Occupying Hearts and Minds

Occupying Hearts and Minds

Dahr Jamail
30 April 2009 - truthout

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One of the definitions of the word "occupation" is: the action, state, or period of occupying or being occupied by military force. Throughout history, areas or countries occupied by military force have always resisted, and this resistance has caused the occupier to devise more suitable methods of subduing the population of the area being occupied.

The US military has sent shock troops, which also donned helmets and flak jackets - anthropologists, sociologists and social psychologists, with their own troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of 2007, American scholars in these fields were embedding with the military in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a Pentagon program called Human Terrain System (HTS), which evolved shortly thereafter into a $40 million program that embedded four or five person groups of scholars in the aforementioned fields in all 26 US combat brigades that were busily occupying Iraq and Afghanistan.

Two years prior to this, the CIA had quietly started recruiting social scientists by advertising in academic journals, offering salaries of up to $400,000. The military's goals for the HTS was to have them gather and disseminate information about Iraqi and Afghani cultures. These embedded scholars, contracted through companies like CACI International, work in the project that is described by CACI as "designed to improve the gathering, understanding, operational application, and sharing of local population knowledge" among combat teams.

This new form of psychological warfare is deeply disturbing. Throughout my five years of reporting on the occupation of Iraq, when I've asked Iraqis what they feel the most damaging aspect of the occupation is, I have been told that the occupation is "shredding the fabric of Iraqi society and culture."

Anthropology, in particular, has been referred to through history as the "handmaiden of colonialism," thus putting anthropologists, at least those with a moral conscience, on guard against anything that smells like exploitation or oppression of their subjects. Roberto Gonzalez, an associate professor of anthropology at San Jose State University and leading member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, told Time magazine that the militarization of anthropology will cause the field to become "just another weapon ... not a tool for building bridges between peoples." Anthropology has core professional ethics standards that require voluntary, informed consent from subjects, and that anthropologists do no harm. How likely do you think these will be adhered to by the flack-jacket-wearing, gun-toting, embedded anthropologists working directly with regimental combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan?

In an article titled "When Anthropologists Become Counter-Insurgents," published in September 2007, and co-authored with David Price, author of the book "Anthropological Intelligence: The Deployment and Abuse of American Anthropology in the Second World War," Gonzalez and Price wrote:

"Although proponents of this form of applied anthropology claim that culturally informed counter-insurgency work will save lives and win 'hearts and minds,' they have thus far not attempted to provide any evidence of this. Instead, there has been a flurry of non-critical newspaper accounts in publications including the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor that portray these HTS anthropologists as heroically serving their nation without bothering to report on the ethical complications of this work. Missing are discussions of anthropologists' ethical responsibilities to disclose who they are and what they are doing, to gain informed consent, and to not harm those they study. Portraying counter-insurgency operations as social work is naive and historically inaccurate.

"In fact, David Kipp of the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas describes HTS teams as a 'CORDS for the 21st Century'-a reference to the Pentagon's Vietnam-era Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support project. The most infamous product of the CORDS counter-insurgency effort was the Phoenix Program, in which CIA agents collected intelligence information used to 'neutralize' (read assassinate) suspected Viet Cong members. Between 1968 and 1972, more than 26,000 suspected Viet Cong were killed as a result, including many civilians.

"Kipp's comparison of HTS and CORDS begs a series of ethical questions which have gone unanswered. If anthropologists on HTS teams interview Afghans or Iraqis about the intimate details of their lives, what is to prevent combat teams from using the same data to one day 'neutralize' suspected insurgents? What would impede the transfer of data collected by social scientists to commanders planning offensive military campaigns? Where is the line that separates the professional anthropologist from the counter-insurgency technician? Although the answers to these questions are not clear, the history of anthropology should give us pause. During World War II and the Cold War, US military and intelligence agencies tended to use anthropologists' work to help accomplish immediate goals, and discarded all other information that was counter to their beliefs or institutional models."

Adding credence to the points made by Price and Gonzalez is the fact that one of the top ten US defense contractors, Science Applications International Corporation, which has been operating in Iraq since the beginning of the occupation, describes anthropology in its job advertisements as a "counter-insurgency related field."

Marcus Griffin, an anthropology professor, while preparing to deploy to Iraq at part of an HTS team, boasted on his blog, "I cut my hair in a high and tight style and look like a drill sergeant ... I shot very well with the M9 and M4 last week at the range ... Shooting well is important if you are a soldier regardless of whether or not your job requires you to carry a weapon."

Nevertheless, proponents of the program attempt to dismiss any ethical dilemma encountered by the embedded scholars. Montgomery McFate, a Navy anthropologist, described HTS as an effort to anthropologize the military, not militarizing anthropology, told Time, "The more unconventional the adversary, and the further from Western cultural norms, the more we need to understand the society and underlying cultural dynamics."

The program is nothing new, neither for the US empire nor other empires throughout history. As far as the US empire project is concerned, there were two programs from the Vietnam era that involved anthropologists.

Project Camelot, in 1965, organized by US Army intelligence, recruited anthropologists to assess the cultural causes of war and violence. Despite the misleadingly benign sounding name, the project used Chile as a trial run while the CIA was engineering the election of Eduardo Frei as president in 1964 to prevent the election of Socialist leader Salvador Allende.

The second program from that era, known as CORDS (Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support), was formed to coordinate the US civil and military pacification programs in Vietnam. CORDS used anthropological data to map human terrain and identify individuals and groups that the military believed were sympathizers of the Vietcong, who were then targeted for assassination.

It is easy to imagine HTS teams in Iraq being used to exploit existing fault lines between Sunni and Shia, Kurd and Arab, and even differences within each group, in order to invoke the classic divide-to-conquer strategy. For example, the Sahwa (US-created and -backed Sunni militia) clashing with the US-backed Maliki government in Iraq is a classic example of Iraqis being effectively turned against one another so as not to unite against the occupier.

Another example would be the effective creation and exploitation of the myth of sectarianism in Iraq, which has lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and threatens to do so once again.

Documentary filmmaker Jason Coppola is directing and producing a film titled "Justify My War." In the film, an introspective Coppola explores the question of rationalization of the wars being waged by our government, from Wounded Knee to Fallujah. I asked Coppola for his perspective about the ongoing use of anthropologists by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This seems to be the most powerful weapon against indigenous cultures today. Much more powerful than F-16s and M-1 tanks. We see how well it worked against our own indigenous culture. You need to know a people before you decide what can corrupt them, what can be used to confuse, divide and conquer them. The strongest defense against occupation is an undivided, culturally rooted people, but empires don't like that."

Commenting on experiences from his recent trip to Iraq, Coppola adds, "A country can rebuild itself after an invasion, but it is much more difficult to rebuild a culture after it has been invaded. I realized this seeing young girls walking the streets of Sadr City, on their way to school in their traditional hijab carrying their books in a backpack with a blond-haired, blue-eyed Barbie design on it. Confusion is sewn throughout the Iraq occupation, nobody trusts anybody. And as I looked up in Baghdad or Fallujah or Sadr City, and stared at 'Apache' helicopters flying overhead ... I couldn't help but to think - mission accomplished - certainly for the Apache people. But what about the Iraqis? We still don't know."

Price and Gonzalez, along with several other scholars, felt the problem serious enough to have formed the Network of Concerned Anthropologists and drafted a "Pledge of Non-Participation in Counter-Insurgency" to boycott anthropological work in counterinsurgency and direct combat support operations. They took their stand against "work that is covert, work that breaches relations of openness and trust with studied populations, and work that enables the occupation of one country by another."

Similarly, in October 2007, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association issued a statement that warned its members that activities such as involvement in the HTS program are likely to violate the code of ethics. As it should have, for it is impossible to imagine the lethality of a massive conventional military coupled with unconventional scholarship made into a weapon for use in combat, as it is in the ongoing US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of "Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq,". Jamail reported from occupied Iraq for eight months as well as from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last four years.

Bush Getting Even More Unpopular Out Of Office

Bush Getting Even More Unpopular Out Of Office

Megan Slack
04/30/09 - The Huffington Post

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A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that former President Bush's popularity has dropped since he left office.

When he left office in January, 31 percent of American's viewed him positively. That number has now dropped to 26 percent.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is more popular than the past two presidents at this point during their first terms.

According to the poll, 61 percent approve of Obama's job -- that's compared with George W. Bush's 56 percent and Bill Clinton's 52 percent at this same juncture in their presidencies.

Also, 64 percent view Obama favorably versus 23 percent who see him in a negative light -- once again, higher than Bush's and Clinton's scores on this question.

Additionally, 64 percent of Americans also "feel more hopeful about the direction of the country with Obama in office," and a full 59 percent feel he has accomplished a "great deal" or a "fair amount."

Press freedom declining around the world

Press freedom declining around the world: study

Apr 30, 2009 - Agence France Presse

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Press freedom declined around the world last year, deteriorating for the first time in every region, according to a study released by Freedom House.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), meanwhile, unveiled its list of "10 worst countries to be a blogger," naming Myanmar, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Tunisia, China, Turkmenistan and Egypt to its "dishonor roll."

Out of the 195 countries and territories covered in the Freedom House study, 70, or 36 percent, were rated "free," 61 (31 percent), were rated "partly free" and 64 (33 percent) were rated "not free."

Freedom House, which is funded by the US government and private groups and has been conducting an annual study of press freedom since 1980, said that 72 countries were rated free the previous year.

It said that while press freedom had declined in 2008 for the seventh year in a row, last year marked the first time it had deteriorated in every region.

"The journalism profession today is up against the ropes and fighting to stay alive, as pressures from governments, other powerful actors and the global economic crisis take an enormous toll," executive director Jennifer Windsor said.

Freedom House said gains in South Asia and Africa were "overshadowed by a campaign of intimidation targeting independent media, particularly in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East and North Africa."

It said Israel, Italy and Hong Kong slipped from free to partly free status in 2008.

Among the worst-rated states were Belarus, China, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Laos, Libya, Myanmar, North Korea, the Palestinian territories, Rwanda and Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe.

In Asia, Cambodia fell to not free status because of increased violence against journalists, while Hong Kong slipped to partly free as Beijing exerted growing influence over the media.

China's media environment remained "bleak" while media in Taiwan faced assault and growing government pressure.

"China should have had a better record in 2008 and upheld its promise to ensure press freedom during the Olympics, but instead it chose to remain the world's largest repressor of media freedom," said Karin Deutsch Karlekar, managing editor of the study.

South Asia saw improvement in Bangladesh, the Maldives and Pakistan while Sri Lanka and Afghanistan suffered setbacks.

Myanmar also got poor marks from the CPJ.

"With a military government that severely restricts Internet access and imprisons people for years for posting critical material, Burma is the worst place in the world to be a blogger," it said.

Freedom House said the biggest drop in press freedom occurred in Central and Eastern Europe with journalists murdered in Bulgaria and Croatia, assaulted in Bosnia and denied judicial protection in Russia.

The Middle East and North Africa continued to have the lowest level of press freedom.

Restrictions on journalists and official attempts to influence coverage during the Gaza conflict led to Israel's downgrading to partly free status.

Freedom House said press freedom fell in Senegal, Madagascar, Chad, South Africa, Tanzania and others in sub-Saharan Africa while Comoros, Sierra Leone, Angola and Liberia showed improvement.

It said Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala and Nicaragua registered major declines while Guyana regained its free rating and Haiti and Uruguay saw significant improvement. Mexico?s score dropped because of increased violence.

Western Europe boasted the highest level of press freedom although Italy slipped into the partly free category with free speech limited by courts and libel laws and concerns over the concentration of media ownership.

The reports from Freedom House, which was created in 1941 by Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of then US president Franklin Roosevelt, among others, and CPJ were released to coincide with World Press Freedom Day on Sunday.

toons

Georgia candidate for governor says sex with mules, watermelon behind him

Candidate for Georgia governorship says he'd kill his own son to secede

John Byrne
April 30, 2009 - Raw Story

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A longshot Georgia candidate for governor who's already admitted having sex with a mule before finding God says he's ready to sacrifice his own son in an effort to get his state to secede from the union.

Neal Horsley made national headlines when he posted the names, phone numbers and addresses of abortion doctors online. His "Nuremberg Files" website also crossed off the names of doctors as they were killed.

Now he's ready to make new news. In an interview by Dylan Otto Krider published late Wednesday, he indicated he'd kill his own son to dissolve the United States (in an effort to overturn Roe v. Wade).

Asked if he was ready to sacrifice his own son in a national insurrection, Horsley recounts a fight with his son where he almost killed him.

"I was one foot from killing my own son, or hurting him really, really bad," Horsley told Krider. "If he would have attacked me again, I would have stuck him. Or cut him or sliced him or done something to stop him. That's the point, you hypothetical has literally already been worked out with me, and that's what makes me different from the other candidates for Governor. They understand I'm not like no politician they have looked at, ever. I am prepared to do a John Brown. I'm not prepared to do an Abe Lincoln and talk out both sides of my mouth and try to get a majority together. I'm looking for the people who are prepared to go with me and take over the foundry, then set up shop and prepare to fight to the death. I'll do it."

Asked again if he was willing to sacrifice his son, he was even more explicit, telling the interview to read the Bible's Matthew 10.

"Your own family are going to be your greatest enemy because unless you love me more than you love your father, your son, your wife, your daughter, you're not fit to be my disciple," Horsley said. "That's why there's a real rift of estrangement in my family," he says. "I contend this is really about people's ability to believe in God. When it comes to that place, when your're talking about God's plan to protect himself, then the lives of people become, really, almost irrelevant… in the degree that they result in Him being glorified. That's the nature of the truth."

In an earlier television interview with Alan Combs, the would be secessionist said he'd had sex with a mule when he was a child.

"When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule," he said, adding, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually."

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Georgia candidate for governor says sex with mules, watermelon behind him

April 28, 2009 - Examiner.com

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Rude Pundit likes to tell the joke about a man sitting in a bar who says to no one in particular, "A man can spend his life building bridges. Do they call him John the Bridge Builder? No. A man can spend his life raising crops. Do they call him John the Farmer? No. But you screw one goat . . ."

When you're a reporter, you occasionally have to ask uncomfortable questions of someone. In this case, I landed an interview with the Georgia Creator's Rights Party candidate for governor, Neal Horsley, who is running on the secessionist platform. During the course of my research, I stumbled upon the fact that Horsley had screwed a mule. (Horsely originally fessed up in an Esquire article, which was picked up by Alan Colmes.) At that point, the campaign, the crusade, everything else kind of takes a backseat to the fact that he screwed a mule.

How exactly does one go about asking that one? Do you throw that question in at the end of interview, all casual like?

I first learned about Neal Horsley when he sent me an email telling me he had been following my articles on secession and wondered if I could help him get in contact with the head of the Georgia Militia. I told him, sadly, no, but was curious about a link to a website he gave me for his campaign for governor. And then, there was the mule thing, which I'll get to.

He is running on the "nullification platform", which is kind of secessionist lite. Though, looking over his platform, there doesn't appear to be anything lite about it. But we'll get to that later.

Now, about the mule. Here's a snippet of his confession on Alan Colmes:

NH: "Absolutely. I was a fool. When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend is a mule."

AC: "I'm not so sure that that is so."

NH: "You didn't grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?"

AC: "Are you suggesting that everybody who grows up on a farm in Georgia has a mule as a girlfriend?"

NH: It has historically been the case. You people are so far removed from the reality... Welcome to domestic life on the farm..."

Colmes said he thought there were a lot of people in the audience who grew up on farms, are living on farms now, raising kids on farms and "and I don't think they are dating Elsie right now. You know what I'm saying?"

Horsley said, "You experiment with anything that moves when you are growing up sexually. You're naive. You know better than that... If it's warm and it's damp and it vibrates you might in fact have sex with it."

Yep. There was no way we weren't going to ask about that one. It was just a matter of how. We worked in the question somewhat delicately this way: "So, as a candidate for Governor, are you worried about any skeletons in your closet that might get aired in the course of the campaign?"

"No, that's why I'm running for Governor because I don't have any skeletons in my closet," he says. " I've talked about things people would never have talked about. Any skeletons I have, I take them out and rattle them around."

"What kinds of things?" I ask.

Without missing a beat, he says, "You know what you're thinking about has been out there..."

"We're talking about the mule now?"

Yes, he says. The mule.

"A small mule?" I ask.

"No, a full grown mule," he says. "She loved me, though."

We both laugh, but I'm still trying to figure out the logistics. How big is this thing? The size of a horse, he says.

"All I had to do was give her an ear of corn." He laughs again. "She was a [prostitute] mule."

"How did you reach?"

"I don't know... I stood on something. The kicker is, as soon as I was done she pissed all over me. It was embarrassing. I never told anyone that before."

That's right, my friends. This is an Underground exclusive.

Not only that, but Horsley has had sex with men. He was in the Air Force, it was a cold night, yadda, yadda, yadda, he had sex with him, ahem, the way he did the mule. "It was gross," he says.

Really? He hadn't described the mule that way.

"I've [screwed] a watermelon," he says. And that's just for starters. He's had sex with just about everything it's physically possible to have sex with, and some that isn't. "How many times have I masturbated in my life?" he asks. Now he's 65 and orgasm-free for two years (his wife finally divorced him -- too much "drama", she said). "The bottom line is, I never treated it as if it were not a sin."

Good to know.

Now that we got that out of the way, we can talk about his campaign to secede from the Union.

A fleeting glimpse of Sri Lanka's hidden war zone

A fleeting glimpse of Sri Lanka's hidden war zone

David Gray
May 1, 2009 - Reuters UK

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PUTUMATTALAN, Sri Lanka (Reuters) - Getting to the frontline of the Sri Lankan army's war with the Tamil Tigers entailed a hair-rising helicopter trip over the jungle and a bone-jarring ride past scorched homes to the war zone.

Foreign journalists and aid groups have generally been kept away from the area where government troops have battled the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) for months.

On those rare occasions when the government permits a trip to the front, the hazardous journey there and back takes just one day. Yet, as I found out, it could be a world away.

I was among a small group of journalists that took a pre-dawn military flight from Colombo to an airbase near the battle zone where we transferred to helicopters.

To avoid any ground fire, the choppers flew at maximum speed just above the height of the tallest trees, and when I say JUST, I mean scraping the tops of coconut palms.

This fast and furious ride lasted just 30 minutes to the town of Kilinochchi, the Tigers' one-time de facto capital.

From there we traveled in a clunky armored personnel carrier along pot-holed roads that bore testament to the 25-year civil war that has torn apart this Indian Ocean island.

We were thrown around so much as the speeding vehicle hit the craters that I could barely hold my camera up long enough to take photos of the devastation we were passing.

Eventually, I managed to get a few useable frames of a scorched landscape. Every single dwelling was either destroyed or uninhabitable. Burned-out vehicles lined the road. But what was most noticeable was the absence of people. There were simply no civilians anywhere.

RARE PHOTOGRAPHS

After what seemed like hours, but was actually one, we reached the ruined town of Putumattalan where we got into jeeps. The troops escorting us became noticeably nervous. They held their guns at the ready, looking alert and intently into the coconut groves as we passed. We must be close now, I thought.

Eventually we turned a bend in the dirt road and encountered thousands of weary civilians receiving small handouts of food and drink from the soldiers, enough to last them a day or so.

Our military escorts, it seemed, didn't want us around these civilians. After just 5 minutes, we were told to get back into the jeeps as we were headed to the front.

We soon arrived at a place where only days earlier government soldiers had pushed their way through the Tigers' defenses, leading to a mass exodus of civilians.

Smoke billowed from less than a kilometer away where, we were told, troops were still fighting.

Being so close, our escort now numbered almost 100 heavily armed soldiers. We were severely exposed standing on a road that cut a path through the lagoon. Yet for a full 30 minutes, we photographed what we saw around us.

While walking among scattered clothes and rubbish, I found a packet of film negatives that showed mourners at a funeral.

It gave a glimpse of the terrible loss of civilian lives that has taken place out-of-sight of camera lenses and international scrutiny as the government seeks to end the Tigers' fight for an independent homeland for the country's ethnic Tamil minority.

There is no accurate civilian death toll from the fighting, including from being caught in the cross-fire of artillery shells from both sides, but the United Nations has put the number in the tens of thousands. A U.N. working document says 6,432 civilians have been killed since the end of January alone.

Retracing our perilous journey, we reached Colombo a few hours later. In a single day I had been to the front line of a war in a remote area of Sri Lanka usually banned to coverage by foreign reporters.

Exhausted and dripping with sweat, I got to have a hot shower and unwind. But I kept thinking about the people still trapped at the front, enduring the horrors of war in dire conditions and horrendous temperatures, with minimal food, water, medical aid or even shelter.

It seemed strange to be a fleeting visitor to a war zone for just one day when others have had to endure the bitter consequences of the fighting day in and day out for decades.

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David Gray is an Australian photographer who has covered everything from earthquakes, to wars, to major sports events across the Asia-Pacific region. He won Australia's top press photography award last year with his portfolio of 10 images from the Sichuan earthquake in China, the Olympic Games, Tibet and daily life in China. Based in Beijing, he has been on assignment in Sri Lanka for the past few weeks.

Specter Connects With Sea Change

Specter Connects With Sea Change

Kris Maher
MAY 1, 2009 - Wall Street Journal

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Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to switch parties says as much about the transformation of state politics in the swing state of Pennsylvania as it does about Washington.

Pennsylvania has gone from barely blue to solidly blue, in large part because the state's Democratic leadership under Gov. Ed Rendell and Sen. Bob Casey has widened the party's influence and popularity by focusing on local issues like jobs, health care and education -- themes that may be playing well during a time of economic stress.

At the same time, the Republican Party has focused more on national security and tax cuts.

"This state is in major transition," said Terry Madonna, a political scientist at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa. "The moderate base of the Republican Party is defecting, and that has put them in a precarious position in the state."

Across the state, counties that have voted Republican since the Civil War have gone Democrat, while the T-shaped conservative region in the state's rural midsection and north has been aging and losing population. Meanwhile, there has been an influx of people into the more liberal Philadelphia region. Others moving into the northeast part of the state, especially from New Jersey, also tend to vote Democrat.

Since 2004, 200,000 of the state's Republican voters have switched their party affiliation and become Democrats. In 2006, conservative Republican Rick Santorum, who argued that the theory of intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution and whose statements about homosexuality were viewed as intolerant by some voters, was soundly defeated in his bid for a third term by Sen. Casey.

Sen. Specter said his move to the Democratic side came after he assessed his chances for winning re-election in Pennsylvania, following his key vote in favor of President Barack Obama's stimulus package, which angered Republicans and prompted Republican Pat Toomey to declare that he would run in the Senate primary. In 2004, Mr. Toomey, who supports lower taxes and limited government, narrowly lost to Sen. Specter in the party primary.

"I have traveled the state," Sen. Specter said, "and have found that the prospects for winning a Republican primary are bleak."

Sen. Casey said he believes some voters in the state have left the Republican Party because of its "emphasis on ideology even in the face of what I believe are fairly urgent priorities of getting the economy out of the ditch."

Sen. Casey, who is pro-life, said the Democrats also have realized "that if they insist on ideological litmus tests or orthodoxy, then they lose elections." His own father, Bob Casey Sr., who was Pennsylvania's Democratic governor from 1987 to 1995, clashed with the party over his pro-life views.

Michael Barley, a spokesman for the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, said his party doesn't have a litmus test. "We're open to anybody that shares our commitment of less government and less taxes." He said the shift in the past decade from Republicans holding top elected positions to Democrats "typifies how much of a swing state we are. We're going to be back."

One survey last fall of Pennsylvania voters who had switched party affiliation from Republican to Democratic found that two-thirds said the Bush administration's policies were a significant factor in their decision, according to Chris Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.

Elizabeth McCabe, 45 years old, of the Philadelphia suburb of North Wales, switched parties last year over what she described as disappointment with the Bush administration and to support then-Sen. Obama in the state's Democratic primary.

Ms. McCabe, who first registered Republican when she turned 18, said her only hesitation in making the move was her pro-life stance. She approves of President Obama's performance, but said she's not sure if she will vote for Sen. Specter. "I'm disappointed because I think there are some other people who were going to run from the Democratic Party who could have been a better choice."

Another factor in turning Pennsylvania blue, say experts, was the 2002 election of Gov. Rendell, an effective fund-raiser who was also a major campaign force in the 2006 midterm elections. Democrats picked up four Congressional seats in the 2006 midterm elections and one seat last year.

"The short answer to what happened to Pennsylvania is Ed Rendell and his incredible ability to raise money and spend it and energize the Democrats," said William J. Green, a Pittsburgh-based political analyst, who is a Republican.

Meanwhile, a big challenge facing Sen. Specter is winning support from organized labor, which is a major political force in the state. Labor leaders were unhappy with Sen. Specter's decision not to support a key piece of pro-labor legislation known as the Employee Free Choice Act.

"I think it's great that he sees that the direction of the Republican Party is disconnected from the mainstream of the country," said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, which is based in Pittsburgh. But he added that Sen. Specter "still has to be re-educated" on labor-law reform, health care and trade policy.

Diners report seeing Virgin Mary in food griddle

Diners report seeing Virgin Mary in food griddle

April 30, 2009 - AP

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CALEXICO, Calif. – The hottest thing on the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant these days isn't the food — it's the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that a cook says she saw on the griddle.

Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez says more than 100 people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the likeness of the Virgin Mary since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.

Among the awe-struck was a group of masked Mexican wrestlers who arrived Thursday for an exhibition at a nearby swap meet.

One, known as Mr. Tempest, says: "This is amazing. It's a true miracle."

Since the discovery, the griddle has been taken out of service and placed in a shrine in a storage room.

Giant 'Islands' of Garbage Floating in the Ocean

Giant 'Islands' of Garbage Floating in the Ocean, With No Fix in Sight.

Meg White
04/30/2009 - BuzzFlash

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Getting the attention of the daytime TV queen Oprah is the dream scenario for every cause. So after the island of trash floating in the Pacific Ocean made its debut on Oprah's Earth Day episode, one would think we'd already have an army of celebrities out in their yachts, scooping up garbage.

It's been billed as the world's largest landfill, characterized as a three million-ton garbage dump.

To be precise, this mass is not really an island, per se. The garbage itself floats just beneath the surface in a decaying soup that extends many feet below the surface in places. The mass is held together by oceanic currents called gyres. Also known as a trash vortex, this mass of mostly plastic doesn't discriminate. Large pieces mingle in a muck of tiny plastic bits broken down by the sun in a process called photo-degeneration.

To narrow the definition even further, it's not even an it: There may be as many as six of these trash-filled gyres swirling in our oceans. Greenpeace has a fascinating interactive animation showing how coastal garbage interacts with oceanic gyres.

The two best-known gathering points of oceanic trash are the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, collectively known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Floating on either side of Hawaii, the two patches are actually connected by the Subtropical Convergence Zone, or "trash superhighway," as it's described by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This "island" is where flotsam and jetsam meet. An estimated four-fifths of the oceanic debris comes from land sources: litter that is swept by rain or wind from streets as far inland as Iowa to tributaries and beaches. The remainder comes from garbage accidentally lost or deliberately dumped from boats and ship decks.

The dangers of these garbage patches are great in both quantity and quality. Marine animals of all sizes, from zooplankton to whales, mistake the plastic for food. Some organisms become entangled in the mass and die.

The patches also concentrate the most toxic part of plastic trash -- known as persistent organic pollutants, or POPs -- like a sponge, making the garbage itself even more harmful. The island also allows for the spread of invasive species by facilitating "oceanic hitchhikers" that travel from one habitat to another with unprecedented ease.

The remote location of these garbage patches, combined with the constantly-shifting nature of the ocean in general and the gyres specifically, makes determining the size of the garbage patches difficult. Estimates range wildly, from the size of Texas to the size of the continental United States.

Obviously, to combat this problem we need to reduce our plastic use and stop littering. We need to recycle more. This problem needs to be headed off at the source, or else we'll just keep feeding this man-made sea monster. Greenpeace has an excellent, practical list of what ordinary people can do to help stem the tide of this massive problem.

That said, we've been ditching plastic in the natural environment for the last 50 years, and our planet is already overflowing with toxicity. Plastic takes hundreds, sometimes thousands of years to break down. You do the math; I think you'll conclude that we need to do something now about the damage done.

As for the trash that's already there, many throw their hands in the air nihilistically. "There's just too much, and the ocean is just too big," said one expert about the possibility of cleaning up the garbage patches.

I'd posit that the garbage patch problem is too large to allow its continued existence, and the only part its remoteness plays is allowing nations to disavow responsibility by noting international waters statutes. Hell, we're having a hard enough political fight with carbon caps and climate treaties. But we are pursuing them nonetheless. If the political will is there to fight the smoggy Mothra on a global scale, why not soggy Ebirah?

On the home front, NOAA began looking into the possibility of a U.S. attack on Garbage Island a few years ago. According to their Web site, they've been contacted by several companies interested in helping out. They urge caution however, as a great deal of marine life could be destroyed in the process. The agency, in concert with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, does offer grants and other funding opportunities to those with ideas of how to clean up our oceans and local waterways in general.

There are already international efforts underway to remove plastic from the world's oceans. A group in Italy has begun paying fishermen in the Mediterranean (who pull trash out of the sea accidentally in the course of their work, but throw it back overboard as they have no monetary incentive to keep it) to bring back plastic from their expeditions. The group, called Green Ocean, later recycles the plastic. They are working with more than 60 universities and trying to get the attention of the E.U.'s environmental commission.

With the large amount of shipping vessels being docked (at a great price to ship owners and their crews) due to lowered productivity worldwide, now is perhaps the best time to pull together a plan to attack the garbage patch, mirroring what is already being done in Italy.

This is where multinational companies, many of which produce the stuff that populates Trash Island, come in. Can you imagine the goodwill a company like Google could garner by taking on this problem?

I'm not saying it has to be Google. But parts of the planning and execution would fit well into their portfolio, as well as their famous motto. With Google Earth diving into ocean mapping and photography, the company could give the problem a visual dimension.

In reality, it will take many companies cooperating to take on such a challenge. And there's no shortage of global companies who could take this on. Here are a few ideas:

A.P. Moller-Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company, could help haul the trash itself. After all, they boast their environmental foresight is evidenced by their development of the world's first double-hulled tanker to reduce oil spills. They say they want "to do more than what is simply necessary to comply with legislation, recognising [sic] that individual contributions make a difference" in global environmental challenges.

There are thousands of plastic recycling companies that could benefit from this project. Perhaps Nestle, a company that has done its fair share of polluting with its water bottle empire alone, could draw attention to (and expand?) its plastic recycling efforts by participating in the capture and reuse of the garbage patch.

On the manpower front, maybe Celebrity Cruises could donate its new cruise ship (the largest in the world) to an eco-tourism venture. I'd bet that there would be more takers on a heroic trip to battle Garbage Island than you'll find for their Mexican tours of late.

That's where we come in. Though the patch itself is a week's journey from the nearest port, I think it could make for an interesting vacation. Maybe you'll meet Oprah! And hey, why not bring the children along? After all, you're not raising them to be Garbage Patch Kids, are you?

http://blog.buzzflash.com/analysis/739

Churchgoers more likely to back torture

Churchgoers more likely to back torture, survey finds

April 30th, 2009 - CNN.com

.....

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new analysis.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than 6 in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only 4 in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

Now we're supposed to call it H1N1 to protect our pork interests?

An Editor's Post

OK, so there's been a noticeable shift in calling the Swine Flu by it's scientific name of the H1N1 Virus. I guess it's the politically correct thing to do now that both China and Russia have started to refuse our pork exports. I have a hard time buying into this since the science proves that you can't get the virus from processed pork or even a live pig for that matter. This is a virus that mutated, from a pig virus to a human virus. If you're going to catch it, you're going to get it from another human.

I don't mean to make light of the real and somewhat frightening risk of a pandemic breaking out worldwide. Regretfully, the reality of political correctness, political caution and misinformation is there. I'd bet real money that China and Russia's refusal of our exports has way more to do with 1) - Economic opportunism and 2) - Doing something stupid and of no real medical use so their leaders can look like they're doing something in front of their media that gives the appearance of them protecting their citizenry.

The widely publicised use of surgical masks has been getting some attention along with the fact that they don't really do much to protect you from getting H1N1. I would think however, that if you believe you may be infected with the H1N1 virus, wearing a surgical mask might help you from spreading it around. Coughing, sneezing and just breathing in general emits microscopic vapor particles on which the virus can ride along. Touching a surface that has collected these vapor particles and then touching your face, lips, nose or food you're about to consume is how you are most likely to contract it, if you get it at all. This means the best protection is good old hand washing and the use of hand sanitizers.

I think I'll scrub up and have a pork chop.

Yum!

-The Editor

And then Arlen did, and he wont be the last.

An Editor's Post

Who can blame him? It's not as if the mess we're in happened in the last 100 days. Now, right - wingers are trashing a guy they would have bashed their own mothers to defend a couple of days ago. The simple fact is, this one more example of politics overriding policy.

The G"NO"P crowd better get used to the idea of seeing the backs of their members as they walk away from the the hollering idiots. Rush Limbaugh started blasting away within minutes of the announcement and actually said "Take McCain and his daughter with you." Good idea, since Arlen made it clear he would not be an automatic "rubber-stamp" for the Dems.

Much has been made about Arlen's consideration of being able to win again in Pennsylvania as a Republican. Yes, I suppose there is something to that. But the G"NO"P better start thinking about the ads running against their candidates in the next round of elections. We can all expect to hear things that more or less sound like...

While [Republican Politician's name here] made every effort to block any legislation that was presented on [House/Senate] floor to fix the economy, health care, boarder security, [any other significant issue that comes up between now and then], they also provided NO legislative alternatives, NO plans, NO new ideas. Are you sick of "Just Say No"? Then this coming election day, say YES to [new guy's name here].

"Hi, I'm [the new guy] and I say YES to this message."

The ironic thing is, while we will most likely see these ads from Democrats, the greatest damage to the G"NO"P candidates will be done by Republican "up and coming" candidates. You "NO", the ones who want the job but can't get it because they can't get the PAC money, because they won't tow the party line.

-The Editor

The myth of Talibanistan

The myth of Talibanistan

Pepe Escobar
May 1, 2009 - Asia Times

.....

Apocalypse Now. Run for cover. The turbans are coming. This is the state of Pakistan today, according to the current hysteria disseminated by the Barack Obama administration and United States corporate media - from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to The New York Times. Even British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said on the record that Pakistani Talibanistan is a threat to the security of Britain.

But unlike St Petersburg in 1917 or Tehran in late 1978, Islamabad won't fall tomorrow to a turban revolution.

Pakistan is not an ungovernable Somalia. The numbers tell the story. At least 55% of Pakistan's 170 million-strong population are Punjabis. There's no evidence they are about to embrace Talibanistan; they are essentially Shi'ites, Sufis or a mix of both. Around 50 million are Sindhis - faithful followers of the late Benazir Bhutto and her husband, now President Asif Ali Zardari's centrist and overwhelmingly secular Pakistan People's Party. Talibanistan fanatics in these two provinces - amounting to 85% of Pakistan's population, with a heavy concentration of the urban middle class - are an infinitesimal minority.

The Pakistan-based Taliban - subdivided in roughly three major groups, amounting to less than 10,000 fighters with no air force, no Predator drones, no tanks and no heavily weaponized vehicles - are concentrated in the Pashtun tribal areas, in some districts of North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and some very localized, small parts of Punjab.

To believe this rag-tag band could rout the well-equipped, very professional 550,000-strong Pakistani army, the sixth-largest military in the world, which has already met the Indian colossus in battle, is a ludicrous proposition.

Moreover, there's no evidence the Taliban, in Afghanistan or in Pakistan, have any capability to hit a target outside of "Af-Pak"(Afghanistan and Pakistan). That's mythical al-Qaeda's privileged territory. As for the nuclear hysteria of the Taliban being able to crack the Pakistani army codes for the country's nuclear arsenal (most of the Taliban, by the way, are semi-literate), even Obama, at his 100-day news conference, stressed the nuclear arsenal was safe.

Of course, there's a smatter of junior Pashtun army officers who sympathize with the Taliban - as well as significant sections of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But the military institution itself is backed by none other than the American army - with which it has been closely intertwined since the 1970s. Zardari would be a fool to unleash a mass killing of Pakistani Pashtuns; on the contrary, Pashtuns can be very useful for Islamabad's own designs.

Zardari's government this week had to send in troops and the air force to deal with the Buner problem, in the Malakand district of NWFP, which shares a border with Kunar province in Afghanistan and thus is relatively close to US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops. They are fighting less than 500 members of the Tehrik-e Taliban-e Pakistan (TTP). But for the Pakistani army, the possibility of the area joining Talibanistan is a great asset - because this skyrockets Pakistani control of Pashtun southern Afghanistan, ever in accordance to the eternal "strategic depth" doctrine prevailing in Islamabad.

So if Islamabad is not burning tomorrow, why the hysteria? There are several reasons. To start with, what Washington - now under Obama's "Af-Pak" strategy - simply cannot stomach is real democracy and a true civilian government in Islamabad; these would be much more than a threat to "US interests" than the Taliban, whom the Bill Clinton administration was happily wining and dining in the late 1990s.

What Washington may certainly relish is yet another military coup - and sources tell Asia Times Online that former dictator General Pervez Musharraf (Busharraf as he was derisively referred to) is active behind the hysteria scene.

It's crucial to remember that every military coup in Pakistan has been conducted by the army chief of staff. So the man of the hour - and the next few hours, days and months - is discreet General Ashfaq Kiani, Benazir's former army secretary. He is very cozy with US military chief Admiral Mike Mullen, and definitely not a Taliban-hugger.

Moreover, there are canyons of the Pakistani military/security bureaucracy who would love nothing better than to extract even more US dollars from Washington to fight the Pashtun neo-Taliban that they are simultaneously arming to fight the Americans and NATO. It works. Washington is now under a counter-insurgency craze, with the Pentagon eager to teach such tactics to every Pakistani officer in sight.

What is never mentioned by US corporate media is the tremendous social problems Pakistan has to deal with because of the mess in the tribal areas. Islamabad believes that between the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and NWFP, at least 1 million people are now displaced (not to mention badly in need of food aid). FATA's population is around 3.5 million - overwhelmingly poor Pashtun peasants. And obviously war in FATA translates into insecurity and paranoia in the fabled capital of NWFP, Peshawar.

The myth of Talibanistan anyway is just a diversion, a cog in the slow-moving regional big wheel - which in itself is part of the new great game in Eurasia.

During a first stage - let's call it the branding of evil - Washington think-tanks and corporate media hammered non-stop on the "threat of al-Qaeda" to Pakistan and the US. FATA was branded as terrorist central - the most dangerous place in the world where "the terrorists" and an army of suicide bombers were trained and unleashed into Afghanistan to kill the "liberators" of US/NATO.

In the second stage, the new Obama administration accelerated the Predator "hell from above" drone war over Pashtun peasants. Now comes the stage where the soon over 100,000-strong US/NATO troops are depicted as the true liberators of the poor in Af-Pak (and not the "evil" Taliban) - an essential ploy in the new narrative to legitimize Obama's Af-Pak surge.

For all pieces to fall into place, a new uber-bogeyman is needed. And he is TTP leader Baitullah Mehsud, who, curiously, had never been hit by even a fake US drone until, in early March, he made official his allegiance to historic Taliban leader Mullah Omar, "The Shadow" himself, who is said to live undisturbed somewhere around Quetta, in Pakistani Balochistan.

Now there's a US$5 million price on Baitullah's head. The Predators have duly hit the Mehsud family's South Waziristan bases. But - curioser and curioser - not once but twice, the ISI forwarded a detailed dossier of Baitullah's location directly to its cousin, the Central Intelligence Agency. But there was no drone hit.

And maybe there won't be - especially now that a bewildered Zardari government is starting to consider that the previous uber-bogeyman, a certain Osama bin Laden, is no more than a ghost. Drones can incinerate any single Pashtun wedding in sight. But international bogeymen of mystery - Osama, Baitullah, Mullah Omar - star players in the new OCO (overseas contingency operations), formerly GWOT ("global war on terror"), of course deserve star treatment.

.....

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge.

Let's Mess with Texas

Let's Mess with Texas

Richard Reeves
Apr 24, 2009 - Yahoo News

.....

Rush Limbaugh, the entertainer, announced the other day that he was moving out of New York City because New York Gov. David Paterson proposed higher state taxes on the rich. Paterson reacted by saying that if he had known Limbaugh would go, he would have proposed the tax a long time ago.

I had about the same reaction when Texas Gov. Rick Perry began babbling about the Lone Star State seceding from the United States. His rebel yell prompted a scene that may not be remembered as long as the Alamo, but should be. There were a few dozen of Perry's constituents waving "Secede Now" signs in one hand and American flags in the other.

Perry, who had his facts and history all wrong -- practically a given for Texas politicians -- was reacting to his own interpretation of President Obama's stimulus packages. What made him maddest was that the federal plan would have given unemployed Texans more money than the state gives them now. Then he got even madder when Democrats and other Republicans -- Perry is a Republican -- joined together to override his veto of that part of the Obama package of state aid.

"Texas is a unique place," he shouted. No argument there. "When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that."

Wrong! In that respect, Texas is the same as every other state. In fact, if you remember, Texas did secede, or tried to, once before. That was in 1861, The War Between the States and all that.

Perry is not alone. In a quick state poll published by The Dallas Morning News, almost one in five Texans said they would vote for secession if they were given the chance. One of them was that great Texan (and American) Tom DeLay, who brought so much honor to the state during his years in Congress. DeLay praised Perry for upholding Texas "sovereignty." The editor of D Magazine, Wick Allison, complained in an editorial that the national recession was far worse than Dallas' economic problems, and why should relatively prosperous Texans help Americans who did not help them during a local slump in housing prices from 1987 to 1994.

"Now the rest of the country has decided to drag us down with it," wrote Allison. "I find that more than a little irritating."

As for local Democrats, they are having some fun with such talk. Said state representative Jim Dunnam of Waco: "Talk of secession is an attack on our country. It can be nothing else. It is the ultimate anti-American statement."

Both Democrats and newspapers are saying that what Perry is really afraid of is not the United States but only one woman in it, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has been talking about challenging him in the Republican primary for governor next year. He has been calling the lady a "Washington insider," ordinary stuff like that, but now maybe he intends to attack her as "an American." This is a state, after all, that booted its founder, Sam Houston, out of the governor's office because he suggested back in 1861 that it might not be such a good idea to take on the entire United States.

However serious Perry is, maybe the rest of us should take him at his word. Let Texas secede, keep its death sentences and become a buffer state between the drug wars of Mexico and the drug users of the United States. People like me with family in Texas will be bothered by getting visas to visit our own. But, presumably, anyone with half a brain will be heading north. We'll have a whole new illegal immigrant problem, Texans. Well, maybe we'll just have to build another border fence to keep them out.

Actually, what I regret about this messing with Texas is that it's just too late. If it had happened a few years ago, the rest of us, loyal Americans, would have been spared George W. Bush. He would have been president of the Republic of Texas. You can imagine the shape the former state would be in after its pre-emptive invasion of Mexico.

Circle of Blame

Circle of Blame

Ted Rall
April 24, 2009 - Yahoo News

.....

I suppose I should take a bow.

For eight long years (years that passed like centuries for the miserables rotting in cages at Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib and Diego Garcia and Bulgaria and the U.S. Navy's fleet of prison ships) no one cared about torture. Law professors, politicians, and journalists justified it. Even liberals didn't care: there wasn't one major protest march against beating or raping or drowning people to death. Strange but true: the only forces raging against the collective madness that warped the American psyche after 9/11 were human rights organizations and a couple of cartoonists.

The syndicated political cartoonist Matt Bors and I took point, repeatedly ridiculing and ranting about the Bush Administration's torture policies and Americans' tacit tolerance of it in cartoons we knew would be reprinted in only a handful of publications. Editors and readers advised us to "stop obsessing" and "move on." Award committees passed us over in favor of cartoonists who bought Bush's tall tales about WMDs in Iraq. We were blackballed.

At least they didn't shove a flashlight up my ass. That is a favorite interrogation tactic at Gitmo (and Bagram, where Obama plans to send the Gitmo victims next).

Perhaps the declassification of CIA documents revealing that the CIA waterboarded one man 183 times (why not 182? Why not 184?) prompted Americans' newfound distaste for taxpayer-funded dungeons. Maybe it was the juvenile stupidity displayed by Bush's legal eagles: "As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar," one memo said. Because, you know, they don't have caterpillars in the Northwestern Frontier Province.

Whatever the cause, better late than never (though not for the dozens of fathers, brothers and sons murdered in American torture chambers), but things have come full circle. Americans are against torture again. Some Congressmen are calling for investigations into Bush's war crimes. President Obama, forced to backpedal on his infamous inclination to "move forward" rather than compel the CIA's goons to "look over their shoulders" while applying electrodes to the genitals of 14-year-old Afghan boys, seems amenable to throwing the Dirty Half Dozen--the six Bushie lawyers including John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Alberto Gonz‡les--to the tender mercies of a special prosecutor.

My favorite aspect of the discussion involves whether or not torture works. "High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the Al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country," Obama's national intelligence director argued last week. Key suspects "provided much valuable information under less severe treatment, and the harsher handling produced no breakthroughs," countered The New York Times about the newly released documents.

I don't care if torture works. I don't give a damn if torture could reveal a plot that would cost millions of lives. I would rather die in a terrorist attack than live in a society that relies upon torture to protect itself. But what do I know? Maybe I've just been brainwashed by my Christian upbringing.

As I wrote two weeks ago, the Dirty Half Dozen lawyers ought to be prosecuted for constructing an illegal CYA framework to justify heinous acts by government torturers. An attorney who perverts logic and the law as follows is far too dangerous to be allowed to walk among free men: "Although we do not equate a person who voluntarily enters a weight-loss program with a detainee subjected to dietary manipulation as an interrogation technique, we believe that it is relevant that several commercial weight-loss programs available in the United States involve similar or even greater reductions in caloric intake."

An officer of the court who doesn't pack up his office supplies and type up a resignation letter rather than write the following suffers from both psychosis and stupidity: "Although the abdominal slap technique might involve some minor physical pain, it cannot, as you have described it to us, be said to involve even moderate, let alone severe, physical pain or suffering." Do a Google Image search on John Yoo, author of many of the Torture Memos: the pudgy little pig would break down in tears if he ran out of hand lotion.

Jail the lawyers, preferably for life. But don't forget their bosses. As has been amply documented, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld and others personally signed off on specific acts of torture. They ordered the Dirty Half Dozen to draft those memos to provide them with legal cover.

Lawyers don't write law; they interpret it. If a corporate executive relies on bad legal advice, he goes to jail. Hiring a crappy lawyer isn't a defense. Bush and his war council should spend the rest of their lives at Guant‡namo. Since he's continuing Bush's detention policies, so should Obama.

And let's not forget the CIA and military torturers, the so-called little fish. As servicemen learn during training, it is illegal to follow an illegal order. An order to torture or abuse prisoners of war violates U.S. law and international treaty obligations, as well as international law. When given such an order, it is every person's moral and legal obligation to refuse it, even if means facing a court-martial. Everyone involved with torture deserves prosecution, including the physicians and psychologists who sat in on sessions that involved "harsh interrogation techniques."

At the Nuremberg trials that followed World War II, hatemongers like the Jew-baiting newspaper publisher Julius Streicher were prosecuted for promoting racist Nazi ideology. Surely an analogy can be found for right-wing torture fans like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who repeatedly fanned the anti-Muslim hatred that led to our current shame. Even Bill Maher, libertarian-cum-liberal post-ABC firing, was pro-torture after 9/11.

In the end, of course, we are all to blame. It was the American people's moral obligation to rise up as one against a government that carried out torture in our name. Yet we didn't lift a finger. If only there was a prison big enough to hold all of us.

The Clinton Bubble

The Clinton Bubble

Robert Scheer
April 29, 2009 - TruthDig.com

.....

Has Timothy Geithner ever had lunch with a non-megamillionaire who has lost his job or home because of the banking meltdown? I ask that question after reading the list of the treasury secretary's luncheon dates when he was head of the New York Federal Reserve, a list that the government was forced to provide in response to a lawsuit.

During those years when he was supposed to be supervising Wall Street, he supped most often in the top-echelon dining room of some bank or at the home of one of the financial moguls who created the mess that has now bankrupted billions throughout the world. One of his frequent luncheon buddies was Sanford I. Weill, who as chairman of Citigroup lobbied successfully for the reversal of key regulations that dated back to the New Deal era. That change permitted Weill's oligarchy to become "too big to fail."

Another preferred dining companion was Robert Rubin, who as Bill Clinton's treasury secretary pushed through Weill's favored deregulation-a disastrous "reform" that lies at the heart of the current mess-and who went on to become chairman of Citigroup, where he presided over a downfall of the company that required a $45 billion taxpayer bailout. Geithner had worked for Rubin at the Treasury Department, and it was Rubin who got him his job at the New York Fed and hooked him up with Barack Obama.

Geithner has since pushed the Obama administration to approach the banking crisis not in response to the needs of destitute homeowners but rather from the side of the bankers who are seizing their homes. Instead of keeping people in their homes with a freeze on foreclosures, he has rewarded the unscrupulous lenders who conned ordinary folks.

He still wants to give more money to Citigroup, which has just been found woefully short of cash by Treasury's auditors, and has not stopped Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and some other big banks ostensibly under government influence, and indeed sometimes ownership, from recently ending their temporary moratoriums on housing foreclosures. Geithner has been in the forefront of coddling the banks in the hopes that welfare for the rich will trickle down to suffering homeowners, but that has not happened.

As The New York Times revealed this week in a devastating exposé of Geithner's record: "An examination of Mr. Geithner's five years as president of the New York Fed, an era of unbridled and ultimately disastrous risk-taking by the financial industry, shows that he forged unusually close relationships with executives of Wall Street's giant financial institutions. His actions, as a regulator and later a bailout king, often aligned with the industry's interests and desires, according to interviews with financiers, regulators and analysts and a review of Federal Reserve records."

Most revealing was the Times' discovery that Geithner shocked a meeting of top government officials, convened by then-Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson to deal with the financial crisis, when "[h]e proposed asking Congress to give the president broad power to guarantee all the debt in the banking system. ... "

Now I know that the conventional wisdom among Democrats is that the Clintonistas were wildly successful in running the economy when they had their turn, and that Rubin and his protégés Lawrence Summers and Geithner deserve a lot of the credit. But that view is dead wrong. The seeds of the current economic chaos were planted in those years, in which Wall Street lobbyists were given everything they wanted in the way of radical deregulation, and hence was born the madcap world of credit swaps and other unregulated derivatives.

The result was a Clinton bubble, which saw the rise of a new superrich class that vastly skewed income distribution in favor of what was termed the "working rich" by Emmanuel Saez, who deservedly just won the top prize for young economists, the American Economic Association's John Bates Clark Medal. Members of the "working rich" are well represented in the top 1 percent of income "earners," who, according to a study by Saez, "captured about half of the overall economic growth over the period 1993-2006." The record is clear that from the first year of the Clinton reign, the new class of superrich, including many Wall Streeters, benefited as much as the other 99 percent of the nation's population did from the policies that Clinton put in place and George W. Bush accelerated.

To add salt to the wounds of those left out of the bubble, the Clinton administration summarily ended the federal poverty program in the name of a so-called welfare reform that "devolved" programs for the poor to the tender mercy of the states. The meanness derby between the cash-strapped states is on, and the poor, a category that includes a growing number of folks who only recently were judged "middle class," are abandoned.

What is involved here is an extreme case of government-condoned "moral hazard" offering outrageous compensation to the superrich for screwing up royally. Where is the socially conscious Obama we voted for? E-mail him and ask.

.....

Robert Scheer is editor of Truthdig.com and a regular columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle.

What's the deal with Michele Bachmann?

A post by "The Editor"

So the gentlewoman wants to speak out on the CO2 tax. OK, fine. I'm down with that, I don't agree with her position in the least, but it is her job to get up and speak her mind, and present the argument for her and her constituents point of view.

Her recent appointment to the House GOP American Energy Solutions Group is pretty much a wash. Their primary focus is "More oil, and oh yeah, we should try to do something about getting clean energy." Pretty much same crowd that came up with "Drill, Baby, Drill". I guess it's hard to expect anything new from the "hey, let's do more of the same and see if that works" crowd.

Known for occasionally putting her foot in her mouth, she's made a few whoppers in recent months. This one takes the cake, and once again, the media's missing the bigger point. That is, that too often, our politicians are simply pulling stuff out of their butts to say, or simply repeating the party line because it's easier than thinking for yourself, let alone thinking at all.

Here's where things begin to get weird. In her recent speech on the house floor (video below), she goes on and on how CO2 is naturally occurring and therefor, should be left free of regulations. Well, I'm quite sure the IRS isn't knocking on Mother Natures door.



Apparently, no one has ever explained to her that anything in excess, no matter how good or natural, can be detrimental.

Water is a good case in point. In the land of the 15 minute memory span, folks (including the Congresswoman from Minnesota's 6Th District) may have forgotten this story.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now go play it safe and have a beer.

-The Editor

Chasing Ghosts in Afghanistan

Chasing Ghosts in Afghanistan

Katrina vanden Heuvel & Greg Kaufmann
April 27, 2009 - The Nation

.....

There were two important hearings regarding Afghanistan on the Hill last week -- in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and at the Congressional Progressive Caucus' (CPC) third forum examining the war. Both raised critical questions about the current strategy of escalation -- questions Congress should take to heart as it considers the $83 billion war supplemental in coming weeks.

Senator John Kerry -- who as a young Vietnam veteran famously asked the Foreign Relations Committee, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" -- now chaired that same committee's hearing titled "Voice of Veterans of the Afghan War." He said in his opening statement that he "would not compare all of our conflicts to the Vietnam War.... [That] does not mean, however, that there are no parallels between the two wars." The hearing bore out some of those parallels.

There was a diversity of opinion among the four veterans and retired Colonel Andrew Bacevich as to whether sending more troops is the right thing to do. But there was also something they held in common: their connection to this war -- its stakes, costs, and consequences -- is very personal (in the case of Bacevich his personal connection comes not only from having served in Vietnam but also losing his son in Iraq.)

Retired Corporal Rick Reyes was the most vocal of the Afghanistan War veterans in opposing escalation. He spoke of his determination -- and that of his fellow Marines -- to "fight the enemy" following 9/11. But Reyes said that instead they were "sent to fight an enemy we could never see. The entire time we were there, we were chasing ghosts."

Reyes' mission was to "locate and capture suspected members of the Taliban" during nighttime raids. But it was impossible to distinguish between suspected terrorists and the civilian population and "we began creating enemies out of innocent civilians." He told a story of beating a suspected terrorist "to submission" only to discover he was a civilian trying to deliver milk to his kids.

"There were hundreds of incidents like this one," he said. "... Almost 100 percent of the time we would find that suspected terrorists turned out to be innocent civilians."

Reyes called the presence of so many troops "a sign of poor intelligence. With strong intelligence there's no need to occupy the country with [this] massive amount of troops. So we need to strengthen our intelligence, and then plan, and then execute."

He's convinced, in fact, that the escalation will only make the situation worse. "I can almost guarantee you that sending more troops will mean more civilian and US troop casualties, more homes being broken into, more children without food, more women without husbands.... Sending more troops will not make the US safer, it will only build more opposition against us." He concluded with an appeal "on behalf of truth and patriotism to consider carefully and rethink Afghanistan. More troops, more war is not the answer."

Bacevich -- a graduate of West Point and current Boston University faculty member -- also offered compelling testimony on finding an alternative to military force. He drew a parallel to the Vietnam War and President Lyndon Johnson's "tragic failure of imagination, persuading himself that there existed no alternative to a massive US troop commitment."

Bacevich said that if the objective is indeed to ensure that Afghanistan is not a "safe haven" for Al Qaeda, then one example of an alternative to escalation is to "recognize the tribal nature of Afghan politics... and to provide incentives to the tribal chiefs to govern their patch of Earth in ways consistent with our interests. In other words, just don't let Al Qaeda in. And where those incentives don't work then it might be necessary for us to engage in some kind of a punitive action... to eliminate any elements of Al Qaeda." He also spoke of building more "robust defenses" at home, denying terrorist networks financial resources through less dependence on foreign oil, and emphasizing smart police work and intelligence sharing which is more effective and cheaper.

Senator Russ Feingold -- one of the earliest of a growing number of Democrats to question President Obama's policy -- pointed out that increasing the number of troops "may have no lasting positive impact so long as there are safe havens militants in Pakistan.... [it] may further destabilize the situation in Pakistan to the detriment of US national security."

Bacevich agreed. "Even if we could magically wave our wand, and tomorrow have the Afghanistan problem be solved," he said, "...what exactly would we have achieved in a strategic sense...? In many respects the larger problem is in neighboring Pakistan. To invest enormous resources in Afghanistan I think is allowing technical considerations to take precedence over strategic thinking." (A point which seems all the more compelling in light ofrecent events in Pakistan.)

"What about the possibility that an escalation in Afghanistan can actually be more destabilizing to Pakistan?" Sen. Feingold asked. "In other words, in terms of militants spilling back over into that border. Is that a fair concern or not?

"I think it's a very real concern," Bacevich said. "...To some measurable degree, in places like Afghanistan, increasing the US presence actually increases the dimensions of the problem."

Even supporters of President Obama's policy expressed doubt about the prospects for success. Captain Westley Moore said -- even with the escalation -- the number of troops for the mission at hand is still "paltry." (He's right, if one follows General Petraeus' counterinsurgency principles it's been suggested we would need upward of 400,000 troops.) At the CPC forum, Hekmat Karzai, Director of the Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies in Kabul, said: "Counterinsurgency is supposed to be about 80 percent political and 20 percent military... but in Afghanistan we have had over 90 percent of our resources allocated towards military, about 8 percent towards development."

Retired Major General Paul Eaton -- who was charged with rebuilding the Iraqi Armed Forces from 2003-04 and later became an outspoken critic of the Bush Administration -- was also at the CPC forum. He quoted his son's commander in Afghanistan who said, "I don't need any more combat power. I need agriculture experts, I need water engineers, I need doctors, nurses, dentists...."

CPC Policy Advisor Bill Goold posed a critical question as to whether US and NATO forces are widely "viewed as foreign occupiers", and if so, "what military strategy could possibly succeed?"

Clare Lockhart, who served as a UN advisor in Afghanistan during the 2001 Bonn process -- a meeting of Afghans under UN auspices to help the transition to a permanent government and constitution -- said there is indeed "a risk" of the perception of the military as a foreign occupation.

Karzai pointed out that in 2004-05 Afghan support for the international forces was over 80 percent, and that support has now fallen to "the high 40s."

In a dramatic moment, Rep. John Conyers arrived during the forum to make a statement against escalation: "As one who supported the 44th President before nearly everybody else, I want you to understand that my reasons for thinking this is a mistake is not based on the fact that I think I'm smarter than Barack Obama. I think he's the smartest political person in the United States. But I think he's getting some terrible advice. And so I'm here to help straighten that out, because I want him to stay on track.... My first suggestion is that we're making precisely the same mistake that we've been making for six years in Iraq.... [There] is a very suspicious, uneasy feeling among a number of people that this is the beginning of an open-ended situation, that no matter how well tailored it is, no matter how carefully though out it is... we're getting into another hole...."

Conyers is absolutely right. The best thing anyone can do right now to support President Obama is to advise against digging us deeper into what could become a quagmire. Senator Kerry promised more hearings, a thorough vetting of all alternatives, and that the committee will exercise its oversight authority. Let's hope he follows through. Now is also a good time to let your legislators know you are against escalation and that you want to see more hearings that explore alternatives.

As Corporal Reyes suggested, it's time to stop chasing ghosts in Afghanistan.

Let's blame illegal aliens for swine flu!

Let's blame illegal aliens for swine flu!

Arturo Mora
April 29, 2009 - Kansas City Star

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American Hispanics are not exactly shocked that the hard right is using swine flu to once again demonize illegal aliens.

People like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and Neal Boortz, having failed to stir up sufficient xenophobia during the 2008 campaign, are pointing to the outbreak as proof that they were right all along about the immigration issue.

Close the borders, keep out those illegals, and swine flu will not ravage our nation.

Never mind that the globalization many on the right also champion means disease will spread as easily as economic activity.

Never mind that American tourists and businesspeople returning from Mexican visits are as likely carriers of the virus as any illegals. They're instant epidemiologists and know better.

Never mind that the Mexican government recognized the danger relatively quickly and warned the world, despite the horrendous resulting damage to its own economy. Let's blame Mexico anyway.

You'd think the defection of Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter to the Democrats would remind the right of the dangers of conservative extremism to their party's fortunes.

These people are focused on conservative "purity" and conservative "principles" (Xenophobia bordering on racism? Really? Great principles!).

It doesn't matter to them that Republicans lost the entire Southwest in 2008 (except for home-stater John McCain's Arizona), in large part due to Hispanic voters turned off by immigration histrionics.

Ironically, before the hard right attack on illegal immigrants began American Hispanics were by no means monolithic on the issue. They have helped unite Hispanic voters against what they perceive as thinly disguised racism.

I'm not sure what people like Beck achieve for their party, except to help marginalize it and polarize America.

Immigration is a legitimate issue worthy of debate, as is border security and our relationship with Mexico.

Are extreme conservatives so bereft of logic and arguments that their only refuge is scapegoating?

Gun Control Without Gun Laws

Gun Control Without Gun Laws

How Obama can use government procurement regulations to limit gun violence.

Eliot Spitzer and Peter B. Pope
April 29, 2009 - Slate

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Ever since Al Gore lost the presidency in 2000, the national Democratic Party has avoided the issue of gun control. The Obama White House recently made it clear—abandoning a campaign pledge—that it won't push for a legislative ban on the sale of assault weapons. Yet a series of provocative recent events has revived the gun debate: the international tension arising from Mexican drug gangs using guns purchased at American stores, the 10th anniversary of Columbine, and a Supreme Court case invalidating a District of Columbia law prohibiting the possession of guns at home.

Political reality makes even a modest gun law a difficult legislative sell. But if the Obama administration really cares about limiting gun violence, it could pursue a different strategy, one that doesn't involve Congress and isn't likely to provoke a storm of opposition.

Modern government is not only a lawmaker. Indeed, the most effective executive powers may not derive from statutes at all. The government that President Obama oversees is also a gigantic, well-funded procurement agent. And it can—and should—use that power to change American gun policies. Specifically, the government buys lots of guns, for sheriffs, patrol officers, and detectives; for FBI agents, DEA agents, IRS agents, Postal Inspectors, immigration agents, and park rangers; and for soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and spies. The government buys guns by the crate.

What is striking is that the government buys guns from manufacturers who also sell them to criminals—either knowingly or by willfully overlooking the behavior of the retail outlets that the gun companies use as their distribution system. Those of us who were in law enforcement in New York City in the late '80s and early '90s remember how drug dealers pioneered the use of 9-mm guns. We heard over and over from our friends in the police department that they were outgunned, that their service revolvers were no match for semi-automatics in a shootout. So what did the police do? The New York City Police Department finally bought 9-mms, too. It was a classic arms race, with the gun manufacturers in the economically enviable position of selling bigger and better guns to both sides.

This prompts a simple question: Why do we buy guns from companies that permit their products to be sold to bad guys?

In this era of government ownership of financial institutions, we are getting more used to the notion that government as an economic actor can exercise its power in differing ways. After all, firms that received TARP money are subject to a bevy of pay restrictions—wisely constructed or not—and were forced to cancel showy parties and retreats.

If we can use a capital infusion to a bank as an opportunity to control executive compensation and to limit use of private planes, why can't the government use its weight as the largest purchaser of guns from major manufacturers to reward companies that work to keep their products out of criminals' hands? Put another way, if it is too difficult to outlaw bad conduct through statutes, why not pay for good conduct? Why not require vendors to change their behavior if they want our tax dollars?

Just as we now "purchase" good corporate behavior in the financial industry, let it be so with guns. Governors and mayors and federal officials should buy guns from only manufacturers that control their product distribution, from manufacturers that cut off dealers whose guns end up disproportionately in the hands of criminals. In the New York attorney general's office nine years ago, we proposed several ways of constraining gun manufacturers within existing laws. These same proposals could be implemented now. Nongun manufacturers across the nation routinely control how their product is distributed and impose contractual obligations on wholesalers and retailers. Gun companies should have to use a similar approach. They should sell their product through only authorized dealers. And the authorized dealers should have to keep track of how many times they got "trace" inquiries from law enforcement—that is, how many guns they sold were later used by
criminals. Dealers that sold a disproportionate number of "crime guns" would have to fix the problem, something that might be as easy as retraining staff to react to "straw" purchasers who were trying to evade existing laws. Data showing that a high percentage of guns used in crime come from a small subset of dealers suggest that closing these few retailers could have a dramatic impact on access to illegal guns. Likewise, the government could require manufacturers to make a few simple design changes in the interest of safety and tracking: trigger locks, or hidden serial numbers, or a magazine safety disconnect on every pistol.

More fundamentally, companies could be told to stop selling certain types of weapons to the general public. If a manufacturer did not comply with any of the limitations, then it would be excluded from the list of companies with which the government would do business.

In 2000, this idea's time had not come. The government did not so boldly exercise its prerogatives as owner and purchaser. It did not freely insist that companies receiving our tax dollars change their practices—even in fundamental ways—if they wanted our money. Today, of course, this is the way business is done.

If President Obama wants to devise a creative way to limit gun violence, he will use his power as the world's largest consumer to require the cooperation of gun manufacturers. If government cannot legislate the conduct it wants, then it can use market power to buy it. For the money we are spending, we should buy not only guns but some peace from gun violence.

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Eliot Spitzer is the former governor of the state of New York. Peter B. Pope practices law at Arkin Kaplan Rice in New York