The Age of Obama as a Racial Nightmare 
Posted by Michelle Alexander
March 8, 2010
[Note to TomDispatch readers: When you’re done with today’s surprising and, I think, revelatory post, you may want to check out Michelle Alexander’s recently published book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. As I’ve discovered, it’s worth considering her case in depth (and she happens to be a superb writer). Keep this in mind as well: every time you click on a book link or cover-image at this site, go to Amazon.com, and buy anything, book or otherwise, you make a painless contribution to TomDispatch -- we get a small cut -- without spending an extra penny. Tom] California is, as the time-worn adage has it, our nation's bellwether, and nowhere is that truer than in the Golden State’s prison crisis. California’s inmate population is among the highest in the nation. Its complex of prisons spills over with tens of thousands of inmates housed in every available inch of space and sleep-stacked three-high. So overcrowded are California’s prisons that the state penal system has been successfully sued for violating the constitutional rights of inmates -- essentially by subjecting them to a public-health crisis. That its inmates consistently resort to violence in prison should come as no surprise. The dire state of California’s prisons can, in part, be traced to its draconian “three-strikes law,” which throws three-time felons behind bars for a mandatory 25 years. Overflowing prison populations have, in turn, contributed to that state’s bleak economic future, helping consign California to a perpetual budget deficit, annual financial crises, and repeated deep cuts in education and social funding. The state currently spends a staggering 10% of its annual operating budget, or $10.8 billion, on its prison system and its nearly 170,000 prisoners -- more than it spends on the University of California system, once the jewel in the crown of American public higher education. And which Americans have borne the brunt of California’s prison boom? Mostly minorities, African Americans especially. In 2005, the state was incarcerating, on average, 5,125 for every 100,000 male adult blacks in the population -- nearly four-and-a-half times more than for Latino men and six-and-a-half times more than for white men. California’s prisons are also notorious for separating their prisoners by skin color, a form of segregation that was, one lawyer remarked, “not tolerated in any other aspect of American life and hasn't been for fifty years. It's the shame of California.” As Michelle Alexander, legal expert and author of a startling just-published book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, points out in her first TomDispatch post, California’s racially infused prison quagmire is only a snapshot of a growing racial divide, one which includes the formation of a new undercaste in America that loses its normal rights at the prison gates and often never recovers them. (To check out the latest TomCast, Timothy MacBain’s striking audio interview with Alexander in which she explains how she came to realize that this country was bringing Jim Crow into the Age of Obama, click here.) Andy The New Jim Crow
How the War on Drugs Gave Birth to a Permanent American Undercaste
By Michelle Alexander Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation’s “triumph over race.” Obama’s election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America. Obama’s mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that “the land of the free” has finally made good on its promise of equality. There’s an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land. Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.
Most people don’t like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the “era of colorblindness” there’s a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have “moved beyond” race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative: *There are more African Americans under correctional control today -- in prison or jail, on probation or parole -- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. *As of 2004, more African American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race. * A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers. *If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80%.) These men are part of a growing undercaste -- not class, caste -- permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era. Excuses for the Lockdown
Read more...
|
Our Dirty Little Secret: Who's Really Poor in America?
By Leo Hindery Jr.
Huffington Post
March 9, 2010
Two old friends, civil rights activist David Mixner and former U.S. Senator (and my oft co-author) Don Riegle (D-MI), believe that in the economic recovery, not enough attention is being given to 'who's really poor' now. David and Don have for years advised me -- and others -- on the issue of poverty in America, and they are worried that too many people, and especially too many people in the administration and Congress, are missing this imperative. To help make their point, they referred me to poverty activist Marsha Timpson, who describes today's poor as "America's dirty little secret, hidden in the backyards of America's shining homes, the hollows, the reservations, the border towns and the dark ghettos of the city where they are the lie of the American dream." I agree with my friends, and with Ms. Timpson's view, and everyone else should as well, for right now in America: At least 50 million people are ill-fed -- up from 37 million just a year ago -- including 17 million children. Hunger in America is now at an all-time high, and there are currently entire national geographic regions -- the very large 15-state 'South' being one of them -- where more than half of all public school students are poor and ill-fed. Although I myself grew up in a fairly hardscrabble environment, as the father of a daughter who was in fact able to create a successful life from the opportunities her mother and I could give her, it is hard for me to imagine what it must be like to have your child needy and hungry. Yet all of us need to 'imagine' this, because each night in America millions of children do in fact go to bed hungry and under-nourished, while also lacking proper housing, needed clothing, and the basic education required to develop and ultimately find gainful employment. And while I wholeheartedly support the First Lady's new "Let's Move" effort to improve the nutrition of America's children, we must first react to basic hunger rather than to food quality. 30% of the nation's 50 million homeowners own a home whose value is below its mortgage balance, and this number could rise to an almost unbelievable 50% by year-end 2011. It would cost about $745 billion, more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore these borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, which there is no obvious political will to find right now. Despite the truly dismal 'real unemployment' figures with which most everyone now agrees -- a staggering 30 million workers and 19% of the labor force -- very little attention is being paid to the particularly adverse effects the recession is having on people of color, recent immigrants, and out-of school youth. And almost no one is acknowledging the sad reality that even the nation's 130 million full-time workers have had an average economic loss of 15% just since December 2007 -- an average effective work week of 34 hours rather than 40 -- which means that the number of unemployed workers, measured economically, is actually as high as 50 million. The overwhelming problem today for most workers isn't this recession, as horrible as it is -- it's the fact that for every earned income level except the top 10%, average household income hasn't changed a bit for 10 years, and that for the bottom 60% of wage earners it hasn't changed for more than 20 years. Through economic expansions and recessions -- and bull and bear markets -- alike, 90% of workers in America have been standing still earnings-wise. And 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population, are at or below "200% of the federal poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four", which is a needs-measure made lame by the fact that no family of four can actually comfortably live on such a low annual income.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 March 2010 23:57 )
Read more...
NYT columnist peddles ‘post-modern illusions’ and ‘propaganda’ to varnish Bush legacyBy Stephen C. Webster
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 Stanley Fish, author of The New York Times' "Opinionator" column, must have a soft spot for George W. Bush. In a recent piece, he employs just about every argument one could make to varnish the Bush legacy, fishing for proof in what one writer called "post-modern illusions" and citing a recent Newsweek cover that was derided as "propaganda." In reality, few miss George W. Bush, who left office as one of the least popular American presidents in history. Fish knows this too: he took a sampling of comments left on his prior shot at shining up the Bush legacy. Almost all of the readers thought he was nuts. One even asked, "Are you mad?" He said roughly 10 in 300 viewed the former Republican administration favorably. Yet, paragraphs later Fish claims without a scintilla of evidence, "unscientific Web-based polls indicate that more do miss him than don’t." His proof: the March 8, 2010 cover of Newsweek, which proclaims "Victory At Last" in Iraq. The image upon which the offending texts rests is that of Bush, striding off-frame, aboard the aircraft carrier that hosted his infamous "Mission Accomplished" event in 2003. And this, from the magazine that once argued the United States could have won the Vietnam war, if only President Lyndon Johnson had committed more soldiers and more resources sooner. It was enough to make True/Slant writer Michael Hastings wish for a Taser. "My first reaction was to grab the nearest taser, jam it down my throat, pull the trigger, and hope that my bodily fluids would conduct the 10,000 volts of electricity to instantly fry my brain so I wouldn’t have to read the accompanying story," he wrote. "Sadly, I couldn’t find a taser." Instead, he goes on to lash Newsweek for such a "blatant piece of propaganda." "It’s the word victory that I take issue with," Hastings opined. "What, exactly, did we win again? The editors didn’t even have the decency to use the old news magazine trick of ending any wannabe provocative headline with a question mark. (Which would have looked like this:VICTORY AT LAST?)" "Bush’s policies came to seem less obviously reprehensible as the Obama administration drifted into embracing watered-down versions of many of them," Fish wrote. "Guantanamo hasn’t been closed. No Child Left Behind is being revised and perhaps improved, but not repealed. The banks are still engaging in their bad practices. Partisanship is worse than ever. Obama seems about to back away from the decision to try 9/11 defendants in civilian courts, a prospect that led the ACLU to run an ad in Sunday’s Times with the subheading 'Change or more of the same?' Above that question is a series of photographs that shows Obama morphing into guess who — yes, that’s right, George W. Bush." This somehow puts the Bush legacy in a better light, according to Fish. Then again, the same columnist once argued that President Richard Nixon made his way "back from disgrace" by "being smarter than everyone else," and claimed in the same breath that Ronald Reagan's legacy "didn't need rehabilitation." Nixon resigned in disgrace as Congress warily eyed impeachment proceedings over his numerous scandals, including spying on political opponents. Nixon also bears the dubious honor of dramatically escalating the drug war and using the FBI to do his political dirty work. He, like Bush, is one of the most hated presidents in U.S. history; "a crook," by his own denial. "However historians will assess Reagan's responsibility, the record is what it is," Slate reported in 2004. Gathering dust in the news archives are thousands of clippings about the gross influence peddling, bribery, fraud, illegal lobbying and sundry abuses that engulfed the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Justice Department, and the Pentagon, to name a few of the most notorious cases." Not to mention the Iran-Contra affair. A total of 138 Reagan officials were convicted, indicted or investigated during and after the administration's two terms. At his lowest point, President Bush's approval rating was just 20 percent -- the worst rating of any U.S. president in the history of the Gallup polling organization.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 March 2010 22:13 )
Read more...
Manufacturing Consent For Attack On Iran'4-8 Weeks Left for Diplomacy on Iran' By YAAKOV LAPPIN March 09, 2010 "Jerusalem Post " -- Deputy FM says China could replace Iran with energy suppliers like Saudi Arabia. Four to eight weeks remain to test the option of diplomatic engagement as means of stopping Iran’s nuclear program before sanctions will likely be imposed, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told an audience of foreign military officers and government officials in Herzliya on Monday. Speaking to dozens of participants in a terrorism and security program run by the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Ayalon said the “time is not yet lost” to stem Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but added that “it is of the essence.” During a question and answer session at the Interdisciplinary Center’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism, Ayalon warned that Iran could try to sabotage sanctions by inflating international oil prices and raising energy costs for China, which is dependent on Iranian crude oil, and which is a permanent member of the UN security council. At the same time, he added, alternative energy providers to China, like Saudi Arabia, were available. “The only way to stop Iran is through a unified diplomatic position,” Ayalon said. “Iran is a big and vulnerable country, that will use psychological warfare and [the tactic of] divide and conquer. Calling their bluff is the only way,” he added. During his speech, Ayalon said Iran “is the source of instability in the Middle East. For Iran, the nuclear program is not a means but an end.” Addressing attempts by the pro-Palestinian lobby abroad to have senior Israeli army figures and politicians arrested on war crimes charges, Ayalon said, “Terrorism has become sophisticated. It is trying to gain victory by exploiting the legal system. International law is suitable for wars between armies, not for combat between an army and a terrorist organization hiding within a [civilian] population. To win, the legal system must be configured to match the new type of warfare.” Former IDF chief of staff and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe Ya’alon told the audience of two main terrorist fronts, one led by Sunni al-Qaida and the second managed by Shi’ite Iran, which included Hizbullah and Hamas. While the US and its allies were the targets of the former entity, Israel was the main target of the latter, Ya’alon said. He argued that the Iranian-backed axis had access to more weapons and resources than al-Qaida due to the existence of two state sponsors of terrorism in the coalition – Iran and Syria. Ya’alon said added that any future peace agreement with the Palestinians would have to be based on an insistence on an end to terrorism and indoctrination to hatred among schoolchildren. “Without these changes, any peace will be a temporary cease-fire,” he added. Ya’alon described the Goldstone Report as “the most clear example of a new blood libel whose purpose is to deprive Israel from defending itself.” Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former CIA agent Dr. Jay Le Beau, trip leader and instructor of the Marshall Center, addressed the differences in perception of the Iranian threat among western security circles. “I would argue that the US views Iran differently than a lot of European friends and colleagues, primarily due to a history that is particular to us. American security officials... regard Iran as having a long history of rogue state behavior. That was particularly the case at the start of the Islamic Revolution, because it was American hostages who were held and mistreated for a long period of time,” Le Beau said. Administrative Hagiographic Note: Only after deposing the CIA's SHAH !!! And...they were NEVER "waterboarded". Such a CIA twisted hypocrital viewpoint of the brutal truth of historical fact and record.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 March 2010 21:35 )
Read more...
Waterboarding sessions brought detainees ‘close to death’: reportBy Daniel Tencer
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 Update at bottom: Former UK spy chief says US 'misled' allies on torture The waterboarding sessions that terrorist suspects were subjected to during the Bush administration were "administered with meticulous cruelty" and were in part designed so that detainees acted as "guinea pigs" for future interrogation sessions, says an exhaustive new report. The report also shows that the interrogation methods were so harsh that some detainees "simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown." Drawing on numerous documents about the CIA's torture program that have been released over the past year, Mark Benjamin at Salon.com reports that interrogators went to extreme lengths to ensure that detainees were pushed to their physical limits, including feeding the detainees a liquid diet to make them more capable of ingesting large quantities of water, and replacing their water with a saline solution that would keep detainees from dying when they ingested too much water. [T]he CIA forced such massive quantities of water into the mouths and noses of detainees, prisoners inevitably swallowed huge amounts of liquid – enough to conceivably kill them from hyponatremia, a rare but deadly condition in which ingesting enormous quantities of water results in a dangerously low concentration of sodium in the blood.
Benjamin notes that, according to a leaked 2007 report from the Red Cross, doctors were present at the sessions and measured detainees' blood oxygen levels, allowing interrogators to bring detainees "close to death -- but help them from crossing the line." Benjamin reports that the waterboarding sessions were "so excruciating" that some detainees simply decided not to struggle and let themselves drown. "In our limited experience, extensive sustained use of the waterboard can introduce new risks," the article quotes the CIA's Office of Medical Services in a 2003 memo. "Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness." That same memo "seems to say that the detainees subjected to waterboarding were also guinea pigs," Benjamin reports. He cites the last paragraph of that report, which states that "[i]n order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented...." Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent reports that the details of waterboarding revealed in recently released documents back up the claims of Abu Zubaydah, the high-profile terror suspect who was waterboarded 183 times in one month. "It’s one thing for a terrorist to testify to ill treatment," Ackerman writes. "It’s another for CIA documentation to corroborate his account. Clearly Abu Zubaydah was drowned. As Benjamin observes, this is not the “dunking” that Dick Cheney describes. Whatever apologists like Marc Thiessen might say, the people who performed this torture knew full well that they were torturing people like Abu Zubaydah." Benjamin describes the "meticulous cruelty" with which the waterboarding program was carried out. The agency used a gurney "specially designed" to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner's nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing... Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
"The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose," the article quotes Dr. Scott Allen of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights. "They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy. ... This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine."
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 March 2010 20:42 )
Read more...
US forces hold Afghans back to ‘prove’ town safe for Gates visitBy Ron Brynaert
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 The National Security writer for the Associated Press saw through the propaganda, but she apparently decided to run with it anyway. "Defense Secretary Robert Gates, aiming to show progress in the expanded war against insurgents in south Afghanistan, took a brief, heavily guarded walk Tuesday down a rutted street in this scruffy market town where the Taliban lobbed mortars at U.S. forces only weeks ago," Anne Gearan reports for the AP. Now Zad was the scene of first significant military push following President Barack Obama's announcement in early December that he would add 30,000 troops atop 17,000 reinforcements he had already sent into the flagging war. With the additional firepower, Marines moved into Now Zad last December and quickly pushed out Taliban fighters who had seized the town four years ago and forced every civilian to flee. Families that had lived in Now Zad for generations fled their houses with laundry still on the lines, said the top U.S. officer in the district, Marine Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson.
"A few months ago this place was a ghost town, a no-go zone," Gates is quoted as saying. "Now, as I saw for myself, stores are opening, people are returning." After eight paragraphs, the AP reporter notes that "Gates' walk" required "armed guards in front of and behind him and soldiers dressed for battle posted all along his short route." After thirteen paragraphs, Gearan finally observes, "Ironically, to demonstrate that the town is safe enough for Gates to visit, U.S. forces held at bay the very Afghan townspeople Marines fought to bring back." On Monday journalist and historian Gareth Porter wrote about how the media had fallen for the bait "to hype up Marja as the objective of 'Operation Moshtarak' by planting the false impression that it is a good-sized city." For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. It turns out, however, that the picture of Marja presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict. Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley. "It's not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marja a "rural community".
Porter noted that the propaganda campaign had probably been ordered from the top. COIN [counterinsurgency] narrative", according to the Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual as revised under Gen. David Petraeus in 2006. That task is usually done by "higher headquarters" rather than in the field, as the manual notes.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 09 March 2010 20:25 )
Read more...
Real World Ramifications of Cannabis Legalization and Decriminalization
By: Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:16:39 Last week Rhode Island became the fifth state this legislative session to introduce legislation seeking to legalize and regulate the adult use, possession, production, and distribution of non-medical marijuana. Also last week lawmakers in the Hawaii Senate approved legislation seeking to ‘decriminalize’ (replace criminal penalties with civil fines) marijuana possession offenses — a policy reform that now exists in thirteen states. Opponents of such liberalization proposals inevitably argue that any efforts toward decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis will adversely impact the public’s use of marijuana and/or young people’s attitudes toward it. Yet regional data gleaned from around the world consistently demonstrates that the imposition and enforcement of harsh criminal marijuana penalties do not dissuade cannabis use, and moreover, that criminalization is an objectively ineffective public policy. To better educate lawmakers, opinion leaders, and our own constituents of this consistent, comprehensive, and growing body of scientific literature, NORML has authored the following white paper, Real World Ramifications of Cannabis Legalization and Decriminalization. This paper reviews dozens studies that have examined this issue in regions that have either: a) regulated marijuana use and sales for all adults; b) decriminalized the possession of small quantities of marijuana for adults; c) medicalized the use of marijuana to certain authorized individuals; or d) deprioritized the enforcement of marijuana laws. NORML’s paper also proposes general guidelines to govern marijuana use, production, and distribution in a legal, regulated manner. Based on the multi-decade experiences of various states and nations that have enacted various versions of marijuana decriminalization and/or legalization, NORML maintains that: 1. Strict government legalization/regulation of marijuana is unlikely to increase the public’s use of marijuana or significantly influence attitudes. 2. Decriminalization is unlikely to increase the public’s use of marijuana or significantly influence attitudes. 3. Free market legalization of marijuana without strict government restrictions on commercialization and marketing is likely to increase marijuana use among the public; however, given that the United States already has the highest per capita marijuana use rates in the world, this increase is likely to be marginal relative to other nation’s experiences. You can read the entire paper online here. Spread the word… Sources: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3374 Administrative Note: Run from the Cancer Cure - The Rick Simpson Story Hemp a Sustainable Resource Government Hypocrisy
Last Updated ( Monday, 08 March 2010 21:28 )
Rhode Island Lawmakers Introduce State's First Ever Marijuana Legalization Bill 
March 5, 2010 - Providence, RI, USA
House lawmakers on Wednesday for the first time introduced statewide legislation that seeks to legalize the production, distribution, and personal use of marijuana for adults age 21 and older. As introduced, House Bill 7838: The Taxation and Regulation of Marijuana Act, would exempt adults from any statewide criminal or civil penalty for the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana, the not-for-profit transfer of small amounts of marijuana, and/or the cultivation of up to three marijuana plants. The proposal also establishes licensing requirements for the commercial cultivation and distribution of marijuana via retail facilities. Licensed commercial producers will be imposed a $50 per ounce excise tax under the measure. Under current law, the possession of any amount of marijuana is a criminal misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $500 fine. The cultivation or sale of marijuana of any amount of marijuana is classified as a felony offense, punishable by up to 30 years in prison and a $100,000 fine. In February, lawmakers introduced separate legislation – H. 7317 – which seeks to reduce minor marijuana possession offenses to a civil offense punishable by no more than a $150 fine. A special legislative task force is conducting an ongoing review of the state's marijuana policies. The nine-member panel is required to issue its recommendations to the legislature by March 31, 2010. Similar marijuana legalization bills have been debated already this year in California, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Washington. For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at 202-483-5500. For additional information regarding HB 7317, please visit NORML's 'Take Action Center' at: http://capwiz.com/norml2/issues/. Sources: http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=8121
image: file
Last Updated ( Monday, 08 March 2010 20:36 )
The Senate's Lesson About Democracy
Facing a tough primary race, Sen. Michael Bennet is leaving his lethargy behind and mounting a push to use reconciliation to pass a public option for health care. (Photo: Mike Kindig / Colorado Labor Advocate)
by: David Sirota, t r u t h o u t - Op-Ed
Saturday 06 March 2010 When you look past the craziness, chaos and confusion of politics these days, you still find roughly two major schools of thought that aim to explain What's Fundamentally Wrong. The first says America is paralyzed by a political system that is too democratic -- too responsive to citizens' whims. This is the religion of almost everyone in the permanent Washington elite, regardless of party. Its canon mixing paeans to noblesse oblige with shrill authoritarianism is most clearly articulated by high priests like The Washington Post's David Broder and The New York Times' Tom Friedman. The former has said democracy threatens to make "official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion"; the latter dreams of Chinese-style dictatorship. "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages," Friedman recently gushed, adding that the chief "advantage" is the ability of despots to "just impose" policies at the barrel of a gun. By contrast, most people living outside of Washington (i.e., the Rest of Us) see America harmed by a political system that is too undemocratic -- too controlled by moneyed interests, unaccountable lawmakers and a servile press. An organizer friend of mine sums up this view by saying, "The best kind of politician is a nervous politician" -- and the trouble is that gerrymandering, extended terms, incumbent fundraising advantages, obsequious media coverage, lame duck-ness and other travesties make sure few politicians are ever nervous about keeping their jobs. Over the course of history, neither side of this divide has had a full monopoly on truth. But recent moves by three senators teach that, at least at this moment, the Rest of Us are more accurately diagnosing the root problem than our Beltway adversaries. What, for instance, is Sen. Jim Bunning but the personification of unaccountability's downsides? The Kentucky Republican announced in July that he is not seeking re-election. Thus shielded from democratic pressure, he felt free to let his conservative extremism fly with an outrageous attempt this week to block unemployment benefits for thousands of jobless Americans. Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd is Bunning's Democratic analogue. When he was originally planning to face voters in 2010, he was motivated to represent voters' support for stronger financial regulations. For instance, he promised to use his Banking Committee chairmanship to pass a bill constructing a Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) -- one independent of the Federal Reserve, which he rightly said "failed for over 14 years to put an end to the predatory mortgage lending practices that led to the financial crisis." Now, however, Dodd has opted not to run for re-election -- and guess what? He's started working with lobbyists to make sure any CFPA is run by the Fed.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 March 2010 21:26 )
Read more...
Kucinich Forces Congress to Debate Afghanistan
(Photo: SEIU International)
by: Robert Naiman, t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Saturday 06 March 2010 On Thursday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced H. Com Res. 248, a privileged resolution with 16 original cosponsors that will require the House of Representatives to debate whether to continue the war in Afghanistan. Debate on the resolution is expected early next week. Original cosponsors of the Kucinich resolution include John Conyers, Jr. (D-Michigan); Ron Paul (R-Texas); José Serrano (D-New York); Bob Filner (D-California); Lynn Woolsey (D-California); Walter Jones, Jr. (R-North Carolina); Danny Davis (D-Illinois); Barbara Lee (D-California); Michael Capuano (D-Massachusetts); Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona); Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin); Timothy Johnson (R-Illinois); Yvette Clarke (D-New York); Eric Massa (D-New York), Alan Grayson (D-Florida) and Chellie Pingree (D-Maine). The Pentagon doesn't want Congress to debate Afghanistan. The Pentagon wants Congress to fork over $33 billion more to pay for the current military escalation, no questions asked, no restrictions imposed for a withdrawal timetable or an exit strategy. Ideally, from the point of view of the Pentagon, Congress would fork over that money right away, before the coming Kandahar offensive that the $33 billion is supposed to pay for, because you can expect a lot of bad news out of Afghanistan in the form of deaths of American soldiers and Afghan civilians once the Kandahar offensive starts, and it would sure be awkward if all that bad news reached Washington while the $33 billion was hanging fire. So it's a great thing that Kucinich and his 16 allies are forcing Congress to debate the issue, and it would be even better if more Members of Congress would be urged by their constituents to support Kucinich's resolution. That would be a signal to the House leadership that continuation of the open-ended war and occupation is controversial in the House, and the House leadership should not try to ram through $33 billion more for the war on a fast-track without ample opportunity for debate and amendment. Every day the Afghanistan war continues is another day on which the United States government plays Russian roulette with the lives of American soldiers and Afghan civilians. The British government has more urgency than the US government about ending the war - and is more supportive than the US of a political solution to end the conflict - because in Britain there is greater public outcry. If there were greater public and Congressional outcry in the US, we could be more like Britain, and get our government on board the train to a political solution, instead of prolonging the war indefinitely. The first step towards bringing our troops home is for members of Congress to hear from their constituents. Sources: http://www.truthout.org/kucinich-forces-congress-debate-afghanistan57433 Administrative Note: Also an Investigation and discussion about Military Grade Non-Thermite found in ALL samples of the WTC crontrolled demolition and the Washington DC Metro Camera footage that is "classified" for "political" expediance...NOT "National Security". If fact, Constitutionalists can validly argue that KEEPING the information about the Brutal Truth of what happened on September 11, 2001 "Classified" is CONTRARY to our "National Security" since the Constitution requires defense from ALL enemies...especially DOMESTIC ones...which is why we have the right to bear arms and a so-called "free" press.
Last Updated ( Sunday, 07 March 2010 21:09 )
Life in the Gazan "Buffer Zone"
Saber Az-Za'aneen, coordinator of the Local Initiative Committee in Beit Hanoun, speaks at a protest in Gaza's "buffer zone." (Photos: Pam Rasmussen)
by: Pam Rasmussen,
t r u t h o u t Op-Ed
Saturday 06 March 2010 When I wrote last, I was still in Cairo, beginning to lose hope. However, shortly after, a friend at the UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) was miraculously able to get me into Gaza through Israel's Erez Crossing. In a shockingly quick two days, I was in! Among my first activities was this protest.... The Israelis call it the "buffer zone." Gazan NGOs often call it the "hot zone." But to the Palestinians who live near this wide swath of land alongside the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, it is fertile land where their children played and they made a decent living by raising wheat and olives. That is, until Israel declared the land off limits to Palestinians. The so-called "buffer zone" is a military no-go area that extends along the entire northern and eastern Gazan border with Israel,
as well as its southern border with Egypt (known as the Philadelphi Corridor). The creation of a 50-meter-wide buffer zone was agreed to as part of the security arrangements included in an interim Palestinian-Israeli agreement signed in 1995. Following the start of the second Intifada in September 2000, the area of the buffer zone was increased to 150 meters wide. In May 2009, the Israeli military scattered thousands of leaflets warning residents to maintain a distance of at least 300 meters from the border or risk being fired upon. In reality, however, the buffer zone can extend up to two kilometers (1.2 miles) at its widest point in North Gaza. As a result, the area once known as the most bountiful in the Gaza Strip in terms of the families it supported or fed has become a no-man's land - a killing field where Palestinians have been targeted for venturing past the invisible, amorphous demarcation line - or sometimes, for simply being too close and rousing the Israelis' suspicions. Since the end of the Israeli military offensive in January 2009, the UN estimates that five civilians have been killed and 20 injured in incidents involving Israeli gun and tank fire in areas near the buffer zone. Three of the fatalities and at least four of the injured were children. For Saber Az-Za'aneen, a former field worker for a human rights agency and now the full time coordinator of the Local Initiative Committee in Beit Hanoun (in the northern Gaza Strip), it was the deaths of children that drove him to finally fight back. Saber Az-Za'aneen He ticks off the incidents that he says finally made him realize that Palestinians had to overcome their fear and fight back. There were four children walking near the agricultural college (the only one in Gaza and now in ruins) ... another three children tending their sheep ... another three playing in the shadow of their home ... a mother and her four children eating breakfast at their kitchen table. (In the latter case, an Israeli drone killed a suspected resistance fighter, then bombed a nearby house for good measure). Last September, a 14-year-old boy was killed while walking with his father.
Read more...
|
|
