choose your own physician, consultants, or out of town clinics, without the exclusions placed on HMO sponsors such as the Humana Corporation.

We hear cries of woe about costs of universal care from the insurance-subsidized Republican members of Congress. Yet, these same folks have no problem with spending on foreign wars, of questionable need, which have cost the American citizens $923,211,375,341 since 2001. The taxpayer has spent $693,457.283,717 in Iraq and $229,754,091,624 in Afghanistan, according to costofwar.com

Paul Craig Roberts, writing in Information Clearing House on October 21, 2009, notes: 'According to reports the U.S. Marines in Afghanastan use 800,000 gallons of gasoline per day. At $400 per gallon that comes to a $320 million daily fuel bill for the Marines alone.' Mr. Roberts also notes that it costs $750,000 per year for each soldier we have in Afghanistan. And we cannot pay for health care for the 45,000 Americans who die each year for lack of resources to pay for the fundamental right of having decent health car! Please check out Rep. Grayson's new website Names of the Dead.

Happily there is a bit of good news and that is the fact that both the House and Senate are working to include the health insurance industry under the antitrust laws, from which they and major league baseball have been the sole exemptions. Furthermore, there is legislation pending in both the House and Senate, the latter sponsored by Sen. Debbie Stabenow, as SB 1776, that would eliminate Medicare's Sustainable Growth Rate from the physician formula. This, plus a bill for health care reform, deemed necessary by the American College of Physicians, would provide a 10 percent bonus to primary care physicians for five years, establish a workforce Advisory Committee to develop and implement a national workforce strategy, redistribute unused graduate medical education funds to primary care, and create a CMS innovation center to test new payment models that support primary care.

In short we will begin to produce more family doctors, pay them a decent salary, and perhaps some day once again rediscover the house call, which is still available in many European nations. We have fewer primary care physicians than any Western nation. For no good reason some surgical specialists have an income 20 times that of a family doctor.

In the midst of all of this we again hear a cry from the highly paid specialties that Medicare discounts their usual fees. We who practiced prior to Medicare remember that that many of the elderly were able to pay only a token fee, and some could not pay at all; thus we who were in internal medicine, internal medicine subspecialties, or general practice were delighted to see, with the advent of Medicare, on time if discounted payment. I do believe that under a government sponsored program that a payment scheme like that of the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic should become the national standard.

I hope that Congress will pass a comprehensive public option and not the watered-down version noted in my first paragraph. In addition there must be some control of the insurance cartel concerning “pre-existing conditions.” It was noted in a 2008 study on law.com that women are discriminated against by the health insurance cartel, being charged as much as 48% more than men for health insurance. Of more than 3500 plans studied, 60% did not cover maternity care, and women are regularly denied coverage for “pre-existing conditions” which can include pregnancy or a previous C-section. In eight states and the District of Columbia, insurers are allowed to use a woman's status as a survivor of domestic violence to deny her health insurance.

It would appear that President Obama has rid himself of his idée fixe concerning Sen. Snow and the need for “bipartisanship.” It seems that he finally has come out from under the cloud of subservience to the insurance, pharmaceutical, and medical appliance industries and will take an active part in providing the 60% of the public and 65% of the physicians with a true, unencumbered public option.

It also appears that the House of Representatives is listening to the majority of the American people and their physicians. One can only hope that Sen. Reid throws off his jellyfish facade, stands up like a true leader, and demands that the Democrats in the Senate vote for cloture, thus avoiding a filibuster by the “death care” inspired Republicans. (What do we do with Sen. Lieberman?) In the meanwhile the majority of the American public must stand firm against the corporations and their political allies who put profit above morality and the negative image of American society in the civilized world.

I am still not sure that the American public understands the term “public option.” I have seen no polling on the matter. Hence, I conducted a brief survey of my own in a grocery store checkout line, talking to six people. Two middle aged ladies with breast cancer ribbons on their lapels were fully informed. One elderly lady feared it would in some way interfere with her Medicare. (I explained that it was merely a Medicare-like program for those under 65, and she was satisfied.)

One gentleman told me that he had General Electric health insurance and was not interested. Another gentleman was fearful of “socialized medicine,” but it turned out that he was a Korean War Vet and attended the V.A. Clinic; hence, it was easy to explain in terms of the V.A. and his wife's Medicare. The sixth, attired in hunter’s garb, assured me that any government program was 'Communism,' and took off in his Hummer with the NRA sticker on the bumper.

--Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform.

Health Reform and Rural America

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:44:00 +0000

10-28-09, 9:21 am

Health reform being considered in Congress now would address the special concerns of rural Americans, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters Tuesday, Oct 27th.

Introducing a new report title 'More Choices, Better Coverage,' published by her Department, Sec. Sebelius explained that health insurance reform would improve access, affordability and quality for 50 million people living in rural areas who now say health insurance is impossible or nearly impossible to afford.

About one in five uninsured people live in rural areas where poverty rates are also substantially higher than in cities, the report found.

Health reform would remedy the discrepancy in health care access by providing subsidies and tax credits to low-income people who cannot afford insurance. In addition, the creation of an insurance exchange would provide rural residents with more choices of insurance plans. Currently the strongest private market monopolies can be founding rural or mainly rural states, Sebelius pointed out. 'This means that [with reform] family farms and self-employed rural citizens can join together with negotiating power like the big guys now have.'

More choice means that the cost of premiums will be brought under control better, she added.

In addition, most workers in small businesses without insurance work in rural areas. The small business tax credits in both the House and Senate versions of the health reform bill would return as much as 50 percent of the cost of health insurance premiums to small business owners when they decide to provide coverage for themselves, their family members or other workers.

In addition to these direct benefits, other reforms contained in the health reform package will benefit workers and self-employed people, including family farm owners, in rural areas, Secretary Sebelius continued.

Right now, small business owners pay as much as an 18 percent higher rate for employee insurance. In addition, if one employee has a major health issue, the rise in costs can often price that small business out of the market. By eliminating cost-sharing for preventative measures, discrimination based on preexisting conditions and other industry reforms, small business owners will see some parity with bigger businesses in insurance costs.

Rural residents also face problems with finding doctors. 'Two-thirds of the underserved areas in the country are in rural areas,' Sebelius said. The health reform bills in both house of Congress plan to provide new subsidies for student loan repayments and scholarships for doctors, nurses, physician assistants, dentists and mental health specialists to practice in rural areas should increase the number of health care workers in rural areas.

'Health insurance reform will make sure that every American, whether they're living under a skyscraper in New York City, or on a family farm in Kansas or North carolina has access to quality, available coverage,' Sebelius said.

Australia: Oil Spill Disaster Continues – The Toll Rises

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:17:00 +0000

10-27-09, 8:54 am

Original source: The Guardian (Australia)

The people of the region have looked on helplessly as a leak from an oil rig covers thousands of square kilometres of environmentally sensitive waters off Australia’s northwest coast with a sludge-laden slick. The Thai company that operates the West Atlas rig is regrouping for a fourth attempt to stem the flow at the well head 2.6 kilometres below the surface. By the time it is plugged, more than 37 million litres of oil could have belched into waters that ecologists point out contain one of the richest marine faunas in the world. The livelihoods of Indonesian fishermen are also at risk. The Rudd government is setting up an inquiry and is clearly sensitive to claims its Wild West policy of encouragement to oil and gas prospecting and production has led us into an environmental disaster.

Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson is appointing a commissioner to set terms of reference for the inquiry into the spill in the Montara oilfield. The government rejected an amendment from Greens Senator Rachel Siewert to enshrine broad terms of reference for future investigations of this type. She was concerned the probe might only look into the technical and regulatory issues and not review the clean-up operations or the environmental impacts of the spill. The minister says he had already been considering extensive powers for the inquiry in light of a report on the explosion last year at the gas plant on Varanus Island, about 100 kilometres off the coast from the Pilbara town of Karratha.

Environment Minister Peter Garrett says he has developed a wildlife response plan to deal with the effects of the spill. A consultant’s report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) soon after the leak began on August 21 found that the remote area in the Timor Sea teems with life. Fifteen species of whales and dolphins, 30 species of seabirds and five turtle species are affected by the disaster. Fishermen have found sea snakes and turtles killed by the slick and report becoming ill after eating fish from the waters.

Thai rig operators PTTEP are said to be paying the Commonwealth for the costs of monitoring the spill. Industry estimates put the final cost of the spill as high as $100 million but the environmental cost, which cannot be expressed solely in dollars and cents, is immense. This is exactly the sort of nightmare scenario state and federal governments must have dreaded as they increase the pace of resource extraction in an attempt to prop up a fragile economy. With Australian manufacturing moving offshore or simply closing their doors and other sectors of the economy slowing in the wake of the global financial crisis, governments are banking on income from big resource customers like India and China.

Environmental concerns over the proposed Gargon gas project off WA’s northwest coast were dismissed by the federal government in August. The scheme incorporates a gas plant on Barrow Island, which lies in the heart of an area dubbed “Australia’s Galapagos”. Part of the “sell” for the project was the introduction of pioneering and unproven carbon dioxide burying technique. Critics claim the unstable sea floor will cause the greenhouse gas to escape and threaten wildlife.

Elsewhere, the federal government has jettisoned its three mine uranium policy and is now considering a rush of exploration licence applications. In July, the Environment Minister gave the go ahead for Alliance Resources to move into production using the controversial acid corrosion method to extract uranium at the Four Mile mine in the northern Flinders Ranges in South Australia. At the nearby Beverley mine there have been 59 reported spills of radioactive material in the past decade, including one involving 62,000 litres of contaminated water in 2002. There is no requirement placed on Alliance to ever clean up the radioactive plumes that will develop in ground water in the area as a result of the extraction method.

Clearly the federal government is prepared to take big risks with the environment as it turns over resources for development to corporations on the hunt for fat profits. To ensure its sovereignty Australia needs resource industries. It also needs manufacturing and agricultural industries but it cannot provide a liveable environment into the future without a more cautious approach and the strictest oversight of operations that threaten such disastrous consequences as have been witnessed off our northwest coast. Ultimately, the question of public ownership and democratic control will be forced on the people of Australia as a matter of survival.

Bricks in the Chamber Pot of Commerce

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:25:00 +0000

10-26-09, 10:02 am

Original source:

The US Chamber of Commerce blew a mere $39 million on lobbying in Washington in the past three months. Lobbying for the promotion of global warming, the denial of healthcare, the further deregulation (if possible) of the financial 'industry', blockage of the right to unionize, the lowering and elimination of minimum wage laws, maintenance of tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, and protection of the 'right' of corporations to bribe politicians. Money well spent: all minority positions, all adhered to by our government.

Several companies have dropped their membership in this chamber of horrors, and others have dropped their seats on its board. Now has done something interesting. We've obtained the personal Email addresses of all the remaining board members. When you go to our website and scroll down and sign in, an Email is sent to all of the board members asking them to resign. And the chamber doesn't like it one bit. Their staff have been visiting the website constantly. And they've sent a message to their member companies stating: 'Please note that these calls against the Chamber are part of a broad-based, multisource campaign against us being carried out by our normal adversaries -- trial lawyers, activist unions, environmental extremists, etc. It is a 'corporate campaign' in the classic sense, where interest groups are looking for public leverage to force us to do things against the best interests of the business community. Frankly, these efforts are simply the result of how effective we have been in opposing card check, as well as aspects of proposed healthcare, capital markets, and climate-change legislation that we believe would be onerous to business and impede job creation. Our efforts to fix these key pieces of legislation are not going to stop.'

Oh yeah?

Did you know that Drinking Liberally and Credo are urging the makers of Budweiser to drop off the board of the chamber pot, and you can help.

Did you know Change to Win is targeting the chamber?

Have you seen what the Center for Media and Democracy is up to?

What about the AFL-CIO?

Local chambers of commerce are opposing the US Chamber.

And you'll find a growing list of groups taking part in our campaign at .

You say you're not going away. We say we're not. One of us is wrong. And the law may just get to decide.

Public Citizen has filed complaints against the chamber for filing false tax returns.

Cliff Arnebeck successfully sued the chamber for fraud and campaign finance violations in Ohio which the elections commission and three courts found violated criminal law.

According to another complaint filed by Public Citizen, this illegal conduct appears to be a pattern across the United States.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a complaint against the chamber for violating election laws.

The chamber has used fraudulent claims to raise funds by inflating its membership numbers by 1000 percent.

Like I said, WE'RE not going away. Some of you just might be.

Hoosiers Rally for Peace in Afghanistan

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:23:00 +0000

10-26-09, 10:00 am

Original source: Diary of a Heartland Radical

Speakers Link War on Afghanistan to Justice and Environmental Issues

Seventy Hoosiers rallied against escalating war in Afghanistan on Saturday, October 17, in Indianapolis, the capital of Indiana. They came from as far away as Fort Wayne, Manchester, Bloomington, and West Lafayette to demand that President Obama choose diplomacy rather than increased military operations in that troubled land.

The “October 7 Coalition” that organized the rally as the culmination of several days of anti-war events around Indianapolis included traditional peace groups and others such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, Central Indiana Jobs With Justice, Women in Black, Code Pink, and Earth House.

The opening plea for a reconsideration of the military commitment to war in Afghanistan was made by Reverend Mmaja Ajabu, Minister of Social Concerns, Light of the World Christian Church. Reverend Ajabu recalled that when he went off to the Vietnam War forty years ago he thought he was engaging in a noble cause. He said it did not take him long to realize that he was not engaged in a cause which justified killing and dying in battle. In fact, he suggested, most soldiers have a radical change of consciousness when they are planted in the middle of a war that is not about their interests.

Dave Lambert, Fort Wayne veteran of the military and the peace movement, documented in passionate prose the utter futility of wars, from Vietnam, to Iraq, to Afghanistan. Concerning the impact of war on soldiers, he referred to National Guard Specialist Jacob W. Sexton, on leave from service in Kabul, who just days earlier had shot and killed himself in a Muncie movie theatre.

Timothy Baer, Bloomington Peace Action Coalition, identified ten historically-grounded reasons why the United States needed to withdraw from Afghanistan including cost, growing unpopularity of invading forces, and massive violence against civilians.

Dave Pilbrow, North Meadow Circle of Friends, linked issues of war and peace to devastation of the environment. Not only war, but the allocation of resources for war-the military/industrial complex-needs to be challenged if the human race and nature are to survive.

Shehzad Qazi, a student at Indiana University/Purdue University and member of an undergraduate think tank on international security issues, and Lori Perdue, Code Pink, demanded a negotiated solution to the war in Afghanistan. Qazi asserted that what we call the Taliban is a loose coalition of forces with differing perspectives on the willingness to negotiate with their enemies.

Lori Perdue said that she had initially favored an attack on Afghanistan after 9/11 and was moved to that position by the terrible treatment of women in Afghan society. She later realized that the position of women would not be improved by a U.S. war on the country. Women’s rights and peace can only come, she argued, through an all-parties conference to end the war. As the primary victims of the Afghan war, women needed to be at the negotiating table.

Peace Activists Rally and March While Jobless and Homeless Convene for Food

After the speeches, participants marched through downtown Indianapolis chanting for an end to war and money for health care and jobs, not for warfare.

Meanwhile, across the grassy mall from the American Legion monument where the rally was held, and just across the street from the large and elegant Indianapolis public library about 75 people, the same number as those rallying for peace, lined up for free food provided every other Saturday to those without work and housing. This assemblage was mostly African American, while the peace rally was mostly white. The peace rally was in front of the sculpture depicting the history of the U.S. war on Vietnam. So at the same time, a block apart there was a protest against another Vietnam and an assembly of those needing free food, as the country was spending billions of dollars to kill Afghan people while neglecting to feed its own citizens.

Harry Targ, representing the Lafayette Area Peace Coalition, had reminded the assembled protestors of the tragedy of President Lyndon Johnson 45 years ago. As president, Johnson signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, declared a war on poverty, and called on Americans to create a “Great Society.” The goal remained unfulfilled due to the cost of the brutal war on the Vietnamese people.

Tim King, rally organizer and moderator, interspersed speeches with relevant statements from Dr. Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, and former President Eisenhower who said in 1953 that; “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Postscript on the Rally and March Against the War in Afghanistan

Reflections on the rally and march stimulated both praise and self-criticism. What was praiseworthy was the numbers, group representation, sense of determination of participants, and emotional and intellectual power of speeches and chants. The rally was the culmination of networking and organizing of multiple events in a city and state with strong conservative traditions in the context of a political environment dominated by an enormous array of issues: health care, global warming, jobs, and unparalleled Wall Street corruption.

However, the peace movement in Central Indiana, and everywhere, must continue to connect the issues that impact on people’s lives. Metaphorically peace activists must strategize about crossing the mall from the Vietnam War memorial to the food distribution line. While the peace movement bridges some of the divides between people in terms of gender, and religion, for example, more work can be done to overcome barriers of class and race.

Finally, peace and justice activists need to figure out ways to overcome inertia, issue-fatigue, and the overuse of traditional tactics, to mobilize masses of people everywhere to be part of the struggles to create peace and justice. The dilemmas peace and justice activists face in the Heartland of Indiana are similar in substance to the problems all progressives face.

US Military Expelled Some Diego Garcia Residents to Make Way for Military Base

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:20:00 +0000

10-26-09, 9:57 am

In order to convert the sleepy, Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia into a dominating military base, the U.S. forcibly transported its 2,000 Chagossian inhabitants into exile and gassed their dogs.

By banning journalists from the area, the U.S. Navy was able to perpetrate this with virtually no press coverage, says David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University and author of “Island of Shame: the Secret History of the U.S. Military on Diego Garcia(Princeton University Press).”

“The Chagossians were put on a boat and taken to Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles away, where they were left on the docks, with no money and no housing, to fend for themselves,” Vine said on the interview show “Books Of Our Time,” sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

“They were promised jobs that never materialized. They had been living on an island with schools, hospitals, and full employment, sort of like a French coastal village, and they were consigned to a life of abject poverty in exile, unemployment, health problems, and were the poorest of the poor,” Vine told interview host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school.

Their pet dogs were rounded up and gassed, and their bodies burned, before the very eyes of their traumatized owners, Vine said.

“They were moved because they were few in number and not white,” Vine added. The U.S. government circulated the fiction the Chagossians were transient contract workers that had taken up residence only recently but, in fact, they had been living on Diego Garcia since about the time of the American Revolution. Merchants had imported them to work on the coconut and copra plantations. Vine said the U.S. government induced The Washington Post not to break a story spelling out events on the island.

“Through Diego Garcia,” Vine pointed out, “the U.S. can project its power throughout the Middle East, and from East Africa to India, Australia and Indonesia. With Guam, the island is the most important American base outside the U.S.” He said U.S. bases now number around 1,000, including 287 in Germany, 130 in Japan and Okinawa, and 57 in Italy.

“Bases have been essential tools of U.S. military and economic power since not long after independence,” Vine pointed out. “We had bases all the way to the Pacific. After the Civil War, the U.S. began to acquire coaling bases in the Pacific.”

Although the Chagossians were forcibly removed in 1971, they still hope to return, Vine says, and refer to their period of exile as one of “profound sorrow.” Vine says they would be happy to live on the unused eastern portion of the island and work at the base but the U.S. instead “imports contract labor from other areas so they can send them home when the job is done.” The island’s exiled survivors and their descendants today number about 5,000.

Long off limits to reporters, the Red Cross, and all other international observers and far more secretive than Guantánamo Bay, many long suspected the island was a clandestine CIA 'black site' for high-profile detainees, Vine wrote in a related article. Journalist Stephen Grey's 2006 book “Ghost Plane” documented the presence on the island of a CIA-chartered plane used for rendition flights. On two occasions former U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey publicly named Diego Garcia as a detention facility. And a Council of Europe report named the atoll, along with those in Poland and Romania, as a secret prison.

The island became “a major launch pad” for the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, Vine said. In addition to its capacious harbor, the island readily supports some of the largest U.S. warplanes, including Air Force B-52s, B-1Bs and B-2s. Two years ago, the Pentagon awarded a $32 million contract to add a submarine base to the island’s arsenal.

Diego Garcia had been a British possession until 1966, when London allowed the U.S. to use it as a military base in exchange for cancelling a $14-million British debt for a military hardware purchase. Some idea of the size of the base may be conveyed by the fact it is said by the Pentagon to contain 654 buildings.

In a related article about Diego Garcia, Vine has written: “With support for the Chagossians' struggle growing in both the United States and Britain at the same time that revelations about a secret CIA prison are spreading, the United States must finally act to remedy the damage done by another Guantánamo damaging too many lives and undermining its international legitimacy. The United States must allow the Chagossians to return and assist Britain in paying them proper compensation; the United States must close the detention facilities and open Diego Garcia to international investigators; the United States must end the painful irony that is a base the military calls the ‘Footprint of Freedom.’'

--Sherwood Ross is a media consultant to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com.

Iraqi Communists Condemn Bombings in Baghdad

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:14:00 +0000

10-26-09, 9:51 am

The Iraqi Communist party has strongly condemned the twin bombings atrocity in central Baghdad on Sunday 25 October 2009 that killed at least 132 people and wounded more than 500 people.

A statement issued by the Political Bureau of the party said 'the forces of terrorism and crime have once again unleashed their brutal hatred against Iraq and Iraqis, committing a new heinous crime that has claimed dozens of innocent lives, and shedding the blood of hundreds more civilians.'

The statement pointed that, in a manner similar to the atrocity of 'Bloody Wednesday' on 19 August 2009, 'the wounds of which have not yet healed', the criminal forces 'have today carried out their aggression in the same treacherous way, and in the same cold-blooded manner that distinguishes professional killers and criminals.'

'In addition to inflicting harm upon the Iraqi people, the aim is once again to sabotage the ongoing political process in our country, and to create the conditions for its reversal and to return Iraq to the rule of dictatorship and tyranny.

'It is no coincidence that this new crime of genocide, that has been designed and implemented to spread death and destruction on the widest possible scale, has targeted the headquarters of two ministries and the offices of Baghdad's provincial council. It is also no coincidence that the people, who are the victims of the barbaric series of crimes by terrorist gangs, are holding the remnants of Saddam's Baath party, al-Qaeda, militias and organized crime responsible.'

'While strongly condemning the new heinous crime against our people and homeland, we call on the national political forces to overcome their differences and live up to the challenges, and to accelerate the resolution of outstanding political issues, notably the issue of the election law.'

The Iraqi Communist Party called upon the relevant authorities 'to pursue the killers and bring them to justice so that they receive the punishment they deserve, and to take measures in order to put an end to such security breaches and protect the lives of citizens and state institutions.'

The Political Bureau's statement concluded its statement by expressing sincere sympathy to the families of the victims, and its wishes to the wounded and injured for a speedy recovery.

Chomsky Receives Highest Pentagon Honor

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:09:00 +0000

10-26-09, 9:46 am

The Pentagon has paid anti-war activist Noam Chomsky the highest honor any totalitarian entity can bestow upon an author: they’ve banned his book “Interventions” at Guantanamo Bay prison. They won’t say precisely why they “honored” Chomsky, but Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Brook DeWalt told the Miami Herald that “Interventions”(City Lights Books) might negatively “impact on (Gitmo’s) good order and discipline.” The Pentagon, of course, insists on “good order and discipline” running its prison camp. Chomsky likes order, too. What he objects to is the Pentagon spreading disorder globally. Instead of thanking the Pentagon for his “honor,” Chomsky, is said to be angry. The Herald quotes him as saying, “This happens sometimes in totalitarian regimes.” Indeed! Nazi newsreels show Hitler’s brown shirts igniting huge bonfires in German streets into which they pitched banned books. Hitler banned over 4,000 books ranging from anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque to Jack London’s “The Call of The Wild.” And just as Communist Russia wouldn’t let its citizens read “The First Circle” and “Cancer Ward” by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, comrades in the Pentagon refused to allow Gitmo prisoner Hamza al Bahlul to read Chomsky’s “Interventions,” sent him by a defense lawyer. The Pentagon’s ban mimics Iran’s campaign to kill British novelist Salman Rushdie for his 1988 epic “The Satanic Verses.” Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeni indicted Rushdie as “blasphemous against Islam.” The Pentagon, according to The Herald, won’t authorize a book that is “anti-American, anti-Semitic, (or) anti-Western.” Note the similarities of the Pentagon’s objections and the Ayatollah’s. Kissin’ cousins, maybe? Some might suspect its Pentagon censorship that’s “anti-American.” Censorship of Chomsky is not unique. The Pentagon has long pressured Hollywood to show the military in a favorable light. It also bans photographers from war zones if they snap pictures of slain U.S. troops. “I took pictures of something they didn’t like, and they removed me (from Iraq),” complained photographer Zoriah Miller who, like Chomsky, may also be said to be angry. “Deciding what I can and cannot document, I don’t see a clearer definition of censorship,” he said. Back to Chomsky: What has he written the Pentagon doesn’t want Gitmo prisoners to read? Perhaps it’s where he quotes President Bush’s remark “the United States---alone---has the right to carry out ‘preventive war’…using military force to eliminate a perceived threat…” Chomsky adds this is the “supreme crime” condemned at Nuremberg. If the Pentagon is upset over “Interventions” they’ll be really ticked at Chomsky’s “Imperial Ambitions(Metropolitan Books).” In that book, he writes about how the Pentagon’s troops burst into Falluja General Hospital, (November, 2004) on asinine grounds it was “a center of propaganda against allied forces,” and kicked the patients out of their beds and handcuffed them and their doctors to the floor, which Chomsky rightly branded “a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.” The Pentagon might also oppose Chomsky for accusing them of genocide: “If civilians managed to flee Falluja, they were allowed out---except for men. Men of roughly military age were turned back. That’s what happened in Srebrenica in 1995. The only difference is the United States bombed the Iraqis out of the city, they didn’t truck them out. Women and children were allowed to leave; men were stopped, if they were found, and sent back. They were supposed to be killed. That’s universally called genocide, when the Serbs do it. When we do it, it’s liberation.” Banning Chomsky will only call attention to his incisive depictions of Pentagon war crimes. While the Pentagon may worry Chomsky’s work might get Muslim prisoners angry, maybe it should be concerned that Chomsky’s comments such as the following on the Military-Industrial Complex might yet arouse bamboozled and disgusted U.S. taxpayers: “Empires are costly. Running Iraq is not cheap. Somebody’s paying. Somebody’s paying the corporations that destroyed Iraq and the corporations that are rebuilding it. In both cases, they’re getting paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Those are gifts from U.S. taxpayers to U.S. corporations…..first you destroy Iraq, then you rebuild it. It’s a transfer of wealth from the general population to narrow sectors of the population.” Like the Pentagon, which will reap $664 billion next year. Time to replace the Pentagon with the Peace Corps. It accomplishes far more with far less. --Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based writer. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com.

The Next Nasty Attack from the Right

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:06:00 +0000

10-26-09, 9:43 am

Original source: Black Commentator

'So, have you enjoyed the debate over health care reform?' Paul Krugman asked in late September. 'Have you been impressed by the civility of the discussion and the intellectual honesty of reform opponents? 'If so, you'll love the next big debate: the fight over climate change,' the New York Times columnist wrote.

Sarcasm aside, the discussion – if one can call it that – of global warming is going to be painful, particularly if the make-Obama-fail crowd has its way, and if the major media does its usually sloppy job of defining the issue. Nonsense like 'death panels' come to mind.

The whole world is anticipating the UN-sponsored climate talks in December in Copenhagen where another attempt – post-Koyoto – will be made to reach an international agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions by sharply reducing carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Washington observers say the original plan was for President Obama to go to the Danish capital with a pledge from the US to do its part, backed up by new 'cap and trade' regulations enacted by the US Congress. Now there is speculation he my not go to Copenhagen at all. And the probability is that if he goes, it will be with empty hands.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spelled out the problem in clear, unmistakably, and probably undiplomatic, clarity. The European Union can get together in advance and proceed to the Copenhagen talks with a unified position, she said, the US cannot. What US negotiators can present is subject to US politics. Therein lies the rub. The European Union Environment Council met this week in Luxemburg for further work on its common front. Meanwhile, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday Brazil wants to arrive at a common position among all Amazon basin countries for Copenhagen and is considering inviting presidents of all Amazon states to discuss the issue November. 26. 'The issue of climate change is seen in Berlin as one of the most important facing the world this year as the effort continues to come up with an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012,' says the German magazine Der Spiegel. 'Germany, together with the European Union, has set a target of a 20 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 relative to 1990 levels. The EU has said it would up that target to 30 percent if other major polluters join them. A panel of United Nations scientists has said that a 25 percent to 40 percent reduction by industrial countries is necessary to avoid catastrophic consequences stemming from global warming.'

Legislation is currently before Congress for a 17 percent reduction in this country's CO2 emissions by 2020 relative to 2005 levels, with an 83 percent reduction by 2050. German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel 'has been quick to criticize the proposal,' telling Spiegal the US needs to do more and that when it come to dealing with the climate claim threat, 'the US and Europe live in two different worlds.'

The US House of representative has already passed a cap-and-trade climate bill, the Waxman-Markey act – which the Europeans say is not strong enough – but which if it were enacted would lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. As with the healthcare debate the biggest problem is the Senate and there, the political right and the Republicans are geared up for a knock-down-drag-out fight.

In a very real sense, the fate of the world's deliberations on climate change and probability of failure at Copenhagen is being held hostage by the volatile politics of the US. The political rights is geared up to take the President down on this issue and any others they identify.

The naked attempt to undermine the Obama Presidency is becoming more shrill each day. Last week, the cat dragged in none other than Alan Keyes, a 2008 presidential candidate who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Obama's citizenship. 'Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it's true,' Keyes told a radio interviewer. 'He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.'

And the shock troops are ready. In come the 'tea bag' people. A few days ago, the internet web publication sent out an appeal to its readers to 'join the conservative revolution. 'Just before the 2008 elections, the conservative economist and commentator Thomas Sowell warned that a Barack Obama presidency would prove a 'point of no return' for America.' said the appeal. 'Why? Because once in power, Dr. Sowell explained, President Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress would effect such radical changes in our nation's economy, legal structure and social fabric that there would be no rolling them back. Today, we stand on the brink of Dr. Sowell's predictions coming true.'

The appeal went on cataloging things on the brink of happening, like healthcare reform, a 'wise Latina' on the Supreme Court, and progressive income taxes. Among them is the charge that we are on the brink of 'enacting `cap- and-trade' legislation that will cripple American competitiveness in the global economy, double home utility bills, add thousands to the cost of new cars, and cost U.S. workers an estimated 2.5 million jobs per year - while doing next to nothing to impact a `global warming' problem that is largely fictitious to begin with.'

The 'conservative revolution' says, 'here in the conservative underground you're free to speak your mind' even if (among other things) '... you don't believe that Barack Obama is the Second Coming of J.C. (unless that J.C. is Jimmy Carter) and '... you don't believe that man-made 'global warming' is a proven fact - much less an excuse for destroying the U.S. economy - just because Al Gore says so, especially when hundreds of respected scientists publicly disagree with him.'

'Barack Hussein Obama is actively pursuing cap-and-trade legislation,' says the CR. 'Ironically, instead of taxing the very air we breathe, it would instead, in a manner of speaking, tax the air we exhale and give the government unprecedented control over the economy and American businesses.'

Admittedly, Human Events and the people activating the 'conservative revolution' are the far right. However, as has been demonstrated clearly in the campaign against healthcare reform, the efforts fit right in with the political objectives of the broader political right and the current Republican Party leadership

Consider the views of Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), the ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, who says he plans to be in Copenhagen in December as a ' one-man truth squad.' He recently told an interviewer 'God's still up there. We're going through these cycles. ... I really believe that a lot of people are in denial who want to hang their hat on the fact, that they believe is a fact, that man-made gases, anthropogenic gases, are causing global warming. The science really isn't there.'

Inhofe recent reiterated what he told the Senate back in 2003, that 'much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science,' global warming the 'greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people' and that 'environmental extremists exploit the issue for fundraising purposes, raking in millions of dollars, even using federal taxpayer dollars to finance their campaigns.'

The Right has added new elements to its propaganda this time around. In addition to claiming the Obama administration is out to wreck the economy they are attempting to convince black people that action on climate change is not in their interest (witness black 'conservatives' Thomas Sowell and Alan Keyes). As if African Americans and other peoples of color should somehow have less concern than other people for the future of life on the planet. Or, as if many people recognize that those communities most immediately and directly threatened by rising sea levels are in the delta areas of Africa and Asia.

Actually, all working people have ample reason to support early and effective action on climate change. US Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently joined in the call for meaningful action by Congress.

'Comprehensive energy legislation will unleash the American innovation machine to create new industries and clean source of energy to power our economy,' he said. 'It is the single most important step we can take to secure our economic prosperity and leave a healthier planet for future generations.' A national commitment to resolutely confront the climate change challenge will facilitate the development and deployment of new technologies, creating a cleaning environment, refurbishing the nation's physical infrastructure and helping to alleviate the unemployment crisis. We all have a stake in this.   --BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member Carl Bloice is a writer in San Francisco, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism and formerly worked for a healthcare union.

The Rotten Fruits of War

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:20:00 +0000

10-23-09, 12:57 pm

Original source:

Five months ago, shortly after the Pakistani government had begun a military offensive against suspected Taliban fighters in the northernmost area of the country, we arrived in Islamabad, the capital, as part of a small delegation organized by Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org). Our initial travel plans had focused on learning more about civilian suffering caused by U.S. drone attacks. But, over the course of our three-week visit, close to 3 million people had become uprooted by violence in the Swat Valley and neighboring districts. Visiting tent encampments and abandoned buildings to which people had fled, we spoke with people who identified themselves as poor people, with meager resources, who were anxious to return to their homes as soon as possible. They were also alarmed because they feared that their crops, animals, shops and stores were already destroyed.

Now that the military offensive in Swat has wound down, Pakistan’s government officials have labeled the operation a success. They claim to have cleared the area of Taliban fighters and have commenced a new military offensive in South Waziristan.

A closer look reveals a very different story.

Many families from Swat and surrounding districts returned to find that their homes, crops and other means of survival have been damaged or destroyed. Such circumstances force many to rely heavily on food aid. According to Amjad Jamal, a spokesperson for the World Food Program (WFP), “around 2.4 million displaced people received aid from the WFP food hubs last month.”

The WFP announced today that they are temporarily closing 20 food hubs in the North West Frontier Province citing concerns of worsening security.

Reporting from a Pakistani field hospital run by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the BBC met with scores of victims wounded by land mine explosions. The father of a 14 year old boy whose hands were blown off while he was playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance expressed anger over the government’s failure to remove the land mines before telling people it was safe to return. The father worked as a jeweler before the military offensive began, but after he and his family fled the fighting, his shop was looted; now he has no income, and his home was damaged in the shelling.

The BBC also reported that more than 200 corpses, believed to be bodies of suspected Taliban, have been found across the valley in recent weeks. Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission has called for an investigation into reports of numerous extra-judicial killings and reprisals carried out by security forces.

Dr. Aasim Sajjad, a professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, believes that the Taliban’s numbers will grow as a result of Pakistan’s military offensives. “The hundreds of thousands languishing in refugee camps talk of the mortar shells that have destroyed their homes and killed their relatives,” says Dr. Sajjad. “They seethe with anger and warn the government that most Taliban fighters hail from the local population. The longer the war continues – and it has only just begun in this region – the better the chances that the Taliban will be able to recruit from the refugees.” (Monthly Review “War, Islamists and the Left,” July 7, 2009)

Yesterday’s deadly suicide bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad was the latest in a series of the Taliban’s recent reprisal attacks against the Pakistani government that have claimed the lives of over 150 people.

Military offensives that promise to smash or eradicate “the bad guys” may accomplish short-term “successes” by locking up or killing armed resisters and promising that the military will provide peace and security. But military establishments aren’t set up to address the long-term, desperate grievances that afflict impoverished people and give rise to support for militant groups of resisters.

According to conservative estimates, 75% of Pakistan's population of 170 million lives on less than $2 a day. The majority of Pakistanis yearn for food security, clean water, a livelihood that can sustain their families and education that will help their children break out of impoverishment. Young men who are jobless, shut out of education are resentful of social structures that favor wealthy landowners and other elites and they are drawn to Taliban groups that promise a Robin Hood sort of redistribution. These Taliban groups have been dealt a temporary setback by the military offensive, but the fundamental problems of hunger, lack of clean water, illiteracy and joblessness haven’t been tackled.

Meanwhile, U.S. drone attacks continue, in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Using “eyes in the skies” by piloting Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, (UAVs or drones), the U.S. analysts can see and attack suspected Taliban or Al Qaida fighters, along with anyone else who might happen to be in the vicinity. But the UAVs won’t help us understand the acute need for humanitarian relief, diplomacy, negotiation and dialogue in a region already overwhelmed by attacks, counter-attacks, bloodshed and death.

Whether it is in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or even in the U.S., as we've seen in recent years, war takes its heaviest toll on the poorest. It is a profound mistake to believe that military force is a solid foundation for peace.

--Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) and Dan Pearson (dan@vcnv.org) are co-coordinators of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. With colleagues in Chicago, they are organizing the Peaceable Assembly Campaign to nonviolently resist U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as military support for the Israeli military.

Book Review: A Choice of Enemies

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 06:13:00 +0000

10-23-09, 12:50 pm

A Choice of Enemies - America Confronts the Middle East. by Lawrence Freedman. Anchor Canada (Random House). 2009.

The subtitle to this text carries an interesting choice of active verb, “confronts”. It signifies “coming face to face in hostility or defiance.” That alone brings to question the U.S. perspective, generally expressed in most U.S. media that U.S. intentions are generally positive or at best benign (“kind or gracious to inferiors”) and are done to assist the others involved within U.S. actions.

Preface

The preface and last chapter of Lawrence Freedman’s A Choice of Enemies expresses this same double standard of how the U.S. explains itself in association with whatever action it takes on a given issue. Freedman’s “amero-centric” viewpoint (with apologies to all the other citizens of the Americas not living in the U.S.) is clearly expressed in the preface and last chapter of the book. He writes that the wars, the confrontations are “not the result of avarice…nor for a want of beneficence,” but “with genuine conviction, commitments were made to work to improve the lives of ordinary people in the region.”

The U.S. is “not the first external power to struggle in this part of the world,” a part of the world that “contains multiple sources of tension.” The obvious disconnect here is that some of the major “sources of tension” happen to be all the imperial forces that have invaded and occupied the lands over that past couple of centuries. Yes, “the Middle East has lacked the economic and political integration that has worked to encourage more cooperative relationships in other parts of the world,” but again, that task becomes difficult with external empires fighting for control over the area, for resources, for guarding routes of transport, and for providing spheres of influence to control other empire’s interests.

For all its problems, it is not possible for the U.S. to ignore the area because “they get drawn back in” with oil listed as the first reason, its anti-western militancy as the second reason, and trade routes coming third (with much of that trade related to oil transportation). Once again, this only highlights a great disconnect between stated intentions and the geo-strategic reasons for being involved in the area. Freedman reflects on his subtitle and says that the U.S. engagement in the Middle East has “appeared rather confrontational” but that the “aspiration is for complete harmony.” It can readily be argued that the confrontation is way beyond “appearances” and that the “aspiration” for harmony can only be interpreted as harmony within total dominance by the U.S. empire, an empire based on military control and resource extraction. The will of the people has never been of prime concern for U.S. political structures (inclusive of the government, corporations, and the military).

In the preface, and along the historical route traced by Freedman occur smaller “amero-centrisms”. The 1991 Iraq war is seen as “necessary” although arguments for it have never been strong in my interpretations. He argues about the “supposed backing given to Osama bin Laden by the CIA” implying that this did not happen, but within context, the assistance provided by the CIA and the U.S. government for the mujahideen in general did indirectly support bin Laden as well as other insurgent “freedom fighters” as expressed by Reagan at the time. He argues speciously about the military aid to Israel being “dwarfed by the size of the Arab market,” without the context of the recirculation of petro-dollars to U.S. firms and limitations on degree of arms quality and support to the other markets.

The preface ends with the admission that “there have been some staggering misjudgments[sic]. At times policies have been decided without due care and attention, sometimes in panic and sometimes with a cavalier optimism.” The implication here is the old standby “Our intentions were good but, wow, did we ever screw up.” Unfortunately that is fully unrealistic, as the intentions of the U.S. empire have consistently been for the protection of resources and the deflection of other imperial interests away from those resources. Democracy, freedom, “aspirations” and “harmony” are only there to make the actions acceptable to the gullible public at home. The Middle East does not buy into it.

Last Chapter

The last short chapter reiterates the same message. Again ignoring the influence of outside empires in the region Freedman argues that the “continuity of the problems facing the Middle East…are too rooted in the institutional structures, power balances, and cultures of the region.” No direct mention is given to the various empires that have attacked the region, and tried to overlay it with their own structures of control and their own political boundaries to create their own spheres of influence. The same idea is expressed for the future as “the cards will be shuffled and new configurations of power will emerge, probably more as a result of internal upheavals than of external aggression.” I suppose that the new surge in Afghanistan, the attacks and manipulations in Pakistan, the continued occupation of Iraq, the threats and subversion being applied to Iran, the acquiescence to the settlement projects in the West Bank of Palestine are all “internal upheavals.” There is a distinct lack of logical connections to Freedman’s statements.

While accepting the “unpredictability” of the Middle East, Freedman also indicates there is an “unpredictability” from the U.S. based on its short cycle of presidential elections. That simply serves as an excuse for the rather predictable and confrontational manner in which the U.S. has acted in all its spheres of influence throughout its history, from the genocide of the native population through its continental conquests then its quests overseas. The unpredictability that does arrive comes from ignorance, arrogance, and opportunism, more recently expressed in the new “contingency” force design for the military (contingency - uncertainty of occurrence).

The difficulties the U.S. is having in the Middle East are discussed as appearances. For the U.S. as “an outside power…Its motives will always be suspect.” The U.S. has “spoken at times as if they have a civilizing mission.” The latter, in a strange spurious twist of argument, is blamed on the Middle East itself (sort of like the Israelis blaming the Palestinians for the occupation and its violence) as “there is something about the region that lead outsiders to act in ways that reflect the region’s own mores and practices.”

I’m amazed that such an ignorant statement, such an illogical statement could be made.

No, quite the opposite, although the people in the region are not saints, they act the way they do significantly because of the outside influences, the importation of influences of supporting ruthless regimes, dictators and autocrats, influences of military violence and torture which have been the main vehicle of foreign interventions in the region.

And again, smaller items appear that are interpreted strictly by the “amero-centric” viewpoint. An argument that perhaps Mossadegh should not have been “dealt” with, but that may have not been a “real historic choice, for the nationalists were hardly masters of good governance.” Ahh, yes, those nasty popular and democratically elected socialists who wanted to control their own resources, nasty bunch not allowing us - well the British at the time, same difference - to have our oil resources.

Other sentences just don’t make sense: “The rhetoric of good and evil, the polarizing demands of “with us or against us,” the insistence on one strategic imperative above all others are undermined by the complexity of regional conflict and the interplay of forces.” Does that mean that the rhetoric is undermined, that the rhetoric would be okay if the region were not complex?

Freedman’s final statement is a wonderful piece of more double talk. The U.S. must “revive their diplomatic skills…work with the local political grain without losing a sense of purpose and principle…encouraging a positive engagement with the rest of the world.” Yes, the U.S. must revive their currently confrontational diplomatic skills, but also must revive some fundamental principles of human rights, and most certainly, the U.S. should change to a positive engagement with the rest of the world - yet somehow I do not think this is the intended interpretation of the statement. His final word, “If the region is to advance…” the U.S. will have to “make the right choices” but so will the “people of the Middle East.” They already have, they want the U.S. to go home. Will the U.S. make the right choice?

The rest of the book - works

Well, the rest of the book, surprisingly, works. It is not the best work on the Middle East and is based on research mainly from other book sources, a compilation of historical information rather than first hand research. But Freedman does provide a reasonably good political overview of events concerning the Middle East with most references coming from western sources.

In an area that has huge geostrategic interest, Palestine and Israel, A Choice of Enemies works well. From my research over the last several years, the chapters on Palestine - “Camp David”, “The Intifada”, and “Return to Camp David” - are well balanced and accurate. While there are many other references that could have been utilized, the chapters on Palestine give a generally accurate picture of Palestine/U.S./Israeli relationships, in particular around the time of the first intifada.

There are some problems along the way in similar veins as the Iraq war and Mossadegh statements made above, but the overall information, the general presentation of the flow of events reads quite well from all the sources that I have read - many of which are listed in Freedman’s bibliography.

There are no new ideas here, but for a lay person wanting a general overview of trends in the Middle East this is a reasonable source of information on how the various U.S. administrations worked their way through the complexities of the Middle East. The reader needs to read the book aware of the “amero-centric” view expressed at the beginning and the end, but they could also do well to simply ignore those passages and get on with reading the rest.

--Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles' work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Women in the Workplace – the 'New Normal'

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:54:00 +0000

10-23-09, 12:31 pm

A new study declares the 'war of the sexes' is over. According to the findings of a newly released joint report from California First Lady Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, Americans are increasingly welcoming women into the workforce and as breadwinners and co-partners in their families.

These findings are based on a poll conducted by Time magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation. The survey was taken after federal jobs data revealed that women make up 50 percent of the workforce, up from just about one-third in the 1970s.

Almost 40 percent of women identified themselves as the 'breadwinner' in their family, and another 24 percent stated they provide an equal financial contribution to their families household budget as their partner.

In 1975, only 11.7 percent of women said they were the sole breadwinner, and only an additional 16 percent said they earned an equal amount as their partner.

Most attitudes about this new situation have also improved tremendously, the survey found. More than three in four Americans view this shift in the workforce as positive. About three-quarters of men and more than eight in ten women told survey takers that they believe women workers with children are just as committed to their jobs as women workers without children.

Some attitudes, however, seem mired in the past. The survey found that 65 percent of adults say that the fact that only 30 percent of children grow up with a stay-at-home parent is a negative thing. Fifty-seven percent of men and just over half of women agree that it is better for the family if the father works outside the home and the mother takes care of the children. Almost seven in ten women think men resent women who have more power than they do, while less than half of men said this is the case.

In an essay accompanying the report, First Lady Shriver argued that these changes are 'transformational,' similar to how the civil rights movement, industrialization, and the advent of the Internet Age have profoundly impacted American society and culture. 'With working women now the New Normal, striving and succeeding in areas where they never have before, so many assumptions and underpinnings of our society are cracking open,' she wrote.

But added work and new cultural and social changes have also added stress to women's lives, Shriver added. Government, business and male partners have to do more to ease the extra burdens of working in and out of the home. The social safety net, workplace policies and shared contributions in the home environment by men could be improved.

But the news isn't all grim, the report found. According to a chapter in the report by noted sociologist Stephanie Coontz, 'the most stable, high-quality marriages' are those where men and women make equal contributions of labor and finances to the household.

'The marriages that do last today,' writes Coontz, 'are fairer, more intimate, and more respectful than couples from previous eras would have ever dared to dream. If only we could say the same about the work policies and social support systems that families need.'

In a teleconference with reporters to accompany the release of the report this week, Shriver explained demographic issues related to the findings of the survey and report. In the interviews and group sessions with men and women from all over the country, which she participated in for this report, Shriver noted that the people most likely to view positively women's work outside the home or equally shared domestic responsibilities were younger people from working-class families and often from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

'You do see a difference by age, by race and it depends on whether the guy or girl was raised by a working mother,' Shriver said. 'All of that does come into context.

Center for American Progress researcher John Halpin added that attitudes also depended a great deal on political outlook. Respondents to the survey who identified as liberal tended to be more positive than conservatives about changing gender roles in the workplace and in the homes.

Smoke Not the Only Problem with Cigarettes

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 05:46:00 +0000

10-23-09, 12:23 pm

EarthTalk® From the Editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

Dear EarthTalk: Has anyone ever studied the environmental impact of discarded cigarettes? I’m constantly appalled at the number of drivers I see pitching their butts out their car windows. -- Ned Jordan, via email

It’s true that littered cigarette butts are a public nuisance, and not just for aesthetic reasons. The filters on cigarettes – four fifths of all cigarettes have them – are made of cellulose acetate, a form of plastic that is very slow to degrade in the environment. A typical cigarette butt can take anywhere from 18 months to 10 years to decompose, depending on environmental conditions.

But beyond the plastic, these filters – which are on cigarettes in the first place to absorb contaminants to prevent them from going into the lungs—contain trace amounts of toxins like cadmium, arsenic and lead. Thus when smokers discard their butts improperly – out the car window or off the end of a pier or onto the sidewalk below – they are essentially tossing these substances willy-nilly into the environment.

Studies done by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and even the tobacco industry itself show that these contaminants can get into soils and waterways, harm or kill living organisms and generally degrade surrounding ecosystems.

While individual discarded cigarette butts may be small, they add up to a huge problem. Some 5.5 trillion cigarettes are consumed worldwide each year. The non-profit Keep America Beautiful reports that cigarette butts constitute as much as one-third of all litter nationwide when measured by the number of discarded items, not volume. According to the Ocean Conservancy, a non-profit that advocates for stronger protection of marine ecosystems, cigarette butts are the most commonly littered item found on America’s salt and fresh water beaches according to feedback received by hundreds of thousands of volunteers taking part in the group’s annual Coastal Clean-up event.

While the tobacco industry may have its hands full just trying to stay afloat in the maelstrom of ongoing bad publicity, critics say it should be doing more to prevent cigarette butt litter. “Just as beverage manufacturers contribute to anti-litter campaigns, and have invested in public education on litter issues, so too should the tobacco industry,” says Kathleen Register, founder and executive director of Clean Virginia Waterways, a non-profit that has spearheaded the fight against cigarette butt litter in the mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. She adds that cigarette manufacturers “need to take an active and responsible role in educating smokers about this issue and devote resources to the cleanup of cigarette litter.”

Register suggests a number of strategies including putting anti-litter messages on all cigarette packaging and advertisements, distributing small, free portable ashtrays, and placing and maintaining outdoor ashtrays in areas where smokers congregate. She also suggests putting an extra tax on cigarette sales, with proceeds going toward anti-litter education efforts and to defray the costs of cleaning up butts. “Picking up littered cigarette butts costs schools, businesses and park agencies money,” she says. “By taxing smokers for anti-litter educational efforts, some of the costs of cleaning up cigarette butts will shift onto smokers.” One way or another, Register hopes, smokers will learn that the Earth is not one giant ashtray.

CONTACTS: CDC, www.cdc.gov; Clean Virginia Waterways, www.longwood.edu/cleanva.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk® is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

War, Negation and Muslim Identity Revisited

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:58:00 +0000

10-22-09, 9:35 am

A Muslim writer begins an article with, 'who says the campaign for animal rights was started in the West ...' She goes on to argue that Islam provided the original treatise on the humane treatment of animals. Her case was poorly constructed, inadequately executed, although the essence of her idea was to a degree, accurate. Islamic tradition has indeed laid a foundation, with clear boundaries regarding the humane treatment of animals. But why did the author, like so many others, choose to turn what should have been a constructive argument, into a diatribe? Was it necessary to charge Western discourses, resorting to the ever predictable classification of “us and them”, instead of trying to find a common cause? The same point can be made regarding other discussions, whether pertaining to human rights (women’s rights in particular), the environment, labor rights, and many others. In her defense, Amirah Sulaiman was simply following an existing pattern, commonly used to delineate one’s cultural or religious progression, at the expense of another. But it’s more than that, it’s also a defense mechanism, a haunting reminder that the alleged civilizational clash, although more imagined and politicized, than real, pervades many aspects of our perception of ourselves and of others. Among Muslim intellectuals, as in societies, this paradigm is omnipresent. Cultural animosity, collective defensiveness, racism (and Orientalism), among other overriding cultural trends existed long before disdained US foreign policy in the Middle East became the defining norm, before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. But these events emboldened existing arguments on both sides, with Muslims solidifying as a collective victim, and the US, from a Muslim point of view, seen as a vulgar, but true representation of the West. Of course, Muslims and Islam had their own ominous representations in the US, thus ‘Western’ media, culture and psyche – the dagger wielding bearded man, who abuses women, whenever he takes time away from blowing up infidels. As comical as I intended this to sound, as disturbingly true such a depiction is in the minds of many. It would be utterly unfair and largely inaccurate to equate the ‘Western’ misrepresentation of Islam and Muslims, with the latter’s misrepresentation of the West. The former approaches its caricatured depiction from a chest thumping, Fox News mentality of militarily powerful and economically stable countries. Its view of the other is largely hegemonic and its standard solution to bringing wars to an end is with military surges and the increasing of military assistance (with Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan being the current cases in point.) Collective Muslim identity however is largely fragmented, between governments that only represent themselves, and peoples facing many forms of oppression: political tyranny at home, external repression (war, foreign interventions, etc), economic uncertainty (fueled by inequality and compounded by unfiltered globalization), and extremism. The so-called war on terror, for obvious reasons, cemented that fragmentation. On one hand, it reinforced many Muslims’ growing sense of victimization; a notion that itself resulted in both submissiveness and extremism. On the other it inspired a re-think, positive at times, self-negating at others: it kindled a affirmative sense of identity and pride among a generation desperate to identify itself according to its own priorities and on its own turf, while, on the other hand, it led to a (minor) movement of intellectual migration, which sought in the ‘West’ an escape from the oppressive reality, of which, of course the ‘West’ is equally responsible. But it was not war alone (and in itself) that shaped Muslim perceptions of the ‘West’; it was rather the US’ and (to lesser extent Britain’s) insistence that their war championed an essentially Western discourse on democracy and human rights. Such arguments took place in an already hostile atmosphere: incessant media and academic mutterings about Islam’s shortcomings, and a growing right wing, racist tendencies in various Western countries targeting immigrants and minorities, many of whom are Muslims. When such political, military and intellectual encroachment is backed by such statements as that made by US Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Lieutenant General William G. Boykin (now retired), then the plot thickens, and the collective polarization of both societies grows. Boykin, author of “Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom,” became famous for his infamous quote, several years ago, in reference to a Muslim militant in Mogadishu: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.” This was a lone quotation, of course, in a sea of bigoted references that defined many officials and media pundits during the Bush Administration. Such voices are now, somewhat mute, although, its hard to believe that the advent of President Barack Obama has altered a culture in its entirety. It takes generations for genuine trust to take hold, and the countdown cannot possibly start as long as one US solider is stationed in a Muslim country for the purpose of conducting war and occupation. Yet again, there is more to all of this. Reversing intellectual dogmas and collective realizations is too convoluted a process; it requires time, action and good will. In the meantime, Muslims, who insist on living in the shadow of the ‘West’ as unreserved aficionados or obsessed detractors must redefine their own discourses. As for the latter, they must not allow war alone, MTV consumer media culture, hegemonic globalization and racist remarks by a politician or a born again evangelical to taint their entire view of what are essentially unique, diverse and in many ways impressive civilizations that have done much good. Indeed, there is the like of Boykin, but there are millions of others who are peace-loving, ordinary people, some of whom are ardent advocates of human rights, anti-war campaigners, including the thousands who have repeatedly broken the siege on Gaza, and previous to that Iraq. Muslims too must quit caricaturing them, reducing them to enemies, juxtaposing Muslims’ essential righteousness with ‘Western’ essential depravity. Not only are such reductions inaccurate and self-defeating, they also break down possible alliances between the forces of good in this world, in a time when they are of essence. --Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, 'The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle' (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), now available for pre-orders on Amazon.com.