People Before Profit blog

Working Class Strategy in the Era of Capitalist Globalization

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 02:12:00 +0000

9-29-06, 9:26 am

This discussion document is the product of a four day 'Think Tank' organized by the Economics and Labor Commissions of the Communist Party USA, in Chicago, in early February 2006. Several papers were presented and debated each day on a range of issues connected with capitalist globalization and the response of the working class and organized labor. There is no way that a single pamphlet could completely summarize those four days of intense discussion. But we hope that this document will provoke discussion and debates on what we think are some of the most burning challenges of our times for labor and for the working class. A qualitatively new form of transnational capital has clearly emerged. Its features include enormous new concentrations of finance capital, new forms of transnational monopoly, huge changes in the technology of mass production and manufacturing, a new global division of labor, and increasing poverty and decline for workers of the world in a global race to the bottom. Some individuals now own wealth greater than that of smaller countries. World capitalism continues to develop, reaching new levels of concentration and more advanced forms of global economic integration. Some see it as a new phase of what Lenin described as 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.' Others think of it as an even more qualitative change and see it as a whole new stage of monopoly capitalism. Regardless of your view, it is clear that capitalism has not reached its final stage and stopped developing. Changing Strategy for Changing Times Near the turn of the last century Lenin spoke of 'fortresses of the working class' referring to the large industrial factories that were the flagships of the unfolding industrial revolution. He saw the strategic and social importance of these fortresses to the working class struggle. These large concentrations of workers resulted in new levels of cohesion and socialization and gave workers a new kind of economic leverage. In the same time frame and later, Eugene Debs, William Z. Foster and many others were developing concepts of industrial unionism. They were also responding to the impact of the industrial revolution, but in the context of the labor movement in the US. Soon after the Communist Party USA, and other communist and workers parties in other industrialized countries began to focus their efforts on establishing their influence and their memberships in these 'fortresses.' Here in the US the Communist party called its policy 'industrial concentration.' This was not a simple linear development but a complex many sided process of the working class responding and adapting to the new realities of the class struggle of those times. But, taken as a whole, it was a dynamic response to the vast qualitative and quantitative changes in the capitalism of those times. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to try and present an all round picture of the qualitative changes in the global economy. However, as mentioned above, many factors are self-evident, including: qualitative advances in science and technology, in telecommunications, in systems and methods of mass production, in high speed transportation, in global concentrations of finance capital and in the incredible growth of transnational monopolies. It is not necessary to fully document and quantify the changes in capitalism for this discussion. It is enough for now to see the many new and thorny problems the labor movement and the broader working class movements face with capitalist globalization. However, it is necessary that we continue to study the underlying economic and structural changes taking place all around us. It is also necessary to note that the pace of change and development of capitalism is steadily accelerating. The problems for the working class created by the new developments in capitalist globalization are not narrow trade union questions. They are not questions of concern only to the left and communists. They are very basic strategic questions of how to defend and advance the interests of the whole working class under new conditions. They are very much the concern of the broader progressive movements and of all world wide who struggle for economic and social justice. As we try and figure out strategy we must also consider changes in the world working class and the world economy. Changes in the US working class and economy are inextricably tied to global changes in capitalism. Not Enough to Unite in Slogans We have to consider that the power of the working class, more than ever, must be realized in new forms of working class internationalism. It is not enough for workers and oppressed peoples of the world to unite in theory and in slogans. Today's transnational capitalism demands that the world's workers and oppressed peoples organize and unite in new practical ways. 'Workers of the World Unite' has to be transformed from a slogan into a concrete strategy. The Main Power Workers Have Historically every new stage and phase of development of the productive forces of capitalism has required a new strategy from labor. The bottom line for trade unions is the economic struggle. While it is true that unions are most powerful when they can combine political and social strategy in their arsenal of struggle. The bottom line is unions come into being in the first place, in order that workers can collectively exercise the main economic power they have; that is their power to withhold their labor. In the early days of capitalism, guilds and then craft unions were the forms that worked. At that stage, the economic struggle was mostly fought by workers on a local level. And early capitalism was characterized by local ownership. With the dawn of the industrial revolution, capitalism became mostly national in scope, then concentrating even more into monopoly. Thus a broader organization was needed by workers in order to use the threat of withholding their labor effectively. Out of this development came the prolonged period of developing and perfecting wall-to-wall industrial unionism. Today labor is confronted with transnational capital where ownership is more concentrated in global corporations and global financial institutions. Learning from history it should be clear that, like every other new stage of capitalist development, what is needed is bigger and broader concepts of trade unionism. We are now experiencing the difficult beginnings of figuring out and building new forms and strategies to exercise labor's economic muscle and leverage globally. Labor unity and organization must take new international forms. Again this is not a question only for the unions. It is a question that requires the best thinking of communists and the left, of labor and of all progressives. Unions, of necessity focused on their immediate and pressing struggles, do not automatically bring a well rounded class analysis to these problems. For example, let's take a look at the current situation facing the autoworkers at GM and Delphi. GM and Wall Street paint a picture of a struggling corporation caught in a fierce global competition to build and sell cars. They want the union to believe that the healthcare and the pensions GM owes its US workers make it impossible for the company to compete. They argue that GM/Delphi must renege on their union obligations to workers and slash wages or go bankrupt. GM and Wall Street say the company must close plants and destroy communities to stay competitive in the global auto market. Unfortunately GM and Wall Street have been able to convince large sections of both the union leadership and membership that these are the limits of the debate, that only concessions and cuts will save their jobs; that therefore workers have a stake in capitalist competition for profits. They threaten bankruptcy in the US as if GM wasn't a giant transnational corporation with investments and profits all around the world. In fact GM has manufacturing operations in 32 countries. It is one of the largest US investors in China and Asia. Here are huge markets opening up and huge profits being made. But if autoworkers reject the automaker's partnership ideology, where is the economic leverage for workers in the US in this situation? Where is the leverage for the working class in a fight like this? Even as we do our best on the ground to fight every battle for every job and every pension, don't we have to recognize the need to help build a movement that unites GM workers around the world? Isn't the only real solution to this fight for autoworkers to organize and unite GM and all autoworkers around the world? To have any chance of success, any plan to fight for the future of US autoworkers must also include autoworkers in China. The big three auto monopolies, GM, Ford and Chrysler have dominated and called the shots in the US for almost as long as the UAW has been around. In order to have leverage, the UAW had to organize all of them. The union had to put a 'floor' under wages and working conditions for the big three nationwide in order to secure a decent standard of living for autoworkers. And remember, after the battle for industrial unionism raised standards of auto and other industrial workers, the result was higher standards for millions of other workers, including non-union workers in the US. The industrial unions dramatically raised the standards for the whole class. Isn't that ultimately what has to happen now on a global basis? There is no way to know now what organizational form that will take, but the idea of global union standards like industrial unionism in earlier times has to be part of the solution. Don't we have to help figure out how that will happen even as we fight the day to day battles? The auto industry is central to the world economy. There are about ten major auto conglomerates in the world today that operate on all continents and in almost every region. Raising the standards worldwide for workers in this critical section of the global economy is vital to raising the standard of living for hundreds of millions of workers globally. The same can be said for other key global sectors such as steel, energy, petrochemical, food processing, and transportation. It's important to note that important sections of the US labor movement do see the need to move in this direction. The experience of the United Steelworkers with Bridgestone/Firestone, Ravenswood Aluminum and most recently ASARCO, taught the union invaluable lessons in internationalism. USW agreements with metal and rubber unions around the world are not just to exchange information, but are beginning to get at how to hold the biggest transnationals to global standards. The experience of the locked out West Coast longshore workers a few years ago with longshore workers the world over refusing to handle cargo bound for the US led to important new global agreements among longshore unions the world over. Are there practical steps to move things along in labor that we can raise? Here's one idea. In the CIO days, the communists and the left in labor recognized that fighting against racism and for equality and unity were essential to the development of industrial unionism. We campaigned to initiate civil rights and fair employment practices committees in the unions. Shouldn't we now be thinking about how to set up international solidarity committees in locals as well as international unions? Today's workers in the US have a higher cultural and educational level than ever before. Modern communications have helped workers develop a global view and to recognize the global challenges they face. Let's help turn that recognition into practical forms, which can further the process of 'workers of the world unite.' Union international committees could promote international solidarity campaigns around strikes and global union campaigns. They can be concrete forms for the kind of work the unions have done around opposing Apartheid in South Africa and Coke in Colombia. They can serve to inform and educate and bring the grassroots membership more fully into these fights. Another couple of ideas we should think about. Worker-to-worker exchanges with their counterparts in China, India, Africa, the Middle East and South America would be of tremendous benefit to US workers. And we need to take a look at what communist parties can do to help overcome the split in the world labor movement as well as what we can continue to do to heal the split in labor here at home. You Gotta Make the Political Fight Too Now, of course, Delphi workers are fighting for their lives against wage cuts and theft of benefits. And we can't for a minute neglect our responsibility to help in this immediate fight. Not only is there a fight to be waged against the cuts and take-away-demands of GM/Delphi, there is also an important political fight. Bankruptcy laws have become weapons in the hands of corporate lawyers to abrogate union contracts and steal pensions and healthcare benefits. All progressives need to embrace the struggle to reform these laws. And the fight for national health care, protection of pensions and strengthening Social Security are critical political struggles for workers facing plant closings and bankruptcies. The political policies of the global capitalist powers, particularly in the US, are critical. So-called free trade agreements, monetary, tax and investment policy greatly affect workers around the world. The rise of anti-globalization movements against the policies of the World Bank and the WTO show the powerful potential of political struggle. Demonstrations around the world, including in Seattle and Miami have slowed down and derailed transnational capital's plans. The scuttling of the infamous Multinational Agreement on Investments was very much the result of political struggle in many countries. While both the Democrats and Republicans have favored policies that enhance the reach of transnational capital, the ascendancy of the ultra right Republicans in Congress and Bush in the White House has accelerated the process. Defeating the ultra right in Congress this year and defeating any Bush-like Republican clone in 2008 are vital to any movements to put the brakes on transnational capital. Linking Today's Struggles to 'Another World is Possible' New forms of international working class unity and organization must be pursued on many levels. The world communist movement must find new forms of solidarity that go beyond fraternal exchanges and theoretical discussions. Effective struggle against this stage of transnational capital requires communist and left parties to explore joint practical initiatives. The left and communist parties have a contribution to make to this global challenge in coalition with many other world working class and allied forces. Our aim is not simply communist and left unity, though that is important. Our aim is strengthening the global working class and its allies in struggle. The world communist perspective is that socialism as the other world that humanity needs. This uniquely links immediate struggles with a long range view. A long range view is not just a dream about the future, but a direction in which we seek to move the struggle today. A new stage of struggle requires the world communist movement to shake off old problems and hangovers from the past. We don't have the luxury of sitting back and waiting for things to develop. We have to leave behind old attitudes and sectarian habits and jump in to try new forms of organization and unity. We must be much more pro-active. Other Forms of the Global Class Struggle Globally the communist movement must struggle to involve unions and workers in the larger and broader class struggle. The World Social Forums movement, the fight for international environment treaties, the fight for peace, the fight against poverty, and the fight against AIDs have all taken on greater international form and shape drawing workers and oppressed people around the world together in ever bigger numbers. 100 Million Forced to Migrate Transnational capital development today has radically increased the number of workers moving around the globe in search of work. The UN says that more than a hundred million workers have left their homelands. This incredible migration, for the most part forced, is directly the result of accelerating capitalist globalization. This incredible disruption of human lives is closely tied to the almost complete freedom of capital to move freely around the world. Transnational capital's growing ability to control and manipulate the economies of whole countries and run roughshod over their national sovereignties has destroyed rural life in many countries. Transnational conglomerates in food processing, farming and animal husbandry are driving millions off the land. Anti-immigrant racism has become a critical tool in the growth of far right movements around the world as well. On the other hand immigrant workers in every corner of the world are playing an important part in challenging capitalist globalization and transnational capital. We have had the thrill of experiencing this first hand in the massive demonstrations and new organization here in the US. Marxist ideas arrived on our shores in large part from immigrant workers. So too, today, immigrant workers bring a critical cross fertilization of experience and ideas to the new countries where they live and work. The demonstrations here captured the imagination of labor. They have already had a profound affect in rousing unions on many fronts even beyond immigration issues. China Looms Large In the global context, China looms large. For the US working class and for our party, relations with China are of great strategic importance. A significant and growing percentage of US owned or controlled mass production capacity is located in China. An ever growing percentage of this production is for export. US based transnational capital has major investment in critical sectors of mass production manufacturing in China including auto, chemical, electronics and aerospace. More than 100 U.S.-based transnationals have projects in China. Cumulative U.S. investment in China reached an estimated $54 billion by the end of 2005, making our country the second-largest foreign investor in China. China now ranks third in the world in industrial manufacturing output. Solidarity between the working classes of China and the US is critical to progress. China bashing, with its blatant anti-communism and anti-Chinese racism, has become an important tool for capital in blunting working class internationalism in the US, not only in labor but in other important movements like the environmental and anti-globalization movements. It is critically important that we continue to improve and build on our relations with the Chinese Communist party. And we must promote all manner of union to union, worker to worker and people to people exchanges. For many of the same reasons India too must command more of our international attention. US transnational investment is high. And while anti-communism does not play the same role, anti-Indian and anti-Asian racism and chauvinism also retard the development of working class internationalism. There are different but no less powerful arguments to be made also for our greater attention to Africa. The extremes of poverty and the imperialist plunder of natural resources and destruction and destabilization of entire nations and regions in Africa are burning questions for the world's working class. As we all know, anti-African and anti-African American racism has played a special role in blunting class consciousness and internationalism in the US. Just as the working class at home cannot truly rise without raising the poorest sections of the working class out of poverty, so too the world working class has a vital interest in putting a floor under poverty and underdevelopment globally. New World Division of Labor Global conglomerates and transnational investors are creating a new world division of labor that increasingly relocates much mass production capacity in extremely poor regions and countries. It is not only a question of lower wages but they also move production to flee health and safety and environmental regulation costs. It is obvious that much of this relocation is in countries with overwhelming majorities of Black, Brown and Asian peoples. The racism and national chauvinism is obvious. The role of the transnationals in Haiti and American Samoa, illustrate this point close to home. Women workers are naturally found in the forefront of struggle against capitalist globalization. Women are special victims of this new stage of transnational capital. Many of the world's worst sweatshops employ large percentages of women; many in slave-like conditions as was the case during the rise of industrial capitalism. Today women are increasingly concentrated in large numbers in manufacturing and production globally. The global race to the bottom for workers in manufacturing has undermined health and safety and other working conditions around the world including in the industrial countries and the US. War Dangers and Inter-Imperialist Rivalry Today the US stands as the lone superpower recklessly willing to use military power to secure its economic and political objectives around the world. This power is clearly exercised in the narrow interests of US based transnational capital. The Iraq war and the growing US military presence in Colombia are but two current examples.

However, it would be a mistake to conclude that rivalry between imperial powers is a thing of the past, or that the danger of war between these rivals has decreased. In fact, while the Iraq war serves the interests of many US transnationals, including oil and construction interests, it also sends a warning to rivals that the US intends to dominate the region. And while direct wars between imperialist blocks of nations may not be likely anytime soon, all kinds of little 'proxy wars' and destabilizing military actions threaten peace and kill and maim thousands every year. Trade issues Trade issues loom large for the world's working class. While it is true that global economic integration is inevitable, the terms of globalization for the working class are subject to struggle. We must carefully separate what benefits workers and their communities from what benefits transnational capital in so called free trade. Karl Marx nailed the question succinctly in a quote from his speech 'On the question of free trade.' He said, 'To sum up, what is free trade, what is free trade under the present condition of society? It is freedom of capital. When you have overthrown the few national barriers which still restrict the progress of capital, you will merely have given it complete freedom of action. So long as you let the relation of wage labor to capital exist, it does not matter how favorable the conditions under which the exchange of commodities takes place, there will always be a class which will exploit and a class which will be exploited.' Workers have no choice but to fight for their jobs and against their ruination at all times. We cannot and should not be asked to watch as jobs are lost and our communities destroyed in the name of some abstract greater global good or on the promise that other jobs will appear in the long run. The US working class and concentration for today This new stage of transnational capital has had a profound affect on the US working class, on its composition, and on its ability to fight back. Today there are very few factory fortresses left. Automation, science and technology have all profoundly changed the productive process. Today telecommunications, computers, and many so called service occupations are much more integral to the productive process than they ever were before. Privatization, and the increasing integration finance capital into the state apparatus, has profoundly changed the role of government and other public workers in the economy. The working class has grown significantly world wide and domestically with these changes. Globally the number of workers directly involved in the mass production industries has increased. Global manufacturing output has expanded 34 per cent in the last ten years. But domestically, industrial workers, in what we used to call the basic industries, have been put in a much weaker position. Most of these industries are still basic to the global economy, but global production means a tremendous loss of leverage for these workers and their unions domestically. Again the US auto industry illustrates the point. Today industrial unions are changing. Although mass production industries are still central to the domestic economy, the lack of leverage, the harsh anti-labor environment, and corporate and government attacks on organized labor have pushed the industrial unions in the direction of becoming general industrial unions though still centered on their old specific industries. For many of these unions it's a question of survival. In many ways the recent split in labor is more about not being able to find a way to deal with capitalist globalization than anything else. The crying need for the left and communists to help find a way to deal with these problems is part of our historic responsibility. This key question of how the working class can organize for power and leverage cannot be reduced to schemes to organize only workers whose jobs can't be outsourced. Rather to effectively organize for power and leverage here at home we have to take on the challenging task of finding ways to build union and working class organization and action on a global scale. We cannot just stand on the sidelines and throw stones, even at wrong ideas. Simply complaining about the loss of focus on a single industry or sector of the economy will not change much. We have to dig into the situation as it is and figure out how to move things from there. And we have to embrace the idea of bigger and different kinds of industrial unionism for today. Just as the CIO promoted an idea of unionism that was much bigger than craft unionism, today's labor movement needs to provide new union forms that can engage both domestically and internationally. These new forms must lead to bigger and bolder ideas about organization. Our communist piece also has to reflect the new and changing global picture. Industrial concentration policy has to morph into a much bigger and broader idea. Yes we need to focus on building the party and its influence in strategic sectors of the working class, but those strategic sectors cannot be a simple recounting of what we used to call the basic industries. We, like the rest of the working class, have to adjust to today's global realities. We must, of course, continue to focus on critical industries that still drive the global economy like, auto, steel and mass production workers. The transportation industry has to be moved to the top of the list. Transportation has become one of the most significant leverage points against transnational capitalism. And it bears repeating, this kind of strategic concentration has to be fully linked to the fight against transnational capital. In today's world, steel, auto and transportation workers may have their greatest strategic leverage and power in the international arena. As manufacturing has declined in the US, finance capital is greatly expanding. One giant steel company, from the merger of Mittal and Arcelor the two largest steel companies in the world, will soon account for more than 10% of global steel productions. It will own steel mills on every continent and employ over 300,000 steelworkers. Steelworkers that work for Mittal in Indiana or even all the Mittal workers in the US will not be able to go it alone. We also have to take a look at important concentrations of workers in areas like health care, food processing, telecommunications, and energy and utilities, and public workers; sectors of our economy that are increasingly strategic areas of struggle for the working class. As the struggle of the Sky Chef airline catering workers at London's Heathrow airport showed, even in what seemed to be a domestic service, international solidarity was the main leverage for workers in stopping company attacks on jobs, wages and benefits. The Communist party labor commission has begun building ongoing working subcommittees to develop our strategic concentration work in steel, auto, telecommunications, Longshore/transportation, food processing and health care. This is not a complete list of sectors that are critical to our economy. Instead, we believe we just might have the initial resources and ties that can allow these committees to develop. Our goal is to have these sub-committees track development in these sectors. We hope they will help develop articles for our publications, and reports on labor and global developments in these sectors. In this way we will help draw the party's attention to work in these industries. We must also renew our concepts of strategic neighborhood concentrations. Workers who work in a particular sector of the economy or industry no longer live together in the same neighborhoods. The fragmentation and decentralization of mass production has resulted in fragmentation and loss of cohesion in neighborhoods. Never the less, many in working class neighborhoods are acutely aware of the fragmentation and loss of community and cohesion. Many are searching for new forms of community. Neighborhood concentration is a critical tool for building the party and our influence. Focusing our community clubs on working class neighborhoods with special attention to African American, Latino, Asian American and American Indian neighborhoods needs to be renewed. How to focus on mass campaigns, build coalitions, and fight for multiracial, multinational working class unity are critical questions in this work. In conclusion: our task is not a narrow one. The working class response to the industrial revolution and the imperialist stage of capitalism at the turn of the last century was a many sided, long range struggle of the working class. It was also a time of the most impressive growth of communist and workers parties and movements, of the growth of industrial unionism, of the broadening of the working class struggle. So too our response to a new stage of transnational capital today must take on the difficult task of helping to figure out bold new approaches to building international working class solidarity, to new forms of unionism and workers organization, and to building the party and to building our ties to the international communist and workers movements.

--Scott Marshall is Labor Secretary and Vice Chair Communist Party, USA.. For more information see .

Mommy, What's Waterboarding?

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 02:07:00 +0000

9-29-06, 9:22 am

Remember the great harm done to the moral core of our nation when, according to the excited news reports following Kenneth Starr's great work in life, children were asking their parents what oral sex was? Neither do I. But children can now ask their parents what torture is, how waterboarding works, and when exactly torture is a good thing. 'Mommy, we're going to play enemy combatant. Can I have some pliers to pull out Geoffrey's fingernails?' Can I just say, to the Representatives and Senators who just voted to overturn (or allow George Bush to 'interpret') the Geneva Conventions and half the Bill of Rights – and I say this as mildly as I know how – WAKE THE HELL UPYOU COMPLICIT FASCIST MORONS; BUSH HAS CAMPS PLANNED FOR SOME OF YOU, AND DANTE HAS A CIRCLE RESERVED FOR THE REST. Oh, and one more thing: oral sex feels GOOD. Torture HURTS LIKE HELL. Got it? The world needs more sex, less sadism. What exactly are you unclear on? Remember when Bush, like O.J. Simpson on the trail of the real killer, was energetically searching the White House (not to mention consulting a private lawyer) to determine who had leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA agent to the media? Neither do I. But if it had happened, wouldn't it have made sense for Bush to simply subject Cheney, Rove, Libby, Armitage and a few others to a little torture until they spilled the beans? Of course not. The slightest threat of discomfort, and these characters would have each confessed to the leak, the Kennedy assassination, and firing the secret missile into the Pentagon from the ghost jet. Just look at what fear of a vague threat of future prosecution has brought them to. Bush and gang, terrified of prosecution for violating the War Powers Act of 1996, have rammed through Congress, just before an election, a piece of legislation that removes Habeas Corpus and retroactively legalizes war crimes – a piece of legislation that will quite likely be, in part or whole, ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Whether the Supreme Court lets this illegal law stand or not, international courts need not. Legalizing torture and murder did not protect Pinochet or Hitler. And legalizing impeachable offenses does not protect a President from impeachment. On the contrary, it adds yet another impeachable offense to the list. And don't think for a minute that this President isn't scared of impeachment as well. There's no other explanation for the Republican National Committee announcing, in conflict with every bit of evidence, that impeachment is a good issue for Republicans in the coming election. The Bush gang attacks wherever it's most scared. The Pelosi gang falls for the bluff every time. Because the list of impeachable offenses grows on a daily basis now, it may be helpful to list the top ten grounds for removing these thugs from office. The reasons can be found just after the main text of the U.S. Constitution. They're labeled 'The First Amendment,' 'The Second Amendment,'…. Of course, I'm kidding. Bush and Cheney have destroyed much more than 10 amendments. Here are my top ten reasons to impeach: 1.-Launching an aggressive war, using fraud to sell the war to Congress and the public, and misusing government funds to move troops to Iraq and begin bombing raids prior even to Congress's dubious authorization to use force. 2.-Targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and using illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a new type of napalm. 3.-Arbitrarily detaining Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans, without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel. 4.-Authorizing the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in some cases in death. Having prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross and shipped to other nations and secret U.S. bases to be tortured. 5.-Illegal warrantless spying, and lying to the public about it for years. 6.-Failing to protect New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, to provide troops in Iraq with body armor, to attempt to prevent the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, or to work to decrease global warming. 7.-Using signing statements to refuse to obey hundreds of laws passed by Congress. 8.-Stealing the 2000 and 2004 elections. 9.-Systematically using propaganda and disinformation, selectively and misleadingly leaking classified information, and keeping secret information meant to be public. 10.-Urging Congress to pass bills that will retroactively and unconstitutionally legalize a number of the crimes listed above.

Diebold Added Secret Patch to Georgia E-Voting Systems in 2002, Whistleblowers Say

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 01:58:00 +0000

9-29-06, 9:13 am

(APN) ATLANTA – Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files to Georgia's electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 Elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

Former Diebold official Chris Hood told his story concerning the secret 'patch' to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Kennedy's second article on electronic voting in this week's Rolling Stone Magazine.

Hood's claims corroborate a second whistleblower who spoke with Black Box Voting and Wired News in 2003.

Whistleblower Accounts

'With the primaries looming, [Chief of Diebold's Election Division] Urosevich was personally distributing a 'patch,' a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program,' Rolling Stone Magazine reported.

'We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do,' Hood told Rolling Stone. 'The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done.'

'It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state,' Hood told Rolling Stone.

'We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level,' Hood told Rolling Stone.

The 'patch' was applied to about 5,000 polling places in Fulton and DeKalb Counties in 2002, Rolling Stone reported.

Hood did not immediately return a text message from Atlanta Progressive News and his voicemail was not operational.

The second whistleblower, Rob Behler, was contracted to work with Diebold in the lead up to the 2002 Elections.

Two patches were applied in June and July 2002 respectively while Behler worked in the Diebold warehouse; another patch was applied in August 2002 after Behler left the warehouse, Wired News reported.

'Behler said Diebold programmers posted patches to a file-transfer-protocol site for him and his colleagues to apply to the machines,' Wired News reported.

Diebold officials first denied any patches were applied in an interview with Salon in 2003, according to Wired News.

'We have analyzed that situation and have no indication of that happening at all,' Joseph Richardson, Diebold spokesperson, is reported to have told Salon at the time.

This story later changed.

Activists Speak Out

Elections integrity activists are outraged by the relevations, although they say the apparent secretive nature of 'the patch' has only confirmed the things they already suspected and feared.

'The fact that they were doing any patch of any kind is very disturbing,' Garland Favorito of VoterGA, an organization that is suing the State of Georgia over the meaningless nature of elections here, told Atlanta Progressive News.

'It raises the distinct possibility the machines might have counted [in a] different [manner] on Election Night than when certified,' Favorito said.

'It corroborates two of our key points of the suit. One, machines can count differently on Election Night than when certified. So, the only way is to verify on Election Night. Two, it's another example of how people have been removed from the counting of the votes,' Favorito said.

'I'm not surprised people are playing tricks. As far as the patch, I say 'time out' for that,' Donzella James, who is contesting her purported loss in the Democratic Primary in Georgia's 13th Congressional District to US Rep. David Scott (D-GA), told Atlanta Progressive News.

'I'm definitely going to look into it. I'm glad there's a credible person–Kennedy–who has brought this information forward,' James said.

An outspoken advocate for a voter verified paper trail since her days in the Georgia State Senate, James said she is getting ready to run again in 2008 whatever the outcome of her lawsuit.

'It immediately shows Diebold has not been telling the truth, has been covering up facts, in state after state, year after year. This is someone who knows. He has insider knowledge,' Brad Friedman of BradBlog told Atlanta Progressive News.

'These are things people suspected. He confirmed it. Diebold never gave a damn about security, accuracy, or transparency,' Friedman said.

What is worse, the use of last-minute patches on electronic voting machines are routine, Friedman said.

'It has happened all over the country. Because they find out about security issues at the last minute and apply them without going through the proper procedures,' Friedman said.

At a recent press conference called by Donzella James, poll watchers say one county official locked herself in a room with the machine for three unexplained minutes during the recent Primary.

Cathy Cox's Role

Where was Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox during all this?

Apparently, Diebold leadership asked employees to not let her office know about the patch or patches.

And Diebold first alleged this application of patches wasn't going on.

However, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox appears to have found out anyway.

And Diebold appears to have at some point acknowledged the patches existed.

At least one patch was approved by Kennesaw State University, who got a state contract to do so, according to Wired News.

And Diebold admitted to the Elections Assistance Commission about the '0808' patch, Garland Favorito said.

Cox wrote a letter after the 2002 Elections, asking Diebold to address a total of 29 problems with the functioning of their E-voting machines, technology, and procedures, Rolling Stone reported.

This list of 29 items was also brought up in a press conference by US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, her first major press conference on electronic voting.

Cox referred to the item of the mysterious patch as 'The application/implication of the 0808 patch.'

'The state was seeking confirmation that the patch did not require that the system 'be recertified at national and state level' as well as 'verifiable analysis of overall impact of patch to the voting system,'' Rolling Stone Magazine reports.

But shouldn't they be seeking her confirmation and not the other way around?

Diebold's reply to Cox's letter, if one exists, has not been made publicly available, according to Rolling Stone.

'She [Cox] should be the one confirming it, not the vendor. She's the one responsible for running elections in Georgia,' Favorito told Atlanta Progressive News.

'She appears to be trying to privatize the election system to the point where she's trying to ask the vendor to determine if they're in compliance, rather that using their own resources,' within the Office of the Secretary of State, Favorito said.

'They claim [as an excuse] to have changed the operating system and not the tabulating software. We believe the law says the systems have to be re-certified with a patch of any kind. The State did not certify those patches. The State took Diebold's word,' Favorito said.

'However, State Law does not seem to support Diebold's testimony,' Favorito said.

Atlanta Progressive News will be looking more into how Diebold was, or was not, able to satisfy Cox's 2002 concerns.

'Atlanta Progressive News is the only media outlet in Georgia that's covering this story,' Garland Favorito of VoterGA said.

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Matthew Cardinale is the News Editor for Atlanta Progressive News. He may be reached at

The Do-Nothing Congress

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 01:53:00 +0000

9-29-06, 9:08 am

Even by recent standards, the Republican-run 109th Congress set some sort of dubious record for inaction. Remember that, now that they’re campaigning. The GOP-run Congress that Harry S Truman blasted as “do-nothing” back in 1948 was productive by comparison. That 1947-48 Congress passed more than 1,000 pieces of legislation, including some that were positive, such as the Marshall Plan. Of course, that “Do-Nothing Congress” gave us the anti-worker Taft-Hartley Act. Which brings up a key point about this GOP-run Congress, whose legislative output is approximately one-third of that one: Maybe, as far as workers are concerned, no action is better than action. Because when this “Do-Nothing Congress” actually bestirs itself to do something, it usually does the wrong thing. Consider some of the few measures that either the House or the Senate, and occasionally both, approved in the last year and a half: * The law implementing the job-losing Central American Free Trade Agreement. Congress also passed implementing legislation for the free trade agreement with Oman, a nation that has no labor protection laws whatsoever. The Senate vote on Oman was 63-31. Neither the Omani pact nor CAFTA have enforceable labor rights provisions. * Extension of the USA Patriot Act, which trashes the Bill of Rights. * The punitive, vindictive and--let’s call it what it is--racist House version of the immigration bill. Not only would it turn immigrants and Hispanics into felons, but it would also turn union organizers, teachers, religious workers and others who help immigrants into criminals, too. Can you imagine being thrown in jail for giving an immigrant a drink of water? * The Senate version of the immigrant rights legislation is better, but not by much. It sets up a path to “green cards”--permanent residence--for some, but not all, of the 11 million-12 million undocumented workers in the U.S. The path is long and tortuous, taking years and involving thousands of dollars in fines imposed upon some of the poorest, most-exploited workers in the nation. It is hard to imagine how many of the undocumented would actually try to take walk that path. But at least the Senate bill brings undocumented workers under U.S. labor laws. * Blind obedience to GOP President George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. The Republicans have been marching in lockstep with the White House, least until the campaign began. The Democrats are scared of their own shadows. They fail to criticize the decision to go to war--which many voted for--and the corruption, fraud and mismanagement of it by Bush, his corporate cronies and his Right Wing ideologues. * A Congress that is a cesspool of scandal, and not just in the obvious cases of Reps. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) and William Jefferson (D-La.), all in jail or headed for it. The whole campaign contribution system is a scam featuring rampant influence-peddling. It gives the plutocrats and their allies, who have money, access and clout. And it gives the back of its hand to workers and their families. Congress’ response to being for sale? Minor changes in some small ethics rules. Just remember all this when you go to the polls to vote on November 7. From International Labor Communications Association

Treating Criminality As Daring Boldness: The Media on Bush

Sat, 30 Sep 2006 01:49:00 +0000

9-29-06, 9:04 am

Ron Brownstein wrote a column this week that illustrates exactly how far the corporate media will go in criticizing President Bush. Brownstein's criticism is not motivated by his own reflections. He has none, other than those that quietly shape his omissions and categorizations. He's a corporate journalist. In fact, he's what passes for a left-wing corporate journalist. Brownstein is not concerned by Bush's criminal actions, by his unpopularity in polls, by the passion of grassroots opposition, by the growing movement for impeachment, or even by the opposition of Democrats in Congress. Brownstein's column comments, rather, on growing opposition to Bush among former generals, big whigs, and Republican Senators. It's only when others in power and on the right criticize Bush that we are supposed to pay attention to the criticism. This is a deeply ingrained bias in our corporate media. But worse is how Brownstein describes this opposition. He does not depict it as one of law breaker versus defenders of the law. Rather, he describes Bush as a daring rebel outsider taking on a bunch of timid traditionalists. It's cowboy Bush versus the Washington elite – though presumably not any longer the nation-building, foreign-entanglement-prone elite that Bush campaigned against in 2000. Here's how Brownstein begins his column: 'To President Bush's supporters, nothing is more exhilarating than his willingness, even eagerness, to challenge long-established assumptions and policies, especially in foreign policy.' Long established policies such as the Bill of Rights or Article II of the U.S. Constitution? Brownstein 'balances' his column by immediately adding that Bush's opponents object to his readiness to jettison traditional policies. In reality, Bush is not a liberated innovator shaking off silly traditions, but a criminal offending people who have a respect for just and humane laws. Bush has launched an illegal war, lied to Congress to do so, and misused funds by beginning the war before asking for approval. Bush has targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, and used illegal weapons, including white phosphorous, depleted uranium, and a younger cousin of napalm. Bush has arbitrarily detained Americans, legal residents, and non-Americans without due process, without charge, and without access to counsel. To call this criminal is merely to agree with the U.S. Supreme Court. Bush has authorized the torture of thousands of captives, resulting in some cases in death. He has had prisoners hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross and shipped to other nations and secret U.S. bases to be tortured. The U.S. Constitution, international treaties that are part of U.S. law, and other U.S. laws ban torture. When Congress recently redundantly banned torture, Bush signed the bill and added a signing statement explaining that he would not obey it. Bush has openly confessed to engaging in illegal warrentless spying, and a federal court has found the practice criminal. Bush has overturned 800 acts of Congress with signing statements and is actively seeking to retroactively legalize his crimes, a process that will not make those crimes any less impeachable offenses. This is the context in which conservative establishment types are beginning to express hesitations about supporting Bush's agenda. This is why Lt. Gen. William Odom proposed impeachment at Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's hearing on Iraq on Tuesday. But Brownstein calls those who oppose Bush's challenging of assumptions the 'prudence party.' Brownstein claims that this group is made up of 'top-level corporate and Wall Street executives, former diplomats, retired military officers, and some veteran legislators on Capitol Hill.' Brownstein provides no names, except by indicating that he means to include the generals who supported John Kerry for President and those calling for Rumsfeld to resign, plus the Senators and others who have recently expressed support for the Geneva Conventions. Brownstein fails to include the Supreme Court or any federal judges in his list, much less the anti-war movement – the movement responsible for moving Congress to finally block spending on permanent U.S. military bases in Iraq (won't it be refreshingly bold when Bush keeps building them anyway?) Members of the 'prudence party,' Brownstein says, 'fear that Bush has too casually alienated world opinion in his pursuit of greater security for America.' Has Brownstein seen the public sections of the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Bush is encouraging terrorism? On what grounds does Brownstein claim to know that Bush is pursuing greater security for America? A majority of Americans actually believe that Bush is making them less safe, as of course he is. Yet even the 'left-wing' of the corporate media continues to 'balance' any notice of Bush's ground-breaking policy changes (in plain English, steps toward fascism) with the idea that these changes are being pursued for the purpose of security. Brownstein concludes thus: 'Through 2008, Bush's dispute with these [right-wing] voices of restraint may shape America's national security decisions more than his arguments with the Democrats.' What about his arguments with the American people? Don't we count for anything? If we do, it is not at all clear that Bush will be around through 2008.

Bush Appointees Browbeat Senior Military Officers on Geneva Conventions

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 17:22:00 +0000

9-29-06, 9:03 a.m.

As a retired US Army Reserve colonel, I am aghast at the blatant browbeating by civilian political appointees of the Bush administration of another generation of senior US military officers. In late 2002 and 2003, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld began the browbeating. He forced US Central Command commander General Tommy Franks into accepting a war plan for Iraq that Franks knew had too few military personnel for the job ahead - the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

After he retired, Franks said he was worn down by Rumsfeld's never-ending complaints about too many military troops in the general's operations plan. Franks eventually decided to invade and occupy with the minimal forces that Rumsfeld demanded. We know the result: not enough troops to protect the civilian population or the civilian infrastructure (water, sewage, electrical plants); not enough troops to prevent looting; not enough troops to seal the borders from those coming in from other countries; not enough troops to fulfill the responsibilities of an occupying force as required by international law; not enough troops to protect the troops.

Now, William Haynes, the chief civilian lawyer of the Department of Defense, one of the administration's architects of torture and nominated to a life-long judgeship on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, has browbeaten the four military services' senior military lawyers, the Judge Advocate Generals (all two star officers), into signing a 'do not object' letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. The letter says that the senior military lawyers do not object to two key provisions of the Bush bill that would reinterpret US obligations under the Geneva Conventions and also would protect US intelligence agents from war crimes prosecutions. Previously the military lawyers had publicly questioned, in Congressional hearings in both the Senate and House, the reinterpreting of the Geneva Conventions. The 'do not object' letter was written when, after hours of browbeating by William Haynes, the two star officers refused to sign a 'letter of endorsement' of the Bush plan, but instead signed the lesser of the two options, the 'do not object' statement.

According to the Washington Post (September 15, 2006), the Air Force's top lawyer, Major General Charles J. Dunlap, said that he was not forced to sign the 'do not object' letter, but still had reservations about the administration's proposal, just not in the areas discussed in the letter. But, late on September 15, the Army's Judge Advocate General, Major General Scott Black, sent another letter to Senator McCain reinforcing the earlier stand of the lawyers, stating 'further redefinition' of the Geneva Conventions 'is unnecessary and could be seen as a weakening of our treaty obligations, rather than a reinforcement of the standards of treatment.' The senior lawyers have made a noble and professional end-run around the browbeating!

Remarkably, at long last, Bush family friend, former secretary of state, and 35-year military veteran Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, finally broke his silence and acknowledged a bit of conscience regarding the effects of Bush administration's policies that he was a part of. In a letter to McCain, he said that reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions would encourage other countries to 'doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.' No doubt Powell's goose is cooked with the Bush family.

The Bush administration's browbeating of senior military officers is over two key provisions of the bill concerning rules governing military commissions that will put terrorism suspects on trial.

In defining US obligations under the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, Bush's proposal is that only detainee treatment that 'shocks the conscience' should be barred (and would allow degrading acts that do not shock the conscience of someone chosen by the Bush administration).

The Senate Armed Services Committee bill is silent on what constitutes compliance with Common Article 3 and thereby would force CIA officers to treat detainees humanely and to avoid degrading acts, under common understandings of international law. (CIA officers involved in the Bush administration's secret prisons program have consulted lawyers after being warned that they could face prosecution for illegally detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects, and new CIA recruits are advised to take out private liability insurance against the risk of lawsuits as CIA officers will have to pay for their own defense, according to the Washington Times (September 10, 2006).

The second key provision of the bill is on access to classified information during military commission trials of terrorism suspects. The Bush administration advocates classified information could be withheld from a defendant if a military judge approves the withholding and if the judge determines that the withholding of classified information would not obstruct a fair trial.

The Senate Armed Services Committee bill would give defendant declassified information or substitute summaries when possible. A military judge can dismiss charges if the government objects to a judge's order that sensitive information be provided to a defendant.

The Bush administration's violation of international law has severely damaged the reputation of the United States in the international community and has put our military personnel at risk throughout the world.

The browbeating for political ends of our senior military lawyers by the administration is degrading to our professional, volunteer military and calls into question, again, the actions of the civilian leadership of this nation. The administration policy approved by Donald Rumsfeld and William Haynes condoning torture, and now the silencing of professional views of proposed policies concerning the rules for military commissions trying terrorism suspects, undermine the 'good order and discipline' of the military and are dangerous for our country.

-Ann Wright, retired from the US Army Reserves as a colonel after 29 years (13 on active duty and 16 in the Reserves). She also was a US diplomat for 16 years, serving in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. She was on the first team to reopen the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan in December, 2001. She resigned from the US government in March, 2003, in opposition to the war on Iraq.

From

Risk of Misreading US-Iran Dispute

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:21:00 +0000

9-28-06, 9:36 am

The ongoing war of words between US President George W. Bush and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, coupled with deluded western media misconceptions or intentional misrepresentations of the true nature of the escalating conflict, can be utterly misleading, and must promptly be brought back to their sensible parameters of analysis.

Following President Ahmadinejad’s fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly on September 19 – second in its effrontery to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, calling Bush the ‘devil’ – and also his talk to journalists at a packed United Nations conference hall two days later, US media, with the help of official ‘experts’ strove to further highlight the growing chasm between the two positions.

The New York Times, as it often does, took the lead, reducing Ahmadinejad’s statements to a cluster of key positions that the editors of the Times found crucial. The Iranian president, according to Warren Hoge (NYT, Sep. 21) “refused to say whether he would comply with a Security Council demand for the disarmament and disbanding of Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed guerrilla group that fought a 34-day war with Israel”.

Hoge identified yet another noteworthy theme; that of the Iranian president’s “threat to wipe Israel off the map.” More, Ahmadinejad’s “attitude (at the press conference) was less belligerent than it had been in his speech to the General Assembly,” according to the writer.

Aside from prioritizing its editorial agenda around Israel, its security and some mythical threat to wipe it off the map - at a time when the latter illegally occupies lands belonging to three Arab countries - the Times conveniently failed to duly support its claim that Ahmadinejad’s speech to the assembly was belligerent.

True, the Iranian President’s past questioning of the Holocaust was most insensitive, to say the least. However, such comments must not be used as a ready-to-serve rationale behind chastising every Iranian foreign policy position.

Regardless of the Iranian president’s exact intentions behind his General Assembly address, only a self-deceiving person would argue that the United Nations represents a truly democratic institution, and that the international body was set up for any reason other than securing the military achievements and political and economic interests of the victorious allies emerging from WWII. Moreover, few could objectively argue that the US is not subjugating the United Nations to its militaristic whims and strategic ambitions.

If one rejects such claims – more or less introduced by Ahmadinejad - then one must also be ready to bring forth a convincing explanation as to why the US has always managed to instigate brutal and deadly wars – with Iraq being the latest tragic example – unhindered, with or without a UN rubber stamp. Moreover, how can the UN maintain its relevance and respect at a time when that the most ardent violators of international law such as Israel carry on with their inhumane ‘belligerent’ activities, often supported – also in Israel’s case - by an ever growing list of American vetoes in the Security Council, enough to shield the pariah state even from mere verbal criticism?

Since the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran initiated territorial aggression against no one. While human rights violations within the Islamic Republic were and are still rife, their overall damage if contrasted in number or intensity, can hardly be compared to the collective harm that Israel has inflicted on Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arab nations.

While religious decrees in Iran prohibited the pursuit of nuclear weapons years ago, various countries, notwithstanding Israel, have for decades stockpiled nuclear weapons, enough to blow up our planet hundreds of times over. But Western hypocrisy is limitless: democratic states, by definition, produce responsible governance, and since Israel (like the US, Britain, the UK, etc) is a democracy, then only Israel has the right to hold enough power to blow up our planet many times over.

Although I have intentionally ridiculed this argument to highlight its deficiency, it certainly captures the essence of the Western argument regarding the possession of nuclear weapons, with the word ‘democracy’ being completely stripped of its theoretical meaning, and turned into a blank check to refer to anything from the right to launch ‘pre-emptive’ wars, to the use of torture, to the ownership of weapons of mass destruction as a ‘deterrence’ against rogue nations, just like Iran.

This is precisely what makes leaders like Ahmadinejad – like Chavez in South America - appealing to most Iranians (and increasingly to Arabs and other Third World nations.) For the New York Times, like other haughty mainstream media in the United States, the mere questioning of America’s right to “administer” the world is the pinnacle of belligerence.

The intellectual arrogance and logically flawed reasoning of the American media is often a cover for its indubitable ignorance. Reducing a conflict to that of Ahmadinejad’s character and overstating the political worth of his personal views, divert attention from the real conflict at hand, and helps Republican warmongers further cement their drive for war.

Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, a major hub for America’s neoconservatives, was refreshingly honest albeit injudicious in his recent analysis in Middle Eastern Outlook (AEI, Sep 1). Rubin summarized the US position in a few simple words: “A nuclear Iran would represent a fundamental shift in strategic balance.” It means that Iran with nuclear capabilities would simply upset America’s military encroachment in the Middle East, which would also create a rival to the state of Israel, whose military prowess is under immense scrutiny following its humiliating defeat in Lebanon.

This must not mean that Iran’s intentions are most unadulterated either; the temporary alliance Iran had reached with the US, vowing to assist or at least not upset its military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, are all characteristic of a country with pure political and strategic attitude, not necessary to guarantee universal justice, but primarily to advance its own interests.

It is vital that the Iran-US row, regardless of its future direction or level of escalation, be understood for what it really is: a clash of interests between a superpower no longer so fearsome, and an aspiring regional power with clear objectives and aims. It’s neither about America’s burning desire to safeguard democracy and the human race from mad Iranian mullahs, nor is it exactly about Iran’s quest for a just world. Further misinterpretation of this topic shall yield even more erroneous outcomes, of horror scenarios, of smoking guns, and eventually of one more tragic ‘case for war.’

--Ramzy Baroud's latest book: 'The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle' (Pluto Press, London) is now available.

Rethinking the 'War on Terror'

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:18:00 +0000

9-28-06, 9:33 am

Detroit, Michigan -- Everyone agrees that the people who planned the attacks on September 11th 2001 ought to be brought to justice. But how should this be done, and who are these people really, asked Hussein Ibish, Executive Director of the Foundation for Arab-American Leadership. Ibish posed his questions at a talk on September 25th at the University of Detroit-Mercy sponsored by the Detroit Area Peace and Justice Network.

According to Ibish, Bush administration officials have gotten a lot of mileage out of fudging the picture of who the 'real terrorists' are. Creating an atmosphere of 'willful confusion' allowed the administration and its supporters to project the terrorist movement as a larger, more menacing threat. Such a threat could then be used to sustain endless war involving a potential myriad of bad foreign policy decisions such as the war in Iraq.

From Bush supporters, one can usually hear a variety of positions on what the war on terror means, its goals and who the enemy is, Ibish contended. Some describe it as a broad campaign to reform the Middle East and Arab culture. Some have called it World War III. Still others have even openly claimed it as a war on all of Islam.

In Ibish’s view, these broad definitions are dangerously confusing explanations with particular ideological and policy agendas behind them.

The simplest and clearest definition, that the terrorists who struck on 9/11 are part of a specific far-right religious movement on the fringes of Islam which most Arab and Muslim peoples and states are anxious to suppress, is often ignored because it doesn't motivate the emotional and irrational responses needed to sustain long-term and deadly military responses.

Much of the right wing’s inaccurate, ideologically motivated explanations for 9/11 and the war on terror are underpinned by racist thinking about the so-called Arab and Muslim world, Ibish said.

While there is no need to inject a racial and religious component into an accurate explanation, Ibish argued, 'the more elaborate, the more ambitious and ideological explanation of the war on terror become, the more racist and bigoted they are.'

The net effect of most explanations of the war on terror is to lump all nationalities and religious affiliations into a single group of enemies. 'They' are out to destroy the West. 'They' do not like 'us' and will strike 'us' regardless of what 'we' do.

This typical explanation relies on the racist notion that 'we' need not know much about the heterogeneity and complexities of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Indeed, policymakers in the Bush administration responded to 9/11, stated Ibish, not by relying on experts in Arab and Muslim politics, cultures, or languages, but on their self-styled omniscience and omnipotence that instinctively produced the notion that all we had to do was 'kick a little ass' and that would restore 'calm.' Indeed, killing a few thousand people there, so this thinking goes, is for their own good and they welcome it.

Bush administration policymakers approached dealing with the 'Arab world' with the old racist, imperialist notion that 'violence is the only thing Muslim people understand,' Ibish pointed out.

This confused and muddied thinking has hindered the war on terror, he added, and has even strengthened and emboldened the group of people who are behind the 9/11 attacks and their allies.

Muddied thinking has misdirected efforts – both intentionally and unintentionally. Ibish asserted that with 'an increasingly confusedly defined war and an open-ended enemy you end up with at least the war in Iraq.' This error, relying on the racialist notion that 'they' are all one and the same, and 'they' only understand violence, allowed Bush administration policymakers to miss the target.

Neo-conservatives in the Bush administration manipulated this confused state of thinking to push successfully for an attack on Iraq they had long wanted, Ibish added. Others in the administration less interested in invading Iraq were pushed along because they failed to develop a more complex and accurate view of who was behind the terrorist attacks.

Ibish flatly stated that there was absolutely no connection – operational or ideological – between the Saddam Hussein regime and the perpetrators of 9/11 and the movement they sprang from, no matter how many times Bush administration officials say it or imply it.

Racialist thinking fueled bad foreign policy decisions that have derailed whatever honest effort there may have been for bringing Al Qaeda to justice and its allied movement.

Racism, Terror and Domestic Policy

Allowing irrational responses guided by racist ideas to mold our response to 9/11 and to guide our actions in the war on terror has also led to serious domestic policy disasters, Ibish said. These types of responses fueled calls for racial profiling and other serious abuses of civil rights and liberties.

Ibish pointed out that legislative responses such as the USA PATRIOT Act and secretive programs like spying on people in the US without warrants are serious violations of the Constitution. But they aren't the main way civil rights and liberties have been abused in the US.

Immigration policy crafted within the racist anti-Arab and Muslim mindset that fueled the Bush administration's response to 9/11 has fostered the worst abuses. 'The immigrant community,' Ibish said, 'has borne the brunt of civil liberties abuses.'

The alien registration push following the September 11th attacks, for example, a drive to bring thousands of Arab and Muslim people, particularly young men, into close contact with federal law enforcement officials, 'had truly zero effect in terms of counter-terrorism,' Ibish stated.

According to him, federal authorities detained about 5,000 Arab and Muslim people, mostly men. Almost all of these cases were for minor immigration violations that would have been easily handled before 9/11, but since, turned into long periods of isolated detention with little or no access to a legal process and often ending in deportation. None of these cases dredged up any 'real terrorists.'

This mass round up did, however, 'certainly express the idea that Arabs and Muslims are by definition potentially dangerous and of interest to the authorities,' he added.

Racial and religious profiling of Arab and Muslim people as potential terrorists has been an unmitigated failure, Ibish said. Still, right-wing pundits continue to push for it. Why should we be concerned about an 80-year old white grandmother in an airport security line, they say, when 'the real terrorists' are probably Middle Eastern, Muslim, and so on?

According to Ibish, the problem with racial profiling, aside from that fact that it is literally impossible to do when dealing with the many language groups and nationalities that compose the Arab and Muslim world, is that it signals to potential criminals who law enforcement officials are looking for and provides them with a means of changing their appearance to no longer fit the profile. 'Why tell the potential terrorist what you are looking for,' Ibish asked.

For this reason, truly random searches in airport security lines, for example, have a better deterrent effect than profiling, which, he said, has been shown to be 'worse than useless.'

In fact, in 1999 the Federal Aviation Administration admitted that it used a computer system in airport security lines to profile Arab and Muslim men as potential threats. Its failure to stop the terrorist attacks on 9/11, however, was a serious blow to proving its effectiveness, Ibish said.

Now, since airports and the federal transportation security officials have gotten serious about security, racial profiling has become much more difficult to detect. Officials who are serious about security understand that racial profiling is an ineffective security measure.

The right-wing's demand for racial profiling is meant to use race and religion to lump Arab and Muslim into a category of people who are likely or potential enemies, but it shows how detrimental racist thinking can be to real security, Ibish concluded.

Will the real terrorists please stand up?

If the 'real terrorists' aren't among the Arab and Muslim population in the US, and they aren't in the Saddam Hussein regime, who are they? Who was behind the 9/11 attacks? What is this religious movement that appears to be behind so much violence in the Middle East?

In a post-lecture interview, Ibish held that Al Qaeda and 'like-minded' people are part of a complex supra-national Islamic movement (even this is a bit confused, he saexplained, as some within this movement have nationalist tendencies) that, once on the fringes on Muslim society and detested by most Arab and Muslim people, have seen their fortunes improve primarily not because it is natural or instinctive for Muslim and Arab peoples to hate the 'West,' but because of Western policies toward the Middle East and the response by the Bush administration to the 9/11 attacks.

Ibish described this movement as the Salafist-Jihadist movement. It is a specific religious ideological outlook that favors violence against people and groups it declares to be apostates, even other Salafists. For the most part, it envisions a Muslim world without borders and for this reason has aimed much violence at Arab and Muslim peoples and governments.

While its economic theory, if it could be said to have one, favors things like markets, private property, and wealth accumulation, its political and theological outlook dominates its thinking. Patronage and charity, for Muslims with correct thinking only, are key economic ingredients to a moral vision bounded by fierce religious chauvinism that views outsiders as potentially deadly enemies that have to be dealt with violently. It calls for a semi-feudal throwback to what it imagines was a 'golden age' under the direct teachings of the prophet Mohammed.

By no means can this ideology be said to be the mainline Islamic point of view, despite efforts by right-wing ideologues and religious spokespersons to paint it as such. In fact, just decades ago Salafists 'were pretty much dismissed as in the pocket of the US and Britain,' Ibish contended.

According to Ibish, it is closer in mode of thought to some of the right-wing Christian groups in America who fantasize about a golden age when Christianity dominated American life and envision making the country a theocracy.

Indeed, the Salafist-Jihadist anti-state ideology is at odds with most governments in the Middle East, including those deemed to be enemies of the US. Its violently sectarian nature has also put it into conflict with most people in the Middle East, even those people who are supposed to hate the US instinctively and naturally. For this reason, the overwhelming majority of the victims of this movement – from Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the land of the two rivers (mistakenly called Al Qaeda in Iraq), Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia) to groups with nationalist tendencies such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt – have been Arab and Muslim people.

The turning point for the prestige of the Salafist-Jihadist movement came early on as a result of US foreign policy during the Cold War. Then, with the US response to 9/11, it received a new boost.

US support for anti-secular movements throughout the Middle East, from Palestine to Afghanistan, as a tool against the the Soviet Union and its regional allies, was a key factor in strengthening the Salafist-Jihadist movement. A serious problem with Bush administration foreign policy, Ibish argued, is that it continues to reject the idea of working with secular movements, even to the point of regarding them as enemies.

Additionally, Bush's Middle East policy has simply played into the hands of this movement and its goals. Martial rhetoric adopted by the Bush administration in response to 9/11, the so-called war on terror, strengthened the Salafist-Jhadist movement by allowing themselves to be portrayed as victims of military aggression against Muslims, Ibish noted.

A better approach

Success in stopping Al Qaeda, discrediting it and its ideology, and neutralizing the Salafist-Jihadist movement requires a whole new approach, according to Ibish. First, discard the 'over-broad definition of the war on terrorism that includes issues, concerns, and targets that have nothing to with the groups and ideology behind 9/11.' This element, which is propelled by the imperial agenda of some in the Bush administration, Ibish called 'extraneous rubbish that is the real problem.'

The failure to 'keep it focused' on Al Qaeda has discredited the administration’s efforts because they have become framed as and appear to be in fact comprising a war on all of Islam.

Ibish also called on the administration and other policymakers to listen and take seriously the opinions and analysis of its own intelligence experts and of Arab and Muslim scholars and experts on its cultures, religions, histories, and politics. Above all, take the views and opinions of the Arab and Muslim peoples seriously, and not reject them out of hand as manufactured propaganda. 'Treat it as reasonable and legitimate,' Ibish suggested.

Working to unify the people and movements in the Arab and Muslim worlds who want to stop Al Qaeda and its ideology will have a far more positive effect than treating them all as the same potential enemies.

Reject the fallacy that better security requires a 'derogation of freedom.' In Ibish’s view, there is no evidence that freedom causes insecurity or that security requires a strengthened state that withdraws civil liberties or rights. Policies such as warrantless wiretapping and national security letters have to go.

Finally, other political institutions and civil society groupings – Congress, the courts, the media, democratic organizations and movements, and the people themselves – have to step up their role as overseers of the administration’s policies, Ibish concluded. On domestic security policies, they have to ask, how does this make us safer, and how does it safeguard our rights and freedoms? Does it contradict our basic values?

--Joel Wendland can be reached at

Blueprint for Withdrawal from Iraq

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:15:00 +0000

9-28-06, 9:30 am

American and British troops in Iraq could be replaced over a phased, six-month period starting next January by a force of 15,000 men drawn from Arab or Muslim countries and paid for by the United States, former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern proposes.

In a wide-ranging article appearing in the October issue of “Harper’s” magazine, McGovern spelled out a comprehensive “blueprint” for the withdrawal of Coalition troops.

“Withdrawal will not be without financial costs, which are unavoidable and will have to be paid sooner or later,” McGovern wrote, in an article co-authored with William Polk, founder-director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago. “But the decision to withdraw at least does not call for additional expenditures. On the contrary, it will effect massive savings.”

Current U.S. expenditures in Iraq cost about $246-million per day, a rate that continues to climb, and will come to about $100.4-billion in fiscal 2006, the authors write, adding one estimate puts the cost of remaining in Iraq another four years at $1-trillion.

McGovern and Polk urged the creation of a “stabilization force” from Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, to be selected at the determination of the Iraqi government. The authors estimate that a force of just 3,000 troops from five countries would be sufficient to keep the peace.

At a cost of $500 for maintaining one man per day, the overall cost to support a 15,000-man army would be $5.5-billion, “approximately three percent of what it would cost to continue the war, with American troops, for the next two years,” the authors pointed out.

McGovern and Polk called for the “rapid withdrawal” of 25,000 armed “security” firm personnel and the phased withdrawal of the U.S. and British forces, said to number 120,000 and about 10,000 respectively.

They also called for putting a halt to work on U.S. military bases, the immediate release of all prisoners of war and closing of detention centers, payment of at least $25-billion to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure, voiding of all oil contracts entered into during the U.S. occupation, and reparations to Iraqi civilians for lives and property. They also asked for creation of an international body to be named to arrange compensation for Iraqis tortured by Anglo-American troops.

The Harper’s article urged, again at U.S. expense, the rebuilding of damaged and destroyed hospitals and clinics and training their medical personnel, training a national police force, clearing the country of depleted uranium and land mines, and the rehabilitation of damaged historical sites. Personnel to clean up the ordnance could be recruited from among the “millions” of unemployed Iraqis, the authors said.

“We cannot prevent the reconstruction of an Iraqi army, but we should not, as we are currently doing, actually encourage this at a cost of billions to the American taxpayer,” the authors write. “If at all possible, we should encourage Iraq to transfer what soldiers it has already recruited for its army into a national reconstruction corps modeled on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.”

McGovern and Polk go on to say that nearly half of more than 100 U.S. military bases in Iraq have already been turned over to the Government but as many as 14 “enduring” bases are being built “and should be stood down rapidly” due to their expense and also as they “symbolize and personify a hated occupation” to a population only two percent of whom consider the Americans as “liberators.” What’s more, the Green Zone in Baghdad should be turned over to the Iraqi Government no later than the end of 2007.

The authors also call upon the U.S. “to dismantle and dispose of the miles of concrete blast walls and wire barriers erected around American installations.” This could be accomplished for about $500-million and could employ many Iraqi workers. Scrap Oil Contracts The U.S. “should not object to the Iraqi government voiding all contracts entered into for the exploration, development, and marketing of oil during the American occupation,” McGovern and Polk wrote.

“These contracts clearly should be renegotiated or thrown open to competitive international bids” as the Iraqis believe their oil has been sold at a discount to U.S. oil companies and that long-term “production-sharing agreements” have been highly favorable to the Americans and could cost Iraq as much as $194-billion in lost revenues.

“To most Iraqis, and indeed to many foreigners, the move to turn over Iraq’s oil reserves to American and British companies surely confirms that the real purpose of the invasion was to secure, for American use and profit, Iraq’s lightweight and inexpensively produced oil,” McGovern and Polk asserted.

They said, “any funds misused or misappropriated” by U.S. officials from the sale of Iraqi petroleum “should be repaid” to the proper Iraqi authorities.

The authors compared their call to indemnify Iraqi war victims to the U.S. post-World War II “Marshall Plan,” which redounded to America’s benefit by energizing the European economy. They note the number of Iraqi dead have been put at between 30,000 and 100,000 killed “with many more wounded or incapacitated.”

“Assuming the number of unjustified deaths to be 50,000, and the compensation per person to be $10,000, our outlay would run to only $500-million, or two days’ cost of the war,” the authors said. And estimating the number seriously wounded and incapacitated at 100,000, the total cost for their compensation would be $1-billion.

McGovern and Polk called for creation of a “respected international body” to process the claims of, and pay compensation to, Iraqis who have been tortured or suffered long-term imprisonment. More than 3,200 prisoners have been held for longer than a year and more than 700 for longer than two years, they note, “most of them without charge, a clear violation of the treasured American right of habeas corpus.”

Finally, the authors urged the U.S. to find a way “to express our condolences for the large number of Iraqis incarcerated, tortured, incapacitated, or killed in recent years. …A simple gesture of conciliation would go a long way toward shifting our relationship with Iraq from one of occupation to one of friendship.”

The Harper’s article, “The Way Out of War,” is excerpted from the book “Out of Iraq”, to be published next month by Simon & Schuster. Co-author McGovern, the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in 1972, was defeated by Richard Nixon.

--Sherwood Ross is an American reporter and columnist. Reach him at

Bush and Islam: Words versus Deeds

Fri, 29 Sep 2006 02:10:00 +0000

9-28-06, 9:26 am

The wide gap between U.S. President George W. Bush’s words and deeds vis-à-vis Islam and Muslims doomed to failure his speech at the United nations on September 19, which could neither appease Muslims nor pacify the ever growing Islamophobia. Hardly a week had passed since his speech than Winston Churchill - author, journalist, former Member of Parliament and grandson of the former British prime minister - was speaking at an American university to condemn “Radical Islam” as posing to Western civilization a threat similar to that of the Nazis and the Soviets. (1) President Bush has denied that the West is engaged in a war against Islam as a “false propaganda,” but confirmed his country’s determination to carry on with its “war on terror” and its “great ideological struggle” at the start of the 21st century exclusively against Muslims and Muslim countries. “My country desires peace,” Bush told world leaders at the opening of the 61st session of the UN General Assembly, adding: “Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false... We respect Islam.” (2) Bush is also on record as saying that “Islam is a religion of peace” and praising Islam's “commitment to religious freedom,” statements that were criticized by the popular U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson. These rare expressions of respect to Islam would have been welcomed by Muslims were they not swept to utter oblivion in the collective memory of the American public by his incessantly flowing anti-Muslim terminology: Islamic radicalism, Islamic fascism, Islamic extremism and extremists, Islamic or Islamist terrorism and terrorists, radical Islamists or Islamist and Islamic radicals, etc. His September 19 speech was almost exclusively confined to the Middle East, an overwhelmingly Muslim region. The absence of even a reference to the North Korean pillar of his so-called “axis of evil” was revealing enough that his WWIII (3) “on terror” has shrunk to focus exclusively on the Muslim Middle East. “At the start of the 21st century, it is clear that the world is engaged in a great ideological struggle, between extremists who use terror as a weapon to create fear, and moderate people who work for peace,” he said, defining the battle lines of his WWIII. Four days earlier he identified those extremists as being “Islamic,” who “want to impose” their “ideology throughout the broader Middle East.” Earlier, on August 10, CNN quoted Bush as saying that, “this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.” He also defined a modern Anglo-Saxon white man’s mission in the 21st century as “our obligation to defend civilization and liberty, to support the forces of freedom and moderation throughout the Middle East.” (4) How can mainstream Muslims perceive Bush or the United States as respecting Islam when their overwhelming propaganda machine is producing this torrential flow of anti-Muslim terminology and their overpowering war machine is disintegrating Muslim societies to pre-state age, allegedly to defend the freedom of American people. How could a leader secure his people’s freedom when he deprives other peoples of their freedoms! Jim Lobe is a respected reporter of the Asia Times; in a recent article I misquoted him as attributing to Bush’s co-ideologist, Nweit Gingrich, the term “WWIII on Islam.” Lobe rightly felt highly indignant that his credibility was compromised by my misquotation. Gingrich did not literary say it by the word, but he and Bush said it in each and every other word. Bush's “strategies are not wrong, but they are failing,” in part because “they do not define the scale of the emerging World War III, between the West and the forces of Islam,” Gingrich said. (5) Bush’s attempt to verbally separate between Islam and Muslims in his propaganda to justify his pre-emptive American militaristic and hegemonic foreign policy is hopeless and doomed to failure. Five years after U.S. President George W. Bush launched his global war on terrorism, this war has boiled down to a war on Islam: One cannot target all those Muslims, their countries and their Islamic syllabus without targeting their religion. His global war on terrorism targets “Islamic terrorism” almost exclusively. “Till recently, of the 36 organisations on the U.S. State Department's banned list, 24 were Muslim. The rest were Basque and Irish separatists and leftist groups. There were no Christian, Buddhist or Hindu groups. The State Department also lists 26 countries whose nationals represent an ‘elevated security risk’ to the U.S. Barring North Korea, all are Muslim-majority countries.” (6) Bush’s religious terminology is shooting his unreligious war in the legs, antagonizing not only the mainstream Muslims but also the non-Muslim large Christian minority in the midst of their ethnic compatriots because this minority feels threatened by his inciting anti-Muslim propaganda, which creates an explosive antagonistic environment that plays in the hands of the same extremists whom he uses as a scapegoat for his unjust pre-emptive wars. “Ignorance” of the Middle East and its people is a false thesis that sometimes is cited as a justification for Bush’s militarist polices and verbal anti-Muslim blunders. But Bush, whose country has been bleeding the region’s oil wealth for a century, could not be credited even with the benefit of ignorance. All the anti-Islamist terminology cannot blur the fact that the issue is oil. There's no question that controlling the oil and the profits from oil is a U.S. top priority in the Middle East, particularly as Washington is not only bracing for a future competition with China and India for that resource, but also is already in fierce race with Europe and Japan to take hold of the strategic asset, which is getting more precious and more expensive by the day, because whoever sets hands on it will decide who is the future leader of the globalized world economy; hence the U.S. war on Afghanistan in the vicinity of the central Asian oil reservoir and on Iraq in the heart of the Middle East oil reserves huge depot. In his most blatant self-contradiction Bush declared: “Freedom, by its nature, cannot be imposed, it must be chosen.” However he did not hesitate to arrogantly dictate to world leaders and whipping Muslims into line in his U.N. speech: The world “must,” the United Nations “must,” the nations gathered “in this chamber (U.N. General Assembly) must”, the Muslim world “must,” the “leaders” of Iraqis “must,” the Syrian government “must;” and to the Hamas-led Palestinian government he had an outright order: “Serve the interests of the Palestinian people. Abandon terror, recognize Israel's right to exist, honor agreements, and work for peace.” Bush accuses Islamists of forcing their version of things on others while he unsheathes his sword out and high to dictate a 21st century white man mission to convert Muslims to a version of Islam that serves U.S. interests. No wonder the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the “pervasive anti-U.S. sentiment among most Muslims,” is a “movement that is likely to grow more quickly than the West's ability to counter it over the next five years.” (7) And Bush still can't come to grips with the question of “Why they hate us.” Bush's line: “They hate us because of our freedoms.” No Mr. President, they hate you because your administration and its predecessors have been for decades depriving them of their liberty, freedoms, resources and elected governments, in a historic trend that extends from removing an elected leader in Iran in the 1950s because of his nationalizing the oil and replacing him by the Shah, a brutal dictator, to suffocating the Palestinian people to squeeze out the elected Hamas-led government from power in 2006. Bush’s scare tactics aimed at American public should not blur the divide in Bush’s WWIII. The battle lines should be redrawn to be between U.S. and Israeli militarism and military occupation and expansion and the liberation movements that were led by nationalists or Pan-Arabists in the 20th century and now are led by Islamists. Bush absurdly, unconvincingly and arrogantly postured as the liberator of the Muslim and Arab masses, promoting the U.S. Democracy as a campaign of changing Muslim and Arab regimes, by military force if needed. However, Muslims and especially Arabs are very well aware that the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the former USSR have made Islam a useful scapegoat for tightening the US grip on the unipolar world. Books by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations became popular in the west because they promoted the idea that Islam was the main threat to Western “civilization.” They are also aware that this war to establish total and lasting U.S. global hegemony, a sort of modern-day Roman Empire, is spearheaded in the heartland of Muslims and Islam, the Arab world, where all the regimes are targeted sooner or later; it makes no difference whether they are Islamic, Islamist, secular, liberal, or Pan-Arab regimes, monarchies or republics.

--Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Notes (1) Winston Churchill at the Union University on September 26. Reported by the Baptist Press BP on Sept. 27, 2006. (2) President Bush’s speech at the 61st session of the UN General Assembly on September 19, 2006. (3)“WWIII” is a term used by the former Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich in a recent speech at the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI); he was quoted by Jim Lobe, Asia Times on September 14, 2006. (4) Bush's news conference at the White House on Friday, September 15, 2006. (5) Jim Lobe, Asia Times on September 14, 2006. (6) Praful Bidwai, Inter Press Service, September 7, 2006. Reported by http://www.snpx.com (7) The Washington Post on September 27, 2006.

Capitalism Kills: Mad Cow, Crime, Salt, and Suicide

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:33:00 +0000

9-27-06, 8:48 am

The free enterprise system, aka the free market, aka capitalism, is an economic system, as we all know, that is dedicated to maximizing profits at any cost. Neither ethics, morality, honor, environmental concerns, nor human life itself will be spared by this system and its quest to put profits before people (and everything else). Here are some case studies of the system at work. The previous ten case studies are archived on our website.

Case Study #11: If you think you are safe in the free enterprise system -- think again. A New York Times editorial of 4-6-2006 takes the USDA (the Dept. of Agriculture, now controlled by cretinous Bushite Republican clones) to task for exposing the American people to Mad Cow Disease. Creekstone Farms, a beef producer, wants to test all of its cows for the disease. Sounds good to me -- why don’t all cows get tested? The Times says the 'cost is not prohibitive.' The USDA (now a front for the beef industry) only wants to test 1% of the cows and has prohibited Creekstone from testing their own cows. The reason. The USDA is afraid 'that broad testing may reveal a higher rate of infection.... with a devastating impact on the cattle market.' In other words profits for the big beef processors are more important than the lives of the thousands of people who may ultimately die of Mad Cow Disease. It’s that simple for G.W. (Jesus is my favorite philosopher) Bush and his cronies. Meanwhile it is a capital idea not to eat beef -- what’s in your stomach? CASE # 12: As the rich get richer in the US crony capitalist system we find that crime is increasing in poorer communities. 'Small Cities in Region Grow More Violent, Data Show' the New York Times reports. Homicides are up 28% in 15 studied cities in NY, NJ and Connecticut with populations of 100,000 or more. These crimes are mostly in poor areas and due to gang activity. Nationwide in cities from 100,000 to 249,000 the homicide increase was 12.5%. 'The numbers underscore... a resurgence of senseless violence among young men in impoverished neighborhoods.' The truth is that the profits before people capitalist system cannot and will not provide a decent education and meaningful job prospects for millions of poor youth in this country.

CASE # 13: It’s not only the beef industry that doesn't care about your health. The processed food industry is also killing its customers to make a buck. The following information is from 'The War Over Salt: It's the Food Industry vs. an Army of Medical Experts' by Melanie Warner in The New York Times (Business Day) 9-13-2006. Medical experts, the AMA in particular, wants the FDA to start regulating the amount of salt the food industry dumps into the processed food it sells. Fat chance! 'The food industry, which adamantly opposes any regulation of salt, is lobbying the government to stop any attempts to force companies to limit salt in food.' This is because when food is processed it not only loses a lot if its natural flavor and texture but also sometimes 'unpleasant tastes are also created.' Dumping excess salt into the food hides these bad tastes, makes up for the lost flavors and textures, and also acts as a preservative so this junk can stay around in the store longer. Now 75% of salt people eat comes from processed food. Salt is a cause of hypertension which leads to the No. 1 (heart disease) and No. 3 (stroke) causes of death in the US. Middle aged people and people at risk should eat no more than 1500 milligrams of salt a day (its 2300 max for healthy young adults). If salt in processed food were cut in half 150,000 lives a year could be saved. Dr. S. Havas of the AMA says, 'There have been repeated calls over the last 25 years for the FDA and the food industry to take actions that would reduce these unnecessary deaths. As a physician, it’s very hard for me to understand why these groups have not addressed this critical public health problem.' It's the money! Remember, its Profits Before People and capitalism kills.

CASE # 14: 'On India's Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide' by Somini Sengupta (New York Times, Tuesday, September 19, 2006.) This is a really distressing report. It details how our capitalist system takes a horrible toll in death from some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on earth. Across India thousands of dirt poor Indian farmers are driven to suicide each year because of debt and poverty caused directly by the policies of globalization (led by US capitalism) as well as the pro 'free' market attitudes of the Indian government. In 2003 '17,107 farmers committed suicide.' The Times says that 'economic reforms ' have 'opened' [read 'exposed'] the peasants to world competition and that they have 'access to' [read 'are forced to buy'] expensive and promising biotechnology.' Sounds like a good deal. An Ayn Randian dream. Competition and science to the rescue. Surely Indian farmers can beat out costly Western farm products that have to be grown at a higher cost of production that it takes Indian peasants. But, oops, the 'reforms' have a downside in that they haven't 'necessarily opened the way to higher prices, bank loans, irrigation or insurance against pests and rain.' And the 'free ' part of 'free trade' includes the US giving '$18 billion a year to its own farmers, which have helped drive down the price of cotton' paid to Indian farmers. Also 'American multinational companies [are] peddling costly, genetically modified seeds [Monsanto]' which the peasants are forced to buy to try and remain competitive. So they have to go into debt: borrowing against the future harvest.

In order to help out the peasants one Indian state forced Monsanto to lower the 'royalty' it collects for its 'patented' seeds. After all, God didn't make these seeds properly and Monsanto had to do His job for Him, but it is the Indian peasant that has to pay. Not to be deterred from its excess profit making by a mere 17,000 or so suicides due to overwhelming poverty and debt these royalties are partially responsible for, Monsanto 'has appealed to the Indian Supreme Court.'

Meanwhile the Indian government has not stepped in to prevent the charging of 'exorbitant interest rates' by local moneylenders: sometimes as much as 5% a month! These loans become impossible to pay back. Sometimes the peasants must then sell their crops to the moneylender below the market price and he then sells them reaping the profits. One moneylender, quite honest about how capitalism works, told the Times, 'Many moneylenders have made a whole lot of money. Farmers, many of them are ruined.' A study showed that 86.5 percent or 14,798 of the reported suicides were directly caused by debt. What is the value of a human life in these circumstances? The average debt was around $835, a huge amount for an Indian peasant. These figures are from 2003. Evidence indicates the problem is growing even greater. The Indian government should get rid of these moneylenders and provide debt relief and guaranteed low interest (no interest) bank loans to poor peasants. And please, rooters and tooters for capitalism, remember when you read all those stories about the economic success of India that they only refer to a small urban elite. Two-thirds of the population is trapped in the village system. An economic system that sacrifices hundreds of thousands of people (over 170,000 estimated suicides for the period 2001-2010) on the altar of Mammon should be overthrown.

--Thomas Riggins is the book review editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at

Opposition to Death Penalty Gains Momentum

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:29:00 +0000

9-27-06, 8:44 am

Elijah Page isn't a prime candidate for a cause celebré for death penalty opponents. He took no apparent steps to reform his life or to seek redemption. In addition to admitting guilt openly, he has requested to die for helping murder a person during a robbery six years ago. Page even filed court papers to fire his lawyers in order to speed up his execution date.

But his impending execution in the red state of South Dakota, potentially the first execution in that state since reinstating it in 1979, is still stirring debate about whether or not the death penalty is a measure of justice.

According to media reports, South Dakota's Republican Governor Mike Rounds, who is Catholic, commuted Page's execution last month on the pretext of technical discrepancies between state law and the methods of killing used by the prison authorities.

Underlying this pretext, one defense attorney from South Dakota explained to the local media, may be the real concern that the specific technique of execution (lethal injection) may be cruel. The delay in Page’s case has helped publicize the ensuing debate.

In that usually quiet state, some influential voices strongly rejected the death penalty as an inhumane, brutal form of punishment. Both the Catholic bishop of the Rapids City archdiocese and the bishop of the Dakotas Conference of the United Methodist Church (President Bush's church, incidentally) denounced Page’s impending execution and urged permanent forms of punishment other than killing. Both religious leaders argued that redemption and forgiveness are higher forms of human responses to killing than revenge and a 'cycle of violence' perpetuated by the state’s killing of an inmate.

Opposition Grows

From the Catholic Church's recent strong reiteration of its opposition to the death penalty to the refusal of doctors in San Quentin Prison's death row to use lethal injection on cruelty grounds earlier this year, opposition to the death penalty has gained momentum.

Over the past few years, incidents like former Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan's self-imposed moratorium on the death penalty in that state after revelations of torture by Chicago police and a wave of exonerations of death row inmates by new DNA evidence (14 since 1989, according to the Innocence Project) brought serious debate to the public's attention. Massive protests over the execution of Stanley 'Tookie' Williams and New York's de facto ban on the practice this past year, pushed the death penalty again into the headlines.

In the words of David Elliot, spokesperson for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, these developments show an 'important climate change' that indicate 'the death penalty is withering away in the United States.'

Public opinion is roughly split over the death penalty when people are given a choice between sentencing convicted murderers to life without parole and the death penalty. And the number of death sentences handed down per year has fallen from more than 300 since the late 1990s to around 100, said Elliot.

The conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has even aided anti-death penalty momentum. In recent cases, Elliot pointed out, the Court ruled that only juries can hand down death sentences and against executing juvenile offenders and severely mentally disabled people. This past summer, the Court also ruled in favor of giving more weight to new DNA evidence not available at the time of trial when appellate judges make decisions about ordering new trials for defendants sentenced to death. Legal observers view these decisions as potentially increasing the fairness of the judicial process and reducing the use of the death penalty.

The failure of the New York legislature to re-write its death penalty laws after a New York state court struck them down last year, means 'that New York now effectively has no death penalty, although strangely they still have a couple of people on death row,' Elliot stated.

In New Jersey, the state legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1992. Even some Republicans are now expressing criticism for having spent $253 million on it without having executed anyone in those 15 years. For this reason, Elliot expressed a belief in the likelihood of abolishing it there.

He also added that important efforts to abolish the death penalty in North Carolina and New Mexico will happen in the coming year. In fact, a potential shift in several state legislatures from Republican to Democratic control this election cycle may have a big impact on several state-centered efforts to either abolish or limit the use of the death penalty. New state legislators are more likely to be open to lobbying groups with reform and abolition proposals.

Race and the Death Penalty

The cruelty of the death penalty aside, critics of the death penalty argue that persistent racial disparities from the bottom to the top of the judicial system make its use too unfair for a democratic society.

When they are not simply denying that racism plays a role in the criminal justice system, people who support the death penalty, like right-wing activist and Bush supporter Michael Paranzino, whose website ThrowAwaytheKey.org is little more than a donation page and collection of links to articles that quote his diatribes, insist that creating mandatory death sentences would make the death penalty more fair.

While arguments for mandatory sentences ignore racial disparity throughout the process before sentencing – well-documented inequalities include racial profiling, unequal sentencing, disproportionate incarceration rates, jury bias, and economic inequalities – they also fail to address some fundamental facts about race on death row.

According to Elliot, 'People need to know that it is not the race of the perpetrator so much that makes a difference, but rather the race of the victim.'

Of the 1,047 executions since 1976, more than 80 percent of the victims in these cases were white, despite the fact that whites and Blacks are murdered in nearly equal numbers. Elliot highlighted his home state of Texas, which leads the nation in executions with 376 over the past 30 years.

Texas 'has executed precisely one white inmate whose victim was Black,' Elliot said. 'By contrast, the number of Blacks who have been executed for killing white victims in Texas is in the hundreds. It’s really the race of the victim that makes a difference.'

'Draconian responses' like mandatory penalties, Elliot argued, will increase the rate of erroneous convictions. It will also inevitably increase the rate of people who are executed wrongfully as well, he concludes.

--Reach Joel Wendland at

TFAs, The Food Industry’s “Trojan Horse” On Your Table

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:26:00 +0000

9-27-06, 8:42 am

If you’re thinking about a useful holiday gift for a teenager, for $6.99 you can give the invaluable “Trans Fats: the Hidden Killer in Our Food,”(Pocket Books) by Judith Shaw, whose no-holds-barred introduction begins, “This is the story of a killer ingredient tucked into most of the food that you, your family, and most other Americans eat...” This 175-page paperback is an urgent read for teens because, Shaw writes, “Moving into adolescence with their own disposable dollars, children become the principal consumers of foods with hydrogenated vegetable oils, snacking away at the cellophane packages and fast foods that have become a thirty billion dollar American habit.” “Consuming foods with hydrogenated oils (chips, cookies, crackers, muffins, donuts, candy, fast food)...has become a national pastime, a cultural institution,” Shaw argues, noting the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) reports “fully half of packaged cereals, cold or hot, contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.” Indeed, USDA says TFA’s are found in 40 percent of the food on grocery store shelves today! The good news, though, is that since last January 1st, the FDA ordered TFAs to be listed on food package labels, so at least you’ve got a sporting chance to avoid them. What do TFA’s do to you? As Jeffrey Aron, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, puts it in his foreward to Shaw’s book, they cause people to “develop a state of inflammation that creates a cascade of metabolic horrors with results that can include insulin resistance, obesity, heart disease, autoimmune disease, and depression.” Indeed, 60,800,000 Americans didn’t just develop some form of cardiovascular disease without a little help from the processed food industry -- and it’s increasingly seen among children. If those figures don’t unsettle you, Shaw points to long-term Harvard medical studies asserting “the risk of cardiovascular disease correlates to the consumption of TFAs: that the people who eat food with the most partially hydrogenated vegetable oils are those most likely to develop heart disease.” By eliminating partially hydrogenated vegetable oils from the American diet, at least 30,000 deaths from heart disease and an additional 100,000 deaths per year from related vascular disease might be prevented annually, writes Shaw, former long-time educational director of The Family Institute of Berkeley, in California. That's catching up to deaths from cigarette smoking, which wipes out 440,000 Americans annually. (If Osama Bin Laden wanted to do a real number on us, he'd get himself a consulting gig with the cigarette lobby in Washington.) What foods contain TFAs? They are ubiquitous as manufacturers stuff them into products to extend shelf life. Shaw warns: “Any package that lists partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (or soybean, canola, coconut, palm or safflower oil) in its ingredients contains TFAs.” TFAs may be doubly camouflaged on some packages as “shortening,” “vegetable shortening,” or “hardened vegetable oil.” Any baked good of packaged food with margarine in it or one that suggests the use of stick margarine to prepare it is, or becomes, full of TFAs, the author writes. Among the “Worst Offender Foods” Shaw finds are: # Baked goods such as cakes, cookies, breads, donuts, frosting mixes, muffins, pastries, pies and ready-to-bake pizza crusts. If you’re thinking of snacking on fast foods, watch out for flour and fried tortillas, French fries, donuts, brownies, and chicken nuggets, as well as breakfast cakes such as cinnamon buns and Danish. # Even “the baby and toddler food sold in boxes and jars may have them,” Shaw writes. “Arrowroot Cookies from Gerber and Nabisco’s Zwieback Toast and Animal Crackers have them… They’re in a substantial number of the pastries at all 4,126 Starbucks across the nation.” # If you want to avoid TFAs, it’s a good idea to pass up the frozen food supermarket display with its breaded foods like potato nuggets and fish sticks, burritos, frozen dinners, pizza, pot pies, pot stickers, and quiches. # TFAs are also commonly found in margarine, nondairy creamers, peanut butter, vegetable oil shortenings, frosting mixes, butter-like spreads, dessert toppings, gravy mixes, instant soups, dips for chips, roasted or fried nuts, pretzels, peanut butter crackers and like snacks, and those egg substitutes whose consumption you thought might be healthy for your heart. “Most stick margarines are full of TFAs, and some of the tubs have them as well. Snacks like Quaker Cereal Bars…Lunchables, and Oreos have them. Granola bars….take-out salads, apple pies, and stir-fries” have them. And, get this, “They are in the sugar-free candy made expressly for diabetics,” as well as nondairy coffee creamer and Halloween treats! Shaw goes on to write, “Even some name brand ice creams, like Ben & Jerry’s, have them.” “Orville Redenbacher ‘quality’ popcorn uses them” as do most other microwave brands. If you can think of a reason why TFAs should not be banned altogether from the grocery shelves, let me know. For as Dr. Oscar London, author of “Kill as Few Patients as Possible,”warns on Shaw’s cover blurb: “Trans fats are a time bomb ticking in every one of us. For your sake, and that of your children, you must read this book.”

--Sherwood Ross is an American who writes for newspapers and magazines. Reach him at

Non-aligned Movement: Meet Challenges Unitedly

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 01:21:00 +0000

9-27-06, 8:37 am

THE 14th Summit of the Non Aligned Movement (NAM) reaffirmed in its final document the strong commitment to, “its founding principles, ideals and purposes, particularly in establishing a peaceful and prosperous world as well as a just and equitable world order”. The declaration goes on to assert that, “new areas of concern and challenges have emerged which warrant the renewal of commitment by the international community to uphold and defend the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations and the principles of the international law”. In the absence of an recuperating Fidel Castro, the acting president of Cuba, Raul Castro, in his opening address forcefully described the current international situation, “characterised by the one superpower’s irrational attempts to control the world, aided by its allies, shows that we need to be increasingly united in defense of the principles and purposes upon which the Non-Aligned Movement was established, which are those enshrined in the international law and the charter of the United Nations.” “We are speaking with the experience of a country that has withstood more than 45 years of blockade and aggression of all kinds. With the application of their irrational policy against Cuba, the United States has gone to the extreme of presenting an official plan aimed at destroying our social system, openly announcing that it has a secret annexe containing measures and actions to achieve this end.” On this basis, he called upon NAM for “building on its solid foundations of past victories in the struggle for decolonisation and the eradication of apartheid; using the abundant experience of our tireless efforts to secure a New International Economic Order, and campaigns for peace, disarmament and the true exercise of the right to development, the Non-Aligned Movement now has to wage courageous battles against unilateralism, double standards and the impunity granted to those in power; for a fairer and more equal international order in the face of neo-liberalism, plundering and dispossession; and for the survival of the human race in the face of the effects of rich countries’ irrational consumption.” With 118 countries present, over 50 Heads of State and governments, the Summit underscored the need to develop solidarity amongst the Non-Aligned countries to meet the challenges of the present world. Noting the growing inequalities under globalisation, the final declaration called for a transformation of this globalisation process, “into a positive force for change for all peoples, benefiting the largest number of countries, and prospering and empowering of developing countries, not their continued impoverishment and dependence on the developed world.” Noting that global peace and security continues to elude mankind due to the increasing tendency of unilateralism, the Summit called for a unified response from the NAM to strengthen the global order based on international law. Indian prime minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, articulated a reaffirmation of the relevance of the foundational principles of the NAM. However, a mere declaration of intent, laudable as it may be, needs to be backed by unequivocal positions on crucial issues. While correctly calling upon the NAM not to “equivocate on the subject of terrorism”, India remained silent on the causes leading to such situations in the world. Through these columns, we had repeatedly argued that individual terrorism cannot be combated while permitting the exercise of State terrorism. Doing so would be tantamount to permitting and justifying State terrorism in the name of combating individual terrorism. Any struggle against terrorism cannot be successfully carried on without a strong opposition to US imperialism’s unilateralism in the name of its self-proclaimed doctrine of pre-emptive action. Neither can terrorism be combated without waging the struggle against US imperialism’s effort to impose its hegemony in international relations. Hence, any talk of combating terrorism without condemning US imperialism’s brazen violation of national sovereignty through the use of military force as in Iraq; the continued threats of sanctions against Iran; the support of Israel’s military aggression in West Asia etc cannot yield positive results. India went thus far and no further. The very internal logic of the prime minister’s address should have led him to positions of unequivocal opposition to US imperialism’s global designs. If the pressures of the Indo-US nuclear deal and those of an Indo-US strategic partnership were to define India’s foreign policy positions, then, unfortunately, India would not be able to play the leading role the world expects in the NAM. Neither would India be true to its own declared objective in reaffirming the principles of NAM. This was clear in the PM’s reference to West Asia. He called for the setting up of a suitable high level group for West Asia and the need to address the international community’s responsibility to resolve the issue. Bemoaning and offering sympathy to the sufferings of the Palestinian people alone cannot resolve the crisis. This requires the unambiguous identification of who is responsible for the crisis, who is the aggressor in the war against Lebanon. Israel’s illegal and unjust occupation of Palestinian and Arab lands is the source of the turmoil in the region. Once these lands are vacated, if any terrorist attacks take place, then the whole world will join Israel in not only condemning but in combating such menace. Obfuscation rather than clarity often reduces a potentially powerful movement into inaction. One can only hope that under Cuba’s leadership, a more meaningful intervention of NAM in global affairs will take place in the future.

From People's Democracy

Iran Calls for Dialogue with the United States

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:45:00 +0000

9-26-06, 9:01 am

'We believe the production or use of nuclear weapons is immoral.' - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Hours after he spoke to the United Nations, the Iranian president made this clear, unequivocal statement to a group of us during a private meeting in New York. The Mennonite Central Committee organized an extraordinary, private session for about 50 people to dialogue with President Ahmadinejad about the escalating crisis between the U.S. and Iran.

I left the hour-long meeting convinced, as did many, if not all, of my colleagues, that the Iranian leader is a deeply religious person who approaches the issue of nuclear weapons from a moral perspective. The Iranian leader expressed great interest in establishing a dialogue with the religious community in the United States, and he explained that he views Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as three co-equal religions.

Of course, I suspect that all of the people in this meeting had many areas where we probably disagree with the policies of the Iranian government. For instance, FCNL is concerned about political prisoners in Iran, religious tolerance, and Iran's position on Israel. We also were aware that the Iranian president met with us as part of his effort to defuse the looming crisis between the Iranian government and the international community over Iran's nuclear energy program.

But I've been a lobbyist working for the abolition of nuclear weapons for more than a decade, and I've talked about these issues with a lot of people. Ahmadinejad impressed me as someone who had thought about these issues a lot. He's a former engineer, who is thinking through the arguments from a number of different perspectives.

For instance, although he starts any discussion by saying that nuclear weapons are immoral, Ahmadinejad also reminded us that the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, which didn't prevent their government from collapsing. He added that, during Iran's war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iraq's alliance with a country with nuclear weapons (presumably he was referring to the United States) didn't have any impact on the war. He convinced me that Iran is not interested in developing nuclear weapons.

Iran is interested in developing nuclear energy. As a former engineer, he believes that nuclear fuel is the cleanest fuel there is and he explained that this energy source is critical for the future development of his country. And Ahmadinejad bristles at suggestions that the United States or anyone else would try to dictate how his country pursued its energy needs.

But how do we get beyond the current impasse, we asked him? Ahmadinejad suggested that the UN's Committee on Disarmament, based in Geneva, might be one forum where these discussions should take place. He then offered a proposal: Iran will open all of its nuclear facilities to inspections, if the United States will also open its facilities to inspections. Neither Iran nor the U.S. have implemented the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that includes additional inspections, although we at FCNL believe both countries should do so. He added that the United States should refrain from building so-called second or third generation nuclear weapons.

Now, I'm not endorsing Iran's proposals or even arguing this is the only path to peace. And, in our meeting in New York on Wednesday, the Iranian president made other comments that I found deeply troubling. In particular, I was struck by his comments about the Holocaust. He did not deny the Holocaust, but he still conveyed a view that the matter is debatable. In these comments he sounded a lot like politicians in the U.S. Congress who deny that global warming is a fact, even though there is a significant body of evidence that cannot be denied.

But when he spoke about issues that I cover, the nuclear weapons issues, what struck me is that the Iranian president was offering a reasonable basis for real negotiations. Since Ahmadinejad took office, Iran has been backing away from permitting full inspections of its nuclear program. But I think this is a bargaining stance to start negotiations. Iran wants to have full rights for civilian nuclear energy, including nuclear enrichment. Iranian leaders also want some kind of assurance that the United States will not bomb their country.

The day I left Washington to go to New York for this meeting, I attended a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The contrast was striking. Nicholas Burns, the number three official at the State Department, spent most of that hearing lobbing what I can only describe as rhetorical hand grenades at Iran. In his first State of the Union address, President Bush described Iran as part of the 'axis of evil.' That's still the approach of some in the U.S. government.

But what is even more striking is the pride U.S. officials take in insisting they will not even talk to Iran. Nicholas Burns, in his testimony this week to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a point of saying he has never met with an Iranian government official. Now here is a man who has been part of the U.S. foreign service for decades, and he made a point of pride that he had never met with any Iranian official. If the U.S. continues to insist that no dialogue is possible with Iran, then war is the likely alternative.

--David Culp is a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation's Quaker Nuclear Disarmament Program. He can be reached at 202-547-6000 or david@fcnl.org. FCNL, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a non-partisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL works with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from every state in the U.S. to advocate for social and economic justice, peace, and good government. For more information: http://www.fcnl.org

Paraguay-U.S. Post-Stroessner Relations

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:41:00 +0000

9-26-06, 8:55 am

General Alfredo Stroessner, Paraguay’s long-time dictator, died on August 16 at the age of 93 after almost two decades of exile in Brazil. His thirty-year reign was so repressive that even the selectively principled Reagan administration decided to distance itself from his authoritarian rule. The U.S. has since rekindled its relations with the struggling republic, currently providing both military assistance and guidance in the democratization process. However, Paraguayans may want to be wary of these handouts. Philanthropy is not the Bush administration’s strong suit and the White House may be acting entirely in its own interests.

Life and Times of a Dictator

Stroessner seized power in 1954, after leading a golpe de estado against President Federico Chávez. His subsequent decades as the perpetual leader of the Asociación Nacional Republicana/Partido Colorado were characterized by massive corruption, endemic human rights abuses and systematic acts of violence against purported “enemies of the state.” Stroessner also provided hospitality to a wide array of former Nazi leaders following World War II, including the concentration camp experimenter Dr. Josef Mengele, whom he personally protected despite repeated international demands that he be extradited to Israel. Stroessner routinely imprisoned scores of Paraguayan political opponents, some of whom later insisted that they had endured unethical medical experiments under Mengele’s jurisdiction. The strongman also was notorious for his role in Operation Condor, a computerized network of intelligence agencies linking Southern Cone right-wing dictatorships via a U.S.-supplied station, whose purpose was to root out and eliminate exiled political dissidents who sought refuge in nearby nations.

Stroessner’s autocratic reign ended in 1989 with a violent golpe instigated by General Andrés Rodriguez, and he was forced to seek haven in Brazil. Since then, bringing Stroessner to justice was a slow and ultimately futile process. His mouthpiece, the ruling Partido Colorado, remained hesitant to reveal any details about the late dictator’s pathological practices. While in exile, Stroessner was careful not to voice any controversial opinions regarding Latin American issues in order not to embarrass his hosts. He also never traveled outside of Brazil, hoping to avoid the fate of his Chilean counterpart Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested on charges of genocide and terrorism while traveling to London in 1998 on medical grounds.

Even after Stroessner fled to Brazil, his all-powerful Coloradistas continued to use the strosnismo - style politics of intimidation until 1993, when democratic elections were finally allowed to take place after a series of student protests gripped the streets of Asunción.

Stroessner’s long-anticipated death elicited mixed reactions from the population. During a legislative session in which a minute of silence was held by a number of members of the Partido Colorado in memory of the former dictator, some opposition leaders stormed out of the chamber in protest. To his credit, current President Nicanor Duarte refused to grant Stroessner a state funeral, with much of the citizenry outraged that the proposal was even on the table. The state of affairs is best summed up by the Paraguayan Bishop of San Juan Bautista de las Misiones, Mario Melanio Medina Salinas, who observed, “The world is a happier place for the death of the bloody dictator. Justice was not served here; I hope God metes it out.”

The Reagan Administration Revokes Its Support

At first, the Reagan administration maintained a problem-free, working relationship with Stroessner. Although Washington was aware of his blatant brutality, the autocrat’s pose as a vehement anti-Communist was sufficient to overrule the type of “boycott” that the previous Carter administration had put in place toward the regime. Therefore the Reagan administration, already quite adept at looking the other way when it came to downgrading human rights factors, initially was able to maintain cordial relations with the regime with a relatively clear conscience.

Over time, Stroessner’s excesses attracted international condemnation, and his regime became preeminently known for its money laundering, contraband and drug dealing, sex offenses and human trafficking. These egregious violations eventually became too blatant for even the Reagan administration to cover up. Since Washington did not have any major political or economic engagements with Asunción at the time, U.S. officials decided to use Paraguay as a test case for the professed integration of the administration’s human rights standards. The hour had arrived to save face, and for the first time Reagan denounced a former Latin American ally as a human rights transgressor. Abandoned by Washington, increasingly demoralized by corruption, and with his once-tight control of the country loosening, it was simply a matter of time before Stroessner would be ousted from power by one of his ambitious palace guards.

A Change of Direction

Although Paraguay experienced some turbulence under the leadership of several lackluster figures after Stroessner fled the country – one example being former President Luis González Macchi who resigned in 2002 following embezzlement charges – successive administrations have shown Paraguay making slow strides towards a more open society. President Duarte, although surrounded by a ‘pink tide’ of leftist countries, has fashioned a traditionally America-friendly foreign policy and enthusiastically has allied himself with the Bush administration, much to the chagrin of fellow MERCOSUR members.

The White House is actively maintaining this valued connection with Duarte. As part of a broad range of activities in the country, the Bush administration has sent USAID personnel to the rural regions of Paraguay to assist with democratization processes. Moreover, Bush has dispatched units from US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) to train the Paraguayan military in anti-terrorism tactics, as well as National Guard troops to train and engage in civic action programs. However, even though these policies are meant to project a benevolent tone – characterized more by medical missions than military training exercises – Washington’s underlying strategic interests have still found a way to surface.

USAID Encouraging Democracy in Paraguay

U.S. foreign policy regarding Paraguay is two pronged: first, it is characterized by USAID attempts to implement a democratization process. After decades of tyranny and subsequent instability, Paraguay held its first bona fide election following the Coloradistas’ cessation of power in 1993. Since then, Washington reports that it has improved electoral transparency, modified penal code provisions, and mediated a dialogue between impoverished peasants who have taken up arms and government military units ordered to subdue them. USAID justifies its infiltration of the economically-depressed areas in the country, maintaining that its staff is creating jobs and ensuring higher standards of living for the local peasantry.

Interestingly, USAID is spending more time on preparing its lesson plans than dealing with the red tape that normally accompanies such endeavors. As opposed to other country donors, the U.S. has established a process in which it can sidestep the local bureaucracy and instead go directly to the local communities to develop grass-roots democratization programs. Much of this accommodation may not be merely aimed at expediting democracy; it could equally be aimed at servicing Washington’s security goals for the region. If accurate, U.S. authorities could be eliminating a potential source of populist support for their initiatives.

Terrorism in the Tri-Border Region

The second half of American foreign policy regarding Paraguay encompasses an even more strategic mission. Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este serves as a convenient location to address illegal black market dealings in the tri-border area, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay converge. This region features porous boundaries that tolerate a thriving international black market. Rumors abroad liken this region to a terrorist hot spot. This reputation may be partially legitimized by a listing of suspect organizations which have purportedly done business there, such as elements of the Russian and Nigerian mafia, and perhaps most importantly, Hamas, Hizbollah and Al-Qaeda. In an international gray area devoid of any uniform penal code, illicit activities such as arms dealing, drug trafficking and money laundering are alleged to occur quite openly. U.S. officials are especially intrigued by the large Arab population to be found in the area, which they allege raises funds for the benefit of radical Islamic activities throughout the Middle East. In addition to international offenders, Paraguayan military officials also have been known to engage in illegal cross-border activities, such as trading weapons systems and luxury items. This background leaves little question as to why the Bush administration would want to maintain a military presence in Paraguay

American Military Assistance

On May 5, 2005, the Paraguayan Congress approved a measure allowing U.S. Special Forces to conduct a series of 13 military exercises at Mariscal Estigarribia, a military air base built in the 1980s with American assistance. Among other themes, the 13 exercises were to consist of counter-terrorism and domestic peacekeeping exercises— carefully selected choices, considering the alleged threat emanating from the tri-border area and the constant tension between the armed peasants and the military authorities. Confronted by international speculation that the U.S. forces coming into Paraguay to establish a military base would only be the vanguard of a larger future presence, the Bush administration took great pains to differentiate between military aid and an armed deployment. Unsurprisingly, this did little to calm regional fears, due to the increasing U.S. military presence in Paraguay. To express his gratitude for American aid, President Duarte also granted the U.S. soldiers diplomatic immunity while on Paraguayan soil, thus denying the Paraguayan courts the prerogative of hearing any crimes that might be perpetrated by U.S. personnel.

In addition to these exercises, SOUTHCOM personnel stationed in Paraguay are able to penetrate rural communities by providing humanitarian services for the peasant population; upwards of 30 U.S. military medical personnel have traveled to remote areas to oversee health clinics. Some local skeptics contend that these visits are more for reconnaissance than for actual health care, as some personnel have been seen filming the area and collecting data on the peasant populations before departing. Whether these videos are intended for future healthcare workers or for the Paraguayan anti-guerrilla units remains unclear, but the fact that SOUTHCOM’s tactics have left some locals very nervous shows the extent of skepticism towards U.S. military activity in the area.

The End of a Dictatorial Era

In the days following Stroessner’s death, one was reminded of Washington’s traditional proclivity to back authoritarian, conservative leaders who later unmask themselves when they seize absolute power. In Stroessner’s case, the Reagan administration belatedly withdrew its support for the dictator only after it was prepared to acknowledge the extent of the brutality it had condoned for so long.

Years later, after Paraguay’s political instability had reached a boiling point, the U.S. timed its resumption of an active policy toward Asunción when it felt that the Paraguayan civil society was ready to receive lessons in democracy. Presently, the ongoing U.S. military exercises are also providing a modicum of assurance to Duarte, simultaneously keeping the too-close-for-comfort Brazilian military at bay while effectively intimidating the armed peasant groups into submission. This working arrangement between Asunción and Washington could not have come at a more opportune time for both of their basic security self-interests, and promises greater cooperation in the future, to the detriment of many Paraguayan democrats attitudes on the subject.

From Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Evidence emerges of further ties between the corrupt Abramoff and Bush

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:36:00 +0000

9-26-06, 8:51 am

WASHINGTON (PL).— Associates of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now in prison after being convicted of corruption, met many times with advisors to U.S. President George W. Bush, according to a September 21 article in The Washington Post.

According to the daily, these meetings were recorded in the White House visitor logs controlled by the Secret Service.

Republican Party activists Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, political allies of Bush and longtime associates of Abramoff, visited the executive mansion more than 100 times.

The list also includes Neil Volz, assistant to Republican Robert W. Ney, the first to be convicted in the corruption scandal involving the former lobbyist.

Volz visited the White House 18 times for meetings with aides there, while Tom DeLay, former House of Representatives majority leader, did so 13 times.

To date, there has been an attempt to maintain distance between the executive mansion and the Abramoff scandal, despite the fact that he appears among the lists of contributors to President Bush’s electoral campaign.

Last January, Abramoff pleaded guilty to two of six corruption charges brought against him after reaching a controversial deal with prosecutors in an attempt to receive a lighter sentence.

For those crimes, he was sentenced in March to five years and 10 months inprisonment. The deal also provided that he would cooperate with the justice system in any federal investigation carried out in Washington involving legislators who benefited from his favors.

Well-known for his links to top Republican leaders, the former lobbyist admitted to being responsible for a case of fraud and corruption involving the purchase of Casinos SunCruz in 2000.

The scandal came to light more than three years ago, after it was discovered that Abramoff and his buddy Michael Scanlon charged Native American tribes $80 million to do lobbying benefiting their casinos.

Recently, Congressman Ney pleaded guilty in the Abramoff case, also after cutting a deal with prosecutors. Ney admitted to one count of conspiracy and another of false testimony.

From Granma

George Bush vs. the Gospel of Matthew

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 01:33:00 +0000

9-26-06, 8:48 am

According to the gospel of Matthew, it came to pass that Pontius Pilate said to Jesus, “Do you not hear all this evidence that is brought against you?” for even in those days of rudimentary justice a man had the right to hear the charges of his accusers. Yet two thousand years later, under a bill urged by President Bush, a compliant Congress may agree to allow a prisoner of war to be tried without hearing all the evidence against him, some being held back in the name of “national security.” For what is more important, the life of one individual or the security of the State? Every totalitarian regime knows the answer to that. And so prisoners may be put to death, perhaps on false charges, without even knowing what wrong they are accused of. According to the gospel of Matthew, not long before his trial and while journeying to Jerusalem, Jesus took his disciples aside and told them he would be arrested in the city where he would be handed over to a foreign power, to be tried and crucified. And so, too, today, there are more than 400 captives in Guantanamo prison, removed from their homeland by a foreign power in defiance of Geneva, men who have been made to suffer for years in a strange land half a world away from their homes and families, without being charged, without a lawyer, without trial, every one of the uncharged denied due process and thus every one of them innocent. And others, even more unfortunate, have been abducted by the CIA against international law, handed over to a foreign power to be imprisoned, tortured, and, in some cases, crucified, with no trial, and the new bill urged by Mr. Bush allows the CIA to continue its practices. According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus extolled those who showed mercy, saying, “when I was naked ye clothed me; when I was ill ye came to my help, and when I was in prison ye visited me.” By some strange reversal of New Testament teaching, in the same way as Jesus was stripped of his clothing, captives in U.S. prisons have been stripped of theirs and confined naked in rooms of extreme temperature or threatened by dogs or stacked naked in human pyramids or mocked and scorned or sexually abused or beaten. Such actions, contradicting the words of Jesus, “That which ye do to the least of my brethren ye do also to me,” violate Common Article 3 of Geneva that forbids “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” As for being visited in prison, many a captive in U.S. custody, such as those in the CIA compound in Kabul, has been denied visits by the International Red Cross, and some have been held incognito, as the “ghost” prisoners of Guantanamo, whose names are not even carried on the prison rolls, also a violation of Geneva. Nor do their families have the opportunity to visit them, a privilege that was commonly afforded even in the days of primitive justice in the time of Jesus, who saw prison visits as a blessing. But what is international law to President Bush, who reportedly told aides, “the Constitution is just a damn scrap of paper”? By contrast, Jesus said, “If any man therefore sets aside even the least of the Law’s demands, and teaches others to do the same, he will have the lowest place in the kingdom of Heaven..” According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus went up to the hills, and “When he was seated there, crowds flocked to him, bringing with them the lame, blind, dumb, and crippled, and many other sufferers…and he healed them…and they gave praise to the God of Israel.” Only in Bush’s prisons, the sighted are put in darkness for days at a time, whole men are beaten until they are crippled, and sane men are driven mad and to suicide. Recall the words of Matthew: “They (the chief priests) put him in chains and led him away, to hand him over to Pilate, the Roman Governor.” Today, in America’s prisons, men are being chained in stress positions for days at a time or hung by chains suspended from the ceiling for a week or longer. According to the gospel of Matthew, Jesus told his disciples, “Do not murder,” an injunction not followed by the Bush White House, as more than 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody, likely every one of them murdered, and several admittedly murdered by their handlers. As for following the Lord’s injunction, “anyone who commits murder must be brought to judgment,” not one administration official in an executive position responsible for shaping the brutal torture policy has been put on trial. According to the gospel of Matthew, in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “How blest are those who show mercy; mercy shall be shown to them.” Yet, the world sees none of it from the White House. Mercy, a gift within the reach of all humanity, is also within the grasp of President Bush and a Congress that appears liable to codify his inhumane bill on the trial and treatment of prisoners. Any member of Congress who votes “aye” will be guilty of condoning torture and subject to prosecution under international law. Equally despicable, any member of Congress who approves the bill will be voting in defiance of the highest moral law ever preached on this planet. The president’s biographers write he is a regular reader of the Bible. If so, he must be reading the King George version.

--Sherwood Ross writes for newspapers and magazines. Reach him at

Dems Call for Closing the 'Donut Hole' in Medicare Plan

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:45:00 +0000

9-25-06, 9:01 am

Last week, Democratic members of Congress and leaders of a group called Campaign for America's Future (CAF) held a press conference urging an end to the 'donut hole' in prescription drug coverage for millions of seniors who receive Medicare.

A House Democratic report indicates that as many as 7 million seniors on the new Part D prescription drug coverage program, in addition to close to 6 million disabled Medicare Advantage plan recipients, may lose coverage for much-needed prescription drugs. According to the report, the Republican-authored Part D program forces middle-income seniors with drug costs exceeding $2,250 to pay nearly an additional $3,000 in out-of-pocket costs before the program will provide more coverage.

'The Bush administration pushed through this sham of a Medicare prescription drug benefit saying that it would help seniors and people with disabilities,' said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). 'But, what we got was a plan that shifts costs to seniors and people with disabilities while padding the profit margins of drug and insurance companies.'

CAF spokesperson Roger Hickey linked this massive hole in Medicare benefits to right-wing ideology. 'This costly, confusing, and corrupt prescription drug plan written by and for the pharmaceutical and insurance companies exemplifies the conservative ideology of governance – outsource essential government services to corporate cronies and pass the bill on to the taxpayers,' said Hickey.

Republicans, anxious to cut popular public programs like Medicare, viewed their Part D plan as a means of shifting the burden of paying for expensive prescription drugs to private individuals while benefiting the pharmaceuticals who have paid literally tens of millions of dollars hand over fist into their campaign funds. For the GOP, programs like Part D are a first step toward gutting Medicare benefits and privatizing the program in the guise providing more benefits.

So far their stealth campaign hasn't worked. Millions of seniors and other Medicare recipients and their families have grown angry over Republican policies. The Medicare issue alone has tightened a number of congressional races once considered safe Republican seats.

For example, Sen. Jim Talent (R-MO) has found that Medicare is a key issue for his mainly conservative state. Once considered a safe seat, the race in Missouri is now a statistical dead heat. While Talent helped block efforts to fix the donut hole, his Democratic opponent, state auditor Claire McCaskill is promoting a plan to make the program more flexible, guarantee coverage for all Medicare recipients, and reduce the price of prescription drugs.

So far, some Republicans have been able to count on additional funds from the pharmaceutical lobby, which has launched a $10 million ad campaign in vulnerable districts and states in addition to the $12.7 million it has injected into Republican campaign coffers for the 2006 congressional elections.

In exchange for this kind of financial support, the pharmaceutical lobby has gotten several important legislative maneuvers from the Republicans to protect their profit-making plan. Since the Part D prescription drug plan was passed in 2003, there have been three amendments introduced in the House of Representatives and one introduced in the Senate authorizing Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate the price of drugs, thereby reducing the cost of the program and providing Congress with the funds to fill in the coverage gap. Republicans blocked all four amendments.

'Seniors in Michigan and around the country are stunned to learn they are falling into Medicare’s donut hole – a gap in coverage that will have them scrambling to pay thousands of dollars for prescriptions they thought would be covered,' said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). 'It didn’t have to be this way, but unfortunately, this Medicare prescription drug program was created for the drug companies and not for seniors.'

CAF launched a national petition to reform the Republican-authored program. In about a dozen states, local groups last week sent donut holes along with thousands of messages to members of Congress to fix Medicare's prescription drug plan 'donut hole.' More information can be found at http://www.nodonuthole.com/

--Joel Wendland can be reached at

Amy Goodman Scolds Corporate Media during Atlanta Speech

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 01:42:00 +0000

9-25-06, 8:57 am

(APN) ATLANTA – 'The media has been part and parcel of the propaganda machine that was cranked up five years ago on 9/11 and is still churning and well-oiled today,' David Goodman told an audience of 400 at an WRFG fundraiser at the First Iconium Baptist Church, on Monday, September 18, 2006.

'How else do we explain the so-called 'world's freest media' having gotten not just a little bit wrong, but having been a conveyer belt for the lies of this Administration that led us into the tragedy of the quagmire that we are in now?' David Goodman asked.

Amy Goodman, host of the nationally syndicated Democracy Now independent radio news program and her brother, fellow journalist and co-author, David, also conducted a book signing as part of an 80 city tour for their recent entitled, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back.

DAVID GOODMAN'S REMARKS

'It's a sad day when the government no longer has to cover up its dishonesty because the American media does it for them! This is the state of the corporate media today,' David Goodman said.

'We need a media that is fiercely independent, un-embedded, journalism that works to inform, not to deceive. The soldiers and civilians in harm's way in Iraq deserve no less. The citizens of the devastated and abandoned Gulf Coast are counting on it, and the people shackled in America's secret gulags cry out for it. Free speech is Democracy's last line of defense. We must demand it, defend it, and, most of all, use it now, ' David Goodman concluded.

Static criticizes the collusion between The New York Times Newspaper and the Bush Administration to suppress, for twelve months, its scoop that Bush was using the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans' telephone conversations in violation of the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA).

'It turns out The Times did, in fact, have the story ready to go before the 2004 Election but decided to wait at the request of the people running for re-election who rightly feared how the public might respond to the revelations,' David Goodman said.

'Imagine just for a moment how different things might have been if this explosive expose' had been published when it was written,' David Goodman said.

'As... Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) pointed out... 'placing illegal and unconstitutional programs in jeopardy is the whole point of the First Amendment,'' David Goodman said.

'More astonishing was [New York] Times Executive Editor Bill Kelly's explanation... the Bush Administration had 'assured Senior Editors at The Times a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved the program raised no legal questions.'' David Goodman said.

'Mind you, this is the regime of George W. Bush we are talking about. The folks who assured us torture was legal, that preemptive war was legal, and that holding prisoners incommunicado in offshore gulags was legal. But to the Editor of The Times it is enough just to take the government's word when it says something is legal,' David Goodman observed.

Some critics say the corporate media was tricked by the Bush Administration into parroting its deceptive talking points, but David Goodman says this isn't the whole story.

'We know what the front pages of the leading newspapers were graced with and we know where the voices of dissent were placed—at best on page A-15 and that would be on a good day. Propaganda doesn't happen by chance. It's really very meticulously orchestrated,' David Goodman asserted.

David Goodman also described how the Bush Administration, as part of a multi-million dollar covert operation implemented by the Pentagon, planted propaganda stories in receptive Iraqi daily newspapers such as Al Mutar. Associates of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahkmed Chalabi ran this paper.

Prior to the US Invasion of Iraq, Chalabi was a primary source of false stories about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) fed to New York Times reporter, Judith Miller.

When CBS TV's 60 Minutes program belatedly confronted Chalabi about these lies, he did not deny his falsehoods but smugly asserted they had successfully achieved their political goal: To help goad the American people into supporting the US Invasion of Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN'S REMARKS

Amy Goodman in her speech recalled the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina and the American corporate media's reaction to the Bush Administration's failure to respond to the massive human suffering in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane.

'The side effect of [top Bush administration officials] not responding is that when the corporate press actually did the right thing in this case—just showed up in New Orleans—there were no troops to embed with and we actually saw reporting of the victims' perspective,' Amy Goodman said.

'Ground Zero reporting. You'd see a body floating by on your TV screen. Then the Bush Administration leaped into action. They said, 'You are not to film the bodies,' and the Editor of The [New Orleans] Times-Picayune Newspaper said, 'You have GOT to be kidding,'' Goodman remembered.

'I watched this young woman reporter. A man waded up in the water clearly in shock holding his boy's hand. He said he'd been in the attic holding onto his wife, and as her hands slipped out of his she was saying, 'Please take care of our children'…she slipped away…and he was clearly in shock and just walked off in the midst of the interview with this boy in the water. And the young reporter started to cry. That's what reporting from the victim's perspective looks like and it galvanized the nation,' Amy Goodman said.

'And you think, if for just one week we saw that kind of un-embedded reporting in Iraq—babies dead on the ground, women with their legs blown off, cluster bombs either in Iraq or Lebanon, soldiers dead or dying, for one week…Americans are a compassionate people. They would say, 'No, war is not the answer to conflict in the 21st century,'' Amy Goodman exclaimed.

The corporate press 'got it wrong' when it described Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks as a meek and tired seamstress unwilling to give up her seat on a segregated public bus, Amy Goodman said.

The truth was, Rosa Parks was an activist who was, by experience and deliberation, a 'first class trouble maker,' Amy Goodman added.

Pacifica Radio, which carries the Democracy Now program, carried one of the first interviews with Parks before she was discovered by the corporate media, Amy Goodman said.

'The way the media works is they denigrate movements. They isolate people. If they're going to acknowledge someone they've got to strip away the movement they come from and the movement they inspire. And that's how they miss history. That's why it's so important to read books like Howard Zinn's A People's History [of the United States],' Goodman explained.

'You know, it's not so important that we agree with each other. There is a saying that 'Great minds don't think alike.' But we do have to stand together to make it harder to target any individual because that is what is frightening in this country today. We are the greatest Democracy on Earth—for some. But for others it's a very frightening place and we have to take that very seriously and bridge the gap. It doesn't make anyone safer when people, when poor populations feel marginalized, feel alienated…Building bridges, that's the BEST that media can do,' Amy Goodman said.

Amy Goodman discussed the importance of the political movement led by Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed during the US Invasion of Iraq.

She said Sheehan's activist response to her deeply personal loss serves as a focal point for other mothers and fathers across the country who have lost loved ones in what they regard as an illegal, brutal and pointless war. Goodman added that Democracy Now carried one of the first interviews with Sheehan before she decided to protest in Crawford, Texas, at Bush's 'ranch.'

Amy Goodman recalled the corporate media disconnect from public reaction in New York to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Democracy Now broadcasted those events occurring near them in their New York firehouse studio.

'As we broadcast at the firehouse what was unfolding as it was happening we recognized that what was being projected to the rest of the world did not match the reality on the ground at Ground Zero. It was not the blood curdling call for revenge; it was sorrow, it was mourning, it was people joining together against terror. There was a sticker... 'Our grief is not a call for war.' Thousands would gather in parks and talk, and hug each other and hold candles and flowers. That's what was happening in New York, not what was projected through this corporate lens as the war machine geared up in Washington,' Amy Goodman remembered.

Amy Goodman recalled how many family members of victims slain in the 9/11 attacks told the media and Bush Administration not to use the names and stories of their family members as political media fodder to justify a retaliatory war. This led to the creation of the nationwide movement, Not In Our Name: September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

Goodman recalled family members who would show photographs of their missing loved ones to passers-by and ask them if they had seen them. She compared them to the little pictures carried by the mothers of the 'disappeared' in Argentina as they walked the Plaza de Mayo.

'Sometimes we watched [family members of victims on 9/11] on television but only when they described their loved ones. When they moved from description to prescription [the networks] cut away and went to the terrorism 'experts'—the Oliver Norths and the Henry Kissingers--and they would recommend war. We have to have a uniform standard of justice. Terror is the killing of innocent civilians,' Goodman said.

Goodman detailed former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's policy role in the creation of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile; his support of the generals in the 'Dirty War' in Argentina; and his involvement in the Viet Nam War that killed millions of civilians in Cambodia, Laos, and Viet Nam during the Nixon Administration. She described Kissinger's complicity with the Indonesian dictator Suharto during the genocidal occupation of East Timor during the same time frame.

'I think Osama Bin Laden and his accomplices should be tried and, if found guilty, severely punished. But I also think Henry Kissinger should be tried for war crimes,' Amy Goodman said.

'It's why the President today is trying to change the War Crimes Act, not [just] the Geneva Conventions, yes, they have been violated by the U.S. government, but for those who say that's international law that's not our law, this is our law—the 1996 War Crimes Act,' Amy Goodman said.

'The White House has been quietly trying to change it because they are concerned U.S. officials and U.S. soldiers will be tried for war crimes. CIA officers are taking out insurance as they travel abroad because they too are afraid. Now even the Republican Party is at loggerheads with [Republican US] Senators Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and John Warner…taking on the Administration around the issue of torture. This is not the best of America—torture. This extraordinary term 'extraordinary rendition'—there is a simple term for that. It's called 'kidnapping,' or in Latin America it was called 'disappearing people,' and if people in this country understood what was happening they would say, 'No.' That is why it is our job in the media to present what is going on so that people can make their own decision,' Goodman said.

Amy Goodman concluded by pleading for consistency in our use of the word 'terrorism.'

'September 11th united us with people around the world against terror, against the killing of innocent civilians… Whether as individuals who engage in this or States, we have to be honest about this definition. It goes for all,' Amy Goodman said.

From Atlanta Progressive News

--About the author: Scott Crutcher is a Staff Writer for Atlanta Progressive News. He may be reached at