I’ll tell you what really pisses me off: The absolute indifference of most Americans to who it is that is screwing them. In the Thursday, May 16th USA Today Money Section, two news items on the front page were ‘connected at birth ‘to why this nation is going down the tubes. On the left of the section lead page, the little blip stated “Once again, a federal judge has ordered Wells Fargo to pay $ 203 million back to customers who paid multiple overdraft fees. And again, Wells Fargo says it will appeal….” On the right side of the same page, the article stated how Warren Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, “raised its stake in banking giant Wells Fargo, which was Berkshire’s top holding at the end of 2012….”  This is the great guru that the Democrats love to quote when he expounds upon how little he is paying in income taxes, and how he should be paying more. Yet, when it comes to making moolah on the backs of the working stiffs that those overdraft bandits at Wells Fargo targeted, the MSNBC, Fox and Tea Party  crowd does not take Buffett to task. Disgusting! Let us fast forward to page 3B of the same USA Today Money section. The article talks about “These 10 California Cities could be next in bankruptcy “. The city of Atwater (broke) got unions to concede and agree to a 5% cut in pay, including police. Fresno cut its workforce by 25% since 2009, and still faces insolvency… and of course more and more cuts in basic services to the public. Oakland has, since 2008, eliminated 16% of its workforce, or 720 jobs, while “reducing pay and giving workers unpaid furloughs “(duh, it’s called being LAID OFF). The high tech haven of San Jose, Americas 10th largest city, has had 11 consecutive fund deficits and a ...

 I was searching around the internet for the full video of the recent hearing on the Authorization of Military Force where Pentagon officials said the “war on terror” would last another 10-20 years and claimed powers beyond the constitutional requirements set under the War Powers Clause and elsewhere. Eventually, I watched the video on Democracy Now! and another one on The Pentagon Channel which just happens to be run by the Pentagon. The videos were very different as one was propagandistic and another was not at all. That is what inspired me to write this article. Usually when propaganda is talked about it is either emanating from the corporate mass media, covert operations or otherwise. But with the recent changes to the Smith–Mundt Act, which specifies which global audiences will receive US propaganda officially called "public diplomacy," the dissemination ban on distributing this information domestically was eliminated. Those outlets affected by this act and other similar ones must be discussed. The reason for this, is that information from such government outlets is either white or gray propaganda. Wikipedia on their page titled CIA influence on public opinion they write that: "white [propaganda] is acknowledged as an official statement or act of the U.S. Government, or emanates from a source associated closely enough with the U.S. Government to reflect an official viewpoint. The information is true and factual. It also includes all output identified as coming from U.S. official sources." However, there is likelihood that some of the outlets are spreading gray propaganda or when “the true source (U.S. Government) is not revealed to the target audience. The activity engaged in plausibly appears to emanate from a non-official American source, or an indigenous, non-hostile ...

 I - Who Is Alan Hart? Alan Hart is an author and a journalist. He is the former Middle East Chief Correspondent for Britain’s Independent Television News and a former BBC Panorama presenter whose beat was the Middle East. He has written a number of books, including Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? (1984) and the three-volume  Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews (2009-2010). He is also a longtime activist for various causes, particularly his three-decade struggle on behalf of justice for the Palestinian people. II - Alan Hart Resigns On April 25 Alan Hart, the activist for Palestine, literally turned in his resignation letter. In it he states, “I am withdrawing from the battlefield of the war for the truth of history as it relates to making and sustaining of the conflict in and over Palestine.” Why did he do this? In Hart’s opinion, the struggle for justice in Palestine is “mission impossible.” The information/propaganda war between Zionists and those, such as himself, supporting the Palestinians (which, in any case, had always been “the most asymmetric of all information wars”) is lost. He notes that the Western media still follow a Zionist line and asserts that most of the Western populations remain either pro-Israel or indifferent to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Hart blames this alleged Zionist victory in the propaganda war on a lack of financial support for those trying to write and speak out for Palestinian justice, and contrasts their plight to the situation of the Zionist writers and advocates, who enjoy almost unlimited funds. Hart feels it ...

On May 8, 2013, Natalie Prescott, a well-known personal injury attorney based in California, was able to attain an excellent decree for her client who suffered injuries in a rear end motor vehicle accident. This legal suit witnessed the participation of two motor vehicle accident attorneys in San Diego and was highly contended. It resulted in a high jury decree. Cross Prescott APC is one of the popular personal injury firms in the city of San Diego which deals with automobile accident claims and personal injury. They were satisfied with the verdict of the jury to grant $260,000 as compensation to their client. As laid down by the records submitted to the jury, the complainant was hit by a car near a red signal and as a consequence of this collision, experienced severe injuries. Subsequently, the trial went on for a period of seven days and the analysis and presentation went on for one day. The jury passed a decree in support of their client. It was an extremely competitive case which necessitated the evidence of eight professional eyewitnesses and many physicians along with healthcare services providers. Ultimately, the personal injury lawyers of Cross Prescott APC were able to convince the jury that the neck pain, back pain, and rotator cuff wound of the affected person were solely associated with the road mishap. Natalie Prescott, who is a famous personal injury lawyer carrying out practices in San Diego, took up this lawsuit in getting a good judgment with another esteemed lawyer based in California. The number of this lawsuit is 00093805-CU-PA-CTL and the filing was done in the San Diego Superior Court. As furnished by the court records, the respondent was careless and inadvertent towards the street while he struck his car with the automobile of the complainant. Once the jury examined all the witnesses and listened to the analysis of the lawyers, they made a decision to grant all kinds of compensation for which the ...

 Ten Thousand Men of Harvard want victory todayFor they know that o'er old EliFair Harvard holds sway.So then we'll conquer all old Eli's men,And when the game ends we'll sing again:Ten thousand men of Harvard gained vict'ry today."Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" Harvard's fight songEnter Jason Richwine, a reputed Harvard-trained Ph. D, now experiencing his 15 minutes of infamy. Surely, as fervently as a New England Congregationalist might, folks associated with Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) hope Richwine's notoriety quickly fades. You see, his debut on the national stage via the right-wing nut factory The Heritage Foundation will likely result in a nasty bit of paper shuffling and Committees of Excuse Us at the Big Crimson. Why? Well, for starters, Mr. Richwine is a racist. And a rather stupid racist, which is a stretch. Moreover, he's considered smart by the same people who consider Newt Gingrich an intellectual. People like Heritage Foundation brainiacs, and apparently HKS, which awarded him his doctorate in Public Policy in 2009.Richwine, now (still) a Heritage Senior Policy Analyst, Empirical Studies, was co-author (with Robert Rector) of The Heritage Foundation's just released immigration screed, The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer ( if you care to read it). It delivered all the usual Heritage Foundation humbug and right-wing hyperbole, and then some. "Then some" being Mr. Richwine's Harvard Ph. D dissertation, IQ and Immigration (

 The relevant life policy can be regarded as one of the best things that has happened to the directors of small companies, who want to provide for a death-in-service benefit for their employees. We will learn more about that as we progress through the article. At first, let us find out about the basic features of the policy: Many of us do not know how does relevant life insurance work. Thus let us learn more about it:

• It is a special type of cover that can be secured by the employers who want to establish death-in-service benefits for the company employees
• However, the company in question must have at least 5 employees
• This type of cover is appropriate for organizations that are not eligible for a registered group life scheme
• The cover stops to provide protection as soon as the client reaches his 75th birthday
• The cover does not have a surrender value
• The payouts are made after the employee is dead through a discretionary trust established by the company

Now that you are considerably acquainted with the features of relevant life cover, let us discuss the various benefits offered  by the policy. Benefits of relevant life insurance Earlier, when shareholders wanted to obtain a life insurance cover, they either had to do it from their post-tax incomes or else had to pay out from the company's account. These premiums, in turn, were also subject to serious tax restrictions. The biggest advantage of relevant life cover is that the premiums are disbursed in a tax-efficient manner from the company's account. Here is a lowdown on the tax benefits of the ...

   PART I - Richard Falk Tells the Truth Shortly after the 15 April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian territories, published an analysis of the episode entitled “A Commentary on the Marathon Murders.” In this analysis Falk pointed out that there are “serious deficiencies in how the U.S. sees itself in the world. We should be worried by the taboo  . . . imposed on any type of self-scrutiny  [of U.S. foreign policy] by either the political leadership or the mainstream media.” This taboo essentially blinds us to the reality of our situation. Falk continues, “The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. . . . Especially if there is no disposition to rethink U.S. relations with others . . . starting with the Middle East.” It seems obvious that if Washington wants to prevent future attacks, it is not enough to  pursue alleged terrorists and beef up “homeland security.” It seems logical that one needs to also perform a foreign policy review, preferably in a public manner, to determine if any American policies or behaviors are unnecessarily provoking animosity. For instance, will continued unqualified U.S. support of Israeli oppression of  Palestinians increase or decrease future violent anti-American episodes at home or abroad? Yet, this critical aspect of any response to terrorism has apparently never been performed. As regards the administration of George W. Bush, this comes ...

 [Note: This paper was presented to the World Future Society General Assembly in Washington D.C. in April 1975 and published in the Spring of 1976 in The Renaissance Universal Journal. No attempt has been made to update it to reflect the now more enlightened way of expressing gender, nor to include new issues such as the global economy, immigration etc. What has been added are some observations brought about by the recession/depression that made its debut in 2008. See addendum at the end. ******* In America today several revolutions (sexual, technological, social, economic and work) seem to be occurring at once. Perhaps the revolution occurring in work presents more difficult adaptation problems than any other revolution. Consequently, there is need for a new work ethic—for a new philosophy of work. This piece will look at some of the current philosophy and suggest a new direction for the development of a future philosophy. Work, as used here, means the production of goods and services by human effort. There was a time in America when the labor of every able-bodied person was needed. The very survival of the new nation was dependent upon the maximum production of each individual. The philosophy that virtue was inherent in work was well suited to the economic and social demands of the time. The usefulness of this philosophy was destroyed, however, by the burst of technology following World War II. In our anxiety about the burst we reinforced the old philosophy and declared a moratorium on developing a new one. We reinforced the myth that there is virtue in work by our insistence that the government or society provide jobs for everyone. American society still ignores the fact that not all of the workforce is needed to produce an over ...

 Boston Marathon, this thing called terrorism, and the United StatesWhat is it that makes young men, reasonably well educated, in good health and nice looking, with long lives ahead of them, use powerful explosives to murder complete strangers because of political beliefs?I’m speaking about American military personnel of course, on the ground, in the air, or directing drones from an office in Nevada.Do not the survivors of US attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere, and their loved ones, ask such a question?The survivors and loved ones in Boston have their answer – America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.That’s what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber has said in custody, and there’s no reason to doubt that he means it, nor the dozens of others in the past two decades who have carried out terrorist attacks against American targets and expressed anger toward US foreign policy. 1 Both Tsarnaev brothers had expressed such opinions before the attack as well. 2 The Marathon bombing took place just days after a deadly US attack in Afghanistan killed 17 civilians, including 12 children, as but one example of countless similar horrors from recent years. “Oh”, an American says, “but those are accidents. What terrorists do is on purpose. It’s cold-blooded murder.”But if the American military sends out a bombing mission on Monday which kills multiple innocent civilians, and then the military announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” And then on Tuesday the American military sends out a bombing mission which kills multiple innocent civilians, and then the military announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” And then on Wednesday the American military ...

 Alternative finance options like payday cash, same day cash advance, fast loans are becoming popular over these days as the economy is going through an unstable phase. No matter if you run a small health care agency or if you are a medical doctor, all of us are in need of some extra money. After all there are so much to do – pay off those utility and hospital bills, repay the debts that you have already taken, book vacations for family and then again save some cash for the emergencies – phew! And when you need some cash for emergencies, applying for a traditional loan won't help either as the process is very time consuming. If you have a not so good financial report and a bad credit score, even then, there is a solution. bad credit personal loans can serve you out the best. In case you are not so familiar with this type of credit, here are some must-know facts listed below: Get the needed documents ·      Make sure that you are 18 years of age and you have a stable source of income.·      Bring the age proof as well as employment proof with you while applying for the loan, as you will need to submit them. Do your homework ·      Before you apply for a payday credit, do some online research.·      Find out what people say about this type of credit – if they are enough beneficial or not.·      Also check out the interest rates that the different companies are offering.  Make the right ...

 Last night, from Abu Dhabi, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel revealed certain intelligence assessments of Syria's suspected use of chemical weapons against Syrian rebels and civilians, or at least for a moment it seemed like he did:"This morning, the White House delivered -- delivered a letter to several members of Congress on the topic of chemical weapons used in Syria. The letter, which will be made available to you here shortly -- as soon as George gets it, we'll get it to you -- states that the U.S. intelligence community assesses with some degree of varying confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin." [Italics added; for compete text and accompanying story]  We absolutely positively without a scintilla of doubt have some degree of varying confidence. Thus we have an official definitive conclusion that Syria's Assad regime may or may not have used deadly chemical weapons on its own people, perhaps as far as we know.  The White House letter Hagel referenced provided more detail about the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime, and included this: "Given the stakes involved, and what we have learned from our own recent experience, intelligence assessments alone are not sufficient – only credible and corroborated facts that provide us with some degree of certainty will guide our decision-making..."  [Italics added; for ...

 I had an opportunity to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted political asylum since June 2012. Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden over sex allegations, although he has never been charged. Assange believes that if sent to Sweden, he would be put into prison and then sent to the United States, where he is already being investigated for espionage for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military memos on the WikiLeaks website.  George W. Bush’s new presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Texas has opened with great fanfare, including the attendance of Presidents Obama and former Presidents Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton. George Bush has said that the library is “a place to lay out facts.” What facts would you like to see displayed at his library? A good place to start would be laying out the number of deaths caused by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. At Wikileaks, we documented that from 2004-2009, the US had records of over 100,000 individual deaths of Iraqis due to violence unleashed by that invasion, roughly 80% of them civilians. These are the recorded deaths, but many more died. And in Afghanistan, the US recorded about 20,000 deaths from 2004-2010. These would be good facts to include in the presidential library. And perhaps the library could document how people around the world protested against the invasion of Iraq, including the historic February 15, 2003 mobilization of millions of people around the globe. Many people worked hard during the Bush years to protest the wars, but the Bush administration refused to listen. It was very demoralizing for people to think that their ...

On the night of December 2-3, 1984, Union Carbide’s plant in Bhopal India exploded. Approximately 3800 people were immediately killed. At least another 8000 died in the days and weeks following. It was and remains one of the worst industrial disasters on record.Union Carbide bore the brunt of the blame since it owned 50.9% of the plant. The remainder was owned by an Indian subsidiary.The causes of Bhopal have been well documented. Basically, the efforts to stem a financial crisis led to an even worse one.In order to stop the plant from losing money, the decision was made to cut costs. Unfortunately, this resulted in letting go some of the most experienced operators. Other experienced operators who were demoralized left of their own accord. As a result, mainly inexperienced personnel were left to operate the plant. Furthermore, those who remained suffered from increased job pressures. This further lowered morale that was already dangerously low to begin with.In addition, the plant was initially poorly designed. It was also poorly maintained. All of these factors combined to produce a gas explosion when an inexperienced operator opened the wrong valve allowing water into a tank. The resulting chemical reaction produced a dangerous gas, methyl isocynate, which spewed into the surrounding slums that had been allowed by the Indian government to crowd up next to the plant.The surrounding community had not been prepared in any way for a disaster of this kind. All they knew was that the plant produced a kind of fertilizer. If they had been warned of the potential danger, they would have known that since methyl isocynate is heavier than air, the best thing to do was to lie down on the ground with a wet rag covering one’s eyes, nose, and mouth.The explosion that occurred last week in the town of West, Texas does not even begin to approach the enormity of Bhopal. Nonetheless, while the numbers of people ...

This week is Earth Week, and while many are saying “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” we think key topics should be the extraction economy and the corporate-controlled political system that permits destruction of the environment. We live on a finite planet with finite resources and we are seeing the disastrous effects of continuing to extract resources from increasingly difficult and dangerous places. Reducing consumption is important, but greater systemic change that places sustainability and the needs of people and the planet before profits is necessary. Thanks to whistleblowers and the current trial in Louisiana, information about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf is coming to light. Newly released video reveals how BP employees tried to hide the amount of oil that leaked from the deep water well by burning it.  And the chemical used to disperse the oil, Corexit, which has been banned elsewhere, is causing serious symptoms in humans and mutations in sea creatures that were exposed to it. More people are directly experiencing the effects of extraction, transport and processing of oil. In just the past month, there have been 13 oil spills, over a million gallons released into the environment, most of them in the US. The building of oil pipelines for tar sands and hydro-fracking  continues despite protests across the country. Here are a few recent examples among many in Colorado,

 Part I - High Anxiety Americans may assume that public insecurity is a condition you find under dictatorships, where the agents of the state can burst through your door and cart you away without a warrant. That can now happen in the USA too, but only to those the government calls “terrorists.” Perhaps naively, ordinary folks see themselves as immune from that sort of treatment. However, public insecurity has many roots. Americans actually experience, but almost never acknowledge, the fact that there is a correlation between U.S. democracy’s relatively broad array of freedoms and public high anxiety. Here are some of the ways this works: 

• Economic freedom can, theoretically, break down class barriers and open up opportunities for enterprising citizens. It also leaves you free to become abjectly poor and produces a socio-political environment in which ideologically driven leaders hesitate to use the power of the state to solve the consequences of poverty. Being poor is, usually, a high-anxiety state.

• Political freedoms can become lopsided in favor of well-organized special interests with the financial ability to corrupt the political system. It might be that 90% or more of Americans favor reform of the gun laws and would feel safer if there were universal background checks on those purchasing firearms. It does not matter, though, because this majority does not know how to effectively use its political freedom to achieve this end. As a consequence lobby groups that specialize in working the system (such as the National Rifle Association) can easily override the wishes of the majority and, as just happened, arrange for the most innocuous of 

 Can this country do what it takes to reduce gun violence? Let's talk about the issues involved. We'll start with President Obama's proposals. The President's plan includes four points:

1. Closing background check loopholes to keep guns out of dangerous hands
2. Banning military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and taking other common-sense steps to reduce gun violence
3. Making schools safer and
4. Increasing access to mental health services.

I like this. There's some good stuff here. Closing background check loopholes wouldn't have affected Newtown, granted. But it might stop suicides and domestic shootings. And making straw purchases a felony might stop some of the street sales of guns in inner cities. I have mixed feelings about banning assault weapons, but I can get behind banning high-capacity magazines that let someone rip off 150 shots in five minutes. That would definitely help in mass shooting scenarios, like the one in Arizona where the shooting was stopped when the shooter had to stop to change clips. Some people think that stopping gun violence is a gun control issue. I also have mixed feelings about "making schools safer." There is some evidence that school resource officers (SROs), who are supposed to make schools safer, are criminalizing childish behavior and teaching kids to distrust police. But others say this

 This morning I watched on television, the exceptional interfaith service at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. I was impressed by the quality of the speakers. I was impressed by the by the similarity of messages that we must not let the  awareness of our good fortune be dimmed by the violent tragedy of the Boston Marathon.  I find that I am able to forgive the bombers, who in one way or another may have been left out of our good fortune, or found a lens that made Patriots’ Day appear differently to them than to the rest of us. Even though they have maimed and murdered unsuspecting children and families, I am willing to try to forgive their senseless violence. Then I thought of the U.S. Senators who blocked the vote on the bill that would have required background checks for gun buyers. And I cannot forgive them. I have clawed the air trying to find some sort of understanding, some reasonable cause for their disregard of the families of the slaughtered children, the many officials who testified, the agreement of the American people that background checks would be useful in reducing gun violence in our nation. But they blocked the vote. They did not even respect the opinion of the majority of  their peers. In effect they voted for the purchase of weapons by people convicted of violent crimes and by people known to be mentally ill. In effect they voted FOR the continuing slaughter of our people -- including children -- using guns.  U.S. SENATORS!  We can hardly say that they have been disadvantaged in our nation. We can hardly say that their careers have somehow  been blocked by our society. We can hardly say that they fear the National Rifle Association, when the majority of Senators were willing to vote for the background checks, ...

 On Thursday April 11, 2013, The Nation of Change published my blog, “The Banality of Evil Arguments.”  In effect, I argued that evil arguments against reasonable laws for gun control are the last refuge of the scoundrel. Unfortunately, one is never finished in beating back evil arguments. Immediately after the parents of the children who were killed in Newtown met with President Obama and Senators in Washington DC in an attempt to win support for new gun control legislation, the Right-wing began its scurrilous attacks. In the most despicable manner possible, the parents were roundly accused of “politicizing a tragedy.” Listening to the sickening “arguments”—if they can be called that--the following question immediately crossed my mind, “How should the Newtown parents have responded such that they would have satisfied the Right?” The “answers” I came up with constitutes in effect an evil argument. First of all, according to the Right, the parents should have suffered in complete silence! They should not have in any way made a public spectacle of their tragedy. Second, they should have totally accepted the premises and the arguments of the NRA. Thus, Newtown was the act of a single, isolated, deranged individual. In short, there are no such things as “systems effects.” One can have a nation with an average of one gun per a population of 315,000,000 and there will be no spill over effects on violence and public safety in general. In other words, a highly armed society poses no threats. Indeed, it’s safer than one that is not highly armed. The argument continues: background checks and limits on the types of ...

 Amira Hass Part I - Claiming the Right of Resistance Amira Hass is a reporter for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. She reports on Palestinian affairs in the occupied territories and, over the years, has come to understand the Palestinians' plight from their own point of view. On 3 April 2013 Hass wrote an op-ed for her newspaper entitled “The Inner Syntax of Palestinian Stone-Throwing,” in which she wrote, It would make sense for Palestinian schools to give classes in resistance: how to build multiple “tower and stockade” villages; . . . how to behave when army troops enter your homes; . . . how to use a video camera to document the violence of the regime’s representatives; . . . how to identify soldiers who have flung you handcuffed to the floor of a jeep, in order to submit a complaint.  Hass has been writing in this fashion since 1991. She and Gideon Levy, another Haaretz reporter, are among the very small number of Israeli journalists who tell the truth about the Israeli occupation. And, as far as I know, they are the only ones who are regularly translated into English.   In this particular op-ed Hass goes on to contextualize the major resistance practice of Palestinian youth, stone throwing.   Throwing stones is the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule.  Throwing stones is an action as well as a metaphor of resistance. Persecution of stone-throwers, including 8-year-old children, is an inseparable ...

 Reality Irrelevant. The man poised to replace Louis Gohmert (TX-1) as the most galactically loopy Texas representative, 36th Congressional District Congressloon Steve Stockman, is among the more vocal supporters of virtually unlimited 2nd Amendment rights. During February 2013 he invited the public to a meeting where they would learn of the "Fallacy of Gun-Free School Zones." Here's the headline on his invite:Grab free donuts and coffee before Obama grabs your gun!Also during February, Stockman issued this cris du coeur:I whole heartedly (sic) endorse the February 23rd “2-23 Day of Resistance” and urge every gun owner, and everyone concerned about civil rights and peace, to call their member of Congress and urge him or her to oppose all anti-gun legislation.The right of the people to keep and bear arms in an unalienable civil and human right. An armed populace is the reason the United States are (sic) the world’s oldest and most stable (sic) democracy.The purpose of the Second Amendment is clear. Every peaceful person should be able to possess arms without restrictions, reporting or permission to serve as (sic) an unorganized civilian military force to resist violence, oppression or invasion.Nest, reacting to an overwhelming need, he introduced H.R. 577. Among other things, this legislation would provide more 2nd Amendment protection for those unfortunate military ...

 Would you believe that the United States tried to do something that was not nice against Hugo Chávez?Wikileaks has done it again. I guess the US will really have to get tough now with Julian Assange and Bradley Manning.In a secret US cable to the State Department, dated November 9, 2006, and recently published online by WikiLeaks, former US ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, outlines a comprehensive plan to destabilize the government of the late President Hugo Chávez. The cable begins with a Summary:During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of Venezuelan society.USAID/OTI = United States Agency for International Development/Office of Transition Initiatives. The latter is one of the many euphemisms that American diplomats use with each other and the world – They say it means a transition to “democracy”. What it actually means is a transition from the target country adamantly refusing to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs to a country gladly willing (or acceding under pressure) to cooperate with American imperialist grand designs.OTI supports the Freedom House (FH) “Right to Defend Human Rights” program with $1.1 million. Simultaneously through Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), OTI has also provided 22 grants to human rights organizations.Freedom House is one of the oldest US government conduits for transitioning to “democracy”; to a significant extent it equates “democracy” and “human rights” with free enterprise. Development Alternatives ...

In April 17,1775, Boswell recorded one of Samuel Johnson’s most famous lines, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” If he were alive today, I believe that Johnson might well say, “Evil arguments are the first and last refuge of scoundrels.” On the April 9, 2013 edition of the PBS NewsHour, there was a mild debate of sorts between Jim Johnson, Police Chief of Baltimore County, and Lawrence Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The topic was of course background checks for gun owners. Predictably, Johnson was for checks and Keane was against them. Although I’ve heard it many times before, I was particularly shocked by Keane’s use of a particularly insidious argument against background checks. Given that painful interviews with some of the family members who lost loved ones in the tragic Newtown shootings had aired recently on the CBS program 60 Minutes and were thus still fresh, the more I listened to Keane, the more that the phrase “the banality of evil arguments” flashed through my mind. Time and again, Keane argued that if background checks were required before someone could purchase a gun, then it would place an inordinate burden on “small mom and pop gun dealers.” The particular word that Keane used repeatedly to signify the burden that small dealers would face was “inconvenience.” That is, they would be “greatly inconvenienced” by having to fill out all the forms that background checks would require. After all, why should they be required to do the work of the government? If this is not a prime example of an argument that is both evil and banal, then I don’t know what is! As a parent, spouse, relative, or friend of someone that ...

 Part I - Ignorance As a Default Position In 2008 Rick Shenkman, the Editor-in-Chief of the History News Network, published a book entitled Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth about the American Voter (Basic Books). In it he demonstrated, among other things, that most Americans were: (1) ignorant about major international events, (2) knew little about how their own government runs and who runs it, (3) were nonetheless willing to accept government positions and policies even though a moderate amount of critical thought suggested they were bad for the country, and (4) were readily swayed by stereotyping, simplistic solutions, irrational fears, and public relations babble.  Shenkman spent 256 pages documenting these claims, using a great number of polls and surveys from very reputable sources. Indeed, in the end it is hard to argue with his data. So, what can we say about this? One thing that can be said is that this is not an abnormal state of affairs. As has been suggested in prior analyses, ignorance of non-local affairs (often leading to inaccurate assumptions, passive acceptance of authority, and illogical actions) is, in fact, a default position for any population. To put it another way, the majority of any population will pay little or no attention to news stories or government actions that do not appear to impact their lives or the lives of close associates. If something non-local happens that is brought to their attention by the media, they will passively accept government explanations and simplistic solutions.  The ...

New York City’s pioneering effort to moderate the sale of super-sized sodas took a hit this month when a state-court justice blocked a new rule limiting the size of sugary beverages sold for immediate consumption to 16 ounces. One day before the measure was scheduled to take effect, Justice Milton Tingling sided with the beverage industry, frustrating health advocates who are fighting to stem the tide of diabetes and other chronic diseases. Last week, 30 of those groups, including Prevention Institute, submitted an amicus brief in support of the appeal filed by New York City. The brief detailed a number of problems and distortions in the lower court’s decision. Here are four of the biggest flaws in the argument advanced by the beverage industry and accepted by the lower court. Flaw 1: The New York City Board of Health lacked the authority to enact this rule because public health officials are only empowered to control diseases caused by the spread of infection, not chronic conditions caused by products companies sell and people consume. Why It’s a Flop: Local health departments—including New York City’s—have broad legal authority to take action to prevent disease. In the 19th and early 20th centuries when they were granted these powers, the key threats were infections like tuberculosis and cholera and poor hygiene in restaurants and markets. Today the public health threats facing this country ...

 Part I - Something Is Rotten in the State of Israel It is said that the devil has about him the smell of fire and brimstone (sulphur). Evil deeds are often described as “most foul.” On the other hand, people who appear, accurately or not, as always innocent are described as “smelling like roses.” There seems, then, to be a long standing, if improbable, association between behavior and smells.  The Israeli army has recently dedicated itself to demonstrating this association. Back on 6 March 2013 the Middle East Monitor reported that   Israeli forces have sprayed Palestinian homes in the village of Nabi Saleh with Skunk as a punishment for organizing weekly protests against the Apartheid Wall built on occupied land. Human rights watchdog B’Tselem published a video showing Israel’s armored tanker trucks fitted with “water canons” [spraying] the foul fluid.   Skunk is a fluid so offensive smelling that people automatically retreat from anywhere or anyone doused with it.    This is not the first time the Israelis have used such noxious tactics. Zionist settlers are fond of diverting the sewage from their illegal settlements, which are usually placed on high ground,  into the fields and towns of Palestinians living in the ...

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Partiesto leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history.Sir Winston ChurchillSpeech in the House of Commons (January 23, 1948)Yesterday, heeding Winston Churchill's advice, former SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, continued rewriting its history. Or tried to do so. Little needs saying here about how ludicrous his account is, and that of other co-conspirators as well, especially Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. As President, poor Dubya never grasped what happened, to his country, to his legacy, to him. In 2008, taking his leave from the White House, he revealed his "biggest regret" was the "intelligence failure in Iraq," and concluded with this, "I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess." [Italics added] "I guess"? That's as much a baffling thought as it is clueless - he could have received good intel only by, among other things, cashiering Donald Rumsfeld, the man who now, ten years later, demands respect and appreciation.Here's Rummy's Iraq Invasion Day tweet:@RumsfeldOffice10 years ago began the long, difficult work of liberating 25 mil IraqisAll who played a role in history deserve our respect & appreciation.The liberation claim. Well, early on we all knew that "liberating the Iraqi people" was a trivial concern for the likes of Rumsfeld. His consistent callousness about Iraqis after the invasion was proof enough, and the failure to even plan for a ...

 I come to bury Chavez, not to praise him. Barak Obama says he was authoritarian. And the President is an honourable man. John Graham, former ambassador to Venezuela says he couldn’t manage his own economy. And he is an honourable man. Stephen Harper says he was undemocratic. And he is a Right Honourable man. So are they all, all honourable men. And yet … Hugo Chavez gave people free education while others indenture their citizens. He put in place the most robust electoral system in the south. He narrowed the gap between rich and poor even while the gap grows wider in the north. Poverty, infant mortality, public debt—all cut by half. His will, shall I read you his will? It is simple. To the people of Venezuela he gives them their own country’s resources, and the money earned from their extraction. Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar had Marc Antony to rehabilitate his reputation. His Richard III had no one. Shakespeare says the King was a murderer, a usurper, and a twisted tyrant. And Shakespeare was honourable man. But Tudor generals dumped Richard under a Leicester parking lot and Tudor historians heaped upon the ...

 Dear Friends of Peace, Environment and Democracy, When I was a little boy my mother and I went to visit her parents in Palm Beach. It was the middle of the depression.  Developments in the making had been abandoned after the crash of 1929. We came across one such development, only the foundations remained and grass was growing in the streets. And there, right in front of us, was a snake eating a small  rabbit. Snake’s jaws open wide, they inch forward a little at a time, until the larger animal has been swallowed. I don’t remember anything else about that visit, but that nauseating scene of the abandoned development with the snake swallowing the rabbit are engraved in my memory. Today we have something similar. A small group of corporate executives and very rich individuals are devouring our nation, a little bit at a time. Over the last three decades they are gradually swallowing both major parties, the supreme court and the presidency. They operate through a wide variety of  well-funded think tanks and lobbying groups. While some of their money was wasted on failed candidates in the last election, they are making steady progress in taking over many of our government agencies and rendering them useless. They have  managed to impose drastic cutbacks on the government, which make it appear less effective. Tax loopholes and foreign headquarters reduce their tax liabilities and increase their opportunity to accumulate more money and influence. Our “democracy” no longer represents the will or the needs of the people. It is “of, by, and for” big money. One of the most tragic examples of this influence is the failure of our government to do anything substantial to reduce our output of climate-changing greenhouse gasses. Even while people were dying during super storm ...

 Nowadays, it’s awfully expensive to get all your baggage onto an airliner.Unless your name is Bush and the plane is Air Force One.In fact, the mainstream media has a long history of bending over backwards to help handle the Bush family’s substantial pile of baggage. Like a team of personal skycaps, they’ve dutifully stored it in the deep, dark memory hole we call “the past.”Perhaps that is why Jeb “the Smart One” Bush expressed the utmost confidence that, despite a rather disastrous eight years under Brother George, he wouldn’t be weighed down by the Bush name if or when he makes a run at the White House.No doubt, Jeb is counting on the media to handle the baggage.His brother slid right by the media’s security checkpoint in 2000. Drug abuse, de facto draft evasion, National Guard hi-jinx, connections to the Bin Laden family, unbelievable financial “luck” from a failed business, bogus education reform…you name it, the media glossed over it.Nothing seemed to stick in 2004, either. The only carry-on allowed by the gatekeepers was George’s proclamation that he answered to a “higher father,” which wasn’t really considered “baggage” by his ...

 Part I - Bureaucracy The institutions of modern society, including governments, large economic structures, and  military forces, are organized in bureaucratic fashion. A bureaucracy is a form of organization that operates by means of a wide range of closely supervised departments capable of performing specific tasks in efficient ways. This division of labor, or specialization, is carried on according to well-defined rules and regulations. Therefore, the workers in a bureaucracy (i.e., the bureaucrats) perform their tasks within a compartmentalized environment that narrows their focus to the task at hand. Potentially mitigating circumstances that might call into question the task set for the worker, or the rules governing its implementation, are almost always ignored.  The command structure of bureaucracies is hierarchical, or what is called a “vertical pyramid power structure.” This is how Max Weber, the great sociologist, described this topdown arrangement and its consequences: The principles of . . . graded authority mean a firmly ordered system of superiority and subordination in which there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher offices. . . . Rational calculation . . . reduces every worker to a cog in this bureaucratic machine and, seeing himself in this light, he will merely ask how to transform himself into a somewhat bigger cog. . . . [Such an institution’s] specific nature. . . develops the more perfectly the more bureaucracy is dehumanized.

 So I’m asked all the time, what do you do? And here’s the thing. It’s so obvious. We read to babies when they don’t understand what we are saying. We put a map on the walls in kindergartens when they are years away from understanding that the map represents something huge and round they are standing on. Yet we don’t have the table of all the elements their own world is made of, on the wall. A 4 year old can easily understand that the copper in your hand is this square on the periodic table. We can tell them, every single thing on the planet is made up of these things. Then we show them a soda can and then show them the square for Aluminum and tell them, this is the square for aluminum, this can is made of that. But they still won’t understand the map.Science is the only subject where we do this. We don’t hide anything basic and simple in any other subject from children. We show them numbers, we teach them to add which leads to multiplication which leads to exponents which leads to the square root table. But what if we hid math from them then suddenly in 7th grade we said, these are numbers and here’s the square root table. They would see it, fear it and leave it. We teach them progressively so that when we bring them the square root table, it is just another next step from exponents. Why didn’t they have trouble with exponents? Because we taught them multiplication. Why didn’t they have trouble with multiplication? Because we showed them addition. You see?Steps. Yet in science we have it all backward. And do you know that we as a human race have not yet sat back and questioned how and why we teach science the way we do, EVER? Not since Copernicus, or Newton or even the industrial revolution, have we ever stopped to question the reasoning behind the way we present science to the population.Follow me with this. Chemistry is ...

Hugo ChávezI once wrote about Chilean president Salvador Allende:Washington knows no heresy in the Third World but genuine independence. In the case of Salvador Allende independence came clothed in an especially provocative costume – a Marxist constitutionally elected who continued to honor the constitution. This would not do. It shook the very foundation stones upon which the anti-communist tower is built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that “communists” can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population. There could be only one thing worse than a Marxist in power – an elected Marxist in power.There was no one in the entire universe that those who own and run “United States, Inc.” wanted to see dead more than Hugo Chávez. He was worse than Allende. Worse than Fidel Castro. Worse than any world leader not in the American camp because he spoke out in the most forceful terms about US imperialism and its cruelty. Repeatedly. Constantly. Saying things that heads of state are not supposed to say. At the United Nations, on a shockingly personal level about George W. Bush. All over Latin America, as he organized the region into anti-US-Empire blocs.Long-term readers of this report know that I’m not much of a knee-reflex conspiracy theorist. But when someone like Chávez dies at the young age of 58 I have to wonder about the circumstances. Unremitting cancer, intractable respiratory infections, massive heart attack, one after the other … It is well known that during the Cold War, the CIA worked diligently to develop substances that could kill without leaving a trace. I would like to see the Venezuelan government pursue every avenue of investigation in having an autopsy performed.Back in ...

Take a long look at Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. He may be the last of a dying breed.Senator Wyden is a Democrat.He’s not a New Democrat. Or Blue Dog. Or an electorally-adept Reagan Democrat in progressive clothing.Most importantly, he is not a willing functionary of the Corporate Imperium™ that passes itself off as the two-party system.Senator Ron Wyden actually adheres to both the small “d” and the capital “D” versions of the democratic tradition—of protecting civil liberties, preserving the separation of powers and questioning unchecked militarism. These Ghosts of Democrats Past still haunt the dreams of reflexive voters, of party loyalists and of hungry progressives everywhere.But they are ghosts. Faint illusions and lingering specters.Those indelible images of Henry Wallace and RFK, Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern, Paul Wellstone and Robert Byrd, and, hold your breath, the ever-more prescient Jimmy Carter—they are bitter reminders of the Democratic Party we wish we had…and of the party so many still think they are voting for every two and four years.Those ghosts were finally exorcised during Rand Paul’s teachable moment. The drone policy filibuster not only exposed the fading luster of Constitutional guarantees, but it also laid bare the worthlessness of the Democrats as an alternative to the Imperium.Only Senator Wyden came to the floor to speak in defense of due process, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. Only Senator Wyden stood up to the prevailing orthodoxy of his own party and its ...

Cultures can evolve over centuries and once their major parameters are set they have remarkable staying power. The notion that such parameters can be reversed in, say 48 years, is naive at best.  Nonetheless, the presumption that 48 years can eliminate historical racial prejudice in the U.S. South is indeed the basis of the attitudes of a potential majority of the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act.   Part I - The Background The 1965 Voting Rights Act (reauthorized for an additional 25 years by Congress in 2006) requires nine southern states and parts of seven others (including Michigan, New Hampshire and New York) to submit any changes in local voting rules to the Justice Department for prior review.  This was done to prevent voting procedures that discriminate against minority groups.  “The Justice Department has used the pre-clearance requirement, also known as Section 5, to object to more than 2,400 state and local voting changes since 1982.”  One might ask what are the odds that the federal government would raise frivolous and unjustified objections 2,400 times?  Not likely.  Thus, it is fair to conclude that racial discrimination still plays a role in the making of voting rules in many localities.   Why, after 48 years (counting from 1965), would that be so?  A good part of the answer is that a culture of racism shaped the way of life, particularly in the southern United States.  This was only briefly interrupted by the Civil War.  After that war, there followed a period known as

 Six students passed away and several others sustained severe injuries when a school bus belonging to Alhussan International School – catering to the well-to-do expatriates – had an accident today on Jubail Industrial City Highway, in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia.According to local sources, the tragic incident took place at around 2 p.m. when a very fast speeding SUV rammed into the back of the bus while it was heading towards Jubail town to drop the kids off after school. The SUV driver was going around 125 miles per hour when it slammed into the bus. Six kids of different nationalities died instantly at the scene of the incident. Thirteen others were rushed to the local hospital. Five of the kids are reported to have left the hospital, but the remaining injured kids are admitted into the intensive care unit (ICU).According to a local Saudi daily newspaper, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported Saudi Arabia to have the world’s highest number of death tolls from road accidents, which now make up the country’s principal cause of death in adult males aged 16 to 36.Saudis are notoriously known for driving dangerously and for being reckless motorists, going over the specified speed limit with literally nobody stopping them. The Saudi law enforcement is as strict as it can be in terms of religious freedom, freedom of speech, and/or political matters. When it comes to traffic, however, not only common motorists that break the law but also those that oversee it disobey the law, and rarely if ever, do cops take firmer measures against violators.So many lives have been lost due to Saudis reckless driving on the same high and in every other part of the Kingdom. This is a call for the Saudi authorities to practice severe enforcement where needed most and to enforce stricter rules against traffic violators in order to save ...

 Alabama, you gotThe weight on your shouldersThat's breaking your back.Your CadillacHas got a wheel in the ditch And a wheel on the track Neil Young,  AlabamaHarvest (1972)What are you doing Alabama?Yesterday's oral argument did not begin well for Bert W. Rein, Shelby County's lead counsel in the blockbuster Voting Rights Act case, Shelby County v. Holder. The word "gauntlet" comes to mind, an ordeal swiftly doled out by Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg, and Kagan. It was left to Justice Anthony Kennedy to calm the fray a bit. Inevitably, though, Rein fell into the loving arms of the dark eminences, Justices Scalia and Alito (while their brother dark eminence, Justice Thomas, retained his usual oral argument quietude).Nonetheless, the initial four questioners - a literal minority of the Court - sought to undress and uncover an obvious truth: Despite Rein's arguments, and the state's voting rights kicking-and-screaming progress since 1965, on its overall record, Alabama has "a wheel in the ditch and a wheel on the track." Still.Putting aside the legal and practical value of the three Madame Justices' fully unplugged and ...

 Very early in the morning, the historic sit-in was ended. Police swarmed in and arrested all whom were involved. I had been following it all night, even writing an article about it. This political disturbance is in the place one would least expect it: Saudi Arabia. A sworn ally of the United States, the monarchy rules over the people with an iron fist. Amnesty International in a post calling for the release of female prisoners who had participated in demonstrations wrote that “criticism of the state is generally not tolerated in Saudi Arabia. Those who do criticize the government, their policies or practices are often held incommunicado without charge, sometimes in solitary confinement, and denied access to lawyers or the courts to challenge the lawfulness of their detention. Torture or other ill-treatment is frequently used to extract “confessions” from detainees.”This is not the beginning of disturbances in this country. Already back in January 2011, following the shockwave coming from the “Arab Spring,” one man lit himself on fire, beginning mass demonstrations. As I wrote in a post on the Culture of Resistance tumblr blog, “demands throughout have included changes in political and economic conditions, suffrage for women, giving women the right to drive, the release of all political prisoners, taking the Saudi forces out of Bahrain which are participating in crushing the uprising, equality for Shias in the country along with a Constitution and independent legislature in the country’s Eastern Province.” There have been very few concessions to meet these demands, as most of them are just meant to stop further protest, not eliminate the root ...

Officials from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice warned flower and gift shops to remove all red roses from their shelves."They stopped by last night," a florist from the Philippines said. "They gave us warnings and this morning we packed up all the red roses."In Jubail, in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia, the ban was enforced on Wednesday and remained until after Thursday the 14th. The community members – mostly are local citizens – showed frustration and anger. “Why don’t you ban everything red, then? One customer shouted at the florist. “I can see them behind the counter over there. Give me one,” screamed another.The authorities believe celebrating Valentine's Day is against Sharia, the Islamic laws, and encourages relations out of wedlock, which are strictly forbidden.The crackdown has pushed up the price of the flowers on the black market, with some florists making deliveries in the middle of the night, a person who prefers not reveal his identity has confessed.Couples who anticipated the ban placed orders for red roses, red wrapper, and gifts weeks before the deadline. In fact, in the previous years, “they banned selling everything red on Valentine's Day last year,” another customer commented.Saudi Arabia imposes a strict code which prevents unmarried men and women from socializing together. Relations outside marriage are banned and punishable by law.

 Part I - Emotionally Moving Pictures  Some images move us, or at least should move us, to sudden insight into the consequences of our actions. Images of innocent victims of violence, particularly children, should have the capacity to penetrate the most hardened defenses and touch our hearts.  However, the truth is that this does not always occur.  Skewed information environments, operating over time, may condition us to react with compassion only to images depicting the suffering of our own community.   When many of us see the anguish we have caused an “enemy,” we feel not compassion or regret but annoyance. The reaction is:  “Why are you showing me that? Don’t you know it is their (the other’s) own behavior that made us hurt them?  It is their own fault.”  That we react this way to the horrors we are capable of causing is a sure sign that those same actions have dehumanized us.  Part II - The Pictures in Question -- On 15 February 2013, The World Press Photo of the Year 2012 (pasted above) was made public.  The winning image (selected from 103,481 photos submitted by 5,666 photographers from 124 countries) was taken by Swedish photojournalist Paul Hansen, working for the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter.  The photo depicts a funeral procession in the narrow streets of Gaza. Two men, visibly expressing the emotions of anguish and anger, are leading the procession. They are carrying the bodies of two-year old Sahaib Hijazi and her four-year old brother Muhammad. Both children ...

 Oh, m’gosh, we’re fighting the wrong war! The U.S. is now spending billions on  building more military bases in Asia and Africa. While none of these nations has attacked the U.S., we are told that we must defend our “interests.”  As I see it, stamp collecting or golf is an interest;  wanting other nations’ gold, oil or uranium is not an interest,  it is coveting, and you can read about it in the Ten Commandments.  When will we wake to the fact that with our lagging schools, unemployed workers, cutbacks on first responders, stagnant economy and rotting infrastructure, we are in no position to lavish money on building military bases around Asia and Africa to please our tax-evading international corporations? Climate Change is attacking the United States! We have droughts and fires in the West, floods and tornadoes in the Midwest and killer storms in the East. According to the National Climatic Data Center, in the last dozen years, climate change has killed 3,952 American men, women and children. It has destroyed $412 billion in property - not counting Sandy, which is yet to be totaled.  In spite of these terrible losses, we have yet to cut back on our carbon output or to harden our infrastructure to withstand climate attacks. The challenge of reducing our fossil fuel dependency, while increasing our wind, solar and other energies is still largely at the whim  of our fragmented Congress. There is not even a plan to build the new infrastructure needed to transmit alternative energy from the windy plains and burning deserts where it is generated to the industrial and urban areas where it will be needed.  It is ridiculous to be pouring money into being the world’s policeman while our people are dying ...

 "Mr. Mica said of his House colleagues,'They wouldn't vote on a Mother's Day resolutionif it had extra spending on it.'"In August 2012, Mark Thoma, economist and Fellow at the American Century Foundation, commented on the incontrovertible need for U.S. infrastructure investment. He was stunned by Congress's inability to fund it, even though it would surely boost to the general economy, a supposed goal of the GOP:"The first is infrastructure spending. We cannot afford to fall behind the rest of the world in terms of our infrastructure development, but that’s exactly what we are doing. At a time when interest rates are as low as we are likely to see, when labor and other costs are minimal due to lack of demand during the downturn, and when the need is so high, why aren’t we making a massive investment in infrastructure, which is ultimately an investment in our future? There are many, many public investments we could make where the benefits surely exceed the costs – these are things the private sector won’t do on its own even though they are highly valuable to society – so what are we waiting for?Particularly confusing for Thoma - and for most of us - is the Republican blockade of infrastructure spending when, in fact, it betrays their own professed beliefs in supply side economics:"If there’s any policy Republicans ought to be able to support, it’s infrastructure spending. It’s inherently a ...

NOTE: I wrote this and sent it out 2 days before the Academy Awards. The movie did not win Best Picture or Best Director although Daniel Day-Lewis did win Best Actor. I’m satisfied. OK, I'll admit it right up front.  I stopped watching or caring about the Academy Awards/Oscars years ago. Maybe I was just jaded. I'd spent my whole adult career in the ad game and there was something about watching this 2 - 3 hour-long trailer for the movie biz that made me feel er...uh...stoopid - almost as dumb as dropping my hard-earned shekels to go to the auto show. Don't get me wrong. I grew up like most poor, "colored" kids in America. I was as big a sucker for this stuff as anybody else. Bigger. When you're poor, young and black in America, watching, reading and hearing white folks’ half truths, myths and fantasies about themselves is 99% of your "education".  I think I really believed George Washington never told a lie until I heard Malcolm X or H. Rap Brown tell a different version. That was the beginning of my adulthood. But ‘til then, pop culture was all I knew...or wanted to know.  But now I've lived 65 blackyears in America. EurAmerica’s myths and fantasies are not so much fun these days.  Watching the AAs is not a priority. Besides, I'm sure my friends, family and every "news" outlet in the country will make sure I know who won...whether I ask or not. So, at least I give Steven Spielberg's Lincoln credit for one thing. It revived my interest in the event. I’m really in suspense now to know how many Oscars the “Academy” will award this motion picture mess. What does it say ...

 I've been looking at the President's plan to reduce gun violence. There's some good stuff there, but I have lately wondered if there is too much emphasis on mental health. As if mentally ill people are the only ones shooting people. The President's plan, in the section on background checks, says some alarming things. It contains a whole section on mental health care, and it discusses mentally ill people in the section about background checks. The plan uses the euphemism, "dangerous people," to refer to mentally ill people. So now, along with being called nutjobs, maniacs, lunatics, and monsters, we are "dangerous people." The NRA's LaPierre calls for a "national database of the mentally ill." I guess we get put on his list, whether we are "dangerous" or not, just because we happen to be sick. But that's not right. The majority of gun violence isn't attributable to mental illness, so don't blame crazy people for it. There's no word for that except "scapegoating." In an interview, Pamela Hyde, JD, administrator of the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration warns that we must "disconnect the discussion about mental health from the discussion about violence. While there is no question that some people with mental health problems perpetrate violent acts, so do lots and lots and lots of people who don’t have mental health problems."

 Much of the time South Carolina's Senator Lindsey Graham reminds me of a grade school pest, someone you want to swat away. Lately his insistence on "Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi!" was among the more unmoored and perhaps least useful. He strongly vowed to block Chuck Hagel's nomination, partly because of Benghazi, something Hagel had as little connection to as Graham's questioning had to relevance. Yesterday, Graham backed off, and on FOX News Sunday told Chris Wallace he'd support Chuck Hagel because “president deserves great deference in his choice.” HUH? Pest. He does that fairly often.Nonetheless, on immigration reform and a few other issues, in the age of red meat Republicanism, Graham is a bit of a centrist. He's more likely to showcase his wing nut nature these days, like his embarrassing questions during the gun control hearings, because he fears a 2014 re-election challenge by a really red meat candidate, as in Tea Party. Though not a centrist as in pre-Gingrich era centrist, Graham's among the more nearly centrists we have.About the sequester, though, Graham has always been clear in his distaste for it. (“I’ll fight it with every ounce of my being.”) During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Graham answered a Chris Wallace sequester question with this pesky reply, and tries to conflate defense spending wth Obamacare savings:"Well, all I can say is the commander-in-chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk. It is my belief — ...

 The Ring of Fire. It sounds like something out of a Tolkien novel. Welcome to Mordor Ontario, an area of 5,120 square kilometres in the James Bay watershed chock full of nickel, copper, zinc, gold, palladium and chromium—especially chromium (the element at the centre of Erin Brockovich’s crusade).* The Lords of the Ring are some 30 exploration companies, such as KWG and Noront, who have staked over 31,000 claims. Cliffs Natural Resources from Ohio is the principle mining company. They’re after chromium, a vital ingredient in stainless steel. But others are coming in, including the Chinese state-owned Sinocan Resources Corp. The Crown, in this realm, has two heads—Stephen Harper and Kathleen Wynne. Ottawa has responsibility for some environmental oversight through the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and Ontario collects royalties, or will, after the 10-year tax holiday it gives remote mines. In fact, Ontario’s mining tax regime is so generous, compared to other provinces, it amounts to a subsidy. (Throw in the oil sands and the Crown gives more money to mining companies than it spends on First Nations’ health, education and housing.) The federal government’s recent omnibus bills have so severely crippled the Crown’s environmental regulatory muscle that you might as well hang a sign on the north that says “(Ring ...

 Opening my inbox, an unread email reads “It’s official: CISPA is back.” I remember that I signed up for that mailing list of Fight for the Future. I continue to scroll through the message which says the following: “We just got the official word that CISPA is back. CISPA would let corporations share all of your private, personal information with the government... with no restrictions…Congress needs to hear a strong, clear message from Internet users…This email, your love letters, your secrets and private conversations, your search and email history, what you say and do anywhere on the web...All these things could become a part of a government file on you that everyone from the IRS to local police would have access to.” Next the email tells me to sign a petition on cispaisback.com. I do so but with reluctance, realizing that much more needs to be done than just signing a petition by entering my email into a bar or donating to their cause. There is a good graphic describing what CISPA is and how it will affect people in the United States.  Still, it just seems too passive to just sign a petition. In an instant, the words of Anti-Flag’s song calling for  all political prisoners to be released, Mumia's Song, comes to mind where the singers yell that we must “keep hope alive!” So, I decided to write this article because I thought that it could do what the Anti-Flag song recommended that listeners do: inspiring people to fight back, in this case to fight for the internet. For those fighting for free information the future looks bleak. Tuesday President Obama implemented new cybersecurity measures with an executive order. A technology magazine, The Verge, wrote that it opened “the door for ...

Part I -  What’s War? In the halls of Congress and confines of the Oval Office, the perception is that the U.S. is at war with an enemy called al-Qaeda.  Is this actually the case or is the claim an exaggerated piece of propaganda that has conveniently captured the minds of leaders whose abuse of power has become institutionalized? In modern history "war" most often describes a condition of armed conflict between two or more states.  War is also a condition that has a discernible beginning and a definite end.  Your state officially declares war, you take territory, destroy the other state’s army, its government raises a white flag, signs a cease fire or, preferably, a peace treaty, and that’s that.  Sometimes, a national government will want to hide the fact that the nation is at war and, as in the case of the United States in Korea (1950s) or in Vietnam (1960s), it does so through a blatant, but no less effective, bit of propaganda:  in place of a declaration of war it goes about calling its violent behavior a “police action.” In truth, however, these add up to wars waged against other states.  So, at least from the point of view of custom and tradition, not just any category of hostilities can be a "war."  For instance, feuds, vendettas, punitive actions, ethnic violence, tribal hostilities and the like, as bloody as they might be, are not traditionally thought of as wars. Part II -- al-Qaeda and the War Against Terror Unfortunately, the traditional definition of what constitutes a war is changing and not for the better.   Back in 2001 the United States was attacked by a shadowy organization called al-Qaeda.  Al-Qaeda was not a nation nor a government nor a state of any sort.  ...

 Our military spending has more than doubled since 9/11/01. The threat of terrorism has diminished, al Qaeda leadership has been killed off, and there is very little likelihood of any terrorist group mounting another attack on the United States. But in spite of the huge money spent on the wars and the serious weakness in our economy, the military continues to receive more than it requests from the Congress. There is no military entitlement. The word entitlement means the right to something. The Social Security fund is a entitlement because working people and their employers have paid into that fund. If our aging population threatens that fund, the remedy is simple, we raise the ceiling on income that is taxed to compensate for the inflation since the law was established.  Medicare is an insurance which we buy, usually paid from our Social Security. If it is not in balance, it makes sense to adjust the relatively low premiums to solve the problem. The elderly have a right to it because they pay for it. It is remarkably efficient and a lifesaver.  Military expenses are not an entitlement, even though the Congress treats it as almost untouchable. It is paid for by the largest share of our disposable tax income. Its big piece of the budget pie is starving many of our federal agencies, which are loosing effectiveness - to the great joy of the antigovernment, Tea Party Vandals.  Our military expenses are huge. Here’s the estimate of Dave Lindorff in his articleAmerica’s Political Disfunction is Rooted in War Addiction on www.ThisCant’tBeHappening.net “The military budget, on the other hand, could be slashed by 50% and nobody would ...

 As I head west on Chambers Street toward the Court House I hear a huge roar followed by loud chanting ricocheting off the stonewalls of the buildings and I’m elated.   This is amazing, I think.  There must be hundreds of people protesting the NDAA outside 40 Centre Street.  But then I realize the protest is the transit workers school bus strike now in its third week.  I stop to take a few photos and give them a thumbs up before continuing along my route.By the time I reach the 40 Centre Street I’ve already missed Hedges, Ellsberg, Drake, Chomsky and the other notables who’ve already entered the Court House.  What I find are 25 or so activists milling around and a huge group of photographers standing in a line on the opposite side of the sidewalk watching the proceedings along with several police cars and officers.  So much for my dream of a large peoples presence to protest Obama signing the NDAA into law on December 31, 2011 as unsuspecting Americans sipped champagne and sang “Auld Lang Syne.”  Perhaps Obama figured no one would notice and most people didn’t but Chris Hedges did and he filed a lawsuit against Obama and Panetta.Whenever I mention the NDAA most people give me a quizzical look and ask, “What’s that?”  To which I give them the ‘in a nutshell’ answer.  The NDAA stands for the National Defense Authorization Act, which has provisions for the government to use the US military against US citizens and can throw us into prison without due process until the end of hostilities, which in our case of permanent war means forever!   They then look at me and ask, “Are you making this up?”  To which reply, “Google it.”  Let’s be honest who could make this up?  Well, besides some member of the SS.This is why plaintiffs and supporters in the Hedges v. Obama ...

 As I continue to highlight the war in Mali, I realized the need for an update. Putting posters around my campus is raising awareness but it’s not doing much of anything to stop the war. Not much else other action has occurred on my campus. I contacted the ten organizations listed in my last article and only two responded. I can’t find the email I got back from Global Exchange, but I do have the one from Veterans for Peace. According to the email, Vice President, Matt Southworth added onto their statement about AFRICOM that “our best message is that US counterterrorism policies have many negative consequence--some immediate--in Africa. The intervention in Libya, which the US participated in (spending over $1 billion is just a few months) has contributed to fall out in Mali, where the US trained military leaders that then undertook a coup [sic] of the Mali government. US logistical support for the French (and British) in both Libya and Mali represent participation in a war that Congress has not authorized. US support for militant leaders and dictatorial governments in Africa will inevitably backfire, leading to untold blowback. After over a decade of US led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we should take pause to re-evaluate failed US policies, rather than double down on them in countries all over Africa to further undefined ends. Training foreign military leaders, conducting drone strikes and providing logistical support for various interventions by US allies will inevitably prove counterproductive and undermine true US security interests.” Off-campus, an online hacker “breached into the official website of French Ministry of Defense,

 American Foreign Policy – Have our war lovers learned anything?Over the past four decades, of all the reasons people over a certain age have given for their becoming radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the best example of this that you could find. I sometimes think that if the war lovers who run the United States had known of this in advance they might have had serious second thoughts about starting that great historical folly and war crime.At other times, however, I have the thought that our dear war lovers have had 40 years to take this lesson to heart, and during this time what did they do? They did Salvador and Nicaragua, and Angola and Grenada. They did Panama and Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan and Iraq. And in 2012 American President Barack Obama saw fit to declare that the Vietnam War was “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of military history”. 1So, have they learned nothing? When it comes to following international law, is the United States like a failed state? The Somalia of international law? Well, if they were perfectly frank, the war lovers would insist that the purpose of all these interventions, and many others like them, was to keep the atheists out of power – the non-believers in America’s god-given right to rule the world – or to at least make life as difficult as possible for them. And thus the interventions were successful; nothing to apologize for; even the Vietnam War achieved its purpose of preventing that country from becoming a good development option for Asia, a socialist alternative to the capitalist model; precisely the same reason for Washington’s endless hostility toward Cuba in Latin America; and Cuba has indeed inspired numerous atheists and their ...

 One of the reasons why the NRA and rabid gun “enthusiasts” are so effective in getting their ideas across is that they’ve perfected the art of writing bumper stickers. They’ve taken extremely complex ideas and reduced them to half-truths and pithy, easy-to-remember slogans.Why shouldn’t liberals and progressives fight back? Or are we “too pure to sink to the level of communicating effectively with a wider public?”I think the attitude that liberals and progressives are somehow “above” such forms of expression is not only wrong, but “dead wrong!” Pun intended!We do ourselves a great disservice by not communicating our ideas as simply and as forcefully as we can. To do so is not necessarily to debase them. It is to sharpen them.Sadly, I have been unable to find any sites on the Internet that have “bumper stickers for gun control advocates.” They may well be there, but I haven’t found them.In the spirit of countering the NRA and other organizations, I offer the following as merely one attempt to come up with bumper stickers for those like myself who want tougher gun control laws. Since they merely represent a first attempt, they are a work in progress. This also accounts for the fact that there is a considerable overlap and repetition between the items.One last thought. If you have to explain it, then it isn’t working. Baseball Bats and Cars Can Kill, But They’re Not Made for Killing. Guns Are! We Don’t Abandon Laws Against Murder Because Murderers Don’tObey Them! Why Are Gun Laws Any Different?How Many Mass Drive-by Knifings Have You Heard Of?Automatic Weapons Kill More People Faster Than All ...

 There is a new documentary movie about Israel, called The Gatekeepers.  It is directed by Dror Moreh, and features interviews with all the former leaders of the Shin Bet, the country’s internal security organization.  The Shin Bet is assigned the job of preventing Palestinian retaliatory attacks on Israel and, as described by Moreh, the film “is the story of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories as told by the people at the crossroads of some of the most crucial moments in the security history of the country.”   Along the way it touches on such particular topics as targeted assassinations, the use of torture, and “collateral damage.”  The Gatekeepers has garnered a lot of acclaim.  It has played at film festivals in Jerusalem, Amsterdam, New York, Toronto and Venice, and elsewhere.  It has received critical acclaim from critics and won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association’s Best Documentary Award. It has been nominated for an Oscar.    Part II — The Messages  In order to promote the The Gatekeepers, Morah has been doing interviews and recently appeared on CNN with Christiane Amanpour.  He made a number of points, as did the Shin Bet leaders in the clips featured during the interview.  I shall review and critique some of these below. – Moreh says that “if there is someone who understands the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it’s these guys”  (the Shin Bet leaders).  Actually, this not necessarily true. ...

 Low interest rates are helping only two groups, bankers/Wall streeters and the richest people in America, and the greedy 1%. More on that later, right now let us look at some logic, and some simple math.If the Austerity mongers gets all that they wish, (One thing they have accomplished according to comparison of words uttered in Germany between the 1920’s and 1940’s, is to mimic as completely as possible, the words of the leading fascists (and worse) of that era); Their desire to end Collective Bargaining, cuts or elimination in pensions, Medicare, Social Security, laying-off millions of people, what will happen? Well, that series of not only stupid and destructive and cuts past the heart and into the bone of commerce. Their ideas would destroy the discretionary income of approximately 80 – 100 million people and their ability to prosper will be all but annihilated. The companies whom those people currently support by buying goods and services will be diminished and those companies they were patronizing will lay off their own workers and soon go bankrupt and add to the present 31 million out of work and underemployed thus will more than double and perhaps triple the number out of work in the depression of 1929 look like a lark in the park. Had the US not declared  wars everywhere, not given loans to people who could not afford them, people would still be working and there would have been no crash. However, no one stopped allowing the incredible mark ups of 9,000% on lots selling for $150k - $300k a lot, NOT an acre for land they bought at $2175 and sold at 13,700% mark up and house at a 150% - 400 % markup and none of them had proper insulation or HVAC. The blame goes to all the greedy minds involved  including appraisers who okayed $200,000 homes to sell and be mortgaged as $400,000 and $500,000 homes as well as bankers, and Builders, a title which should never have ...

 I live in New York City just one block off Central Park and when this unthinkable crime occurred on April 19, 1989 I remember, like most New Yorkers, being shocked and horrified.  This brutal attack not only rocked the city it reverberated around the world.  Mayor Koch called it the "crime of the century."The victim, a 28-year old white female, investment banker had been so badly beaten, raped and left for dead she was not expected to live.  The suspects, five black and Latino teenagers, were in the park for a night of “wilding” and the jogger was just another victim in their wake or so the story went. It was amazing how quickly the perpetrators were apprehended, confessed to the crimes, tried and sent off to rot in prison.  No muss.  No fuss.  The press dehumanized and vilified them as members of a “wolf pack.”  Notable personalities, including Donald Trump, immediately went to work publically defaming and demonizing these kids.  Mayor Koch chimed in “They got ’em.”  They were tried in the court of public opinion, condemned and convicted in a court of law and that was that. The young woman miraculously recovered although, luckily for her but sadly for the five accused youths, she remembered nothing about her attack or attacker(s).Amazing how quickly all the loose ends were wrapped up in a neat little package and tied with a bow.  Now everyone could go back to business as usual.  The criminals had been apprehended, law and order restored, we breathed a collective sigh of relief, the city went back to normal and everyone forgot about the attackers as justice had been served or so we were led to believe.I recently attended a screening of the film, “Central Park Five” by Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns and her husband, David McMahon.  As I watched this powerful documentary unfold ...

 I have written many times already about this subject, but I feel that few are following in my lead. The New York General Assembly, what is the center of the Occupy Movement, is doing great work but has no actions planned to protest the war. I have seen few mentions on their twitter feed about this at all. While some spread my articles on twitter and reddit (I applaud you), the subject still doesn’t seem to be getting out there. In a sense, saying there is no resistance is unfair because of actions that have occurred previously. In April of last year activists protested against those behind the coup,  Islamists have protested the war in Egypt, local residents have instigated an uprising against the Islamist forces in northern Mali, in October of last year, over 100 women protested the implementation of Sharia law in Timbuktu, in May of last year Malians held a sit-in against these same Islamists, this month protesters in Kuwait protested by carrying banners saying that France should end its war in Mali, and before ECOWAS joined in, hundreds marched in Mali’s capital to protest their deployment to the country. Even Tunisia’s government said they were against the war. However, even with these actions there hasn’t been the organized effort of the peace movement to oppose this war. That is what I wish to counter.Some peace organizations have offered hope that this criminal and imperialist war which is about getting natural resources or protecting French-backed economic unions (in the case of most African countries involved) can be opposed on a larger scale. A press release by Veterans for Peace is good in a sense. They mention that “the expansion of AFRICOM in Africa in ...

 There is something seriously wrong with a society that even has to debate whether it needs to control the most lethal types of weapons in the hands of civilians.I want to propose what is to my knowledge a novel way of thinking about and thereby treating gun violence. If as I believe that an obsessive need for guns is akin to an addiction and therefore cannot be dealt with by means of conventional arguments (after all, many alcoholics know “rationally” that alcohol is killing them but they are still unable to resist its near total control over their lives), then I believe that we need to stop beating around the bush and treat the obsessive need for guns as a major form of addiction. Accordingly, I have taken the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and reworded them to apply to our society’s deadly obsession with guns. In proposing this, I have no illusion whatsoever that in and of itself this will help us to better manage what I believe is our society’s completely out-of-control proliferation of guns. What I do hope is this it will encourage us to explore new ways of thinking about guns.I strongly urge the reader to note that in the second paragraph above I have deliberately stressed the word “obsessive” for I don’t believe that everyone who possesses guns or has the desire to have them is therefore suffering from a major form of addiction. Quite to the contrary. I also don’t believe that all guns ought to be banned. I believe that only those guns that are extremely lethal ought to be strictly controlled. That is, contrary to the NRA, some guns are more lethal than others. All guns are not equal. As a result, I believe that there is no place whatsoever for military-assault type weapons in the hands of civilians. Apparently, neither do many responsible and sensible gun owners.Here then is my version of a twelve-step program for rabid ...

The NRA owes Sam Harris a debt of gratitude. In his short piece Riddle of the Gun, Mr. Harris makes a more compelling defense of civilian gun ownership and critique of popular gun control measures than the NRA has been able to muster in the 140+ years of its existence. While recently the NRA has been preoccupied with spewing inflammatory rhetoric and taking cheap shots at President Obama, Sam Harris has put together a reasoned argument that all but the most closed-minded of liberal political thinkers will find difficult to dismiss. Harris reaches a varied audience because he forces his readers to set aside moral judgments on the inherent value of guns in public life and, instead, discusses in detail the plausibility of political suggestions on both sides of the gun control debate. Acknowledging that a world without the necessity of guns would be most desirable, Harris goes on to explain that the reality of a world without guns today (or a world where only law enforcement officers have guns) would not be a great place to live. In such a world, people would be helpless against other aggressive people with the advantages of youth, physical strength, and/or sheer numbers. Harris claims that we can call 911, but if a person breaks into our home with the intent to harm us, we cannot reasonably expect police or other protectors to arrive in time to stop violence. Harris also points out that most of the gun control measures being discussed by U.S. lawmakers in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre are mere symbolic gestures which will have little effect on our nation’s problem with gun ...

 While addressing the Republican National Committee (RNC) last Friday in Charlotte North Carolina, another "intellectual leader" of the Republican party, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, got lost in the woods of logic as he struggled foot by foot, forest path by forest path to escape the land called Wing Nut. He started out well enough, but paths he believed would lead to brighter vistas spiraled to the right leaving the poor governor pretty much where he started. In an auspicious start he tossed up an idea generally left unspoken at RNC gatherings:"We must not be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive. We are the party whose ideas will help the middle class, and help more folks join the middle class. We are a populist party and need to make that clear." (Full text here)By the conclusion of his speech, however, that liberating sentiment turned out to be simply only a feint to the left soon abandoned for a path circling back to the right.Another long quote from the same speech uncovered his particular problem - he doesn't understand that speaking of change doesn't fool anyone if in the very same speech you aggressively reiterate the very same GOP principles that most need reform and correction.That only leads you back to Wing Nut City.Jindal:"Now let me shift gears and speak to changes I believe we must make if we are to win elections. As I indicated before, I am not one of those who believe we should moderate, equivocate, or otherwise abandon our principles. This badly ...

 PART I - What Is Important When It Comes to Rights? Question:  Why is it that so many Americans are more angry over the prospect of relatively minor adjustments to the gun laws, than they are over the serious erosion of Constitutional rights to due process in the courts?  Despite the fact that proposed changes to the gun laws would leave the Second Amendment’s* alleged basic right of ownership intact, thousands of Americans rallied in state capitals across the nation last week to demand their “right” to own all manner of automatic weapons and multiple round ammunition clips. The rationale for this ranged from “the Second Amendment comes from God,” a popular claim with protesters in Austin Texas, to the equally absurd notion that the Obama administration is obsessed with controlling all our lives.  “It is not about guns, it is about control” proclaimed  the folks rallying in Annapolis, Maryland.  All this took place on the nation’s first impromptu  “gun appreciation day” (Saturday, 19 January 2013) during which five accidental shooting occurred at celebratory gun shows and three others took place elsewhere.  Nonetheless, as one protester in Maine put it, the right to “bear arms” is “a constitutional right no one can take away.”   Actually, the last twelve years have proved this fellow from Maine quite wrong.  There has been an erosion of ...

 On Tumblr I found a map which peaked my interest. A user had uploaded a map from AFP showing how different countries are involved in the war in Mali (other than France) including the EU, US, Germany, Belgium, Canada, UK, Italy and the UAE, among others. Of these countries, currently Nigeria (as shown by a Reuters picture) and Togo (according to Euro News) have troops on the ground. The French seem to be the main players in the war which I noted was imperialistic and violated international law. I also already knew that four governments (Israeli, Spanish, French and Ukrainian), the chairman of the German aerospace defense industry association, a French multimillionaire, the CEO of Daimler AG, the  CEO of Dassault Aviation, anti-gay multibillionaire named Serge Dassault, the CEO of the Boeing Company, the French company Panhard, and Virginia-based Geo-Eye Inc. are directly profiting from France’s share of the war. It seemed obvious why UK, Italy and Belgium would participate since they wanted to regain control of Africa, the same with the US which is engaging in the next imperial ‘scramble for Africa’.  As for Canada, EU, UAE, and Denmark, it seemed that these countries liked the spoil of war and wanted to follow along, supporting their allies ...

Today's in-box contained a letter titled "Message to Our Nation’s Health Care Providers" from the US Department of Health and Human Services. Its release today suggests that it is part of the President's new gun policy proposals. The letter says, in part, [T]he Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule does not prevent your ability to disclose necessary information about a patient to law enforcement, family members of the patient, or other persons, when you believe the patient presents a serious danger to himself or other people. It goes on to say that The HIPAA Privacy Rule. . . . allows the provider, consistent with applicable law and standards of ethical conduct, to alert those persons whom the provider believes are reasonably able to prevent or lessen the threat. This is bad. Take a look at the letter and see what you think. When I read it, I see confusion. The letter bounces around a lot, telling providers that the HIPAA Privacy Rule doesn't prevent them from betraying their clients' confidentiality, talking about their "professional ethical standards," "the laws applicable to their profession in the states where they practice," and ending with "providers play an important role in protecting the safety of their patients and the broader community." This letter/policy will have two effects: 1.    Clients will not trust their providers. But a client's relationship with her/his therapist must be based upon trust. Some clients or potential ...

 After I saw that there was another war in Mali I shook my head in dismay. I had predicted this war back in November, saying it would be fought under the guise of fighting terrorism, but would actually be about securing gold deposits, undiscovered oil and the drug trade. There is one aspect I didn’t necessarily predict which was that America would not lead this war. The “socialist” in France, Francois Hollande who was elected with messages mirroring what propelled Obama into power in 2008, is leading the war effort but the U.S. is the secret force behind this intervention. As Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! put it “the U.S. has backed France’s offensive in Mali…ferry[ing] hundreds of additional French troops to Mali…[and] U.S. officials say they’re also making plans to send drones or other surveillance aircraft.” In addition to this, France also wants 3,300 troops from West African states to “deploy in support of the Malian army.” The questions that must be asked are: why would France engage in such a imperialistic war in its former colony, does this war violate international law and what should we do about it  First, the background of this war is important to understand. Glenn Greenwald lays this out in his piece in The Guardian. He writes that the war in Mali will be the eighth war in which “western powers…have bombed and killed Muslims,” saying it will fuel anti-western extremism. Greenwald further notes that the war for oil in Libya, which I described in May as an imperialistic intervention, caused instability in the country, ...

Our country’s rocked by yet another mass shooting this time in Newtown, Connecticut.  This time a 20-year-old kid, Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in their home then drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed six adults including the principal and 20 children before killing himself. This time three weapons were found in the car: a .223 caliber “Bushmaster” rifle and two pistols, a Sig Sauer and a Glock.  Adam’s mother, Nancy Lanza, a gun enthusiast who’d taken both her children to the rifle range to learn how to shoot, legally owned all these guns. This shooting, one of the deadliest in U.S. history, is second only to the rampage that killed 32 students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. This in a country where just five months earlier another gunman killed 12 in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. I’m always amazed when Americans express their shock at yet another mass shooting when we live in a culture awash in violence.  In fact, we glorify violence.  It’s produced, packaged and promoted by Hollywood, television and video games.   We live in a country where we shoot first and ask questions later or not at all.  The NRA drafted the “stand your ground” law, which caused the senseless murder of Travon Martin, and this Neanderthal law has been enacted in 25 states.  We live in a culture where our government no longer negotiates to solve issues with other nations but instead uses preemptive illegal wars and we now find ourselves residing in a state of permanent war. We have a president who offers his condolences to the families, sheds a few tears over the loss as he reassures us, “Our hearts are broken today.” and promises “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this.”  Then turns around and picks from his “kill ...

 Part I - Does Torture Work? Back in the Fall of 2005 I wrote a essay, published in the journal Logos (issue 4.4), entitled “Torture in our Time.”  In it I laid out the historical evidence for the conclusion that torture rarely works.  This position goes back at least to the Enlightenment when Cesare Beccaria wrote a famous pamphlet, “ On Crimes and Punishments” (1764) in which he observed the obvious: “The impression of pain, then, may increase to such a degree that, occupying the mind entirely, it will compel the sufferer to use the shortest method of freeing himself from torment....He will accuse himself of crimes of which he is innocent so that the very means employed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty will most effectually destroy all difference between them.” Along with false admissions of guilt, those under torture will tell their tormenter just about anything, regardless of truth and accuracy.  Modern researchers, and even modern practitioners of interrogation, know this to be so.  They have come to the same conclusion as Beccaria. Torture produces more false and fictional information than not.   For instance, Darius Rejali in his book Torture and Democracy (2009), tells us that “the available evidence [against the efficacy of torture] is conclusive” and alludes to the fact that, for 250 years, criminologists, and psychologists have been pointing this out.   The ex-intelligence officer, 

 It is telling that the Idle No More movement started with four First Nations women—Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon and Sheelah McLean who gave the first “Idle No More” teach-in. Sylvia McAdam is a lawyer, as is Tanya Kappo, who first tweeted #idlenomore. Perhaps they are of the “New People” of the Anishinaabek Seventh Fire prophecy. Perhaps they are of those who refuse to see themselves as victims, but rather as human beings with rights that are being eroded and responsibilities that need taking up, Time will tell, as it has told of past abuses and as it is telling of present wrongs.In 2007, Mr Harper gave the Kashechewan First Nation a choice. Either stay where they were put in 1957, or move to Timmins—stay in a place where you might get sick again from E-coli or lose your land and move to town. To become what? Beggars? Assimilated? The people suggested a third way and asked Mr Harper to move them upstream, to their original home. He refused. During the pomp and ceremony of Mr Harper’s apology to Aboriginal Canada for the Indian Residential School System, a First Nation’s commentator on the CBC radio said “at least it was well written.” (I think it was Mary Simon, but I can’t find the clip on the CBC website and queries have gone unanswered). It was her way of wondering if the apology was sincere and would ever lead to reconciliation. Perhaps she had seen this sort of thing before. Such apologies are cheaply made and dearly bought. They give only the appearance of reconciliation, because only equals can be reconciled. An apology is insincere if made to people abused, for ...

 It is telling that the Idle No More movement started with four First Nations women—Nina Wilson, Sylvia McAdam, Jessica Gordon and Sheelah McLean who gave the first “Idle No More” teach-in. Sylvia McAdam is a lawyer, as is Tanya Kappo, who first tweeted #idlenomore. Perhaps they are of the “New People” of the Anishinaabek Seventh Fire prophecy. Perhaps they are of those who refuse to see themselves as victims, but rather as human beings with rights that are being eroded and responsibilities that need taking up, Time will tell, as it has told of past abuses and as it is telling of present wrongs.In 2007, Mr Harper gave the Kashechewan First Nation a choice. Either stay where they were put in 1957, or move to Timmins—stay in a place where you might get sick again from E-coli or lose your land and move to town. To become what? Beggars? Assimilated? The people suggested a third way and asked Mr Harper to move them upstream, to their original home. He refused. During the pomp and ceremony of Mr Harper’s apology to Aboriginal Canada for the Indian Residential School System, a First Nation’s commentator on the CBC radio said “at least it was well written.” (I think it was Mary Simon, but I can’t find the clip on the CBC website and queries have gone unanswered). It was her way of wondering if the apology was sincere and would ever lead to reconciliation. Perhaps she had seen this sort of thing before. Such apologies are cheaply made and dearly bought. They give only the appearance of reconciliation, because only equals can be reconciled. An apology is insincere if made to people abused, for ...

 Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"France no longer recognizes its children," lamented Guillaume Roquette in an editorial in the Figaro weekly magazine in Paris. "How can the country of Victor Hugo, secularism and family reunions produce jihadists capable of attacking a kosher grocery store?" 1I ask: How can the country of Henry David Thoreau, separation of church and state, and family Thanksgiving dinners produce American super-nationalists capable of firing missiles into Muslim family reunions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia?Does America recognize its children? Indeed, it honors them. Constantly.A French state prosecutor stated that "A network of French Islamists behind a grenade attack on a kosher market outside Paris last month also planned to join jihadists fighting in Syria." 2We can add these worthies to the many other jihadists coming from all over to fight in Syria for regime change, waving al-Qaeda flags ("There is no god but God"), carrying out suicide attacks, exploding car bombs, and singling out Christians for extermination (for not supporting the overthrow of the secular Syrian government.) These folks are not the first ones you would think of as allies in a struggle for the proverbial freedom and democracy. Yet America's children are on the same side, with the same goal of overthrowing Syrian president Bashir Assad.So how do America's leaders explain and justify this?"Not everybody who's participating on the ground in fighting Assad are people who we are comfortable with," President Obama sad in an interview in December. "There are some who, I think, have adopted an extremist agenda, an anti-U.S. agenda, and we are going to make clear to distinguish between ...

 Part I - Haneen Zoabi and Her Mission Haneen Zoabi is an Arab Israeli member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.  She was elected in 2009 as a member from the Balad Party.  Balad is an Arab party that was formed in 1995 with the aim of “struggling to transform the state of Israel into a democracy for all its citizens.”  In the West, this is a perfectly normal goal.  But Israel’s Zionist ideology disqualifies it as a “Western” nation.  Thus Balad’s aim is in direct opposition to the Zionist idea of Israel as a “Jewish state,” a concept that Ms Zoabi labels “inherently racist.”   Apparently, Haneen Zoabi is fearless.  She actually lives her principles.  She has been campaigning loudly and very publicly for full citizenship rights for Israel’s Palestinians.  She has also actively opposed Israel’s settlement movement, occupation policies, and its siege of Gaza.  That last effort led her to participate in the international flotilla that sought to break the Gaza siege in May of 2010.  That was the time Israeli commandos attacked the Mavi Marmara in international waters, killing 9 Turkish activists who tried to resist the assault on their ship.  In an outright dictatorship, Ms Zoabi would be in jail or worse.  And, given the direction of Israel’s political evolution, that still might be her fate.  However, as of now she is just the worst nightmare of an ...

In the morning after Christmas, I listened to a video from Democracy Now! detailing the day’s headlines. What I heard announced by Amy Goodman angered me greatly: “U.S. Army teams will be deploying to as many as 35 African countries early next year for training programs and other operations as part of an increased Pentagon role in Africa. The move would see small teams of U.S. troops dispatched to countries with groups allegedly linked to al-Qaeda…The teams are from a U.S. brigade that has the capability to use drones for military operations in Africa if granted permission. The deployment could also potentially lay the groundwork for future U.S. military intervention in Africa.” President Obama echoed this sentiment when he nominated John Kerry; he congratulated his previous Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on restoring “our global leadership” and declared triumphantly: “the United States will continue to lead in this world for our lifetimes.” These statements and the headline from Democracy Now! didn’t surprise me one bit. Already, I had heard that an imperialist intervention will begin in the West African state of Mali next year, fighting over uranium deposits, gold deposits and untapped oil deposits, which is exactly what I predicted back on November 3rd. I had already written a year earlier, criticizing the war for oil in Libya for the same reasons, saying that “the extent of imperialism in this war is very troubling…[and] is not debatable…The war is imperialist, ...

 Part I - What is Education For? The last week of September, 1938 was deemed “American Education Week” and for the occasion President Franklin Delano Roosevelt released a message to the citizenry.  He noted that there were competitive systems of government that were fast coming into conflict and, when it came to the practice and preservation of the political system in the U.S., public education played a vital role.  “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.  The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”   Thus did Roosevelt tie education to “national security.”  Nonetheless, this was a problematic assertion.  It assumed that citizens actually do choose their leaders rather than just affirming a leader chosen by elites.  And, significantly, it assumed that what is taught in the schools results in the ability to make “wise” political choices. The mission that FDR assigned to education continues to be part of a popular democratic trope that idealizes education’s mission.  Yet, underneath the quixotry there are more pragmatic, and certainly less democratic concerns.  In truth, education has always had two main functions: 1. To train people for the market place.  Before literacy was required for the market place, schools were strictly for those few who went into specialized careers such as religious vocations, scribes and record keepers and the like. Almost everyone else learned what they needed to know through apprenticeships.  For this, there were no instruction manuals to read.  As early modern times saw literacy become more ...

 There are at least two widely differing positions in treating gun violence that surface every time there is a horrendous tragedy like that which happened in Newtown, Connecticut. Indeed, they are always just beneath the surface of any argument pertaining to gun control.The first is represented by the movie/TV and video game industries; the second, by cardiologists of all people. The first position argues that there is no firm causal relationship between (1) the prolonged exposure of children and young adults to violent movies/TV/video games and (2) their engagement in actual violent behavior. Correlations are all there are, and correlations are not hard definitive proof of causality. Therefore, lacking such proof, there is no valid reason for the producers/writers of violent movies/TV/video games to tone down their creations. Besides, aren’t they protected by the First Amendment? The second position argues that no cardiologist would ever say that because a certain set of factors are low in their overall contribution to heart disease that one should therefore ignore them. Instead, no matter what their level of contribution, one should treat any and all factors as aggressively as one can. To draw out the differences between these two positions even more starkly, let me put them in the form of two opposing ethical principles because that’s what they really are. The first says in effect that, “Whenever the correlation between what we do/produce as an industry and some important problem in society is low or beneath a certain ‘threshold,’ then we are warranted ethically in not doing anything; we are absolved as it were.” The question of course is, “How high would the correlation have to be before one accepted ‘ethical responsibility’?”

 There are at least two widely differing positions in treating gun violence that surface every time there is a horrendous tragedy like that which happened in Newtown, Connecticut. Indeed, they are always just beneath the surface of any argument pertaining to gun control.The first is represented by the movie/TV and video game industries; the second, by cardiologists of all people. The first position argues that there is no firm causal relationship between (1) the prolonged exposure of children and young adults to violent movies/TV/video games and (2) their engagement in actual violent behavior. Correlations are all there are, and correlations are not hard definitive proof of causality. Therefore, lacking such proof, there is no valid reason for the producers/writers of violent movies/TV/video games to tone down their creations. Besides, aren’t they protected by the First Amendment? The second position argues that no cardiologist would ever say that because a certain set of factors are low in their overall contribution to heart disease that one should therefore ignore them. Instead, no matter what their level of contribution, one should treat any and all factors as aggressively as one can. To draw out the differences between these two positions even more starkly, let me put them in the form of two opposing ethical principles because that’s what they really are. The first says in effect that, “Whenever the correlation between what we do/produce as an industry and some important problem in society is low or beneath a certain ‘threshold,’ then we are warranted ethically in not doing anything; we are absolved as it were.” The question of course is, “How high would the correlation have to be before one accepted ‘ethical responsibility’?”

 Part I - Gun Violence Epidemic Continues Well here we go again.  Late in the evening of July 20th “a masked gunman entered a Colorado movie theater playing the new Batman movie and “opened fire…killing at least 12 people and wounding 50.” [To this we can now add the December 14th massacre of 20 young children and 6 adults by twenty year-old gunman in Newtown Conn].  The gunman was not a large anthropomorphized bat but rather a young white male, and he “was armed with a rifle, a shotgun and two handguns” all of which he had legally obtained. [The Newtown shooter was armed with two handguns and a 45 caliber automatic rifle].  This is nothing new in the Land Of The Free.  Among the more notable victims of the nation’s love affair with deadly weapons have been Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and, of course, John Lennon . Then there are the recent (and periodically on-going) mass murders among the population at large: the Colombine High School shootings, the Beltway sniper incidents, the Virginia Tech massacre, and the 2011 Tucson killings.  To this can be added the daily shootings that occur in every city in the country.  Taking the representative year 2007, there were 31,224 deaths from gunshots with 17,352 of them (56%) being suicides. The numbers have, generally, been going up.  Part II ...

"Nuclear, ecological, chemical, economic — our arsenal of Death by Stupidity is impressive for a species as smart as Homo sapiens" 1The hurricanes, the typhoons, the heat waves ... the droughts, the heavy rains, the floods ... ever more powerful, ever new records being set. Something must be done of course. Except if you don't believe at all that it's man-made. But if there's even a small chance that the greenhouse effect is driving the changes, is it not plain that, at a minimum, we have to err on the side of caution? There's too much at stake. Like civilization as we know it. Carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere must be greatly curtailed.The three greatest problems facing the beleaguered, fragile inhabitants of this lonely planet are climate change, economic crisis, and the violence of war. It is my sad duty to report that the United States of America is the main culprit in each case. Is that not remarkable?Why does Barack Obama not pursue the battle against climate change with the same intensity he pursues war? Why does he not seek to punish the American bankers and stockbrokers responsible for the financial calamity as much as he seeks to punish Julian Assange and Bradley Manning?In both cases he's putting the interests of the corporate world before anything else. No amount of fines or penalties will induce corporate leaders to modify their behavior. Only spending some hard time in a prison cellblock might cause the growth in them of their missing part, the part that's shaped like a social conscience.Only prosecuting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their partners in bombing and torture will discourage future American war lovers from following in their bloody footsteps.The recent election result can only embolden Obama. He likely took it as an ...

"Nuclear, ecological, chemical, economic — our arsenal of Death by Stupidity is impressive for a species as smart as Homo sapiens" 1The hurricanes, the typhoons, the heat waves ... the droughts, the heavy rains, the floods ... ever more powerful, ever new records being set. Something must be done of course. Except if you don't believe at all that it's man-made. But if there's even a small chance that the greenhouse effect is driving the changes, is it not plain that, at a minimum, we have to err on the side of caution? There's too much at stake. Like civilization as we know it. Carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere must be greatly curtailed.The three greatest problems facing the beleaguered, fragile inhabitants of this lonely planet are climate change, economic crisis, and the violence of war. It is my sad duty to report that the United States of America is the main culprit in each case. Is that not remarkable?Why does Barack Obama not pursue the battle against climate change with the same intensity he pursues war? Why does he not seek to punish the American bankers and stockbrokers responsible for the financial calamity as much as he seeks to punish Julian Assange and Bradley Manning?In both cases he's putting the interests of the corporate world before anything else. No amount of fines or penalties will induce corporate leaders to modify their behavior. Only spending some hard time in a prison cellblock might cause the growth in them of their missing part, the part that's shaped like a social conscience.Only prosecuting George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their partners in bombing and torture will discourage future American war lovers from following in their bloody footsteps.The recent election result can only embolden Obama. He likely took it as an ...

 Part I - Magdulien Abaida and the Real Libya  On 3 December 2012, BBC News reported on the plight of Libyan activist Magdulien Abaida.  When the Libyan revolution broke out in Benghazi back in February 2011, she played an important part in developing a positive image of the revolt among European audiences and helped arrange material aid for the rebel forces.  She did this against the backdrop of Western governments describing the rebellion as one that sought “democratic rights” for the Libyan people.  Upon the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, the U.S. State Department issued a statement (2 November 2012) applauding the rebel victory as a “milestone” in the country’s “democratic transition."  This matched Ms Abaida’s expectations.  Unfortunately, her subsequent experience belied the optimism.  With the rebel victory in October 2011, Abaida  returned to Libya to help with the “democratic transition” and promote her particular cause of women’s rights.  However, what she found in her homeland was chaos.  The tribalism that underlies social organization in Libya had come to the fore.   According to Amnesty International, that tribalism is reflected in the activities of  “armed militias...acting completely out of control....There are hundreds of them across the country, arresting people without warrant, detaining them incommunicado, and torturing them....This is all happening while the government is unwilling or ...

 Part I - Magdulien Abaida and the Real Libya  On 3 December 2012, BBC News reported on the plight of Libyan activist Magdulien Abaida.  When the Libyan revolution broke out in Benghazi back in February 2011, she played an important part in developing a positive image of the revolt among European audiences and helped arrange material aid for the rebel forces.  She did this against the backdrop of Western governments describing the rebellion as one that sought “democratic rights” for the Libyan people.  Upon the collapse of the Qaddafi regime, the U.S. State Department issued a statement (2 November 2012) applauding the rebel victory as a “milestone” in the country’s “democratic transition."  This matched Ms Abaida’s expectations.  Unfortunately, her subsequent experience belied the optimism.  With the rebel victory in October 2011, Abaida  returned to Libya to help with the “democratic transition” and promote her particular cause of women’s rights.  However, what she found in her homeland was chaos.  The tribalism that underlies social organization in Libya had come to the fore.   According to Amnesty International, that tribalism is reflected in the activities of  “armed militias...acting completely out of control....There are hundreds of them across the country, arresting people without warrant, detaining them incommunicado, and torturing them....This is all happening while the government is unwilling or ...

Every December, radio stations across the country play Christmas songs.  In recent years, a song titled “Christmas Shoes” found its way into the rotation.  It tells the story of an impoverished child ("His clothes were worn and old, he was dirty from head to toe") standing in line at a store trying to scrape together enough change to buy a pair of shoes for his mother, who is going to die soon from a terminal illness.  The boy doesn't have enough money, so the narrator, moved by the boy’s plight, pays for the shoes.  Bidding a grateful farewell, the boy rushes to give the shoes to his mother before she passes away, and the narrator muses that God sent the boy to remind him of what Christmas is all about. The song is hardly controversial. Most people with a conscience would have helped such a boy.  Yet when it comes to larger commitments to helping the less fortunate, such as ensuring their access to health care, the controversy of the song’s scenario is clear. The real tragedy of the song, assuming that it is set in contemporary America, is that the boy’s mother probably didn’t have to die an untimely death.   For instance, if we had universal health care, the boy’s mother would have been able to afford yearly doctor visits and preventative screenings that might have caught her illness at an early stage and likely saved her life.  Instead, under our current system, the uninsured have no access to health care until things are so bad that they have to go to the emergency room, which in many cases is too late.  Nearly everyone agrees ...

 About a month ago, the Harper government dropped the first shoe of its new foreign policy—economic agreements with the 3rd world and China. The latter will be at our expense but it looks as though our agreements with developing countries will be at theirs. Canadian mining companies are implicated in dozens of cases of human rights and environmental abuses: Dorato Resources in Peru, Barrick Gold in Tanzania and New Guinea; Centerra in Kyrgyzstan; Excellon in Mexico; Hudbay Minerals in Guatemala. There are others. If the Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement we signed with China is any measure, the agreements we are signing in Africa and South America will allow Canadian mining companies to run roughshod over other peoples’ rights and their ...

So the 2012 US election is over at last. Democrats won the White House and the Senate and the popular vote for both. They even won the popular vote for the House of Representatives—by half a million votes. But the GOP won the House because Republican governments at the state level spent the last two years re-drawing congressional district boundaries to favour Republican candidates. It seems Americans are in for more of the same legislative gridlock as before the election. How Congress deals with the looming fiscal cliff will be telling. If you look at the exit polls, the vote split along America’s fault lines: income gap, religion, and race. Mitt Romney won amongst white males (especially Protestants), but Obama won women voters, blacks and Hispanics. Race still matters in America. It matters so much that Republican governments in several states tried to suppress the black and Hispanic vote by purging voter lists and by passing laws reducing early voting hours or requiring voter ID. And now, to their credit, some Republicans are admitting the intention of those ...

For years now there has been unremitting torture and killing of people with Albinism in Tanzania. Babies, children and adults have been killed and mutilated, their limbs often hacked off, and their organs cut out. The belief is that once harvested from a population with a genetic mutation - People with Albinism - the organs magically confer other humans some new powers. It is a false tale perpetuated by witch doctors in a practice that politicians and the powers that be in Tanzania turn a blind eye to. Or they in fact play an active role in a macabre trade of humans and human body parts that has been growing during these last few decades.In the past much of the evil practice was limited to remote and rural parts of Tanzania, but today human body parts are increasingly being transported farther afield - to other African destinations. An underground human trafficking and human body parts transportation has been growing into a lucrative enterprise. There have been sporadic reports of kidnappings and murder of people with albinism in East Africa, but all in all there has been very little publicity regarding this perfidious practice. Unfortunately many authorities prefer not to acknowledge that a practice as primitive, as evil and inhumane as this takes place within their country’s borders. However one regards it, people with albinism in Tanzania live in real terror everyday – they never know when the sharp machete blade will fall on their neck or some other part of their body. I recount this here because a year ago I witnessed the kidnap and disappearance of a three-year-old child with albinism. The fate of this child, certainly a victim of trans-border human trafficking, haunts me constantly, no matter how hard I try to drown and forget it.I also recount this Tanzanian tragedy to highlight yet another catastrophe that is taking place there and to a lesser extent in ...

Thirty-one year old Savita Halappanavar died in late October from a miscarriage. News of her death haunts women around the world, providing a valuable lesson in the way arguments for religious “freedom” often contradict the necessity of reproductive health.According to her husband, Praveen, Halappanavar went to the hospital a week prior to her death complaining of severe back pain. Her doctors told her she was having a miscarriage but, when she requested that her pregnancy be terminated, they refused, claiming they could still detect a fetal heartbeat. They added that Ireland “is a Catholic country.” Halappanavar and her husband returned home. Her pain continued for days. She died a short time later.As a country that remains under strong Roman Catholic influence, Ireland is known for having some of the strictest abortion laws of any nation in the world. Although abortion in Ireland has been constitutionally illegal since British rule in 1861, a 1992 Supreme Court ruling exempted cases in which “a real and substantial risk” threatens the woman’s life. Halappanavar’s death is, in part, a result of the ruling’s failure to outline clearly what constitutes such a risk, leaving decisions to medical professionals on a case-by-case basis. Since Halappanavar’s death, more than ten-thousand protesters have filled the streets of Dublin to demand reform to Ireland’s abortion laws.Such legal ambiguities and their consequences illustrate the ways religion-based laws regulating ...

 Part I - Some History  By the middle of the 19th century the multi-ethnic empire was on its way out as the dominant political paradigm in Europe.  Replacing it was the nation-state, a political form which allowed the concentration of ethnic groups within their own political borders.  This in turn formed cultural and “racial” incubators for us (superior) vs. them (inferior) nationalism that would underpin most of the West’s future wars.  Many of these nation states were also imperial powers expanding across the globe and, of course, their state-based chauvinistic outlook went with them.   Zionism was born in this milieu of nationalism and imperialism, both of which left an indelible mark on the character and ambitions of the Israeli state. The conviction of Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founding father, was that the centuries of anti-Semitism were proof positive that Europe’s Jews could not be assimilated into mainstream Western society.  They could only be safe if they possessed a nation state of their own.  This conviction also reflected the European imperial sentiments of the day.  The founders of modern Zionism were both Jews and Europeans, and (as such) had acquired the West’s cultural sense of superiority in relation to non-Europeans.   This sense of superiority would play an important role when a deal (the Balfour Declaration) was struck in 1917 between the World Zionist ...

A video depicting a young boy plunging into dark water, his mouth gaping and arms flailing, his body surrounded by bubbles and what sounds like muffled screams, has been released as part of the newly formed “Too Small To Fail” campaign. As the boy struggles, text appears over the image stating “Can't watch one child in danger? You do it every day. Stop watching.” “Too Small To Fail” is a social media campaign in response to the looming “fiscal cliff.” Sponsored by the Center for the Next Generation, the campaign focuses on raising awareness about the issues most affecting children in the United States--issues such as health care and socio-economic status. The cause’s primary focus is a debate likely to be shunned from budget discourse: the necessity of adequately funded public education. With the fiscal cliff approaching, debates about revenue are growing even more heated. Obama’s request to raise revenue by letting the Bush tax cuts for the highest tax bracket expire is meeting vehement resistance. Republicans accuse Democrats of stifling competition and engaging in “class warfare.” They assert that the wealthy are already being “taxed to death” and that any tax increase, no matter how small, will have devastating effects on the economy.   The reality, however, is that, relative to history, the top marginal income tax rate is very low. Indeed, from 1936 to 1981, the income tax rate on the top tax bracket never dropped below 70%. Today, the rate is half that (35%), and, with the exception of the five-year period between 1988 and 1992, is the lowest it’s been since 1931. Thus, the assertion that the wealthy are facing an abnormally high income tax burden is nonsense. The claim that a modest tax increase will hurt the economy ...

 Part I - Introducing Fred Skolnik Soon after my analysis, “In Defense of Robert Falk” (4 November 2012) was published by Media with a Conscience (MWC), the site editor forwarded to me an unusual chastising response.  Unusual because it came from a relatively well-known scholar and writer by the name of Fred Skolnik.  Mr. Skolnik is the editor in chief of a 22 volume Encyclopedia Judaica (second edition), a work that won the Dartmouth Medal in 2007.  He is also the author of numerous works of fiction all concerning life in Israel.  It is not rare for Zionists to take me to task, and Skolnik is most certainly a Zionist.  Yet it is rare that those who chastise are of Skolnik’s stature.  And so, a reply is in order. Mr. Skolnik does not like Dr. Falk who, the reader might remember, is the present United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories.  And, because I defend Falk, he does not like me either.  Indeed, as far as Skolnik is concerned I am part of “an army of Israel haters...churning out endless... venomous half truths” about the Land of Israel.  Nonetheless, Skolnik has taken the time to write a three page commentary to set me and my readers straight.  He says,  “I will state Israel’s case in as few words as possible, though you of course may not choose to publish this in order not to lose the effect you are aiming at.”  Well, that is silly.  I have no objection to my readers seeing Mr. Skolnik’s response.  Here is how you can do so: go to the MWC site; search for Davidson; go ...

 PART I  --  Positives and Negatives Barack Obama won reelection last week (6 November 2012). And, what was the Left’s reaction?  “So what?”  Well, we are spared four years of Mitt Romney.  Again,  “so what?  They are both two peas from the same pod.”  Well maybe, but even peas can vary.  Here are some positive differences to consider.  These will be followed by some negative similarities to Romney and his conservative advisers.  We will start with the bright side: -- In terms of probabilities,  under Obama the U.S. is less likely to find itself at war with Iran then would be the case with Romney.  On such issues as war in the Middle East, Obama seems to be able to think relatively independently while Romney, by his own admission, can’t tell the difference between U.S. interests and those of racist Israel.  -- Obama took a sensible attitude toward the Arab Spring uprising except, of course, in Bahrain where its support for the monarchy was lamentable to say the least.  Romney’s reaction would have been to ring up Netanyahu and ask him what to do.   -- On issues of women’s rights, Gay rights, environmental and educational concerns an Obama administration is much preferable to a Romney one. -- If there are Supreme Court vacancies in the next four years we are much less likely to have extreme conservatives nominated than would have been the case under Mitt Romney. -- Obama dropped Bush’s torture ...

 My Dear Lord Raglan,I am but a few leagues from you and your great house at Usk and travelling westward. However, I regret to say that I am storm-stayed in a small village on the border of Gloucestershire and here I must rest, for the coachman refuses to challenge the hurricane that howls about the public house in which we sought refuge late last night. I am entrusting this letter to one who must ride to Usk today in order that you might be apprised of my delay and to tell you of a most extraordinary encounter.As I wrote to you last month from my office at the Times of London, I have with me a phonograph cylinder of Lord Tennyson reading his famous Charge of the Light Brigade, made just this year, and another, blank cylinder, on which I propose to record your thoughts concerning that engagement and indeed, the whole of the Battle of Balaclava—that most dreadful encounter with the army of Tsar Nicholas. My editors could not think of a more appropriate way to mark the 40th anniversary of that fight than to interview the grandson of the commander of the British forces in the Crimea.But to my extraordinary encounter. Last evening, by the glow of the publican’s fire, I was browsing through a yellowing copy of the Illustrated London News from 1855. It was a fortuitous discovery because the issue contained Roger Fenton’s famous photographs of the Crimean War. Although not of the editorial quality of The Times, I spent a most pleasant hour browsing through the pictures in that publication. Embraced by the warmth of the hearth and the whisky I had been served, my chin fell upon my chest and the paper slipped from my hands.“Do thee want truth of that photograph there, guv’nor?”

 Part I - Who is Richard Falk and What Has He Done? Richard Falk is the present United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories.  His job is to monitor the human rights situation in the territories, with particular reference to international law, and report back to both the U.N. General Assembly and the United Nations Human Rights Council. He is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and well qualified for his United Nations post.  Professor Falk was appointed in 2008 to a six year term in his present position. That means he has been telling the unsettling truth about Israeli behavior for four years now, with another two to go. Repeatedly he has documented Israeli violations of international law and its relentless disregard for Palestinian human rights.  For instance: -- In his 2008 report Falk documented the “desperate plight of civilians in Gaza.”-- In his 2009 report Falk described Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip as a “war crime of the           greatest magnitude.”-- In his 2010 report Falk documented Israel’s array of apartheid policies. -- In his 2011 report Falk documented Israeli policies in Jerusalem and labelled them “ethnic cleansing.” -- And finally, in this latest report for the year 2012, Falk has concentrated on two subjects: First, Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners which, he concludes, is so bad as to warrant ...

 I am a veteran of the free trade battles of the 1980s and I’ve got the political scars to prove it. NAFTA’s been in effect for some 18 years now, but I still don’t know whether it’s a good deal. I do know that of the 16 trade disputes we launched under NAFTA, we’ve lost every one. US companies, however, have won most of theirs and they’ve taken home $170 million of our money in compensation. So when I look at the deal our PM signed with China in September, I worry. And you should too. If China doesn’t like something we do to protect our environment or our health, it will sue us … not in open court, but in secret arbitration. An example is needed. Let’s say a Chinese company wants to set up a huge windfarm in Grey and Bruce Counties and they meet all our governments’ existing criteria. You and your municipality don’t like where the windmills are going, or their numbers, or how the company does business. (China, by the way, is a major manufacturer of wind turbines now, and under this agreement, it has no obligation to use turbines we build, or to hire locally.) So your municipality passes a bylaw that blocks construction. The Chinese consider that to be an action disallowed by the Agreement. The company sues Canada under the Agreement’s dispute arbitration provisions. You lose. Canada and maybe even your municipality are on the hook for millions of dollars in compensation and the company gets to go ahead and put up its turbines anyway. It’s called the Canada-China Foreign Investment ...

 I remember sitting in the large impersonal lecture hall in my American History 101 class feeling a bit forlorn and overwhelmed.  I’m a freshman at the University of South Carolina.  It’s 1968, the Vietnam War is raging, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King have been assassinated, riots erupted in several U.S. cities, the antiwar movement, woman’s movement and civil rights movement are in full swing, my father’s currently serving in Military Intelligence, Saigon and my mom’s hospitalized after suffering 3rd degree burns because she’s having a nervous breakdown trying to deal with my father being at war leaving her responsible for raising 4 kids ranging in ages from 5 and 18.  I feel like I’m hanging on by my fingernails.The professor asks, “What is democracy?”  I’m wondering the answer to that question myself.  Student’s hands shoot up as one by one they proclaim, “Freedom of speech.”  “Freedom of religion.”  “Freedom of the press.”  “Freedom to peacefully assemble.”  Freedom to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  “Freedom from illegal search and seizures.”  And the list goes on and each time our professor nods, “Yes, and what else?”After our ideas are exhausted the professor responds, “Democracy means one man one vote.  Period.  This is the only power you have.  If you don’t wield that power at the ballot box then you have no power.”  His statement made a huge impression on me.  Until then I was so apathetic about what was going on in our country I’d decided to ignore the entire rotten system but his words changed my mind. My voting recordI became a registered Democrat.  And every four years I’d march myself to my voting ...

 The universe unravelingThe Southeast Asian country of Laos in the late 1950s and early 60s was a complex and confusing patchwork of civil conflicts, changes of government and switching loyalties. The CIA and the State Department alone could take credit for engineering coups at least once in each of the years 1958, 1959 and 1960. No study of Laos of this period appears to have had notable success in untangling the muddle of who exactly replaced whom, and when, and how, and why. After returning from Laos in 1961, American writer Norman Cousins stated that "if you want to get a sense of the universe unraveling, come to Laos. Complexity such as this has to be respected." 1Syria 2012 has produced its own tangled complexity. In the past 18 months it appears that at one time or another virtually every nation in the Middle East and North Africa as well as members of NATO and the European Union has been reported as aiding those seeking to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad, while Russia, China, and several other countries are reported as aiding Assad. The Syrian leader, for his part, has consistently referred to those in combat against him as "terrorists", citing the repeated use of car bombs and suicide bombers. The West has treated this accusation with scorn, or has simply ignored it. But the evidence that Assad has had good reason for his stance has been accumulating for some time now, particularly of late. Here is a small sample from recent months:

• "It is the sort of image that has become a staple of the Syrian revolution, a video of masked men calling themselves the Free Syrian Army and brandishing AK-47s — with one unsettling difference. In the background hang two flags of Al Qaeda, white Arabic writing on a black field ... The video, posted on YouTube, is one more bit of evidence that Al Qaeda and ...

 Part I - Savagery On-Going In my last analysis I noted that a Zionist organization run by the Islamophobe  Pamela Geller is posting messages on buses and subways calling for support for Israel.  The messages claim that Israel represents the “civilized man” in a struggle against Jihadist “savagery.”  I questioned Israel’s qualifications for civilized status in the earlier piece, but am drawn back to the subject by the almost daily revelations of the Zionist state’s questionable behavior.  It is not that the Jihadist cannot be a savage at times, it is that the Israeli government seems quite incapable of being civilized.  For instance: -- On 16 October 2012 the Israeli organization Yazkern hosted dozens of veterans of  Israel’s 1948 “War of Independence” for a look at what that struggle really entailed.  The veterans testified to what can only be called a conscious effort at ethnic cleansing--the systematic destruction of entire Palestinian villages and numerous massacres.  A documentary film by  Israeli-Russian journalist Lia Tarachansky, dealing with this same subject, the Palestinian “Nakba” or catastrophe, is nearing  completion.  It too has the testimony of Israeli soldiers of the 1948 war.  These latest revelations lend credence to the claims of Israel’s “new historians” such ...

  The moment I emerge above ground from the South Ferry Station in lower Manhattan I must appear lost.  I’m not lost just disoriented, which I am from time to time when I arise from the subterranean bowels of the New York City subway system.  The man standing at the corner asks, “Need a cab?   “No.” I reply.  “I need 55 Water Street. “ The cabbie points, “Two blocks down—on the right.”  And off I go.  I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never been to the Vietnam War Memorial in New York or Washington, D.C. for that matter.  I’ve never much felt like paying homage to these lost souls as it brings up too much pain from my own life with a Colonel father who served in three wars.  His Swan Song was Vietnam.  Our entire family had to deal with the ramifications of the aftermath of that war and we never fully recovered.  My father returned from his tour of Vietnam a different man and the country he’d given his total love and undying devotion to and his family had changed.  Our living room became the new battleground.  I no longer saw my father as the mighty war hero from WWII or the savior of the Nazi horror but as a cog in the military war machine of death and destruction being perpetrated on innocent people in some land far, far away that we had no business being in.  Back then it was called the communist threat.  The Domino Theory was how they justified it.  “It we don’t stop the communist they will take over the world one country at a time.” My father and I were mostly estranged from the time I was 18 until right before his death, which was 23 years later.  We reconciled and made our peace shortly before he died and all these ...

 PART I - The Savage vs. the Civilized Back on 1 August 2012 I posted a piece entitled History on a Billboard.  It reported on the placement, in the northern suburbs of New York City, of informational billboards with  maps of Palestine showing the steady growth of Israeli confiscated territory and the corresponding shrinkage of territory available to the indigenous Palestinians.  It also told the observer that “4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the UN as Refugees.”  Although Zionists labelled the billboard as “anti-Semitic,”  it was nothing of the kind.  It was wholly informational, and completely accurate.   As it turns out that informational effort is now part of a growing number of ads, signs and messages which collectively make up what I call the “billboard wars.”  From San Francisco to Washington D.C. and New York City, both Zionists and pro-Palestinian groups have launched competing billboard efforts. This is going on mostly in publicly owned spaces because Zionist pressure often results in private billboard companies refusing to display pro-Palestinian messages.  Now, depending on how you want to read the message of the latest Zionist effort, the billboard wars battleground has widened beyond the issue of Palestine to encompass a worldwide clash between the “civilized” and the “savage.”  It is to be noted that this was the sort of language used by imperial colonizers, including the U.S. in its conquest of the American Indians, to compare themselves to the indigenous populations they oppressed.  Here is what has happened.  There is a Zionist group calling itself “American Freedom Defense ...

 Part I – Earning a Place in the Eighth Rung of Hell Mitt Romney might be the most brazen political liar since James Polk.   Polk, who was the 11th U.S. president (1845-1849),  lied through his teeth–to Congress, to his cabinet, to the newspapers– in order to get the country into a war with Mexico.  Of course, other presidents have lied to this end, for instance presidents Johnson (Vietnam) and Bush Jr. (Iraq), but Polk had the same audacious, “lying is part of what I do,” disposition as does our current Republican candidate.   If one has any doubt about Mitt Romney’s mendacious temperment, the first presidential debate should have put it to rest.  According to one analyst, Romney let loose with “27 myths in 38 minutes,”  finishing with a big grin after most of these prevarications. ...

 They used to tell me I was building a dream, and so I followed the mob,When there was earth to plow, or guns to bear, I was always there right on the job.They used to tell me I was building a dream, with peace and glory ahead,Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?—“Brother, can you spare a dime?” E. Y. Harburg and Jay Gorney, 1931 In the summer of 1933, General Smedley Butler (ret) sat in the otherwise empty dining room of the Bellevue-Stratford in Philly and tried not to let his jaw drop on the tablecloth. Gerald MacGuire sat across from him and spoke quietly about what it was that JP Morgan and Irénée DuPont wanted the General to do. They wanted him to lead an army of veterans against the government of the United States. They wanted FDR and his New Deals gone and they had the money and the influence to do it. They would force the President to appoint Butler Secretary of General Affairs and “persuade” Roosevelt to take a back seat to their agenda. “You’ll see,” said MacGuire. “They’re organizing things right now.” And lo and behold, a few weeks later, the press announced the creation of an influential but secretive group called the American Liberty League. Most of the money came from Irénée DuPont. Most of the influence came from JP Morgan, J Howard Pew, President of the Sun Oil Company, and Alfred P Sloan, head of General Motors. General Butler was no great fan of government either. But he was a patriot. And when the Congressional Committee on Nazi Propaganda and Un-American Activities ...

The woman standing at the podium may seem small and unassuming but don’t be fooled she’s a powerhouse and has a warning to share with the world.  Vera Scroggins is a mother, a grandmother, resident of Susquehanna County, PA and a member of Citizens for Clean Water, a citizen-watch group of volunteers who keep an eye on the gas-drilling process by videotaping and keeping tabs on any problems or concerns.  But today Vera’s in New York City at Saint John the Divine for the Global Frackdown and her message is loud and clear.  “Don’t let them in.” Ms. Scroggina was born in Germany but her family fled in order to escape the Nazi’s and she speaks out against the horrors of hydrofracking so we can’t, like the Germans, make the excuse, we didn’t know.  She’s here to make sure we don’t make the same mistake and allow hydrofracking in New York.Yes, there’s something rotten in Susquehanna County and it’s called hydrofracking.  What the heck is hydrofracking anyway?  In a nutshell–it’s a highly toxic method of extracting natural gas from the shale by drilling down through aquifers, then horizontally through the shale and pumping millions of gallons of clean drinking water full of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals and sand.  They then shoot the toxic water into the shale using extreme pressure, which causes small earthquakes, fracturing the shale and releasing the gas.  Former VP and Halliburton Exec, Dick Cheney’s made sure the gas companies don’t have to divulge any of these toxic chemicals by implementing an energy policy, which conveniently exempted hydrofracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Superfund Act, now referred to as the Halliburton Loophole.  So all this hydrofracking is completely ...

 Part I -  Taking Progress For Granted People often take things for granted.  Take the concept of progress.  My students all assume that progress is continuous.  In fact, they think that it is inevitable.  Mostly they conceive of progress in terms of technology:  smart phones and computers of every sort. However, there is also a sense that there is a steady and inevitable movement toward the realization of social ideals.  Whether they are conservatives, liberals or libertarians, they all assume that the kind of world they want to live in is the kind of world that will evolve.   That is also true for the feminists in my classes.  They know that they have to fight for gender equality and they are  willing to do so.  Yet they also assume the betterment of women’s conditions will be continuous and that victory for their cause is ...

 Part I -  Taking Progress For Granted People often take things for granted.  Take the concept of progress.  My students all assume that progress is continuous.  In fact, they think that it is inevitable.  Mostly they conceive of progress in terms of technology:  smart phones and computers of every sort. However, there is also a sense that there is a steady and inevitable movement toward the realization of social ideals.  Whether they are conservatives, liberals or libertarians, they all assume that the kind of world they want to live in is the kind of world that will evolve.   That is also true for the feminists in my classes.  They know that they have to fight for gender equality and they are  willing to do so.  Yet they also assume the betterment of women’s conditions will be continuous and that victory for their cause is inevitable.  In terms of their own local communities, they are sure that conditions for ...

 Maybe I shouldn't say this. But, I'm almost starting to feel sorry for Mitt. I said “almost”. Because that would be like a Mississippi field slave feeling sad because his ol' Massa's whip broke. How could anyone fall so far so fast? Last week’s “47%” gaffe makes his past...er...uh... ”misspeakings” sound like the Gettysburg address. He was caught on video saying 47% of Americans are losers and leeches who rely on government for handouts and that's why they'll vote for Obama. The scandal is not that he thinks this. I'd bet 99% of all WWSM (Wealthy White Straight Men) do. It's not even that he said it in public. Although nobody’s ever invited moi, I’d guess they say this stuff all the time at the country clubs, private islands and resorts they own. (And, as quiet as it's kept, the mainstream media’s heard it many times before, in spite of their "shocked, shocked" rhetoric. After all, their owners are almost all WWSM too) No, the only difference is that he said it where some patriot with a camera - ...

In a previous op-ed, “When Liberals Deny Reality: Demonizing Conservatives While Idealizing Liberals.” (Nation of Change, Saturday, September 22, 2012), I praised a recent book by Chris Mooney (The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, Wiley, 2012). In spite of this, I was nonetheless highly critical of it.There is no question whatsoever that I basically agreed with Mooney’s characterization of conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are generally fearful of and highly resistant to change, have an obsessive need for order and predictability, prize individual differences (money, status, etc.), and believe in hierarchy over community and egalitarianism. In short, they are closed-minded and don’t believe in science, especially if it conflicts with their deep-seated religious and social beliefs.In sharp contrast, liberals generally believe strongly in reasoned argument, logic, and science. They are not only extremely open to change, but to learning from their own errors, and from the views of others.Nonetheless, as much as I agreed with Mooney on the key differences between conservatives and liberals, I parted sharp company with him with regard to his overly simplistic and highly idealized characterizations of academics and scientists. While academics and scientists may be liberals politically, they are not necessarily when it comes to their day-to-day work. Indeed, they are generally very conservative. Having been a university professor for over 45 years, I know this for a fact!In short, Mooney was seriously wrong if he thought that academics and scientists were “the shinning model for liberal thought.”None of this meant that I didn’t regard science as one of the best ways of ferreting out error that humankind has ever invented. Science is! Indeed, I have no regard whatsoever for those who ...

 I. The Israel Lobby and How it Operates Much is being made of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s involvement in the on-going American presidential campaign.  His public stance has been characterized as an Israeli effort to  “openly…topple [President] Obama.”  The truth is that the only thing unusual about this meddling is its open and advertised nature.  In a more discrete fashion, Zionist pressure bordering on blackmail and bribery goes on every day.   I have written elsewhere about this corrupting process that I call “lobbification.“  In brief, this is how it operates: Step One:  A lobbyist, in this case someone from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), approaches Congresspersons or Senators.  At some point in time that means every single one of them has been approached:  all 435 voting members of Congress and every one of the 100 voting members of the Senate.  Party affiliation is not an issue here.   Step Two:  The lobbyist offers to organize financial campaign assistance, positive media coverage, briefings on situations in the Middle East, trips to Israel, etc.  Step Three: All that is asked in return is that the recipient consistently vote in a pro-Israel way.  In other words, AIPAC wants the politician to surrender a part of his or her mind to them — that part that might exercise critical and considered judgment on issues pertaining to Israel.   

Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of the death penalty for federal or state crimes. Neither candidate is interested in eliminating or reducing the 5,113 US nuclear warheads. Neither candidate is campaigning to close Guantanamo prison. Neither candidate has called for arresting and prosecuting high ranking people on Wall Street for the subprime mortgage catastrophe. Neither candidate is interested in holding anyone in the Bush administration accountable for the torture committed by US personnel against prisoners in Guantanamo or in Iraq or Afghanistan. Neither candidate is interested in stopping the use of drones to assassinate people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia.  Neither candidate is against warrantless surveillance, indefinite detention, or racial profiling in fighting “terrorism.” Neither candidate is interested in fighting for a living wage.  In fact neither are really committed beyond lip service to raising the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour  – which, if it kept pace with inflation since the 1960s should be about $10 an hour. Neither candidate was interested in arresting Osama bin Laden and having him tried in court. Neither candidate will declare they refuse to bomb Iran. Neither candidate is refusing to take huge campaign contributions from people and organizations. Neither candidate proposes any significant specific steps to reverse global warming. Neither candidate is talking about the over 2 million people in jails and prisons in the US. Neither candidate proposes to create public jobs so everyone who wants to work can. Neither candidate opposes the nuclear power industry.  In fact both support expansion. 

Chris Mooney has written a very important book on the enormous differences between Republicans and Democrats, or more generally, between conservatives and liberals (The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science—and Reality, Wiley, 2012). Despite its critical flaws, it deserves to be read widely, especially by everyone who is disturbed by the current breakdown of political discourse.Mooney has done nothing less than a masterful job in assembling, summarizing, and integrating the vast amount of studies from psychology and neuroscience on the differences between the minds of conservatives and liberals. The same, consistent portrait between the two emerges repeatedly. We really do inhabit different realities.In brief, conservatives are generally fearful of and highly resistant to change. They have an obsessive need for order and predictability. They prize individual differences (money, status, etc.) and believe in hierarchy over community and egalitarianism. In short, they are closed-minded and don’t believe in science, especially if it conflicts with their deep-seated religious and social beliefs.On the positive side, conservatives are loyal, decisive, and generally show “spine.”In sharp contrast, liberals generally believe strongly in reasoned argument, logic, and science. They are not only extremely open to change, but to learning from their own errors, and from the views of others.On the negative side, liberals are often divided by petty differences that they obsess over and literally talk to death. For this reason, they are often accurately viewed as indecisive and lacking in  “spine.”As much as I agree with Mooney on the key differences between conservatives and liberals—he hits the mark brilliantly--I part company with him with regard to his overly simplistic characterizations of academics and ...

When I finish one of my analyses I usually look forward to a week to ten day hiatus and sometimes even wonder if I will have to hunt around for the next topic.  It rarely works out that way.  Usually,  within three of four days, something happens which strikes me as worthy of attention.  Often other commentators  have moved more quickly than I to report on the event.    However, there are always more questions to be asked and different perspectives to be offered.   So it is with the death of four American diplomats, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Libya on Wednesday 12 September 2012.  There are two mutually reinforcing parts to this tragedy: one takes place here in the USA, and the other in Libya, Egypt and several other places in the Middle East.  Let’s take them in sequence.  Part I ...

 I believe Barack Obama was put into office to do what no Republican could ever have gotten away with. Obama has extend the wars, created new wars, extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich, given additional bail out money to the banks, allowed the health insurance industry to write the healthcare bill, extended the Patriot Act and signed the NDAA.Under his watch not one member of the Bush Administration has been held accountable for leading us into wars built on false evidence and lies; not one banker has been held accountable for the fraud and corruption that brought down the global economy. And the final nail in the coffin, Mr. Slim Shady signed the NDAA bill on New Year’s Eve while most American’s sipped champagne and sang Auld Lang Syne. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) makes America the battlefield and allows indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of ‘terrorist” leanings without due process. http://www.aclu.org/national-security/president-obama-signs-indefinite-detention-bill-lawBut why be so negative you might ask? Here are a few things Obama did manage to do. He extended unemployment benefits because they’re no jobs as his stimulus package was too small. He also managed to cut payroll taxes, which is a back door way to defund Social Security, He helped cover up the BP oil spill in the Gulf by allowing Corexit, a toxic disbursement not allowed in other countries, to break up the oil which then dropped to the bottom instead of just cleaning it up. In other words, allowing them to hide the body.Obama hates truth tellers such as Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and whistleblowers like Bradley Manning who’s been held in detention for almost two years for, according to Obama, exposing state secrets aka a horrendous war crime. That is if Manning is the ...

For years, I have taught courses in Interpersonal Dynamics to undergraduate and graduate business school students alike. The prime purpose of the courses has been to help people better understand themselves and others. To accomplish this, I have had people take countless personality tests to show them how and why they literally “see highly disparate realities,” experience and handle conflict very differently, have diverse learning styles, varied aims and aspirations, etc.One of most powerful ways of helping people learn about themselves and others is to put people into different groups based on their personalities. Thus, all the people with the same personality type are put into a common group. In this way, there are as many different groups as there are different types.Next, all of the groups are then given the same assignment to see how they respond. For instance, each group is given the same issue of a popular magazine. Each group is then asked to cut out images from the magazine that best represents their group’s idea of their “ideal organization.” Making a collage, giving it a name, and listing as many characteristics as they can of their ideal organization allows people to literally “see” and compare an internal disposition such as personality.A key component of the course is dealing with difficult people, whether at work, play, home, with family members, etc. One of the most powerful ways of doing this is not just to have people merely read about different kinds of difficult people and proven strategies for dealing with them, but to engage in actual role-plays. Thus, people take turns role-playing a certain type of difficult person while another person role-plays how best to cope effectively with that type.Without a doubt, one of the most stressful types of difficult people to role-play and with whom to cope effectively is the “Sherman ...

Credit card debts are one of the most expensive debts. There isn’t any easy way as such to get rid of it. Moreover, since average interest rates on credit cards are pretty high, most choose to go for credit card consolidation. Consolidating credit card debts provides a manageable solution to your never ending debt problems.You’d obviously question whether or not it is worth consolidating credit card debts. The answer lies in the fact that since interest rates are so high, it is worthwhile to consolidate your debts before it goes out of hand. Now, credit card consolidation can be done in the following three ways. 1. Credit card consolidation programThis method actually helps you deal with multiple credit card debts together. Most importantly credit card consolidation saves you time. You’re less confused as the entire process becomes simpler and hassle-free with the credit card consolidation company negotiating on your behalf. You’d now have only one payment to make each month.You can pay off your credit card bills within a period of 4 to 5 years through credit card consolidation program. However, the ...

I received an email from a friend yesterday morning discussing the two political conventions and touting the brilliance of Bill Clinton’s speech and how amazing he is.  Well, I have a few things to say about Bill Clinton and the two political parties and their Hollywood spectacles err I mean conventions.But first, let’s give credit where credit’s due.  Clinton has massive amounts of charisma otherwise he couldn’t have achieved the political things he did.  Clinton is a masterful politician and for more insights into his character and how he uses his gifts I recommend watching “Primary Colors.”  But let’s be fair, no matter what’s said about him he did balance the budget, no small feat, and left us with a surplus.  I acknowledge and commend him for that. However, he also managed to:Deregulated Wall Street by getting rid of the Glass Steagall Act (Banking Act of 1933), which was put into place after the stock market crash of ’29 to prevent that kind of catastrophe from ever occurring again and once those regulations were removed allowed the recent global meltdown to occur.He also signed NAFTA into law and swore up and down on a stack of Bibles NAFTA would be great for creating jobs and we believed him and yes, it created millions of slave labor jobs overseas.  This so called “free trade” agreement sent millions of our jobs to China, India, Vietnam, etc. never to return home again and left our factories to rot, collapse and decay and now millions of Americans find themselves without a job and with no hopes of ever getting another one unless they want to work some menial service sector job–McDonalds comes to mind.What else?  Oh yeah, he gutted welfare all the while feigning his “I feel your pain” rhetoric.  This guy’s good.  He’s a topnotch politician and brilliant at his craft.  ...

Following the recent monetary turmoil of 2008, more and more individuals have turned to a non-stop use of credit cards. Although credit cards are basically meant for people who hate carrying cash, it has turned out to be a sort of addiction these days. Today, a majority of the people use credit cards for buying anything and everything under the sun. They easily get obsessed with an incessant use of credit cards and consequently end up in a pool of credit card debt. If you’re one of them and trapped in a vicious cycle of credit card debt, you needn’t fret. These days, there are countless debt relief options available for you. However, you need to choose the one that suits your circumstances and requirements.When you choose a credit card, there are certain things that you need to keep in mind. If you decide to go for a credit card that offers the best rewards program, you’re certainly going to benefit from it. However, there’ll always be a question lurking behind your mind: Do you need to pay taxes for your credit card rewards? While the short answer is perhaps, the sensible answer is possibly not.Wise to be AnxiousYour concern is quite justified. It’s no more a secret that the IRS categorizes almost everything under taxable income. In ...

The gun is now a part of Canadian politics. Richard Henry Bain killed one person and injured another at the PQ rally last Wed night. He was ill, it seems, and a recluse, like many of those who suddenly, unexpectedly, tragically erupt into violence. It’s tempting to leave it there, at the feet of a mad man. But, like so many other, similar mad men, Mr Bain has tapped into something deeper and darker in our national psyche. Some old business we’ve left unfinished. He’s English, and when he yelled “the English are waking up” he tainted the next four years of politics in Québec. We must be careful that the blood he spilled does not stain us in ‘the rest of Canada’. I remember, now, my last visit to Québec. I chatted with two students from the Université de Québec about the federal election. The conversation was polite—not the sycophantic politeness that makes you cringe. It was a respectful courtesy—discourse without rancour or rhetoric. It was pure Canadian curtesie, to use the old English word, politesse to use the French … tough stands argued bravely, with honour and a smile.  Their wit and their charm were disarming, and typically Canadian. Is it still true? It’s only been a year. Have the hate-filled politics of our neighbour to the south finally infected us? Among us there are some, both mad and bad, who pick up the threads of political discord and act in ways that unravel the social fabric and test our national character. But whenever ...

Part I – Reality TV At The Democratic ConventionOn Wednesday the 5th of September, 2012, in the middle of the Democratic Party convention, U.S. democracy took a big hit. Essentially the convention managers rigged a vote in the manner of those dictatorships that stuff ballot boxes and then announce that 99% of the voters support the dictator in question. Worse yet, the Democrats did this on national TV so millions of other Americans could watch them do it. Here is how it went:

• The Democratic platform committee had decided to keep all issues pertaining to a final treaty between Israelis and Palestinians out of the platform. After all, Israel and Palestine are foreign nations. Among these issues is the final status of the city of Jerusalem.
• However, the Republican platform “envisions” Israel with Jerusalem as its capital. Having set this gold standard, the Republicans were trying their best to make the status of Jerusalem a major campaign issue.
• So, President Obama apparently decided that the politically savvy thing to do was to match the Republicans and put into the .Democratic platform language declaring that “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.” (See amendments in picture above).
• To amend the platform at this point in time required a two-thirds majority vote from the convention floor. So on Wednesday the 5th, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was chairing the Democratic convention, confidently called for the amending vote.
• If you would like bear witness to what happened then, click the following: Here is what ...
  

In John Milloy’s A National Tragedy, there are before and after photographs of an Aboriginal boy. In the before photo, his hair is long. He is dressed in buckskins and beads and posed against a buffalo robe. He is as he was when as he came to the Regina Indian Industrial School. In the after photo, he is beside a potted plant looking as though he could have stepped into Eton with his short hair and neat uniform. Even his name has changed—to Thomas Moore, after a particularly rakish Irish poet popular in regency England, perhaps. But his eyes tell a different story. They have not changed and they say more of what has been guarded than what has been lost. The after photo does not have the effect the administrators of the Indian Residential School System had hoped for. It is not a picture of transformation from savage to civilized. It is a parody of the whole colonial project. Parody is what comes of applying our very Western European ideas to peoples with cultures very different from ours, as the culture of Turtle Island most certainly is. Residential schools with hunters planted in rows like radishes. Houses with tissue paper walls—suburbs on muskeg. Prisons bursting with Aboriginal people being ‘rehabilitated’—sweat lodges behind bars. “Sell a country? Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth?” said Tecumseh to William Harrison. “Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?” “We have a different understanding,” said Red Jacket to a young missionary come to civilize the Seneca. “To you the Creator has given the book; to us He has given the land.” Or, as Archbishop Desmond Tutu (who knows better than most that belief is the bayonet point of the colonial project) says, “When they arrived, we ...

Make no mistake about it. This election is about the choice between two worldviews that are as psychologically different and far apart as any two could possibly be. The choice is difficult not just because so much is riding on it—this much is obvious--but like most crucial things in life, much of it rests on factors that are largely unconscious. The later is far from obvious.On the one side is the Republican view of the world (the Dark Side) that is as mean and repressive as anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime. On the other hand is the Democratic (the Light Side), which while far from perfect, shows real signs of humanity and maturity. With no apologies whatsoever for my clear bias and partisanship, let me explore the psychological differences between these two worldviews. Hopefully, this helps to illuminate the unconscious factors that play a major role in what people vote for and why. To do this, let me discuss very briefly: 1. Jungian psychological types; 2. ego psychology; and 3. American mythology. All three interact in powerful ways to produce the enormous, and unfortunately, unbridgeable differences between the current versions of Republicans and Democrats.As long ago as 1921, Jung identified, among many others, the psychological differences between: 1. Sensing and Intuitive, and 2. Thinking and Feeling personality types. Sensing types instinctively break all problems down into separate and independent parts for which they then proceed to gather “hard data” or “facts” that “measure precisely” the “exact status or performance” of each of the parts. In addition, they are anchored firmly in the “here-and-now.” In short, if you can’t see, feel, hear, smell, taste, or measure something in the here-and-now, then it’s not real, let alone important.In contrast, Intuitive types instinctively look at the ...

Caterpillar’s D9-R Armored Bulldozer Rachel Corrie Part I – The Death of Rachel Corrie On 16 March 2003, the last day of her life, 23 year old Rachel Corrie was in the Gaza town of Rafah standing in front of the Palestinian family home (not just a house) of Dr. Samir Nasrallah. Dr. Nasrallah was a local pharmacist and Ms Corrie had been staying with his family while serving as part of an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) cadre seeking to disrupt the Israeli army’s (IDF) on-going demolition of Palestinian homes. Between 2000 and 2004, the Israelis had destroyed enough homes in the Rafah area to leave some 1700 people homeless. The Israeli army claimed they did this because these homes were used as “terrorist hiding places.” The result, they claimed, was frequent gunfire at Israeli settlements and soldiers. Yet for the time that Ms Corrie stayed with the Nasrallahs, everyone in the home had slept on the floor and away from the windows to avoid a constant barrage of gunfire from Israeli snipers. On the day that Ms Corrie died, she had interposed herself between the Nasrallah home and a very large “D9R” armored Caterpillar bulldozer driven by an Israeli soldier. This was one of those infamous, made-in-the-USA machines sold to Israel by the Caterpillar Inc. even though the CEO, Board of Directors and sales staff know that their product is used to destroy homes in ways that violate ...

"We pledge allegiance to the republic for which America stands and not to its empire for which it is now suffering."Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, the Third Reich needed World War II, the Land of the Rising Sun needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home. What will the American Empire need?Perhaps losing the long-held admiration and support of one group of people after another, one country after another, as the empire's wars, bombings, occupations, torture, and lies eat away at the facade of a beloved and legendary "America"; an empire unlike any other in history, that has intervened seriously and grievously, in war and in peace, in most countries on the planet, as it preached to the world that the American Way of Life was a shining example for all humanity and that America above all was needed to lead the world.The Wikileaks documents and videos have provided one humiliation after another ... lies exposed, political manipulations revealed, gross hypocrisies, murders in cold blood, ... followed by the torture of Bradley Manning and the persecution of Julian Assange. Washington calls the revelations "threats to national security", but the world can well see it's simply plain old embarrassment. Manning's defense attorneys have asked the military court on several occasions to specify the exact harm done to national security. The court has never given an answer. If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, consider an empire embarrassed.And we now have the international soap opera, L'Affaire Assange, starring Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Ecuador, and Julian Assange. The United States' ...

Part I — Some BackgroundThe Ku Klux Klan (the name derives from the Greek word Kuklos meaning circle with a modification of the word clan added), an American terrorist organization, was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1865. It was organized by Southerners who refused to reconcile themselves to the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War, and its declared mission was to “maintain the supremacy of the white race in the United States.” To this end it adopted tactics in the southern states that would so terrify emancipated African Americans and their white allies, that they would not dare to vote, run for public office, or intermingle with whites except in “racially appropriate” ways.Intimidation took many forms. Non-whites and their allies who sought to assert civil rights were threatened, assaulted and frequently murdered. If they were women they were subjected to assault and rape. The property of these people was destroyed, their homes and meeting places attacked with bombs or burned. Finally, a favorite tactic was lynching.Lynching was/is murder carried out by a mob that collectively thinks it is protecting the community and/or its traditions. Between 1882 and 1930 the Klan and allied organizations lynched some 3,000 people, mostly black men. Often the accusation was that the black male victim had sought sexual relations with white women. It was very rare that those involved in these murders, which were carried out quite openly with little effort to hide identities, were arrested for their actions much less convicted and adequately punished. This, in turn, was possible because of a number of factors:– First and foremost, the belief that African Americans, and subsequently all non-whites, were dangerous to ...

Davida Finger also contributed to this submission.1          Rank of New Orleans in fastest growing US cities between 2010 and 2011.  Source: Census Bureau.1          Rank of New Orleans, Louisiana in world prison rate.  Louisiana imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of the other 50 states.  Louisiana rate is five times higher than Iran, 13 times higher than China and 20 times Germany.  In Louisiana, one in 86 adults is in prison.  In New Orleans, one in 14 black men is behind bars.  In New Orleans, one of every seven black men is in prison, on parole or on probation.  Source: Times-Picayune.2          Rank of New Orleans in rate of homelessness among US cities.  Source: 2012 Report of National Alliance to End Homelessness.2          Rank of New Orleans in highest income inequality for cities of over 10,000   Source: Census. 3          Days a week the New Orleans daily paper, the Times-Picayune, will start publishing and delivering the paper this fall and switch to internet only on other days.  (See 44 below).  Source: The Times-Picayune.10        Rate that New Orleans murders occur compared to US average.  According to FBI reports, the national average is 5 murders per 100,000.  The Louisiana average is 12 per 100,000.  The New Orleans reported 175 murders last year or 50 murders per 100,000 residents.  Source: WWL TV.13        Rank of New Orleans in FBI overall crime rate rankings.  Source: Congressional Quarterly.15        Number of police officer-involved shootings in New ...

This is a rant. I make no apologies for it because sometimes that’s the only thing that can help cleanse one’s soul.Norman Mailer was once asked why no good literature ever came out of the Third Reich in WWII. He responded--I paraphrase--“The whole philosophy was so garbled such that if you tried to write it down, all you got was complete nonsense.”Mailer’s perceptive remark captures perfectly the essence of the whole Todd Akin fiasco. Even more, it captures the complete idiocy, if not deeply psychotic nature, of the current Republican belief system. Yes, I said “psychotic.”To view, as Akin would like us to do, his crazy remarks merely as a “poor choice of words,” is only to compound the original crime. Words don’t come out of thin air. They are always reflective of an underlying philosophy or world-view, in this case, a deeply distorted and sick one. This is also why we must not take Akin’s outburst as an “isolated aberration” as the Republican leadership would like us to do.Getting rid of Akin will not cause the basic illness to go away. Indeed, it only prolongs and makes it worse. To believe otherwise is merely to commit the latest form of what I call The Hazelwood Defense, the label I associate with Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the ill-fated Exxon Valdez that went aground and spilled thousands of gallons of oil in the Bay of Valdez many years ago. Exxon wanted us to believe that it was just the fault of “one bad apple,” i.e., Hazelwood, when it was a whole “bad system run amuck.”In a way, Akin has done us a public service—I wouldn’t dare call it “great” by any means--but not in the usual ways that Liberals and Progressives are calling it, i.e., his staying in the race almost ensures that Republicans will not take back the Senate.Not that we really need ...

 Living on a First Nation and looking across the boundary line is a little like looking through the wrong end of a telescope—your field of view is wider, the picture is clearer, and Canada looks a lot further away than it really is. People who have lived on a reserve will know what I mean. For those who haven’t, well Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore; although which side of the boundary is Oz depends a great deal on which side of the line you’re standing. It’s a perspective you can’t get anywhere else in the country, and it’s wonderfully useful for examining the workings of Canada and the US. Take the IJC for example. The International Joint Commission is charged by both US and Canadian governments with managing water diversions in and out of ten lake and river systems that dare to cross the border without a visa or VISA. The IJC was formed because, in 1900, the Army Corps of Engineers built the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to link Lake Michigan with the Mississippi River System. The level of the Upper Great Lakes dropped precipitously and someone said, “Oops, perhaps we should have talked to Canada first.” And the IJC was born. The IJC still carries the Corps’ can-do attitude. It can suggest ways of managing the Great Lakes, but now all the parties have to agree before they do it. However, it’s still not very good at dealing with the consequences. For example, it obtained agreement that the St Clair River should be dredged to make room for ocean going “salties.” The big ships brought all kinds of invasive species that are rapidly changing the food cycle in the water column and wreaking havoc with the fisheries. To examine dropping water levels in Lakes Huron and Michigan, the IJC formed the Upper Great Lakes Study Group. The scientists who undertook the ...

What is it that’s making governments in the West so afraid of information? Britain has platoons of police surrounding Ecuador’s embassy in London lest Julian Assange tries to make a break for it. The PM is threatening to storm the place—an act of war by the way. Not that Ecuador would win, but still. It’s positively Kafkaesque. This small, one story embassy on the ground floor of an apartment building is besieged because some guy leaked a lot of embarrassing information. He hasn’t even been charged with anything. There are no reports of harm to secret agents; no military objectives compromised. But a lot of thuggish back-room chicanery (not to mention war crimes by our side) has come to light. Maybe that’s why the US has a secret indictment signed, sealed and waiting for his delivery. Our own government is not nearly so dramatic. But it is just as paranoid. Mr Harper has cut the long-form census. He’s axed the world-class Experimental Lakes Area. He’s muzzled our scientists. He sees no data, hears no data and speaks no data on everything from crime to climate change to the cost of jet planes. The demos in democracy is you and I. If our governments can’t be transparent, if they are so afraid of scrutiny that they suppress or process or dismiss what we, the people, should know then it falls to you and I with help from whistleblowers like Julian Assange. 

Part I - The Good Old Bad Days In the 132 years between 1797 and 1929, there was no effective regulation of U.S. economy. No federal agencies existed to control corruption, fraud and exploitation on the part of the business class. Even during the Civil War, economic management on a national level was minimal and war profiteering common. As a result the country experienced 33 major economic downturns which impacted roughly 60 of the years in question. These included 22 recessions, 4 depressions, and 7 economic “panics” (bank runs and failures). Then came the Great Depression starting with the crash of the New York stock market in 1929. This soon became a worldwide affair which lasted until the onset of World War II. Millions were thrown out of work, agricultural production partially collapsed, and the fear of rebellion and revolution was palpable both in the U.S. and Europe. It is to be noted that the way capitalism worked over these 132 years was a function of ideology. This was (and still is) the so-called free market ideology which taught that if the government was kept as small as possible (basically having responsibility for internal order, external defense, and the enforcement of contracts), the citizenry would have to pay very low taxes and be left alone to pursue their own prosperity. Thus, as the ideology goes, everyone would be free to maximize their own wealth and in doing so also maximize the wealth of the community as a whole. The Great Depression was a real moment of truth for the capitalist West because it suggested to the open-minded that the free market ideology was seriously flawed. Free market practices had brought the economic system to the brink of collapse, and Russia’s newly triumphant communists represented serious competition. So the question that ...

 Part I – The Know-Nothings, Then and Now There is a universal phenomenon that I call natural localism.  The majority of people, wherever they might live,  are affected by this condition.  It results in limited knowledge–knowledge of what is local and ignorance (often breeding fear) of what is not local.  Unless countered by positive education and tolerance,  natural localism can result in aggressive behavior toward the unfamiliar. In the year 1849, natural localism was institutionalized in a small nativist party in the United States called The American Party.  It was basically an anti-immigrant affair.  White men who were ignorant and fearful of outsiders came to see Catholic immigrants of all descriptions undermining the true character of ...

The United States and its comrade-in-arms, Al Qaeda. And other tales of an empire gone mad.Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s ... Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s ... Libya 2011 ... Syria 2012 ... In military conflicts in each of these countries the United States and al Qaeda (or one of its associates) have been on the same side.What does this tell us about the United States' "War On Terrorism"?Regime change has been the American goal on each occasion: overthrowing communists (or "communists"), Serbians, Slobodan Milosevic, Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad ... all heretics or infidels, all non-believers in the empire, all inconvenient to the empire.Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, has the United States invested so much blood and treasure against the PLO, Iraq, and Libya, and now Syria, all mideast secular governments?Why are Washington's closest Arab allies in the Middle East the Islamic governments of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain? Bahrain being the home of an American naval base; Saudi Arabia and Qatar being conduits to transfer arms to the Syrian rebels.Why, if democracy means anything to the United States are these same close allies in the Middle East all monarchies?Why, if the enemy is Islamic terrorism, did the United States shepherd Kosovo — 90% Islamist and perhaps the most gangsterish government in the world — to unilaterally declare independence from Serbia in 2008, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world's nations still have not recognized it?Why — since Kosovo's ruling Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic) — has the United States been pushing for Kosovo's membership in NATO and the European Union? (Just what the EU needs: another economic basket case.) Between 1998 and 2002, the ...

Part I – History On A BillboardFor the past few weeks, those taking local trains from New York City’s wealthier suburbs into Manhattan have encountered a succinct billboard history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The lesson comes in the form of four aligned maps showing the absorption of Palestinian land by Israel from 1946 to the present, along with a declaration that “4.7 million Palestinians are classified by the U.N. as refugees.” In all respects, the ad is historically correct.  This was made possible thanks to the efforts of Mr. Henry Clifford, chairman of the area’s local Committee for Peace in Israel/Palestine, who purchased the billboard space so as to educate readers to what really is happening under the Israeli regime of occupation so generously supported by U.S. dollars. Immediately the ads were labeled “anti-Semitic” by area rabbis and Jewish community leaders. Here is the reasoning of Dovid Efune, “editor of the Manhattan-based Jewish newspaper, The Algemeiner.”  “This is anti-Semitic because when people think of the Jews they think of theJewish state. Jews have seen this happen many times. It always starts withmessaging that says Jews are committing a crime.”  Three things are to be said about Mr. Efune’s reaction: 1) On one hand, he seems not to care that the map display and UN statistic are accurate and what that means for the lives of millions of people. 2) On the other, and no doubt quite inadvertently, he does infer that what the ...

 Poverty and extreme wealth on Long Island, where I live, have been in the national spotlight in recent days. HBO this month broadcast a powerful documentary “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island.” Filmmaker Marc Levin followed four Long Island families who suddenly became poor.They’re not rarities. A commission established by the Suffolk County Legislature has been holding hearings about how 6.1% of the county’s 1.4 million residents now live below what the U.S. government considers the poverty line ($22,113 a year for a family of four). The hearings’ title: “Struggling in Suburbia: Meeting the Challenges of Poverty in Suffolk County.”There have “long been pockets of poverty, created by race and income segregation” on Long Island, editorialized the New York Times on July 7. “But it is not just pockets of poverty anymore. These days the struggle has metastasized: foreclosed homes are just as empty in the better-off subdivisions, with the same weed-choked yards, plywood windows and mold-streaked clapboard siding…Long Island’s two counties, Nassau and Suffolk, have the second-and third-highest foreclosure rates in New York State.”The four Long Island families presented in “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island,” as Verne Gay wrote in his Newsday review, “aren’t whiners or slackers, but desperate and afraid.”All had extensive educations and well-paying jobs, and then in the Great Recession were tossed into poverty. Perhaps the most poignant of these stories was that of teacher Heather Hartstein and her husband, David, a chiropractor, of Montauk. He dies at the end of the documentary, which is dedicated to him. Look for a repeat of the excellent work on HBO.Meanwhile, hyper-expensive fundraisers were held on July 8 in Suffolk for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney—and there were ...

Part I - Gun Violence Epidemic Continues  Well here we go again. Late in the evening of July 20th “a masked gunman entered a Colorado movie theater playing the new Batman movie and “opened fire…killing at least 12 people and wounding 50.” The gunman was not a large anthropomorphized bat but rather a young white male, and he “was armed with a rifle, a shotgun and two handguns” all of which he had legally obtained.  This is nothing new in the Land Of The Free. Among the more notable victims of the nation’s love affair with deadly weapons have been Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Ronald Reagan and, of course, John Lennon. Then there are the recent (and periodically on-going) mass murders among the population at large: the Colombine High School shootings, the Beltway sniper incidents, the Virginia Tech massacre, and the 2011 Tucson killings. To this can be added the daily shootings that occur in every city in the country. Taking the representative year 2007, there were 31,224 deaths from gunshots with 17,352 of them (56%) being suicides. The numbers have, generally, been going ...

What does the behavior of British children in WWII possibly have to do with today’s fractious politics? More than one would ever imagine! Indeed, it explains the unconscious roots of much of the current dysfunctional behavior on both the Left and the Right.In WWII, by being placed or lodged either in hospitals or massive care facilities, an overwhelming number of children were separated from their parents for weeks, months, and even years on end. Worst of all were those who were permanently housed in orphanages.When they first arrived, the children cried for hours and days on end. When they eventually stopped, they became zombie-like in that they showed virtually no emotion whatsoever from that time on.To help understand the horrific damage done to children that he witnessed daily, the British psychiatrist John Bowlby created Attachment Theory. Bowlby and his colleagues found that two key dimensions were key to explaining the emotional state of a child: Avoidance and Anxiety. Both were directly traceable to and the direct result of the emotional state of a child’s primary caretakers. During Bowlby’s time, the primary caretaker was of course the mother, if not throughout most of history. Whether the primary caretaker was either high or low on Avoidance and Anxiety had a tremendous effect on the child’s emotional development.By means of the mother’s intense and frequent interactions—how she held, looked at, and attended to her child’s cries and general discomfort--the mother subtly and not so subtly communicated her emotional state to her child. In short, she communicated how comfortable versus how anxious she was in fulfilling her role as a caretaker.Since the interactions took place from the moment of birth, they were largely preverbal and hence unconscious. In this way, the mother not only passed on, but influenced significantly the child’s subsequent ...

 In a local newspaper I recently read an article regarding how a school district was looking to “refinance” their outstanding bonds in an effort to reduce the interest burden on their debt. In the same issue I read how another school district expends nearly $2,000,000 yearly just to pay the interest burden on their debt.Clearly our school systems face a considerable interest burden on their debts.  It is already a matter of public record that US municipalities, school districts, and pension funds were victims of fraud due to the rigging of the commission bids as laid out in an article called “The Scam Wall St Learned from the Mafia” by Matt Taibbi. Many of these municipalities, schools, or other entities were also the victims of a type of derivative called Interest Rate Swaps where the big banks induced them to gamble with public money on the direction of the market, but the end result was often that the “bet” went bad. A great example of this was Jefferson County in  Alabama where the original cost for a sewer project was estimated at $250 million and ended up indebting the county $5 BILLION. Since we do not know all the details, it is difficult at this time to determine specifically how many states, counties, municipalities, and school districts may have been victims of financial fraud which resulted in an increased debt burden paid by the taxpayers as a result of the LIBOR rate rigging scandal that is still unfolding.Consider this…., when a municipality or school district wishes to do a repair, a capital improvement or infrastructure project, the amount of money paid in interest costs to the financiers exceeds the amount of money paid to those who supply the materials and do the labor on the project. Most people should feel angered by this. Why should those who simply ...

 In a local newspaper I recently read an article regarding how a school district was looking to “refinance” their outstanding bonds in an effort to reduce the interest burden on their debt. In the same issue I read how another school district expends nearly $2,000,000 yearly just to pay the interest burden on their debt.Clearly our school systems face a considerable interest burden on their debts.  It is already a matter of public record that US municipalities, school districts, and pension funds were victims of fraud due to the rigging of the commission bids as laid out in an article called “The Scam Wall St Learned from the Mafia” by Matt Taibbi. Many of these municipalities, schools, or other entities were also the victims of a type of derivative called Interest Rate Swaps where the big banks induced them to gamble with public money on the direction of the market, but the end result was often that the “bet” went bad. A great example of this was Jefferson County in  Alabama where the original cost for a sewer project was estimated at $250 million and ended up indebting the county $5 BILLION. Since we do not know all the details, it is difficult at this time to determine specifically how many states, counties, municipalities, and school districts may have been victims of financial fraud which resulted in an increased debt burden paid by the taxpayers as a result of the LIBOR rate rigging scandal that is still unfolding.Consider this…., when a municipality or school district wishes to do a repair, a capital improvement or infrastructure project, the amount of money paid in interest costs to the financiers exceeds the amount of money paid to those who supply the materials and do the labor on the project. Most people should feel angered by this. Why should those who simply ...

One cannot help but note how vitriolic our elections have become. If it is not the candidates themselves, it is their surrogates, either individuals or Political Action Committees. The message is almost always negative. It is as if we now practice the Napoleonic code, guilty until proven innocent. Disinformation is the tactic of first choice. Allegation has become the de facto truth of the moment and the real story behind that allegation is not relevant because our attention has been directed toward the new allegation. The taste of the last allegation is still in our mouth, unresolved, coloring our view of the new allegation. It is a slide away from civil discourse and we, the American people, have been on that slide for the last decade. Civil discourse, the give and take of ideas has been fundamental to the success of our democratic republic. When we veered from this approach in the mid-1800s, we had the Civil War. There have been tough political times in our past since then, but there has always been respect for the opposing opinion until lately. Growing up in a small town in the 50s and 60s meant there was a respect and deference toward parents, civil authorities and elected officials. Vietnam started changing our thinking. We saw that we were involved in something we didn't like, we didn't necessarily know why. We just knew that we didn't like it. It felt wrong. In all previous wars, there were at least 2 degrees of separation between the reality of that war and our personal lives at home. We had to buy a newspaper to read about it or go to the movies and see it in a newsreel. With the advent of a televised war, the reality came into our homes every night. Many people just tuned out, the experience was too personal. Many more people tuned in, and after a while started asking the question, why. Why is this war stopping the spread of Communism? Why isn't there any progress? Why can't you just defeat ...

Part I - Two Ideologies　　There are two very powerful, and fully internalized ideologies in today’s America: one is nationalism and the other is capitalism. Nationalism Pope John Paul II once remarked that "pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one." Whatever else you might think of this Pontiff, he makes a good point here–and one applicable to the U.S.A. American politicians never tire of telling us that ours is the greatest nation on earth and, for the world’s sake, we must aggressively (often by war) expand our freedoms, as well as our general culture, to the ends of the earth. Actually, this is a message that has been repeated for two hundred years and "its dominion" here in the "land of the free" is manifest. For many citizens, this assumption is one of the primary reasons we invaded Iraq, are hanging on in Afghanistan, and swear eternal loyalty to the Israelis. It is probably the case that American political and civic leaders invoke God and national manifest destiny more than those of any other nationality. Capitalism  This is the world’s prevalent economic system. It is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods and services for profit. Wage labor is an important element on the cost side of the capitalist ledger. So are things like safe working conditions and worker benefits. The capitalist impulse is to minimize costs in order to maximize profit. Left to themselves, capitalists will pay workers (white collar or otherwise) the lowest possible wages and deny or minimize other benefits. They ...

Part I - Two Ideologies　　There are two very powerful, and fully internalized ideologies in today’s America: one is nationalism and the other is capitalism. NationalismPope John Paul II once remarked that "pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one." Whatever else you might think of this Pontiff, he makes a good point here–and one applicable to the U.S.A. American politicians never tire of telling us that ours is the greatest nation on earth and, for the world’s sake, we must aggressively (often by war) expand our freedoms, as well as our general culture, to the ends of the earth. Actually, this is a message that has been repeated for two hundred years and "its dominion" here in the "land of the free" is manifest. For many citizens, this assumption is one of the primary reasons we invaded Iraq, are hanging on in Afghanistan, and swear eternal loyalty to the Israelis. It is probably the case that American political and civic leaders invoke God and national manifest destiny more than those of any other nationality. Capitalism This is the world’s prevalent economic system. It is based on private ownership of the means of production and the creation of goods and services for profit. Wage labor is an important element on the cost side of the capitalist ledger. So are things like safe working conditions and worker benefits. The capitalist impulse is to minimize costs in order to maximize profit. Left to themselves, capitalists will pay workers (white collar or otherwise) the lowest possible wages and deny or minimize other benefits. They will ignore worker safety and deny any responsibility for worker health. The only reason ...

It is hard to imagine that an airline can lose a child.  But that's precisely what seems to have happened to a three-year-old albino boy, who was a Kenya Airways passenger flying from Nairobi to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in April. The airline does not seem to know where he went. It’s as if he’s been lost into the thin air of the tropics. That at least is the conclusion we have arrived at, as we have tried to find out: who he was, where he came from and what might have become of him. And we want to know about his fate because unfortunately to be born an albino in Africa is to invite murderous witch doctors and albino human body parts dealers.  We are very concerned for his welfare. To most of us, if a child is lost in an airport, we hope a kind soul finds her and leads her to authorities, who in turn make every attempt to connect her with her parents. But not when you're an albino in Tanzania or Kenya where some people believe in witchcraft. In particular in Tanzania an albino’s arms, legs, heart and liver are considered precious magic potions and albino abductions are common. Albino body parts go for large sums of money in the underground albino body parts market.  I saw the albino child I allude to at Nairobi airport in mid April in the company of three men who were clearly not related to him.  Their behavior should have raised alarm bells for most intelligent people. It didn’t for me until some time had passed, my excuse being that I’d been gone from Africa for three decades. It seems  it raised alarm bells for the African airport workers, for when I saw him the three men were in a heated argument with a Kenya Airways attendant who wanted to know where the child's traveling documents were. How could they have travelled from Tanzania to Kenya without any documents for him, she asked.  In the way some men in Africa have, ...

Make no mistake about it. America is in an extreme state of mind. It is gripped by forces that can only be described as psychotic.The great poets and playwrights understood implicitly that to understand politics—indeed, to truly understand anything human—one not only had to understand the intricacies of the human mind, but extreme states such as psychosis.Much of what motivates humans is buried deep in the unconscious. As a result, most people are not unaware of some of the most powerful determinants of human behavior. This is why drama is so important. It is the art form par excellence that digs far below the surface of everyday life to bring up to the light and thus examine the “dark forces” that govern so much of human conduct.This was brought home recently when my wife and I had the opportunity to attend the play Medea, Macbeth, and Cinderella in Ashland. Despite its critical shortcomings—too often it seemed that three of the most disparate characters imaginable were merely thrown together as in a disjointed nightmare—it nevertheless managed to illuminate the dark side of politics even though this was not the prime intention of the play.Medea, Macbeth, Cinderella brings together three of the major forms of drama: Greek, Elizabethan, and the modern American Musical Comedy in Rogers and Hammerstein’s Broadway production of Cinderella. But most of all, it serves as a prime vehicle to compare and examine the role of women at three critical stages of life: middle, Medea; late, Lady Macbeth; and early, Cinderella.One of the key interpretations of Medea is that she is driven to murder her children because of the uncontrollable rage she feels towards her husband who has deserted her for a younger woman. Lady Macbeth is complicit in her husband’s murder of the king as well as subsequent murders because of their ruthless ambition. And, Cinderella ...

It is time to tell the truth about nuclear weapons. They are not a deterrent to terrorists, whom security experts regard as the greatest danger to our nation. They do not deter attacks from other nations, because very few want to attack us, and our overwhelming conventional forces are more than enough for our defense. What nuclear weapons actually do is cost us a great deal of money. Just to maintain the warheads will cost us $7.6 billion next year and $2.5 billion more to prevent proliferation. As we trim our federal budget other urgently needed programs will be cut, while nuclear weapons funds are defended in the name of National Security and for the benefit of senators and representatives who have facilities in their districts. Some Congress people hope to spend at least $100 billion in the next decade on “modernizing” the planes, missiles and submarines that are ready to deliver the warheads to an unidentified “enemy.” Nuclear weapons are completely indiscriminate. They incinerate adults, children and pets in the target area without regard for innocence or guilt. The radioactive fallout drifts for miles on the shifting winds. Even a relatively small nuclear war would create so much soot that it would drift around the earth for years, blocking the sun and reducing crop yields, thus causing widespread famine. At the same time, the great heat of a nuclear fireball and the following firestorm carries radioactive materials into the stratosphere, where they weaken the ozone layer, causing blindness, skin cancer, and damaged immune systems. It would also destroy aquatic ecosystems, resulting in reduced ocean productivity for years. (for an excellent summary of these effects see: www.ippnw.org/pdf/zero-is-the-only-option.pdf ) For those who are concerned that a nation might try to cheat a Nuclear ...

I – Come November Soon it will be presidential voting time again in the U.S.. That four year cycle comes to us with the regularity of a returning comet, accompanied by a shroud of campaign fog that makes a guessing game of discerning fact from fiction when it comes to political promises. A hefty minority have opted out of this process. Thus, if history runs consistent, when the designated day in November arrives, between 38 and 40% of America’s eligible voters will automatically (without even thinking about it) stay away from the polls. Voting appears not to be part of their local culture: they obviously do not think the results touch them in a personal way.  They feel their vote is meaningless, and they see the candidates as irredeemable liars not to be taken seriously. The behavior of this minority is not in doubt. However, there is yet another group of eligible voters whose actions in November are in doubt. These are people who are regular voters, but are now so put off by their usual party candidate that they refuse to support him. They will either not vote at all or cast a vote for a minor third party. Back in 2000 and again in 2005, when George W. Bush, Jr. stood for election, a good number of moderate Republicans suffered a voting dilemma of this sort. Seeing the Republican Party of Dwight Eisenhower and Nelson Rockefeller (whatever we on the left might think of these folks) taken over by a proven neo-con screwball like Bush Jr. must have made many of them hesitate to vote in their usual fashion. Maybe that is what made the elections so close that only a series of fraudulent maneuvers got George W. elected.  This year an unknown ...

Julian AssangeI'm sure most Americans are mighty proud of the fact that Julian Assange is so frightened of falling into the custody of the United States that he had to seek sanctuary in the embassy of Ecuador, a tiny and poor Third World country, without any way of knowing how it would turn out. He might be forced to be there for years. "That'll teach him to mess with the most powerful country in the world! All you other terrorists and anti-Americans out there — Take Note! When you fuck around with God's country you pay a price!"How true. You do pay a price. Ask the people of Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, etc., etc., etc. And ask the people of Guantánamo, Diego Garcia, Bagram, and a dozen other torture centers to which God's country offers free transportation.You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not be so obvious as to torture Assange if they got hold of him? Ask Bradley Manning. At a bare minimum, prolonged solitary confinement is torture. Before too long the world may ban it. Not that that would keep God's country and other police states from using it.You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not be so obvious as to target Assange with a drone? They've done it with American citizens. Assange is a mere Aussie.And Ecuador and its president, Rafael Correa, will pay a price. You think with the whole world watching, the United States would not intervene in Ecuador? In Latin America, it comes very naturally for Washington. During the Cold War it was said that the United States could cause the downfall of a government south of the border ... with a frown. The dissolution of the Soviet Union didn't bring any change in that because it was never the Soviet Union per se that the United States was fighting. It was the threat of a good example of an alternative to the capitalist model.For ...

On June 12, a leaked copy of the investment chapter for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was made public. This copy was analyzed by Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch and has been verified as authentic.  This agreement has been negotiated IN SECRET for 2-1/2 years and no information has ever been released until this leak. So why have the details of this negotiation been so secret? This agreement has been framed as a “free trade” agreement and yet out of 26 chapters only two have anything to do with trade. The other 24 chapters grant new corporate privileges and rights, while limiting governments and protective regulations.If implemented, this agreement will hard code corporate dominance over sovereign governments into international law that will supercede any federal, state, or local laws of any member country. This TPP agreement  alone should set alarm bells ringing, but if one steps back and looks at the larger picture, the future ramifications look even more ominous. After completing this reading, see what your conclusions are.This video is a must see for anyone who wishes to more fully understand the implications of this secretly negotiated agreement. This article will also show how if this agreement is considered in the context of other recently passed legislation and developments, and the “dots are connected”, the results would be total corporate global governance with an accompanying police state. In this new system the role of elected  governments would be to serve as subservient agents for the transnational corporations, while the armies, police, and courts would serve the interests of these transnational corporations. The  status of the member states would be locked-in,  similar to ...

 At the beginning of everything, the Navajo were shown two yellow powders. One they could use—it was maize pollen. The other they were told to leave in the ground. That was oxidized uranium.No one talks of “clean” nuclear energy anymore, not when you consider the whole fuel cycle.Early mining in the NWT rendered Deline a “village of widows” because of the high mortality rate of Dene men who worked, unwarned and unprotected in the uranium mines.The same thing happened to Navajo in the southwest US. Their ancient lands have been devastated by uranium mines, turning their creation story into apocalyptic prophecy.Contamination during the operation of a nuclear plant is a constant concern. And the spent fuel from the core of a nuclear reactor is high level nuclear waste. It takes a million years (give or take a few millennia) before it’s safe to stand beside.So why do four municipalities in southwestern Ontario want to be the nuclear waste capital of Canada?Fourteen other communities—11 in northern Ontario and 3 in Saskatchewan are also in the running. But Brockton (Walkerton), Saugeen Shores, Huron-Kinloss and Central Huron are all inside a 4-hour drive from London, Kitchener-Waterloo, Hamilton, Toronto and the US border. One community in the same area, Kincardine, has already agreed to take

The State Department is that branch of government that has responsibility for foreign policy. Every U.S. embassy and consulate is an extension of the State Department. U.S. citizens traveling abroad, be it on a short vacation to Canada or Mexico or an extended venture for business or study to anywhere on the globe where the U.S. has diplomatic relations, can rely on assistance in an emergency from the State Department. Well, almost anywhere.　How about Israel? In theory there is no difference between the behavior of State Department personnel in Israel and anywhere else. If you go to the State Department’s website and look under Israel, Entry and Exit Difficulties it will tell you how to contact the embassy or consulates, in case of need, depending on where in the country you are. Thus, if you are stuck at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport you should contact the consular section of the U.S. Embassy (972) (3) 519-7575. If you are stuck at the Allenby Bridge border crossing you have to ring up the consulate in Jerusalem (972) (2) 630-4000. But, again, that’s theory.　In practice, however, the behavior of the State Department’s diplomatic personnel in Israel is quite different than that of diplomats in other countries. In fact, like everything else touching on Israel, U.S. diplomatic practice has been corrupted by the power and influence of the Zionist lobby in Washington.　Take the recent case of Sandra Tamari. Ms Tamari is a Quaker, the mother of two children, an American citizen of Palestinian dissent, and also a member of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee. She traveled to Israel at ...

Once upon a time in a distant land, a miller boasted to his king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. Intrigued, the king locked her up in a roomful of straw and told her, “If you can spin this straw into gold by morning, you shall be my queen. If not, you shall die.”The poor girl was at her wit’s end. She could barely spin wool, let alone straw, let alone into gold. Around midnight, a little man snuck into her room and asked, “What will you give me if I spin this straw into gold?” She gave him her necklace. By morning, when the king came to check on things, he found a room full of finely spun gold.But, he didn’t get to be king by playing fair, so he locked the poor girl up a second night. Again the little man came and this time she gave him her ring. And again the little man spun a room-full of gold. And again, the greedy king locked her up for a third night.This time, when the little man came around, the poor girl had nothing to give him. The little man said he would still help her—on the condition she swore to give him her first born child as a death pledge or, in the language of the land, a ‘mort-gage.’She agreed and again the little man spun all the straw in the room into gold thread. The king took the gold as his dowry and made the girl his queen and they lived happily ever after—until the day of the birth of her first child.The little man came back for the mort-gage. The queen wept and ...

“Are you, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?” With those words Republican Senator Joe McCarthy set off a 10-year witch hunt in the US for just about anyone whose political colour was a redder shade of pink. He was finally censured by the Senate but not before he ruined a lot of lives and dealt a body blow to democracy in the USofA. Whenever I came across the old news reels of that time, I thanked God I didn’t live in a country that would permit that sort of bigoted, callow, scape-goating attack on its own citizens. I can’t say that anymore. In the House Finance committee, a week or so ago, MPs were hearing expert testimony on the impact of Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Bill. Randy Hoback is a member. He’s the Conservative  MP from Prince Albert Saskatchewan, which is not far from Tommy Douglas’s old riding. Hoback attacked the credibility of United Steel Workers economist Erin Weir by demanding, “Have you or have you ever been a member of the NDP party, or are you presently a member of the NDP party?” Clearly Hoback is not as eloquent as Joe McCarthy was, and so he blunted his own attack. But his demand resounds like a siren. Was it a question of his own making? Or was it one that the Prime Minister’s Office put in his mouth? Not that it really matters ... for it begs another, more important question. What are we becoming that a democratically elected Canadian can even ask such a thing, and in such a manner, in the heart of our Parliament. 

 Friday, June 1, is a date that marks a shift in the public consciousness of the state of the US and global economy.  What was touted for months over the past winter as a rebound taking hold in the US economy and the assertions that the US economy was ‘exceptional’ and would not suffer the slowdowns underway in Europe, China and the rest of the world - were all swept away on June 1 by the May US jobs report, a downward revised U.S. GDP numbers for the first quarter 2012, as well as by the rapidly deteriorating banking and general economic situation in the Eurozone. Why Economists’ Jobs Forecasts Consistently Miss Their Mark On the jobs front, Friday’s labor department data showed a growth of only 69,000 jobs, while the preceding month’s jobs numbers were revised downward for April from 115,000 to only 77,000. Both months were originally officially forecast by mainstream economists to show jobs growth of 150,000 and 180,000 respectively. A day earlier, the first quarter GDP numbers were also adjusted downward from 2.2% growth to only 1.9%, a decline that was totally unexpected by most economists, who had been forecasting that the current quarter, April-June, GDP would come in around the 2.5% to 3% range. But now will almost certainly end up in the 1.5% or even lower range, given a likely more rapid slowing in June. One cannot miss jobs and GDP forecasts that badly without something being fundamentally wrong with forecast methodologies employed by most mainstream economists today, a point this writer has been making publicly repeatedly since last December. The main excuse being offered today by economists for missing their recent jobs and GDP forecasts so badly is ‘the weather’.  The exceptionally good weather this past winter, it is argued, moved normal spring production and jobs up by several months into the winter ...

Thank you, graduates, for giving me this opportunity to address you here in the hallowed halls of my imagination. I’m honored.Given that commencement is synonymous with beginning, start, and initiation, I would ordinarily be expected to tell you about some glorious future that awaits you. But these times are hardly ordinary. In fact, it makes more sense to talk about things that are ending, terminating, and ceasing.Let’s start with the fact that we’re currently witnessing—and causing—the most significant geologic shift in 65 million years. The era that began with the extinction of the dinosaurs is now closing with the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history. Our only known living companions in the universe are rapidly disappearing forever. This is simply too overwhelming to process.Yet if we don’t start processing it, in our institutions and hearts, we might see the extinction of our own species, miraculously capable of reflecting on its own existence and mortality, and caring for other living and dying creatures. This is to say nothing about language, music, art, Facebook, and other uniquely human forms of expression.As you probably know, 2012 is also the end of the Mayan Long Count calendar, which has a cycle of about 5,125 years. Whether or not this winter solstice will be the actual end of the world depends you, not Jesus in a spaceship.Interestingly, the period of the Mayan calendar corresponds roughly to the period of recorded history, which has indeed been his story: an account of patriarchs, warriors, rulers, and founding fathers. Basically, it’s all been about Empire—the quest for domination and control. Thankfully, this immature phase of our existence is also ending as its phallocentric assumptions crumble beneath its heavy armor.The end of history itself was proclaimed in 1989 by Frances Fukuyama, who saw globalization as ...

What are we to make of 100 days of mayhem in Montreal? Étudiants en grève—students on strike. Coddled kids with a mistaken sense of entitlement? Yes there’s some of that. But if it were just that, the strike would have fizzled out long before now. The idea of a free education which has deep philosophical and political roots in France and Québec? OK … but does it run deep enough to pull thousands of young Québecois into the streets week after week? Ah-ha! The unions have hijacked the demonstrations. The Québec unions are there alright, and they’re a lot bolder than their English cousins. But the people on the streets were … and are … students. Dial down the diatribes for a bit and what do the streets of Montreal look like? They look like Toronto or Seattle during a G20 meeting. They look like Occupy Wall Street. We say we want the young engaged in the political process. But they’re young. Why are we surprised they engage in a way we don’t approve of? Listen. Our sons and daughters, in Québec this time, are trying to tell us something. Their leaders are articulating it even if we, in English Canada, can’t hear them. No jobs in the future. No money in the money bank. No food in the food bank. Dishonest business leaders. Dishonourable political leaders. The house is burning down and the pumps don’t work ‘cause the vandals took the handles … to quote an old Bob Dylan tune from the sixties … except the real vandals are not the black-masked kids we see on TV. Mais c’est la vie, hein? (shrug) That’s way it is, eh? What can you do? But then, maybe that’s the problem. 

Part I - Health Care in the USA On 7 May 2012 a new study came out on healthcare in the United States. Based on research carried out by the Urban Institute, the report is published in the journal Health Affairs. Here are some of its findings: – There is a prevailing "trend toward private insurance policies with larger deductibles and higher co-payments..."– "Employers [are] shifting more [heath care] costs onto workers." – "Poor and uninsured adults [there are presently 41 million such people in the U.S.] had greater difficulties not just with health care costs, but finding doctors who would see them." In addition, "too few providers are taking Medicaid" patients. – One consequence of this trend is that "one in five American adults under 65 had an ‘unmet medical need’ because of costs in 2010, compared with one in eight in 2000." What all this means is that health care in the U.S. has deteriorated in the first decade of the 21st century. That was also reflected in a 2005 study by the World Health Organization that ranked the United States (supposedly the richest of nations) as 141st in government spending on health. Perhaps not unrelated, the U.S. ranks number 1 in the world when it comes to anxiety disorders. 

 What do the following possibly have in common?One, Woolrich, the venerable 182-year-old clothing company, recently brought out a new line of chinos with a second pocket that has been especially designed for carrying a concealed handgun. The clincher is that the pocket has been designed so that it wouldn’t destroy the “stylish look of the pants.”Two, Levi Johnston, former fiancé of Bristol Palin and father of their child, not only has another baby on the way, but he plans to name her "Breeze Beretta" after his favorite Italian-made pistol.Three, over the stringent objections of Tampa’s Mayor Bob Buckhorn, Florida Governor Rick Scott upheld the decision to ban water guns during the Republican National Convention, but not concealed handguns.If you said that these three items have nothing in common, you’re wrong! Dead wrong!Viewing each of them in isolation not only misses a key point, but a key pattern. Taken together, they show that controlling, if not eliminating altogether, handguns is more difficult than we ever imagined. Guns have insinuated themselves so deeply into our culture that they have literally taken over our minds. The outrage that I feel towards each of these “items” individually is dwarfed by the feelings I experience when I consider their combined effect and what they say about us as a culture.In an earlier op-ed, “Confronting Shame-Based Politics: The Biggest Challenge of All,” The Huffington Post, April 24, 2012, I made the point that shame underlies most, if not virtually all, of our major political issues and societal problems. If in addition, fear, a deep sense of powerlessness, and a growing contempt for public institutions are combined with shame, then we have a potent mixture indeed that not only underlies, but perpetuates an out-of-control gun culture.If we are to have any hope of breaking its ...

US civilian and military employees regularly target and fire lethal unmanned drone guided missiles at people across the world.  Thousands of people have been assassinated.   Hundreds of those killed were civilians. Some of those killed were rescuers and mourners.    These killings would be criminal acts if they occurred inside the US.  Does it make legal sense that these killings would be legal outside the US? Some Facts about Drone Assassinations The US has used drones to kill thousands of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.   But the government routinely refuses to provide any official information on local reports of civilian deaths or the identities of most of those killed. In Pakistan alone, the New America Foundation reports US forces have launched 297 drone strikes killing at least 1800 people, three to four hundred of whom were not even combatants.   Other investigative journalists report four to eight hundred civilians killed by US drone strikes in Pakistan. Very few of these drone strikes kill high level leaders of terror groups.  A recent article in FOREIGN AFFAIRS estimated “only one out of every seven drone attacks in Pakistan kills a militant leader.  The majority of those killed in such strikes are not important insurgent commanders but rather low level fighters, together with a small number of civilians.” An investigation by the Wall Street Journal in November 2011 revealed that most of the time the US did not even know the identities of the people being killed by drones in Pakistan.  The WSJ reported there are two types of drone strikes.  Personality strikes target known terrorist leaders.  Signature strikes target groups of men believed to be militants but are people whose identities are not known.  Most of the drone ...

China. If we close our eyes, we all can envision the ancient culture, the beautiful hills, the monumental Great Wall, cordial people and their delicate features, the exotic music and the lovely tea.  Isn't it true?China has become one of the strongest financial countries in the world, and we keep pouring our money into that regime. The Chinese society differs completely from ours. The Chinese government determines what its citizens are allowed to do, how many children a couple can have,  what you are to study, what you can read, the music you are allowed to hear and even the future of a newborn child, things that are unimaginable in our culture. And their food, everyone loves their food with those wonderful noodles, delicate flavors, perfect balance of vegetables and for those that enjoy a succulent shrimp, a perfectly cooked piece of beef or pork they have wonderful dishes as well. And the fortune cookies, that all of us want regardless that they are never eaten and that all we care about is the fortune that hides inside, even when it makes no sense and we know it’s fake, they are fun and we want them. Of course, their culinary art is very different outside China; it’s altered to fit our less “refined” taste buds. For starters, it is true that rats are part of their menu, and what is even worse than rats, they eat dogs and cats. It breaks my heart to see the barbaric way in which they kill these poor animals, animals that for most of the civilized world are considered to be our companions and our best friends. Being the good businessmen they are, they save the skin of these poor creatures and sell them to clothing factories where they will use it on the collars and ...

The American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) prefers to do its business in secret. And since ALEC's founding in 1973 by Paul Weyrich (who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and is widely considered to be one of the Godfathers of the New Right); former Illinois Republican Congressman Henry Hyde; and conservative activist Lou Barnett, the organization has successfully stayed out of the spotlight.Source Watch, a project of the Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, described ALEC as a "semi-secretive" organization that "has been highly influential, has operated quietly in the United States for decades, and received remarkably little scrutiny from journalists, media or members of the public during that time." A report by the American Association for Justice, titled "ALEC: Ghostwriting the Law for Corporate America" described the organization as "the ultimate smoke filled back room."As John Nichols recently pointed out in The Nation, "the shadowy Koch brothers-funded network ... brings together right-wing legislators with corporate interests and pressure groups to craft so-called ‘model legislation.'" And while ALEC is predominantly concerned with cutting tax rates for corporations and wealthy individuals, privatization, de-regulation, and weakening, if not eliminating unions, it "also dabbles in electoral and public safety issues. And ‘Stand Your Ground' proposals have for seven years been on its agenda."....Investigations surrounding the cold-blooded murder of the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a self-styled vigilante, could push ALEC out into the openThe Florida "stand your ground" law, which may allow the killer of Trayvon Martin to walk free, "is the template for an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) ‘model bill' that has been pushed in other states," PR Watch's Brendan Fischer recently ...

In mid February 2012 an array of top U.S. intelligence chiefs appeared before Senate Intelligence Committee to give their annual report on "currant and future worldwide threats" to national security. Those testifying included CIA Director David Petraeus, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. General Ronald Burgess, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. Their presentations on what is and is not a real threat to the nation, as well as the reaction of the senators holding the hearings, turned out to be an exercise in one dimensional thinking. What is real? Well, what comports with your point of view. Here are two examples from their testimony:1. The Enemy Within – Rogue individuals operating "within the ranks" of the intelligence community and armed forces" now constitute a major threat to U.S. security. According to Lt. General Burgess these people are "self-radicalized lone wolves." He then pointed to the "recent massive Wikileaks disclosures."Everyone involved in these hearings agreed with this assertion even though it is based on a dubious, yet unquestioned, assumption. The assumption is that the behavior of U.S. government forces is a model of acceptable normal military and intelligence behavior. Those who work for the government but find this behavior unacceptable, and indeed a criminal betrayal of all that is humane, and then do something about that conviction, are "self-radicalized"dangers to national security.But what if the support of oppressive and racist regimes, the invasion of other ...

(The following is a transcript of a talk I gave at San Quentin State Prison on February 2, 2012.)

This afternoon I’d like to begin our conversation with a single question: what does individual financial responsibility look like in an economic system that cannot help but to behave in financially irresponsible ways? To approximate an answer we must first challenge traditional notions of individual financial responsibility like balancing a household budget, establishing good credit, and securing employment. These components are central to the idea of financial responsibility, but they only tell one half of the tale.

For example, how many times have we blamed ourselves for what we’re been told is a personal shortcoming, deficiency, or flaw? How many times have we heard that hard work is the linchpin of financial security? And how many times have we thought that if we merely changed our “irresponsible behavior,” then we’d be on the fast track to success and stability? We should have little patience for theories of financial responsibility that divorce what are thought to be as poor individual decisions from the context in which they are made. As human beings we make our own history, though not always under conditions of our choosing. That said, this afternoon I’d to frame our discussion around such “social conditions not of our choosing.” I hope that this back and forth dialogue will help to bridge the gap between the "individual" and "institutional" forms of financial responsibility. People are never just people, but rather we’re people in places, societies, cultures, and political organizations. We're all part of larger social systems that shape our ways of being, doing, and feeling.

So what exactly is the relationship between creature and culture? Between you and me? Between you and we? And what responsibilities do we, as individuals, have to the communities in which we live? I submit to you that financial responsibility is bi-directional: we are ...

As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would hate to see Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being "the only nuclear power in the Middle East" is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. But — in the real, non-propaganda world — is USrael actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran? In case you've forgotten ...

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears." 1

2009: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation." 2

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, "believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make ...

Question One.  The combined pay of the 299 highest paid CEOs in the US is enough to support how many median salary jobs?

45,000?  83,000?  102,325?

Two.  The median net worth of black households in the US is $2,200.  What is the median net worth of white households in the US?

$4,400?  $44,000?  $97,000?

Three. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development issues a national survey every year listing fair market rents for every county in the US.  HUD also suggests renters should pay no more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs.   In how many of the USA’s 3068 counties can someone who works full-time and earns the federal minimum wage pay 30% of their income and find a one-bedroom apartment at the fair market rental amount?

19?  368?  1974?

Four.  How much must the typical U.S. worker earn per hour to rent a two-bedroom apartment if that worker dedicates thirty percent of his income, as HUD suggests, to rent and utilities?

$9.39? $14.63?  $18.46?

Five.  The wealthiest 1 percent of the US has a net worth which is how many times greater than the median or typical household’s net worth?

50?  150?  225?

Six.  Which of these countries puts the highest percentage of their people in jails and prisons?

China? Iran?  Iraq?  Germany?  Russia? USA?

Seven.  In 2012, the US will pay out about $620 million for old age Social Security benefits to 45 million families.  How much is budgeted for military spending by the US in 2012?

$310 billion?  $620 billion?  $836 billion?

Eight.  The US ...

The human body is an amazing creation. It's not only the most complex system known to mankind, but it embodies within it signals that tell its owner that something has gone wrong. A similar signaling system exists in political bodies. Those tasked with reading the signals--be they individuals, physicians or politicians--can choose to consciously ignore the warning signs. The Middle East peace process between Palestinians and Israelis has been emitting SOS signals for decades, but only recently are those signals being received and analyzed for what they are transmitting--a clear and irreversible message that the entire paradigm of "two states for two peoples" has collapsed.

Like doctors who peddle medications instead of practicing medicine, many politicians are under the influence of their narrow political interests and prefer not to call situations by their name. After so many years of failure--political, legal, diplomatic and economic--those who are paid to diagnose and treat reality are being replaced with voices from all corners of the world, voices convincingly making the case that the entire premise undertaken by the Palestine Liberation Organization, starting as far back as 1974, is no longer feasible.

Some will say that the PLO was tricked by the West into a path that was never intended to succeed. Others may claim that the PLO had no option but to acquiesce to the pressures placed upon it to enter, more recently, the Oslo peace process, in hopes that the West (mainly the US) would then pull its weight in bringing Israel in line with international law and UN resolutions. Regardless of the analysis of the past, very few people on the ground who are intimately involved in the attempt to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli "conflict" would venture to spend any additional political credit on the notion that two independent states, Israel and Palestine, remain a way out of this man-made tragedy.

The measures ...

“Corporations are people, my friend.” -Mitt Romney at the Iowa State Fair

Corporations are obviously not people.  But Romney is accurate in the sense that corporations have hijacked most of the rights of people while evading the responsibilities. An important part of the social justice agenda is democratizing corporations.  This means we must radically change the laws so people can be in charge of corporations.  We must strip them of corporate personhood and cut them down to size so democracy can work.  People are taking action so democracy can regulate the size, scope and actions of corporations.

One of the most basic roles of society is to protect the people from harm.  The massive size of many international corporations makes democratic control over them nearly impossible.

Corporate crime is widespread.  The New York Times, ProPublica and others have revealed Wall Street giants like JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs have been charged with fraud many times only to get off by paying hundreds of millions.  Professors at University of Virginia have documented hundreds of corporations which have been found guilty or pled guilty in federal courts.

Corporate abuse is even more widespread.  For example, Corporate Accountability International named six to its Corporate Hall of Shame, including: Koch Industries for spending over $50 million to fund climate change denial; Monsanto for mass producing cancer causing chemicals; Chevron for dumping more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste into the Ecuadorian Amazon; Exxon Mobil for being the worst polluter; Blackwater (now Xe) for killing unarmed Iraqi civilians and hiring paramilitaries; and Halliburton, the nation’s leading war profiteer.

Making corporations responsible to democracy of the people is challenging considering Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest corporation, does more ...

Part I - Two Fronts

In January 2011, I wrote an analysis in support of a one-state solution to the on-going Israeli-Palestinian struggle. It is the Israelis themselves who have made the one-state solution the only practicable approach, because their incessant and illegal colonization of the West Bank has simply eliminated all possibility of a viable and truly independent Palestinian state. Israeli behavior has not changed in the past year and so I still stand by the position.

That being said, it is important to point out that even a one-state solution capable of bringing justice to the Palestinians, and in doing so, saving the Jews from the folly of Zionism, will not be possible without worldwide intervention. What is necessary is a struggle on two international fronts:

A) A strong growing international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Israel and

B) Growing popular pressure in the United States that forces a change in foreign policy towardIsrael.

Without achieving both of these goals the fate of both Palestinians and Jews looks very bleak indeed.

Part II - Israel Will Try To Prevent A Civil Rights Struggle

The necessity of this two-front international approach was reinforced for me upon reading a speech given by Noam Chomsky in Beirut in May of 2010. When commenting on a one-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, he made the following points:

1. For the indefinite future, "Israel will continue doing exactly what [its] doing....[taking] the water resources, the valuable land...the Jordan Valley...and send[ing] corridors through the remaining regions to break them up into separated cantons..."

2. In the process the Israeli government will make sure ...

Dear Gov. Mitch Daniels and your Republican Brethren,

Your response to President Obama’s State of the Union last night was deceitful, historically tenuous, and politically unsophisticated. George Orwell once said that “in a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

(Follow along here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7giygZFgHY )

M.D. "The percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades.”

TRUTH: Daniels speaks truth without context. Yes, the unemployment rate is indeed the highest it has been since 1983, but it has actually fallen by 1.5% since its peak in December, 2009. http://www.miseryindex.us/urbyyear.asp
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

M.D. “In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.”

TRUTH: Over the course of President Obama’s first three years he and Congress increased the national debt by 41%. And in Ronald Reagan’s first three years? You guessed it. He increased the national debt by 55%. http://www.skymachines.com/US-National-Debt-Per-Capita-Percent-of-GDP-an...

M.D. “The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy.”

TRUTH: Yes, but since 1980 federal spending as a percentage of GDP has changed very little. Since Reagan’s first term Republicans presidents have spent on average 21.53% of GDP on federal programs, Democrats, 21.6%.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/07/geithners-gdp-whopper/

M.D. "The President's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery.”

TRUTH: Just two weeks ago President Obama detailed his plan to supplant six current federal agencies with one in order to create a “more efficient and lean” government. The move is projected to save taxpayers $3 billion over ...

Part I - Flawed Systems

Winston Churchill once said that "No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." He was right. Democracy in its various manifestations is a flawed system, flawed by virtue of its roots. By definition it is the system where power flows from the people (or at least a supposed majority of the people), and as there are no perfect people, then.... Well, the logic speaks for itself.

Many of democracy’s problems are common to all forms of governance. For instance, (a) the tendency of a political leader to mistake his or her own interests or that of his party, for the nation’s or community’s interests and (b) the corruptive influence of powerful subgroups or lobbies usually coming through the manipulation of money and other resources. The ubiquitous nature of these problems suggest that they are structural. That is they are built into the system no matter what form a government takes. That does not mean such flaws cannot be held in check or minimized. As James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution believed, they might be subject to control by a well crafted constitution. However, it is unlikely that they can be eliminated.

Part II - Today In The USA

Today, we are presented with a stark example of U.S. democracy’s systemic flaws. Again, these bring together the influence of small but powerful and wealthy subgroups with the tendency of national leaders to define interests in personal ways. The trigger for the present structural malfunction is a foreign policy issue. It is the issue of Iran (which, alas, is a reworking of the recent issue of Iraq).

As the Consortium News website

Haiti, a close neighbor of the US with over nine million people, was devastated by earthquake on January 12, 2010.  Hundreds of thousands were killed and many more wounded.

The UN estimated international donors gave Haiti over $1.6 billion in relief aid since the earthquake (about $155 per Haitian) and over $2 billion in recovery aid (about $173 per Haitian) over the last two years.

Yet Haiti looks like the earthquake happened two months ago, not two years. Over half a million people remain homeless in hundreds of informal camps, most of the tons of debris from destroyed buildings still lays where it fell, and cholera, a preventable disease, was introduced into the country and is now an epidemic killing thousands and sickening hundreds of thousands more.

It turns out that almost none of the money that the general public thought was going to Haiti actually went directly to Haiti.  The international community chose to bypass the Haitian people, Haitian non-governmental organizations and the government of Haiti.  Funds were instead diverted to other governments, international NGOs, and private companies.

Despite this near total lack of control of the money by Haitians, if history is an indication, it is quite likely that the failures will ultimately be blamed on the Haitians themselves in a “blame the victim” reaction.

Haitians ask the same question as many around the world “Where did the money go?

Here are seven places where the earthquake money did and did not go.

One.  The largest single recipient of US earthquake money was the US government.  The same holds true for donations by other countries.

Right after the earthquake, the US allocated $379 million in aid and sent in 5000 troops.  The Associated Press discovered that of the $379 million in initial US money promised for Haiti, most was not really money going directly, or in ...

Part I - New York City

The announcement came from the mayor’s office of New York City (NYC) on 19 December 2011 in the form of an eleven page declaration. It begins "Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, Cornell University President David J. Skorton, and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology President Peretz Lavie today announced an historic partnership to build a two-million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City." This is the result of an Applied Sciences Competition that drew at least seven competitors from around the world.

Good news? Well, NYC officials certainly think so: "Thanks to this outstanding partnership...New York City’s goal of becoming a global leader in technological innovation is now within sight." And all it will cost the city is some public land on Roosevelt Island and "$100 million in city capital to assist with site infrastructure." Oh yes, and written in invisible ink, ‘the forfeiture of one municipal soul." That is the catch. What we have here is a three way pact with the Devil. There is New York City and........

Part II - Cornell University

Cornell University is an 147 year old elite institution located in Ithaca New York. According to the announcement cited above it is "a global leader in the fields of applied science, engineering technology, and research, as well as commercialization and entrepreneurship." Just what NYC was looking for. 

Cornell is led by David J. Skorton, a former professor of medicine and a proven college administrator. He has been the university’s president since 2006. Among other things, president Skorton presents himself as an ethical leader. Back ...

Part I

On 12 December 2011 hundreds of Israeli settler fanatics besieged a West Bank IDF army base. They destroyed equipment, set fires, and even stoned the base soldiers. This was the second such attack in a month. The cause? Anger over the army’s dismantlement of a small number of isolated, unauthorized settler outposts. The Chief of the Central Command of the Israel "Defense" Forces, Major General Avi Misrahi, is quoted as saying "I have not seen such hatred of Jews towards soldiers during my 30 years of service." He must not have been looking.

This was not an exceptional event. The subsequent indignation over the attack expressed by Prime Minister Netanyahu ("red lines have been crossed") was, as Alex Fishman writing in Yedioth Ahronoth put it, staged hypocrisy. The Prime Minister is certainly aware that for some time there has been on-going skirmishing between the settlers and government security forces. Right wing settlers regularly throw rocks and fire bombs at police and army vehicles and "physical altercations" between settlers and Israeli police and soldiers are "almost routine." This is so despite the fact that the government, both Prime Minister and Knesset, "either tacitly or openly" support the settlers; then why the hatred and why the attacks?

At this stage the battle is over strategy. The Israeli government wants to gobble up all of Palestine in an orderly step by step fashion. In part, this is to avoid too much international criticism at any particular stage of the process. On the other hand, the settlers don’t give a damn about ...

On Monday, November 28 a small cadre of Senate Democrats introduced legislation intended to extend and expand the payroll tax cut first introduced by the Jobs Creation Act of 2010. The Middle Class Tax Cut Act of 2011 (S.1917) – drafted chiefly by the Chair of the Joint Economic Committee , Senator Bob Casey (D-PA)— was summarily rejected by Republicans late last week. (Read the text of S.1917 here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:S.1917) Two weeks earlier Republican leaders threatened to reject wholesale any bill imposing tax increases on the wealthy and with the single exception of Senator Susan Collins of Maine every Senate Republican voted against the measure. Bernie Sanders—celebrated social-democrat from Vermont—also voted against the bill.

Had S.1917 passed it would have reduced the social security payroll tax on employees and on the self-employed from 4.2% (already reduced under the Jobs Creation Act of 2010 from the regular 6.2%) to 3.1% for 2012. The bill would also have cut the social security payroll tax levied against employers on the first $5 million of taxable payroll from 6.2% to 3.1%. Senate democrats claimed that their proposal would have been fully subsidized by assessing a surtax on modified adjusted gross incomes in excess of $1 million.

And then yesterday—a mere four days after the rejection of his first proposal—Senator Casey amended his bill to meet a number of republican demands. In an effort to assuage Republican concerns that the overall package was too large, the most current iteration of S.1917 no longer provides any tax break for employers thereby cutting the size of the package by roughly one-third, from $265 billion to $185 billion. Secondly, the amended bill substantially reduces the surtax on the wealthiest Americans. The bill pares down the surtax on modified adjusted gross income in excess of $1 million from 3.25% to 1.9%. The surtax has also been made temporary, not permanent as the in the original bill, and ...

When the Vietnam War became history, and the protest signs and the bullhorns were put away, so too was the serious side of most protestors' alienation and hostility toward the government. They returned, with minimal resistance, to the restless pursuit of success, and the belief that the choice facing the world was either "capitalist democracy" or "communist dictatorship". The war had been an aberration, was the implicit verdict, a blemish on an otherwise humane American record. The fear felt by the powers-that-be that society's fabric was unraveling and that the Republic was hanging by a thread turned out to be little more than media hype; it had been great copy.

I mention this to explain why I've been reluctant to jump with both feet on the Occupy bandwagon. I first thought that if nothing else the approaching winter would do them in; if not, it would be the demands of their lives — they have to make some money at some point, attend classes somewhere, lovers and friends and family they have to cater to somewhere; lately I've been thinking it's the police that will do them in, writing finis to their marvelous movement adventure — if you hold the system up to a mirror the system can go crazy.

But now I don't know. Those young people, and the old ones as well, keep surprising me, with their dedication and energy, their camaraderie and courage, their optimism and innovation, their non-violence and their keen awareness of the danger of being co-opted their focusing on the economic institutions more than on the politicians or political parties. ...

Any epoch of capitalism allegedly premised on competition is visible only from our rearview mirror. It is a leftist truism that in the process of competition, capitalism destroys competition. Competition, therefore, is transformed into its opposite: monopoly. Capitalism no longer survives by enlarging competition, but rather by forestalling it.

The supreme outcome of the contemporary globalization of monopoly capital has been an amplification of world exploitation, poverty rates, wealth disparities, and food insecurities. Since the mid-1970s the rate of world growth has stalled by nearly 70%. (http://www.nationofchange.org/public-republican-privatization-prisons-an...) And one consequence of decelerating rates of growth has been a turn to financialization by giant firms unable to find sufficiently high return investment outlets in production. Beginning in the early 1980’s large corporations gradually began to rely on speculative investments made possible by highly leveraged assets. Overleveraged capital has resulted in a global financial crisis at a time when state systems everywhere are increasingly subject to the vagaries of the “market” and are forced to subsidize the failures of corporate capitalism through taxpayer sponsored “bailouts.” Leaders at national, regional, and municipal levels have begun to counter—so they say—the resulting fiscal crises by disinvesting in social services and by creating more regressive tax systems, thereby intensifying the effective level of exploitation. Hence, the internationalization of monopoly capital, rather than contributing to the stabilization of global systems, is aggrandizing crises in both the scarcely indistinct private and public sectors.

The repugnance of inequality has become deeper and more entrenched. Today the richest 2% of adult individuals own more than half of global wealth, with the richest 1% accounting for 40% of total global assets. Although the gap in per capita income ...

Part I - Bad Movies

Have you seen those old time movies notable for their endings? The cowboy is seen riding into the sunset or the lovers are reunited, etc. And then comes the end - the screen dramatically fades to black. Most of these movies are pretty bad. The stories are predictable, the acting melodramatic and directing inept. Well, this genre seems to be making a comeback, but off the screen rather than on it. In this revival, the Israelis are leading the way.

Israel’s bad movie starts out as an historical drama with moral overtones. It’s the story of Israeli democracy but, unfortunately, it has an illogical and misguided script. It begins with the premise that you can have a religiously exclusive democracy amidst a multi-religious population. Under these circumstances happy endings are impossible and the drama quickly turns to tragedy.

Part II - Final Act

The final act of this tragedy appears to be playing itself out before our eyes. It opened in 2009 with the second term of Prime Minister Netanyahu Netanyahu is a hard-line "Likudnik" determined to expand Israel to the Jordan River (if not the Potomac). That makes him an ally and supporter of the settler fanatics who represent today’s version of Zionist fascists.

There is a correlation between the condition of Israeli democracy and the ambitions of Netanyahu’s allies. As the settlements expand, Israeli democracy shrinks. This in turn is tied into the fact that the prime minister is determined to keep greater Israel demographically Jewish, and this means expansion must be coupled with ethnic cleansing. One can see this clearly in present Israeli policies in East Jerusalem as well as the violent harassment of Palestinians by settler thugs throughout the West Bank. Following logically from the flawed premise in the original script, this is a perfectly predictable ending for the story of modern Israel.

The drama ...

In 1944 the great Hungarian political economist Karl Polanyi penned The Great Transformation in which he vituperated conservatives for privatizing common property resources. He writes, for example, that “allow[ing] the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings” will “result in the demolition of society.”

Forty years later, in 1984, I was born.

I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of human bodies in the United States languishing under some form of state surveillance has ballooned by nearly 400% despite a U.S. population rising ten times as slowly.

I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of private corrections facilities has burgeoned by 4000%. I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of black men in prison has grown by 800%; 73% of people of color incarcerated since 1984 are non-violent, drug-related offenders.

I was born in 1984 and since the year of my birth the number of black men in college has withered by almost 50%. Today, there are some 820,000 black men in cells, but only 270,000 in dorms.

I was born in 1984, the year that incumbent President Ronald Reagan defeated Walter Mondale by nearly 18% in the national popular vote. No candidate since 1984 has managed to equal or surpass Reagan's electoral gulf. Perhaps we should repeal “right on red” laws?

I was born in October of 1984 and during that month a Republican controlled Senate under the leadership of George H.W. Bush, Howard Baker, and Strom Thurmond passed legislation allowing federal agencies to experiment with privatized corrections. Later that year the INS struck a deal with CCA, the Corrections Corporation of America, on whose Board of Directors Thurgood Marshall Jr. currently sits.

The relationship between the INS—now Citizenship and Immigration Services—and the CCA is critical to consider because it demonstrates the circuitous pathways between race, citizenship, containment, and ...

Editor's note/correction: The following proposal was written and proposed by the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street.

This proposal was developed by the Politics and Electoral Reform group at Occupy Wall Street between September and November 2011. It contains input from well over 100 individuals who attended group meetings in Liberty Plaza as well as many others from across the country who influenced the proposal through online discussions.  The document was produced through a collaborative writing process.  It was approved by the Politics and Electoral Reform group with full consensus support on November 6, 2011.

————–

We, the Western Civilization are the last vestiges of semi-autonomy; we see ourselves as Vestal Virgins keeping that flame, but in truth we are vestigial appendages that no longer serve any purpose whatsoever to our hegemonic host.

Now, that may seem like a mouthful of words, a contrived way to play out a pun, but it is not. The truth is plain to see.

Somehow, we wrapped our heads around it from our very inception as a Nation. The atrocities done the Peoples whose land we coveted were “Savages.” The Peoples of Africa were “Lazy Mud-people.” The Peoples of Russia were “Godless Communists.” Southeast Asia was full of “Cat-eating Gooks.” The Peoples of South America were “Violent Drug-dealers.” The People of the Middle east were “Raghead Jihadis.” Now, Africa again, is full of “Tribal Terrorists.”

We went along with it. We go along with it. We never asked what the Peoples of those Nations, the People themselves wanted. We just “knew” somehow, if we could make them more like us, they’d be better off, you see. We were the keepers of the flame of Democracy, Hard Work, The American Dream, McDonalds and Huarachi sandals too. If they weren’t so backward, such animals, they would see we were trying to help them. You know, they made us kill them, the idiots. We were Freedom Inc© weren’t we? The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah and Johnny got his Gun, by God.

We made the Wars look sexy, Shock and Awe in technicolor. We brought vaccinations and antibiotics to cure the diseases they got from us. We moved them out of tents living in harmony with nature and brought them into the sweatshops. We bombed their asses back into the Stone Age, by golly, a clean slate on which our new history would be written.

Were we the Virginal face of Freedom and Democracy, or the very Visage of the fiery demon of ...

Condoleezza Rice was both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. She was also an administration spokesperson who helped scare the American people into supporting the invasion of Iraq. She accomplished this by invoking the image of “mushroom clouds” incinerating the skylines of America. In doing so she gave credence to the false story that Iraq was a threat to the United States because it possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

Rice is presently on a lecture tour promoting her 734 page memoir entitled No Higher Honor (Crown, 1 November 2011). That is what brought her to the Belk Theater on the campus of Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina on 25 October 2011. There she spoke to a packed house of 2000 people. Actually, what made this event notable was not the large numbers who had come to hear her, but rather that, among other things, Condoleezza Rice chose to speak about values.

According to Ms. Rice our present challenge “is not China or Brazil or India, and certainly not Europe. The challenge is the United States gone badly.” Well, she should know. Despite the fact that values are fluid concepts most people esteem the precepts underlying honest government and respect for the law. Most but not all, and it may very well be that Rice is not with the majority on this. There is no living group of individuals who have done more to undermine these sorts of crucial values than those who worked in the Bush Jr. White House. Truth in government, due process in the Justice System, personal protection from official spying, regulating economic greed and corruption, and a general respect for the Constitution and its Bill of Rights, you name it and they managed to trash it. And, of course, Condoleezza Rice was there throughout the entire eight your assault on those sorts of values.

Not surprisingly, in her Charlotte address Rice avoided these topics and instead ...

Steve Jobs was legendary for demanding accomplishments of his employees that seemed scientifically impossible to them.  They characterized him as living in what they termed a “reality distortion field.”  America’s GOP is currently mired in a reality distortion field of their own, but not with the productive upside that flourished at Apple.

Ignoring the reality that Americans are tired of costly, counterproductive wars, driven by disinformation and deceit, the GOP has launched war on the EPA.   To attack the EPA as “job killing” is as much a con game as was attacking Iraq for non-existent weapons of mass destruction.   Justifying themselves as wanting to eliminate regulations of “mass job destruction”, this year the Republican controlled House has passed 168 measures that would weaken or gut core provisions of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.   Regrettably, many conservative Democrats are playing along.

Almost by definition, conservatives always long for the good old days of decades past.  In pushing to abolish the EPA, they apparently are nostalgic for those good old days when the Cuyahoga River caught fire—seven times, when Lake Erie was devoid of fish, and when the air over Los Angeles was more appropriately chewed rather than inhaled.   But the idea that returning to the “glory” days of unrestrained pollution would bring us new jobs is as scientifically sound as advocating our health care return to leeches and bloodletting in the name of job creation.  A reality distortion field to be sure.

For less extreme lawmakers, Republicans or Democrats, to say, “We have enough regulations already, we can’t afford further environmental cleanup” is as absurd as my saying to patients, “Your family has had enough medical care already, we can’t afford to diagnose or treat any new diseases ...

As the revolutionary anti-plutocratic Occupy Wall Street movement traverses the country (and the world) perhaps we should pause for a moment to inventory our refrain. Put squarely, the formal deployment of the term “occupy” is both violent and imprecise. We radicals –particularly we white radicals— must recognize that “America” has been unjustly occupied for the past 500 years and we, in fact, tread on indigenous land. Our country was built on a condition of double theft. Therefore, instead of uncritically ratifying the language of “occupation” I suggest a more pointed and non-colonial shibboleth, that is, “De-Leverage Wall Street.” At the very, very least (and in the short term) we must agitate to “de-leverage wall street” by reducing its debt-to-equity ratio. The slogan is admittedly clunky and so I offer it with weighty reservation. Nevertheless, I argue that it is Wall Street’s unsteady debt-to-equity ratio that is predominantly responsible for our 20% rate of underemployment, our poverty rate of 15%, and a devastating 80% loss of wealth among black households since 2007. (White households lost about 20% of their wealth.) I assert that de-leveraging Wall Street must be the first step in a multi-tiered, variably registered approach to creating enduring material justice for workers, people of color, the homeless, radical leftists, and the poor (and for those who inevitably inhabit multiple social positions).

Perhaps we should be judged on our treatment both of prophets and profits. In 1848 Karl Marx published the Communist Manifesto. In it he famously noted that under conditions of unremitting capital accumulation “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind [:] the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle ...

Not too long ago I gave a talk on the Palestinian bid for statehood. In the audience was a Russian-Israeli expatriate who politely took exception to my criticisms of Israeli policies and behavior. His main point was that I could not credibly criticize the Israelis because I had not experienced what they had and did not know what they knew. Or, to put it in a more homey manner, I had not walked in their shoes. “Israelis have been trying to find solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian dilemma for over sixty years, so what gives you the wisdom to criticize them and tell them what they should do?” This is an old and often used objection and, if taken literally, would suggest that outside mediation is never possible.

My response to this was quite pointed: it is exactly because Israelis have been entangled in this dilemma for so long and, in addition, have passed off to themselves as well as others their hidden expansionist ambitions as “security” needs, that most of them are incapable of coming up with a just and equitable solution. They therefore very much need those with an outside and relatively objective view to critique their actions.

Essentially, most Israelis live in a “closed information environment.” This is so despite their claim to have a free media. That media may be technically free, but it is nonetheless dominated by the nation’s Zionist ideology and the political and social assumptions it expounds. Counter views may indeed exist, but they do so only as rare exceptions or at the margins. So consistent is the Zionist interpretation of things that, for the country’s Jewish citizenry, it now constitutes a “thought collective” and as such dictates the parameters of their thinking. Under such circumstances, it is only by standing outside this “thought collective” (as do a small number of clear sighted progressive folks on the Israeli margins) and looking in that one ...

If capitalism is in perpetual crisis, then so too is its ideological arm: the academic discipline of economics. For those analogically inclined, economists are to capitalism as priests are to Catholicism.

Forgive me this observation, vaguely playful: an economist is someone who gets rich by explaining to others why they’re poor. To this end I argue that the alleged value-neutral rhetoric marshaled by orthodox economists tends to obscure the field’s highly partisan thrust toward the upward redistribution of wealth (from which professional economists as a class clearly benefit) chiefly through the application of 1) rational choice theories and 2) efficient markets hypotheses. Yet despite their implementation of labyrinthine mathematical models, key economists at the London School of Economics (LSE) admitted in 2009 in a letter collectively authored to her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II that they had failed to prognosticate the current crisis because they somehow “lost sight of systemic risks” Excuse me?

But why should we be astonished by the failure of professional economists to account for systemic risk, that is, the probability of system-wide disintegration? The truth is that professional economists overwhelmingly employ neoclassical methodologies premised on the philosophical field of logical positivism, a late 19th century school of thought that swiftly severed epistemology (claims to truth) from axiology (claims to value). For instance, neoclassical economists reject Marxian notions of exploitation (or theft, coercion, colonization) and instead advance the idea that the distribution of social resources produced by market exchanges is innately fair and just when it is allowed to work without regulative friction. Positivism, therefore, provides the theoretical underpinnings for neoclassical economic theory by scientizing (and sanitizing) existence through the production objective generalizations that divorce information from meaning.

But historicizing the ...

October 6-9, 2011: ORC International Caravan Poll – Interviews with 1,005 adult Americans

An ongoing complaint of the mainstream media is that the Wall Street protestors and their kin in various cities throughout America lack a coherent agenda.  The right wing media has gone further and labeled the dissidents  “weirdoes” and “the usual assortment of tree-huggers and anti-American zealots” as well as emphasizing the lack of definable and agreed upon goals.  Of course it’s too early for these courageous and highly divergent group of concerned and patriotic citizens to articulate specific principles they can all agree upon.   But despite (maybe because of) the negative response from the far right, recent polls show there is wide support for the movement across the country.  Of those who have heard of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, 42% agree with the group’s positions, while only 27% disagree. An MSNBC poll, admittedly skewered because of that network’s liberal viewership, found that 89% of its respondents approved of the protest.

As the GOP “greed is good” presidential campaign continues its oblivious assertions that the Bush tax cuts should remain in place and that the wealthy are really the only “job creators” in the country, it becomes more and more difficult for many people to defend the colossal inequalities that become increasingly obvious with each passing day.  As

Tis’ the Halloween season.  Be afraid, very afraid.  Eric Cantor, Orrin Hatch, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity,  Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and Herman Cain want you to be very afraid of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement.  These politicians and pundits have called the OWS participants "badly educated," riot provoking, “dirty”, “lazy”, a “mob” of “anarchists”, “parasites”, “human debris”,  “marxists”, and “bizarre, aging hippies.”  Fox and Friends accused them of being “drug addicts.”  Glenn Beck warned, “They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill us.”  Well, I intend to join this mob of parasites and soon to be violent killers at Occupy Salt Lake City.  This is how scary I am.

I’m “a drug addict” that’s never used drugs...ever.  I’ve never even had a drink of alcohol...ever.  Never smoked cigarettes or pot...ever.   I went on a mission for the Mormon Church (just like you did, Mitt).  

Despite my “laziness” I have a job, work about 55 hours a week, plus 20 more hours for a non-profit, unpaid.  Despite my being a “parasite” I make enough money that I want the government to raise my taxes.  Despite being “badly educated” I have advanced degrees and have spent the last 37 years studying and teaching medical science.  Despite my wanting to “drag you out into the street and kill you,” I’ve managed to spend many nights during those 37 years helping drag some of you from the streets and provide life saving care for victims of car accidents and gun battles.

Despite being “human debris” according to Rush Limbaugh, I’ve managed to stay married to the same person for 40 years ...

(I delivered the following remarks at U.C. Berkeley on October 12, 2011.)

As an anti-racist white ally dedicated to the “cause” I’ve come to believe that the only thing worse than white lies are white liars, particularly white liars whose race privilege supposedly inoculates them from falsity through colorblind appeals to transcendent truths like equity, freedom, and justice. Nothing more aptly describes my experience as a counter-protestor partaking in the anti-affirmative action bake sale recently hosted by the Berkeley College Republicans. Their protestation of SB 185 (a pro-affirmative action piece of legislation) by way of their “Increase Diversity Bake Sale”—one in which a sliding scale pricing structure explicitly indexed to skin color and gender identification was used to determine the cost of a cookie – provides unimpeachable proof that they’re adept at “speaking truth without context,” an aptitude primarily reserved for ideologues whose unflagging commitment to capital-T “truth” is inversely (and perversely) related to their disdain for historical forms of argumentation.

“Speaking truth without context” presents a very real threat to social justice workers because half-truths are just as lethal as the presentation of pure fallacy, but often more difficult to detect, diagnose, and treat. Come to think of it, the rudiments of affirmative action are approximated in the practice of baking, but it seems that at some point along the way Republicans forgot that the shape, texture, and taste of their cookies are invariably reflective of the ingredients used. That is, the properties of each cookie at the moment of consumption cannot be divorced from the ingredients that constitute them. Similarly, any discourse on affirmative action must underscore the concept of “present history,’ that is, the relationship of the past on the present. So, I hereby promise to offer my enthusiastic support to the Berkeley College Republicans in their rejection of SB 185 ...

OK, I might as well admit it.

When I first heard of the Occupy Wall Street initiative, I thought it was just a group of overfed and overeducated and underemployed “white” boys trying to get their own generational street cred. “New Millennial Hippies” (Mippies?) out to gain a little attention, smoke a little grass (or whatever they call it these days) and hopefully get laid by some arty-cutey from the Upper East Side or Jersey (Or both).

That was just the cynic in me talking. Deep down, the “better angel of my nature” was begging to be heard. But the devil in me still thought... as soon as the cops grab and twist a few arms, break some legs, spray a few faces with mace and kick a little ass, the kids would cry “foul, unfair, not nice” and scurry back home.

Maybe it’s because I remember standing on the corner of Chicago’s Michigan Avenue and Randolph, looking south, down toward the Conrad Hilton Hotel and deciding not to walk down past Grant Park. It was August, 1968 during the Democratic Convention. I was a 20-year-old “black” man who’d just moved out of Robert Taylor Homes, America’s largest housing project at the time, after scoring my first decent job – in the big time ad agency game.

Not that I didn’t feel for the hippies and yippies and Panthers getting their heads busted in the park. I was as philosophically on their side as I am on the OWStreeters’ today.  But I was no fool. I opted out for what became a 35-year career creating ads for the biggest ad agencies in America and their clients. Being one of the first and few “un-whites” in the corporate suites then was my version of contributing to the Civil Rights Movement, as Jesse would say – “in the suites, if not the streets”.

Which brings me – quite nicely – to my point. The Civil Rights Movement was one of ...

Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood.  Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street.  Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in between houses and in any small pocket of land.  Most of the people are unemployed or selling mangoes or food on the side of every main street.  This was Port au Prince during my visit with a human rights delegation of School of Americas Watch – more than a year and a half after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and made two million homeless.

What I did not see this week were bulldozers scooping up the mountains of concrete remaining from last January’s earthquake.  No cranes lifting metal beams up to create new buildings.  No public works projects.  No housing developments.  No public food or public water distribution centers.

Everywhere I went, the people of Haiti asked, “Where is the money the world promised Haitians?” 

The world has moved on.  Witness the rows of padlocked public port o lets stand on the sidewalk outside Camp St. Anne.  The displacement camp covers a public park hard by the still hollow skeleton of the still devastated St. Anne church.  The place is crowded with babies, small children, women, men, and the elderly.  It smells of charcoal smoke, dust and humans. Sixty hundred fifty families live there without electricity, running water or security. 

I talked with several young women inside the camp of shelters, most about eight feet by eight feet made from old gray tarps, branches, leftover wood, and pieces of rusty tin.  When it rains, they stand up inside their leaky shelters and wait for it to stop.  In a path in front of one home, crisscrossed with clotheslines full of tiny ...

Part I – What “Real Democratic Rights”?

In his speech to Congress on 24 May 2011 Prime Minister Netanyahu boasted that “Of the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa, only Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy real democratic rights.” This is, of course, a variation on the oft cited claim that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Leaving aside places like Lebanon and now potentially Tunisia and Egypt, one can ask just how “real” are these democratic rights the Prime Minister claims for Israel’s Arabs? Here is some recent evidence that speaks to this question.

1. At the end of September 2011 the Israeli government announced “a plan to displace 30,000 native Bedouin Arabs [all of whom are Israeli citizens]...from their homes [in the Negev].” This would constitute “the biggest dispossession plan of Palestinians issued by Israel since 1948. It would forcibly relocate about half of the Bedouin population from their existing villages, which are older than the State of Israel itself....”

Why should Israel do this to the Bedouin? Is it to facilitate their enjoyment of their “real democratic rights”? Well not quite. According to head of the Regional Council of Ramat Ha-Negev, a Zionist settlement in the region, the reason goes like this, “I want the Negev to be Jewish....Jewish settlement must grow, must continue.....What do you mean by ‘they [the Bedouin] also have rights’! You know what–after all this it is no longer possible to conceal the core problem, which is the struggle over the land. Who does this land belong to–us or them?”

2. At the Beginning of October 2011 leaders of the Jewish settler movement announced their ...

On October 6, 2011 Janell Ross, reporter for The Huffington Post, published an article entitled “Occupy Wall Street Doesn't Adequately Represent Struggling Black Population, Experts Say”, in which she decries the movement for “remain[ing] overwhelmingly white” and supports her rhetorical meanderings by relying heavily on the “expert” opinion of Bennett College president and noted Black economist Julianne Malveaux. Malveaux states that “organizers of Occupy Wall Street need to tap into the spaces where non-white people organize and discuss political and economic matters if they want to broaden the movement.” Fair enough. Malveaux’s cavil is pragmatic and therefore fairly easily rectifiable. Black activists already associated with Occupy Wall Street could consider publicizing the movement’s strategies, aims, and, above all, its relevance to the Black community in, what Melissa Harris-Perry calls “black counterpublics” like barbershops, ciphers spaces, or worship groups. Representatives of Occupy Wall Street must also articulate the core mission of the movement on electronic fora visited disproportionately by Black Americans like The Root, New American Media, Facebook, MySpace, or Colorlines.

Perorating mightily, Ross concludes that although “three years after the start of the recession, many Americans have lost their jobs, [unfortunately] many of the ones who have been disproportionately affected have not yet shown up in Zucotti Park.” Again, fair enough, but I contend that support for social movements can and must take many forms, only one of which is direct action in the streets. Black Americans may choose to remain steadfastly supportive from afar while refusing to join marchers. Although such a personal decision doesn’t require any legitimization, I nonetheless understand such a concern. The fraught relationship between the NYPD (or really any other “cop club,” both literally and metaphorically) and Black Americans is one marked by abuse and palpably racist ...

Is history getting too close for comfort for the fragile little American heart and mind? Their schools and their favorite media have done an excellent job of keeping them ignorant of what their favorite country has done to the rest of the world, but lately some discomforting points of view have managed to find their way into this well-defended American consciousness.

First, Congressman Ron Paul during a presidential debate last month expressed the belief that those who carried out the September 11 attack were retaliating for the many abuses perpetrated against Arab countries by the United States over the years. The audience booed him, loudly.

Then, popular-song icon Tony Bennett, in a radio interview, said the United States caused the 9/11 attacks because of its actions in the Persian Gulf, adding that President George W. Bush had told him in 2005 that the Iraq war was a mistake. Bennett of course came under some nasty fire. FOX News (September 24), carefully choosing its comments charmingly as usual, used words like "insane", "twisted mind", and "absurdities". Bennett felt obliged to post a statement on Facebook saying that his experience in World War II had taught him that "war is the lowest form of human behavior." He said there's no excuse for terrorism, and he added, "I'm sorry if my statements suggested anything other than an expression of love for my country." (NBC September 21)Then came the Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, who for some time had been blaming US foreign policy in the Middle East as the cause of anti-American hatred and terrorist acts. So we killed him. Ron Paul and Tony Bennett can count themselves lucky.

What, then, is the basis of all this? What has the United ...

The Republican Party of today embodies two clashing frames of mind that could either bring it down after 166 years of life, or jog it a mite leftward to the moderate center, where it could readily survive as a viable opposition to the Democrats.  There’s an alternative scenario: a massive realignment of parties, in which the Republican remnants of this mighty collision collapse like a dying star into a minor planet of certifiable extremists and oddballs, which fades into the vastness of historic space.  One can see the major elements of this paradox in the struggling campaigns of Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, both confronting: practicality vs. rigidity, realism vs. dogma, pragmatism vs. ideology.

Psychiatrists classify this behavior of dueling absolutes as acute neurosis.  Rick Perry’s drive for the presidency is designed to win the GOP’s hard-right base, while satisfying the extremist oil-and-gas libertarians who fund him.  Perry now confronts a voters’ rebellion by angry elements within the party’s hard-right base, who despise his practical program to provide in-state college tuition to the children of illegal immigrants.  This pleases Texas’ large Hispanic voting bloc, while it avoids the social menace of a lost generation of rootless and angry Hispanic youth.  But the hard right wants Perry’s program repealed by radical voters who want to know: is he really one of us?

As for former governor Romney, his pragmatic, hard-headed policy in Massachusetts early in the last decade to close state tax loopholes for corporations brought many millions of lost dollars back into state coffers, but his “tax raising” operations have created resistance among the Republican true-believing anti-tax sect to candidate Romney’s drive for the presidency.  They can’t stomach his shape-shifting political identity: liberal to conservative on ...

Has anyone noticed that the political air is wafting rancid lately? That is the smell of modern barbarism. Modern barbarism is a malodorous umbrella concept. Underneath the umbrella are lots of fetid phobias, isms and behaviors: Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, semi-fascism, scapegoating, stereotyping, bullying, libeling and a growing, aggressive intolerance of everything and everyone who is not to the liking of the modern barbarian. Here are some recent instances of this phenomenon.

Part I - Mistaking the Particular for the General

Michael Quigley, a Democratic Congressman from Chicago, made the New York Times on 24 September 2011. He made it by promoting the virtues of tolerance and diversity and lamenting the suffering that occurs when tolerance fails. Out and about in his Chicago district, he stopped in at a meeting of the American Islamic Conference. He made a short speech to the 100 or so conferees during which he said "discrimination comes in many forms, many shapes and many guises. You have my pledge to work with you to fight them, and I think it is appropriate for me to apologize on behalf of this country for the discrimination you face." Mr. Quigley was correct about the growing levels of Islamophobia that confront Muslim Americans. Islamophobia is a delusional mind-set which mistakes the general for the particular, which condemns an entire group (which happens to have a billion plus members) for the particular actions of a very few. There is no logic to such an overreaching generalization. It is irrational.

Within days of Mr. Quigley’s brief presentation he was "attacked harshly...in the conservative blogosphere...on radio and TV." There was "at least one death threat on a Fox news site that by week’s end was still not taken down despite ...

We Want… 1)...A direct constitutional amendment overturning the U.S. Supreme Court’s “Citizens United V. F.E.C” (February, 2010) decision which authorizes corporations to donate unlimited funds to political campaigns through the circuitry of 501(c)4 PAC’s.2)…The NYPD to return the $4.6 million donation it received from JPMorgan Chase in June, 2011. (The largess was provided at the very moment #OccupyWallStreet began publicizing its September 17th activities.3)…Increases on Federal Income Taxes levied against the wealthy. Raise the current highest marginal federal income tax rate beginning at $379,150 from 35% to 50%. (The tax rate during the Reagan era was 50%.) In addition, create more tax brackets for the richest Americans: $1 million / 60%, $10 million / 70%, $50 million / 80%. (The tax rate established by the conservative Eisenhower administration was 91%.)4)…Increases on Capital Gains Tax from 15% to 35% for those earning more than $1 million on stock investments. (The average U.S. family owns less than $50,000 of asset values; the Capital Gains Tax rate rested at 35% during George H.W. Bush’s presidency.)5)…The reinstatement of the Estate Tax to pre-Obama levels. The Estate Tax is levied against the wealthiest 2% of the population. In 2000 it was 55% and kicked in after $1 million. Today it is 35% and kicks in at $5 million.6)…The immediate passage of the Employee Free Choice Act introduced to Congress in 2009. The Bill would amend the National Labor Relations Act (1935) to allow employees to form, join, or assist labor unions. Further, the Bill would allow a union to gain legal recognition and to bargain with an employer if union officials collect signatures of a majority of workers.7)…The swift elimination of Wall Street bonuses until either the U.S. poverty and/or the U-6 unemployment rate drops below 3%. (A more ...

On September 17th #OccupyWallStreet emerged as a leaderless resistance movement against the U.S. finance industry. Since its inception in Zuccotti Park nearly two weeks ago thousands of citizens have taken to the streets in over fifty U.S. cities. And on September 23rd the coalition grew a bit larger when www.occupytogether.com was launched as “a central hub for all of the events springing up across the country in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protestors.” Perhaps we are witnessing the rumblings of the insubordinate self-assertion of a new generation of American youth who refuse to conflate consumption with compassion, money with change.

For weeks now I’ve been hearten by the vim and vigor of the restless multitude in my home city of San Francisco, but as we huddled together in the foyer of Chase Bank SF last Thursday singing protest songs I felt a bit embarrassed. I asked myself, is it possible that this entire movement is premised on a misdiagnosis of our current crisis? The afternoon was dominated by the indelible anaphora “Make Banks Pay, Make Banks Pay…!” But such an apothegm elides just about as much as it illuminates. Beyond the unconscionable rapacity of a handful of Wall Street executives, the banking industry by and large did exactly what the system required of it, it leveraged assets to generate liquidity. Liquidity, in this sense, refers to fictitious capital. Lending institutions typically loan around three times the value of their deposits on the assumption that depositors will never withdraw at the same time. This false assumption is precisely why Lehman collapsed.

And so it seems to me that repeating the exclamation “Make Banks Pay!” at top volume presumes that we’re in a financial crisis. This, I believe, is misguided.

The alleged financial crisis today is a symptom of a faltering economy, but the disease is capitalism. We are not enveloped in a ...

Allegedly in protest of California SB 185 -- a non-compulsory affirmative action bill currently awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature --U.C. Berkeley College Republicans will host tomorrow morning what they're terming an "Increase Diversity Bake Sale." The group plans to implement a sliding scale pricing structure explicitly indexed to gender identification or skin color in determining the cost of a cookie. Baked goods will be sold to white men for $2.00, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1.00, black men for $0.75 and Native American men for $0.25. All women will get $0.25 off those prices.

If SB 185 becomes law it would "authorize the University of California and the California State University to consider race, gender, ethnicity, and national origin, along with other relevant factors, in undergraduate and graduate admissions, to the maximum extent permitted by the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 31 of Article I of the California Constitution, and relevant case law."

Both sides, however--the architects of the bake sale and the state's lawmakers--fall short in their diagnoses and remedies for contemporary forms of race-based discrimination.

The Berkeley College Republicans have convincingly demonstrated that they know next to nothing about the genesis, propensities, or parameters of U.S. based "affirmative action" programs and policies. They fail to consider what affirmative action is called when its beneficiaries are white. One answer is social security, another is the G.I. Bill. Simply put, when racically predicated privileges are dispensed to white persons such policy becomes universalized and therefore rendered invisible. What then counts as affirmative action?

Let's take a brief look, for instance, at the monumental social programs of FDR's New Deal and Harry Truman's Fair Deal in the 1930's and 1940's. Programs falling under those rubrics not only discriminated against black people as racial faction, but actually ...

The political community called the Democratic Party has been stricken by aphasia. The consequences of muteness of leadership can be mortal.

Aphasia is the inability, periodically or totally, to speak.  The result in Congress is that the Tea Party is left to run the political show – by default.  The mandarins who program the Tea Party’s tactics from offstage hold the Democratic and Republican Parties hostage to their agenda of nihilistic obstruction.  The result is the near-total paralysis of the two-party system.

In this vacuum, the Koch brothers, libertarians Charles and David, create legislative havoc through their Tea-Party’s control of the House of Representatives.  And “Congress,” that co-equal branch of the government where laws are supposed to be made, is blamed by the public for its inability to do much in a time of national crisis.  However, Congress as an instrument  is   n o t  the  problem.  It’s the Tea Party, and the unelected masters who run and pay for it, who should be held publicly responsible.  But the Democrats, their aphasic state, mutely accept responsibility -- with their silence.  Latter-day Democrats have forgotten how to hold their rivals accountable.  They’ve lost the art of fiery political speech on the old-fashioned stump – to inform, to mobilize, to educate citizens through systematic, cohesive public communications on what’s going on and who’s to be held accountable for it.  Their silence is compounded by a great national silence.

Congressional Democrats should be naming and calling out the villains.  They should be arousing the populist passions of frustrated and angry Americans at the repeated obstruction of Tea Party members in Congress, and their directors, the Kochs and fellow libertarians.  They should be identifying the culprits, and naming them -- ...

Weeks ago I wrote an essay on America’s empathy crisis as the common denominator in our country’s hard right turn on a broad array of political issues.  The recent Republican presidential candidates debates revealed more than an empathy crisis.  The Tea Party audience of Sept. 12th’s debate revealed that for some of them callousness and selfishness are grossly insufficient to describe the depth of their inhumanity.One of literature’s and the movie screen’s most repulsive villains is Madam Defarge of Charles Dicken’s  A Tale of Two Cities.  She personified ruthlessness, revenge, and sadistic delight in other people’s pain, suffering and death.  Her ideological rigidity did not allow her to countenance any mercy.  Madam Defarge, meet your contemporaries, America’s Tea Party. My father was often the court appointed psychiatrist asked to evaluate the sanity of those accused of crimes, especially of high profile murders in Utah.  He interviewed the worst of the worst.  I remember in 1974 asking him about the accused killers in the “Hi-FI” murders, a brutal murder/robbery in a hi-fi store (that’s where you went to buy sound systems in case you are too young to know, or too old to remember) where several innocent people were tortured, raped and then shot by a pair of disturbed young thugs.In asking him about our justice system of jury trial, I will never forget his comment to me.  He said he would rather live in a society where nine out of ten murderers go free if that’s what it takes to make sure that an innocent man is not convicted or executed.  My dad was the anti-Rick Parry, and the rise of the Tea Party would make him roll over in his grave.Tea Partiers cheered when Rick Parry’s Guinness book of world records for state enacted executions was mentioned.  Parry, fresh from his stadium filled prayer ...

Part I - The Erosion Universal Jurisdiction

Back on 12 February 2011 I put out an analysis on the subject of Universal Jurisdiction. Here is the first paragraph from the piece:

“One of the really progressive acts that followed the end of World War II was the establishment of the principle of universal jurisdiction (UJ). UJ is a legal process that allows states that are signatories to various international treaties and conventions (such as the Geneva conventions) to prosecute alleged violators of these treaties, even when these violations are committed outside the country’s borders. This is particularly so if it can be demonstrated that the home government of the accused has no intention of bringing them to trial for the alleged offense. The assumption behind this principle is that the crime committed is so egregious as to be seen as a crime against humanity at large. In the wake of the Nazi Holocaust and other such crimes against humanity, UJ was accepted as a necessary and positive legal step by almost all Western nations.”

It has been 66 years since the end of World War II and the memory of the concentration camps has faded (except when invoked as a political tool by Zionists). Nor has the subsequent holocausts such as those in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia been sufficient to keep the issue of crimes against humanity front and center in the governmental minds of the great powers. The historical fact is that such truly horrible crimes committed at the edges of the European world or beyond have never been seen as symbolically important in the same way the Nazi holocaust was. And so we cease to pay attention. That allows for the erosion of the safeguards against these crimes such as UJ.

Now we have proof of this process of erosion. On 15 September 2011

I enjoy PBS’s weekly science documentary NOVA -- well-conceived, well reported, well produced.  The series makes an important contribution to the people’s understanding and importance of scientific inquiry.  I recommend it highly.  Next time you view Nova, take note of the series’ contributors.  They include Howard Hughes Medical Center, Franklin Templeton Investments, and a single individual named David H. Koch.  Most viewers let the credits slide by.  Few bother to think about donor Koch,  let alone how to pronounce the name:  Kotch or perhaps Kosh?  The name of the seemingly enlightened Mr. Koch, actually pronounced like the soft drink, “Coke,” has little to do with the drink--ORr with scientific advancement. But, as principal funders of the Tea Party movement, their Trojan horse inside the federal government, David and his brother Charles have everything to do with the libertarian hijacking of the Republican Party and its right-wing propaganda and agitation network, through their lead sponsorship of the Tea Party It's their Trojan horse inside Party and the federal government.  Together the Kochs form the wealthiest individual opposition to enlightened democratic governance.

Among David and Charles are leaders of the American confederation of wealth, private and corporate.  The Kochs are among the wealthiest men in America. They sponsor twice-yearly conventions of the wealthy to discuss strategy and action on protecting American free enterprise and the gaining and retaining of unfettered wealth.  Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have attended some of these events.  These two members of the highest court in America are objects of controversy over conflicts of interest at the highest levels of the federal judiciary, over their affirmative role in the Citizens United decision, which opened the floodgates to ...

If we take seriously Gandhi’s admonishment that poverty is the worst form of violence, then what are we to make of the 2010 poverty figures released by the Census Bureau earlier this week? The 2010 Income and Poverty Report serves as a weighty reminder of the depth and breadth of human suffering in the United States. Or does it? Although traditional economists marked the end of the Great Recession (two or more consecutive quarters of declining GDP) on July 1, 2009, the labor market has continued to disintegrate. Since late 2007 the U.S. has lost more than 8 million jobs. In fact, almost 700,000 were lost just this year at a time when unemployment rose from 9.3% to 9.6%. In sum: income dropped; poverty and unemployment rose.

According to the report an additional 2.6 million people dipped below the poverty line last year as the official poverty rate increased from 14.3% to 15.1%. The current rate represents 46.2 million people living in poverty in the United States. (The last time the poverty rate was higher was in 1983 when it reached a staggering 15.2%.) Mississippi had the highest poverty rate last year, at 22.7%, and New Hampshire had the lowest, 6.6%. Poverty rates rose to 9.9% (.5^) among white households, 27.4% (1.6^) among black households, 26.6% (1.3^) among brown households, and dropped from 12.5% to 12.1% among yellow households. (Recall that the original poverty threshold was derived in the mid-1950’s and is based on the measure of the food consumption of low-income families. Surveys from this era revealed that families spent about a third of their income on food and so the poverty threshold was calculated by simply tripling the value of the “economy food plan” for a given family size. Amazingly, with very few alterations, and with adjustments for inflation, this measure remains the official poverty measure to this day. Food consumption represents a much smaller share of family budgets than was the case fifty years ago while housing, ...

There is an interesting phenomenon which we can call "the political retiree’s confession." I don’t mean all those hyped memoirs, ghost written for all manner of high ranking ex-officials. Here I refer to statements by important political leaders and bureaucrats, either out of office or about to vacate their positions, publically describing what really needs to be done. For instance, what really needs to be done to obtain peace, or accurately pointing fingers at those obstructing peace. These statements can be shocking in their honesty, but curiously enough, are never made, much less acted upon, while the truth sayer is in a position of power. They come to us only with retirement or pending retirement.

For example, take former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Olmert was Prime Minister from 2006 (replacing Ariel Sharon who had suffered a debilitating stroke) till early 2009. A few months before leaving office Olmert told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot that, in the end, Israel would have to return "almost all" of the West Bank to the Palestinians, including East Jerusalem. There was no other way to achieve peace with the Arab world. Olmert went on, "the decision we are going to have to make is the decision we have been refusing for 40 years to look at open-eyed....The time has come to say these things. The time has come to put them on the table." Of course "the time" oddly coincided with a period when the Prime Minister could not move this insight from theory into practice.

Now we have another example of this strange phenomenon. This time from the United States. According to Jeffrey Goldberg, the national correspondent for The Atlantic magazine, former ...

Hungarian philosopher and literary critic Georg Lukács once wrote that “ideology lags behind reality” and a glittering instantiation of his insight lay enmeshed in a report recently issued by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) entitled “New College Grads Losing Ground On Wages.” The illegitimacy of the jaunty meritocratic refrain “the more you learn, the more you earn” is unraveling…and in plain view. The insidiously conservative “myth of meritocracy” is oddly ratified by well-meaning liberals who, while acknowledging the falsification that inherence-based arguments level against it, continue to allow the internalization of meritocratic discourses within the context of personal educational attainment. Work hard in high school and you’re promised admission to college, they say. Work hard in college and you’re promised a job rife with middle class amenities that include, but aren’t limited to, a “fair” wage (Marx would argue that the phenomenon of a ‘fair’ wage is inherently impossible, but such a consideration is beyond the scope and intention of this piece), paid time off, a reliable pension, and health insurance. They don’t tell you that you’re also promised debt and “job lock.”

Is this why we go to college? Although a few Das Kapital toting young radical leftists may conceive of education as the practice of political and personal freedom by creating a “counter-hegemonic culture” capable of challenging the capitalist agenda and prefiguring new ways of consciousness and of self-organization, most youth simply associate college with the expectation of socioeconomic ascendency. (Conversation had at a recent high school reunion validates this anecdotally.) And according to the 1998 U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, their assumption is right. In 1998 the annual earnings of a worker with a college degree was $45,400; and for a worker with a high school diploma alone, $30,400. Unfortunately, these data are outdated and new figures by the EPI ...

Congress resumes its polarized deliberations this week after the summer recess.  With the horrific ideology-driven storm over raising the debt ceiling behind them, has anything been learned by the Ultra-Cons on the value of old-fashioned compromise?  Or will Koch-driven Tea Party members complete the process of hijacking the Republican Party, wielding a hatchet and a hard line?

If today’s victorious shoot-from-the-lip Republican leaders still have any respect for their founding saint Abraham Lincoln, it would be well that they act on some of his wisdom: “The time comes upon every public man when it is best for him to keep his lips closed.”   I for one regret that we voters could not move events fast-forward to hear the unbending lip-flap of Mitch McConnell and his leadership buddies before they cast their ballots: “The mandate for change is directed at the other guys,” he growled just days after the G.O.P’s stunning victories.  That joyless machismo was softened by the ultra-con political manager Sal Russo’s Lincolnesque observation that "Most people recognize that you have to give to get sometimes."   Republican enforcer Rush Limbaugh was having none of it: “What is all this talk about compromise?  We've got nothing to compromise."  What’s with Rush’s “we?”  No one’s elected him to anything.

Hard-bottomed members of the Gritty Old Party had best remember three things: what happened to them in 2006 and 2008 can happen to them again in 2012.  The centrist voters who swing elections, including the one just past, didn’t vote for bully-boying by Al Capone or by Rupert Murdoch’s gunsels.  They voted for productive compromise-propelled progress on Capitol Hill, not more gridlock, with “No, No, a Thousand Times No” as their refrain.  Tough talk is hardly the ...

In the wake of the dubious UN investigatory report which all but exonerated Israel for its May 31, 2010 attack on the Mavi Marmara–an attack that killed 8 Turkish citizens and 1 Turkish-America–Turkey has downgraded its diplomatic relations with Israel and suspended all military cooperation. Ankara had little choice in this matter. The Israeli attack was egregious. It took place in international waters against an unarmed civilian vessel and was carried out in defense of a barbaric and illegal policy of collective punishment against one million Palestinians bottled up in Gaza by an Israeli blockade.For their part, the Israelis claim that they murdered the Mavi Marmara Turks in self-defense. I juxtapose the words self defense and murder quite purposefully, for the Turkish passengers were in the process of defending themselves from a violent assault when they were gunned down by Israeli soldiers who now describe their actions as self-defense. This scenario is a tragic parody of a hundred years of Zionist action in the Middle East. Having come to the region in the baggage train of an imperial occupying power (Great Britain) and successfully establishing themselves by evicting the native population (a process that is on-going), the Israelis define all acts of resistence to their aggression as attacks which require their defending themselves. The Mavi Marmara action fits neatly into this Zionist world of peculiar logic. In this sense, they turn the world upside down.The Turkish government will have none of this and demanded the minimum of decency from the Israelis–an apology and compensation. In so doing they stand for civilized behavior. The ...

As far near the edge as you can get on the far-out right wing, “super-patriots” are working overtime to poke a stout stick through the spinning spokes of this democracy – or, what’s left of it.  They have been hard at work, over a year before the 2012 presidential election, pushing hard to get new laws through state legislatures to suppress the votes of citizens who tend to vote the Democratic line.  At least a dozen states will insist that voters display photo IDs at polling places before they can cast ballots.  Other states are busily attempting to shorten voting hours, as well as the number of days voters may cast early ballots.  Both strategies are devised to curb the voting of the jobless, the young, minority voters, the needy, the ill, the elderly, all folks who lack the funds to pay for photo IDs, or the time to spend on voting lines on election day.

This tactic has been on the books of ultra-con orthodoxy since Republican politics went extreme in the 1980s during the Reagan years.  That’s when a pioneering far-right organizer, the late Paul Weyrich, got hefty donations from the likes of the Coors family and Richard Mellon Scaife, big spenders off their beer profits and the Mellon banking fortune respectively.  Weyrich began building a popular-front of hundreds of far-right activist organizations whose activities media have yet to begin reporting on.  Here’s what Paul Weyrich told a meeting of the religious right in Dallas in 1980 about the power of suppressing voter turnouts: 

“Many of our Christians have what I call the Goo Goo Syndrome: Good Government.  They want everybody to vote.  I don’t want everybody to vote.  Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been, from the beginning of our country, ...

Earlier today the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) released its 18th annual Executive Compensation Survey. According to the report, S&P 500 CEOs raked in $10.8 million in average compensation (including the value of new stock) during the 2009-2010 fiscal year. Researchers at the IPS say that this increase represents a 28% rate of income growth over fiscal year 2008-2009. Further, the gap between CEO and median worker pay at these same companies rose from 263-to-1 in 2008-2009 to 351-to-1 last year.

So while CEOs are making millions of dollars per year, how much is the “average U.S. worker,” (statistically speaking) taking home? Well, it might surprise you to know that the answer is difficult to find. Functionally speaking, the “average U.S. worker” doesn’t exist as a category of analysis against which policies related to public programming and/or and social support are based and justified. Try performing a Google search on “average personal income, U.S. worker” or “average personal income, American” and you’ll promptly be ushered to websites providing data on “average household income.” The Wall Street Journal tells us that “the median income” hovers around $49,000, Forbes, $50,000. But why does a ‘average personal income” search yield statistics from an entirely different category of analysis, namely, “average household income?"

As it turns out, the U.S. Census Bureau, along with a variety of other number-crunching agencies, calculates but doesn’t utilize the “median income in current dollars” as a viable unit of analysis for producing and delivering public services to our country’s citizens. Instead, the Census Bureau uses the category “median household income” as its basis to determine qualification for social services including, for instance, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families). The hidden message: If you want to have any chance at achieving middle class status then you’d better get hitched, or at least, partner up with someone.

The ...

"Why are you attacking us? Why are you killing our children? Why are you destroying our infrastructure?"

– Television address by Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi, April 30, 2011

A few hours later NATO hit a target in Tripoli, killing Gaddafi's 29-year-old son Saif al-Arab, three of Gaddafi's grandchildren, all under twelve years of age, and several friends and neighbors.

In his TV address, Gaddafi had appealed to the NATO nations for a cease-fire and negotiations after six weeks of bombings and cruise missile attacks against his country.

Well, let's see if we can derive some understanding of the complex Libyan turmoil.

The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, NATO and the European Union — recognizes no higher power and believes, literally, that it can do whatever it wants in the world, to whomever it wants, for as long as it wants, and call it whatever it wants, like "humanitarian".If The Holy Triumvirate decides that it doesn't want to overthrow the government in Syria or in Egypt or Tunisia or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia or Yemen or Jordan, no matter how cruel, oppressive, or religiously intolerant those governments are with their people, no matter how much they impoverish and torture their people, no matter how ...

Part I - Entrapment as Government Policy

Here is an important question: What single organization is responsible for more terror plots in the USA than any other? Possible answers: Al Qaida. That would no doubt be the popular answer but it would be wrong. The KKK. Way past their prime, so that is not it. The Jewish Defense League. Good guess, but still not it. So what is the correct answer? It is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, AKA the FBI. Don’t believe me? Well, just read Trevor Aaronson’s expose entitled "The Informants" published in the September/October 2011 issue of Mother Jones.

Aaronson looked at over 500 terrorism related cases taken up by the FBI and found that over half of them involved the Bureau’s stable of 15,000 informants. Many of these are ex-felons and con men who are often paid well if their efforts result in an arrest and conviction. So what, you might say. Using informants to obtain information about criminal activity is an old and legitimate tactic. Yes, however, that approach to information gathering is not exactly how the FBI uses all of its informants. Indeed, the Bureau has a program, misnamed "prevention" which encourages its agents to get creative in the use of informants. How creative? Well, if they can’t find any terrorist activity going on, they have their informants instigate some. Where are they doing this? Mainly in our country’s Muslim communities.

According to the Mother Jones story the FBI has concluded that Al-Qaeda as an organization is no longer a major threat to the US. The threat now comes from the "lone wolf," the person who is angry at or frustrated by their life situation and open to the influence of terrorist rhetoric. Allegedly, the American Muslim community is full of these "lone wolves" just sitting out there fuming, ...

During a 1996 interview with Kuan-Hsing Chen the irreducibly brilliant cultural theorist Stuart Hall remarked that “What has resulted from the abandonment of deterministic economism has been, not alternative ways of thinking questions about the economic relationships and their effects…but instead, a massive gigantic and eloquent disavowal.”

A seemingly immovable fixture in most Cultural Studies literature today, especially those that explicitly address issues of social inequality or oppression, is the ritual critique of Marxism’s blindness to the social typologies of race and gender. Mid-century black intellectuals (almost exclusively men) and white feminists beginning of the 1970’s have excoriated Marxism for its failure to develop a robust analysis of racial and sexual oppression, for its alleged economism, and for its class reductionism. Soon after, particularly academic feminists, began to assert that a Marxian analytic was irredeemably irreconcilable with the contours and challenges presented by “new social movements.” As “new social movements,” emblematized by the Black Panthers, Young Lords, and Brown Berets, were systematically neutralized by the FBI’s COINTELPRO, (an organization whose original mission was the eradicate CPUSA from the country) scholarship on “new social histories” began to proliferate and people of color and women, in particular, agitated for the institutionalization of ethnic studies, black studies, and women’s studies programs around the United States. The emergence of publications like “Race, Sex, and Class” and the “Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice” as well as the popularization of theoretical paradigms like intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) or standpoint theory (Collins, 1990) represented the materialization of work (literally) emerging from these newly established departments. Cultural Studies, the banner under which such disciplines currently fall, rightly emerged as an (inter)disciplinary alternative to the Humanities, ...

Four days ago French Prime Minister François Fillon announced plans to introduce a one-time tax on top earners as part of a package to stimulate aggregate demand and to reduce the national deficit. The proposed measures are slated for presentation in parliament this October. Whether or not such legislation is ultimately adopted, the United States could learn from the French. I toast the French for their willingness to confront a seemingly intractable economic situation with evenhanded policy premised on equity, evidence, and honesty.

Highlighting the impermanent nature of plans to tax France’s wealthiest individuals, Fillon explained that a contribution of 3% would be imposed on annual income (income tax) and an additional 1.2% on capital (capital gains tax) in excess of the 500,000 Euros, or the equivalent of $721,000 U.S.D. (Capital Gains Tax currently stands at 19% in France and 15% in the United States). According to a recent KPMG report emerging from the U.K., France would still sit outside the top-10 highest tax rates in Europe despite its proposal. Sweden has the highest rate of income tax at 56.6%, Denmark 55.4%, Netherlands 52% and the UK 50%, tied with Belgium, Austria and Finland.

Expected to generate in the vicinity of 200 million Euros ($290 million U.S.D.) in additional revenues for the state next year, the temporary levy will be abolished once the country’s deficit returns to 3% of gross domestic product (GDP). Framers of France’s multi-tiered plan aim to reduce the country’s public deficit to 5.7% of GDP this year, to 4.5% in 2012 and to 3% in 2013. While France has already adopted measures to reduce its public deficit while it rests at 5.7% of GDP, the United States has done very little to reduce ours which currently stands at 9.6% of GDP, and more importantly, to generate an aggregate revenue stream which will allow consumers to purchase goods and services that our economy is capable of producing.
Instead of levying a modest tax increase ...

Part I - Stretching the Definition of Anti-SemitismCan criticism of Israel, particularly a) criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and b) criticism of the state ideology of Zionism that justifies that treatment, be labeled anti-Semitic? This is not a hypothetical query. An affirmative answer to this question is being advocated by influential Zionist lobbies in the United States. The question is of particular importance on the nation’s college and university campuses. In places like the University of California at Berkeley and Santa Cruz, and also at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Zionist students are now threatening to sue these institutions for failing to prevent an "atmosphere of anti-Semitic bigotry" allegedly created by the presence of pro-Palestinian student groups and faculty.One might ask if it isn’t a stretch to assert that protesting Israeli and Zionist behavior is the same as anti-Semitism? Common sense certainly tells us this is so. Unfortunately, we are not dealing with situations that are ruled by common sense. What we are facing here is the issue of ideologues bred to a specific perceptual paradigm and their insistence that others conform to it.Here is an example: Take an American kid from a self-conscious Jewish home. This kid does not represent all American Jewish youth, but does typify say 20% of them. He or she is taught about the religion and also taught about recent history and the near annihilation of the Jews of Europe. He or she is sent to Hebrew school, and maybe a yeshiva school as well. Most of our hypothetical student’s friends will be Jewish and of similar background. Between home, friends and school the student might well find him or herself in something of a closed universe. Throughout this educational process Judaism and its fate in the modern world is connected with Israel and its survival. The Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, are transformed ...

Mathias O is 34 years old.  He is one of about 600,000 people still homeless from the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  He lives with his wife and her 2 year old under a homemade shelter made out of several tarps.  They sleep on the rocky ground inside.  The side tarp walls are reinforced by pieces of cardboard boxes taped together.  Candles provide the only inside light at night.  There is no running water.  No electricity.  They live near a canal and suffer from lots of mosquitoes.  There are hundreds of families living in tents beside him.  This is the third tent community he has lived in since the earthquake.

The earthquake made Mathias homeless when it crushed his apartment and killed his cousin and younger brother.  He and his wife first stayed in a park next to St. Anne’s Catholic Church.  Then the family moved to what they thought was a safer place, Sylvio Cator stadium.  They put up a tent on the lawn inside the stadium and stayed there for several months.  The authorities then moved them just outside of the stadium so the soccer team could practice.  They lived in a tent outside the stadium with 514 other families for over a year until they were ordered to leave in July 2011.  Each family was told they had to leave and were given 10,000 Goudes (about $250 in US dollars) to assist in their relocation.  Where did the 514 families go?  No one knows for sure.  About 150 families stayed together and live under tarps beside Mathias.  Some used the money to build new tarp shelters elsewhere and some used it for food.  The rest?  No one knows.  No one is keeping track.

When I asked what Mathias would like to say to the human rights community, he said, “The life of the people living in the tents is not a human life.  Our human rights are not respected.  No institutions are taking care of us, we are the ...

Note: Written in collaboration with Davida Finger, an esteemed Professor and associate at Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.

Six years ago, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf coast.  The impact of Katrina and government bungling continue to inflict major pain on the people left behind.  It is impossible to understand what happened and what still remains without considering race, gender, and poverty.The following offer some hints of what remains.

$62 million.  Amount of money HUD and the State of Louisiana agreed to pay thousands of homeowners because of racial discrimination in Louisiana’s program to disburse federal rebuilding funds following Katrina and Rita.  African American homeowners were more likely than whites to have their rebuilding grants based on much lower pre-storm value of their homes rather than the higher estimated cost to rebuild them. Source:  Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.

343,829.   The current population of the city of New Orleans, about 110,000 less than when Katrina hit.  New Orleans is now whiter, more male and more prosperous.  Source: Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. 

154,000.   FEMA is now reviewing the grants it gave to 154,000 people following hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.  It is now demanding that some return the long ago spent funds!  FEMA admits that many of the cases under review stem from mistakes made by its own agency employees.  FEMA’s error rate following Katrina was 14.5 per cent.  Michael Kunzelman and Ryan Foley, Associated Press.

65,423.   In the New Orleans metropolitan area, there are now 65,423 fewer ...

The electromagnetic spectrum is a window on the real world in all its vast variety. In wavelength it ranges from 0.1 nanometers for gamma rays to long wave infrared waves of a 1000 meters. Humankind has invented instruments that can look out into the world at all of these wave lengths. However, when it comes to the human eye (our innate instrument for seeing) the perceptual range is very much smaller. The visible spectrum ranges from 400 nanometers (which appears to us as violet) to 700 nanometers (which appears to us as red). Leaving aside those who are blind, there are a number of defects that can limit our vision range even further.

Thus, without artificial aids, humankind’s ability to see the natural world and to understand the full range of what is real and operative is quite limited. Unfortunately, this phenomenon of restricted perception is not just physiological. Something akin to it seems to happen on the psychological level as well, inhibiting our sense of the world beyond familiar community and cultural wave lengths. A phenomenon that I call "natural localism" concentrates most people’s attention to the limited geographical area within which they live, work and study. Inside their local zone, people can have first hand knowledge, but they are also led (again quite naturally) to conform their views to those of their neighbors, their friends, their fellow workers, their religious congregations, etc. In many of these categories there will be personalities who stand out as leaders and they often have great influence in shaping the perceptions of local populations. Beyond their local zone most people know little of what is real. The rest of the world is, if you will, beyond the wave lengths they can see and understand. Many folks are simply indifferent to world beyond their own personal sphere. And, most of those who might periodically become interested in what is happening on the other side of the hill, will tend to go ...

What does it mean to “work across difference” in broad political contexts? And what types of political practices and theoretical devices best enable a translation from the private “me” to the collective “we?” I begin with a strikingly simple claim: the ways in which the “particular” is related to the “universal” is one of the most ubiquitous and persistent questions in human life. Cataloging and negotiating the eternally precarious relationship between “me” and “we” requires an analytic with sufficient flexibility; one nuanced enough to adjoin “human being” with “being human.”

My examination will therefore foreground three foundational questions: What is identity and how is it produced socially? To what ends it is politicized? And what are the contemporary limits of its politicization? Against the backcloth of these queries I historicize (and materialize) the emergence of identity politics and the cultural instruments available to render human difference politically legible. Further, I explore the ways in which well intentioned and allegedly emancipatory political projects problematically mirror the mechanisms and arrangements of power of which they are a product and which they profess to subvert. Here I consider how the politicization of private identities may, under certain circumstances, unwittingly rethread the very configurations and consequences of power it seeks to ameliorate.

I contend that in order to build more just, humane, and peaceful communities we must first, in the words of Judith Butler, “learn to see the frame to blinds us to what we see,” or, stated differently, we must lay bare the questions which our “answers” have hidden. The true vulgarity of commonsense ideological explanations lay in their ability to offer conclusions that adjust and obscure the original parameters of the social challenge. I argue that the frame within which all contemporary discourses on cultural politics exists is that of “late-modern, post-industrial ...

For Tea Party zealots it is impossible to utter, hear, read or write the words “freedom” and “liberty” too many times.  And of course to them the antithesis of freedom and liberty is the federal government, which they swear they will “take back.”  For them, taking back the government means restoring the freedom to not be able to afford health care, restoring the freedom to be unemployed without any unemployment insurance,  restoring the freedom to lose your home to mortgage fraud and your pension to criminal wall street bankers.  That doesn’t sound much like a “Party” to me, that sounds more like a nightmare.

Even though many of their devotees don’t realize it themselves, what the Tea Party Nightmare is actually selling is not freedom for you, but more freedom for corporate America to deny your freedom.   And this year no freedom is more important to the Tea Party Nightmare than the freedom for corporations to make you sick by polluting our air and water.  Every Republican presidential candidate and virtually every Republican Congressperson has joined the Tea Party Nightmare chorus in ranting against the EPA, and not just the EPA regulating greenhouse gases, but against everything the EPA does.  Michelle Bachmann, the Tea Party Nightmare’s charmingly oblivious and truly frightening presidential pin up girl, proudly wants to abolish the EPA.  Not to be out done, pistol packin’ Rick Perry sounds like he wants to torture everyone who works there and shoot it with his gun before he abolishes it. 

The 1979 movie China Syndrome brought to life the danger of a nuclear reactor melt down.  Within weeks the first of real life melt downs occurred at Three Mile Island, then Chernobyl, then Fukushima.   China is now in total environmental “melt down”, a new version of the China Syndrome if you will.  ...

 Part I - Education as Indoctrination

Over the last ten years there have been periodic outbursts of rage over the alleged anti-Semitic nature of Palestinian textbooks. Most of these episodes have been instigated by an Israeli based organization called the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (AKA the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education). According to one Israeli journalist, Akiva Eldar, the Center does sloppy work. It "routinely feeds the media with excerpts from "Palestinian" textbooks that call for Israel’s annihilation...[without] bothering to point out that the texts quoted in fact come from Egypt and Jordan." The Center’s conclusions have been corroborated only by other Israeli institutions such as Palestinian Media Watch.

Not surprisingly, almost all independent investigations of the same issue have come up with very different conclusions. Non-Zionist sources such as The Nation magazine, which published a report on Palestinian textbooks in 2001, the George Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, reporting in 2002, the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, reporting in 2004, and the U.S. State Department Report of 2009 all found that Palestinian textbooks did not preach anti-Semitism. Nathan Brown, a professor of Political Science at George Washington University, who did his own study on the subject in 2000, set out the situation this way, Palestinian textbooks now in use, and which replaced older ones published in Egypt and Jordan, do not teach anti-Semitism. However, "they tell history from a Palestinian point of view." It might very well be this fact that the Zionists cannot abide and purposefully mistake for anti-Semitism.

Here is another not very surprising fact. When it comes to choosing which set of reports to support, which set to take a public stand on, American politicians will almost always go ...

At 12:01am on Sunday over 45,000 Verizon employees in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states went on strike as a result of failed negotiations between workers and management on Saturday evening. The collective action has been initiated and organized by the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Late last week management at Verizon Communications Inc. demanded that the workers accept a bevy of concessions. According to CNET, the company is attempting to “change employment contract terms to allow it to more easily fire workers, tie pay increases to job performance, halt pension accruals this year, and require union workers to contribute to health-plan premiums.” Most participating in the strike are field technicians whose base pay, by Verizon’s own admission, begins at $19,864/yr. Meanwhile over the past year, Ivan Seidenberg, the company’s CEO has witnessed his compensation burgeon by more than 4% to $18.1 million. Know this: Seidenberg accrues, on average, 947 times more than the field technicians he employs.

Critics of the strike argue that slashing worker benefits is a necessary cost-saving measure during difficult financial times. Perhaps; but how then does Verizon explain its demands in light of its record profits? Verizon’s quarterly report released on January 10, 2011, claimed that that its profits nearly doubled from the same point in 2010 ($4.65 billion compared to $2.37 billion). Then, on April 21, 2011 Bloomberg reported that the company’s profits “more than tripled after Verizon began offering services on Apple’s iPhone. If these figures aren’t troubling enough, Verizon paid an effective corporate tax rate of 19.2% last year, a rate significantly lower than my federal income tax rate and I’m a graduate student.

What makes this story so remarkable is precisely that it isn’t. Whether it’s Verizon or Boeing or Starbucks the capitalist mantra has changed very little over the past few centuries: privatize profit, socialize debt. Repeat. Is it ...

“Under capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited.” –Michael Denning

From the perspective of “labor”, the callous contradiction inherent to capitalism is that its very configuration guarantees exploitation by appealing to the language of economic propriety; after all, who would object to the prospect of full employment?! And from the angle of “capital,” one could say that it takes money to take money.

After six months of “wageless life” my father was very recently offered (and accepted) a position at a reputable engineering firm. His good fortune, however, belies the chilly and cheerless figures released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) concerning the state of working America. According to the July 2011 monthly Employment Situation report drafted by the BLS there are 25.1 million workers who are either unemployed or underemployed last month. Further, the labor market is now 11.1 million jobs below the level needed to restore the pre-recession employment rate of 5.0% in December 2007. And, according to research conducted by the Economic Policy Institute we would need to add roughly 400,000 jobs every single month for 4 years to return to our pre-recession unemployment rate by 2015. A sanguine aspiration like this would require a job growth rate of 350% our 2011 monthly average.

Last Friday’s BLS report shows the addition of 117,000 jobs in July, a rate of job growth that all but preordains persistently high unemployment. (We need to add at least 125,000 jobs per month to achieve parity with workforce entrants.) The report also indicates a paltry decline in the unemployment rate from 9.2% to 9.1% which is attributable entirely to a drop in labor force participation, not an increase in the percentage of workers with jobs.

Unfortunately, the labor force participation rate (the ratio of working-age adults to those with jobs) also declined to 63.9% in July, its new low of the recession. Surprisingly, ...

While the train wreck of the phony debt ceiling crisis occupied the media and voters for much of the last several weeks, public health and the environment were quietly being mugged in the back alley on Capital Hill by a ruthless gang of Tea Party Congressmen armed by a cabal of dirty energy corporations, chief among them Koch Industries. But this mugging will have permanent consequences for all Americans, including diminished quality of life, more cancer causing contamination of your water, dirtier air, poorer health, shorter life spans, and higher medical bills. Yes, you and your family are going to take a quite hit for the Koch Brothers team. But it will provide more billions in profits for these Titans of fossil fuel which is their noble contribution to “shared sacrifice.”

Multiple tactics and weapons are being used in this mugging. Contradicting every study that’s ever been done, the Tea Party gang started labeling the EPA, and its enforcement of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, “job killing” to persuade voters there was something sinister about environmental protection. Then they started their legislative machinations, like attaching dozens of “are you kidding me?” riders to the appropriations bill that funds the EPA.

Those riders include such gems as allowing uranium mining on the door step of the Grand Canyon, with the likelihood of contaminating the lower Colorado River and the drinking water for 30 million people. Mind you that right now the federal government is spending a billion dollars to clean up 50 year old uranium tailings near that same Colorado River at Moab, Utah. Other riders are as deranged and senseless as blocking the tougher fuel standards the Obama ...

Among the nuttiest theories about radiation is that it is good for you. Yes, radiation is good for you—it exercises the immune system.That’s what some nuclear scientists claim. They call it the “hormesis radiation” theory. These scientists don’t just want to minimize or even flatly deny the deadly impacts of radioactivity—they want people to think it’s healthy.An advocate of the “hormesis radiation” theory was scheduled to peddle the theory today before the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site-Citizens Advisory Board.The DOE’s Savannah River Site is a radioactive mess—310 square miles in South Carolina—that includes the Savannah River National Laboratory and five now closed nuclear reactors. It’s been used through the years to produce plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons, plutonium to power NASA space probes, and now seeks to make plutonium-based MOX fuel for nuclear power plants, and do other things nuclear. It is in an area of South Carolina which has a large minority population. It’s been designated a high-pollution Superfund site.But Dr. Clinton R. Wolfe, executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness, wasn’t planning to simply comfort the 25-person advisory board with the “hormesis radiation” theory as regarding the radioactive muddle where they reside.The topic of his talk was; “A Perspective on Radiation Exposure and the Fukushima Disaster.” People in South Carolina—indeed around the world—have become more aware of and concerned about radioactivity because of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex disaster.Wolfe, like many in his group, is a product of the system of DOE national nuclear laboratories. He was at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the atomic bomb was developed, specializing in work with plutonium, then worked for Westinghouse, a ...

On July 9 I took part in a demonstration in front of the White House, the theme of which was "Stop Bombing Libya". The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing of a foreign country, which the White House was selling as "humanitarian intervention", as they are now, was in 1999 during the 78-day bombing of Serbia. At that time I went to a couple of such demonstrations and both times I was virtually the only American there. The rest, maybe two dozen, were almost all Serbs. "Humanitarian intervention" is a great selling device for imperialism, particularly in the American market. Americans are desperate to renew their precious faith that the United States means well, that we are still "the good guys".

This time there were about 100 taking part in the protest. I don't know if any were Libyans, but there was a new element — almost half of the protesters were black, marching with signs saying: "Stop Bombing Africa".

There was another new element — people supporting the bombing of Libya, facing us from their side of Pennsylvania Avenue about 40 feet away. They were made up largely of Libyans, probably living in the area, who had only praise and love for the United States and NATO. Their theme was that Gaddafi was so bad that they would support anything to get rid of him, even daily bombing of their homeland, which now exceeds Serbia's 78 days. I of course crossed the road and got into arguments with some of them. I kept asking: "I hate that man there [pointing to the White House] just as much as you hate Gaddafi. Do you think I should therefore support the bombing of Washington? Destroying the beautiful monuments and buildings of this city, as well as killing people?"

None of the Libyans even tried to answer my question. They only repeated their anti-Gaddafi vitriol. "You don't understand. We have to get rid of Gaddafi. He's ...

You probably don’t know that another act of hostage-taking by Republicans is underway. They have shut down the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to help Delta Airlines in its battle to keep its workers from voting in a union. This is costing the government $200 million a week, more than 4,000 FAA employees have been furloughed, and as many as 87,000 construction workers and other contractors around the country are being laid off. The agency has been shut down for more than a week and so far the Republicans have refused to let it open before Congress leaves town for the summer. All this apparently so one company can keep employees who want a union from winning an election.

The FAA is the agency that regulates and overseas civil aviation. That is airports, airlines, pilots, employees, air traffic control, and other components of our aviation system. But the agency has been shut down. FAA inspectors and others are working without pay and paying for their own job-related travel. The shutdown is keeping the FAA from collecting federal taxes on airline tickets at a cost of $200 million in revenues each week even as the country struggles with deficits. Republicans said they don’t like deficits, but they clearly hate working people more – this shutdown adds $30 million a day, over $200 million a week to deficits.

A Shutdown Engineered For A Company

Drop someone off at the airport here and you’ll be searched three times before getting into the parking lot. Kabul is a city of sandbags and armed men, both on foot and in big, shiny, assertive, urgently-honking vehicles. In Kabul much life is lived opaquely — behind barbed wire and thick metal doors and high walls.

Early on we are told that, according to the Red Cross, the area is enduring the worst security situation in 30 years. Those with a stake in how things are dread the talked-about (and fanciful?) departure of international forces – of the invaders and occupiers — for fear of civil war. Some seem to prefer the devil they’ve come to know this past excruciating decade to other devils harder to predict, harder to identify.

Our little delegation is severely restricted in our movements – we keep a low profile: we don’t linger outside those high walls. We stay inside until our driver arrives and then quickly hop in the van. We may not even be able to get beyond Kabul – a tan, dusty, decaying, sprawling town with what must be some of the densest, scariest, least regulated traffic on the planet. (Not once in our two weeks here have we stopped for a red light.)

Do we avoid venturing forth from the clipped lawns and rose gardens of our guest house compound? Hardly. We are blessed with our unflappable driver, who with preternatural reflexes plunges us into the swirling traffic. And, especially, we are blessed with our interpreter and mentor, “Hakim” – the Singaporean ...

On the 26th of July, 2011 Robert Serry, The United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East peace process appeared before the UN Security Council. Mr. Serry is a career Dutch diplomat and had led the Middle Eastern Affairs Division of the Dutch Foreign Ministry. There is every reason to believe that he knows what he is talking about. He told the Security Council that the "peace process," that is the political process allegedly seeking a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, had reached a stage of "profound and persistent deadlock." Attempts to resume negotiations are "extremely difficult" he said. And, "in the absence of a framework for meaningful talks, and with Israeli settlement activity continuing, the Palestinians are actively exploring approaching the UN." That is actively considering asking for UN recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state within pre-1967 borders.

Mr. Serry’s description of the negotiations seems pretty straight forward. The two sides are stalemated. And, as the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted, this stalemate follows negotiations that have stretched out over at least 20 years. Indeed, we know that in the most recent phase of these marathon negotiations the Palestinian team had dropped just about all of their original demands. Erekat told U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell, that the Palestinian negotiators had done everything but "convert to Zionism." And yet, the Israelis scorned the Palestinian’s offered compromises. As Mr. Serry indicated, Israel’s settlement of Palestinian land continues. In fact throughout this entire 20 year process colonization has gone on unabated. And, of course, all of it is illegal under the Geneva Conventions. One of the reasons that restarting any negotiations is so "extremely difficult" is that the Palestinian side has insisted that, as a prerequisite for any new talks, Israel ...

Perhaps the pre-eminent task of philosophy today is to challenge the veracity of ideological constructs through processes of demystification. That is, rather than providing pedestrian resolutions to complex social contradictions, it is possible to argue that philosophy must be operationalized to illustrate that our perception of a problem can itself constitute the problem. Answers cannot exist a priori because they are engendered through the posing of questions. Any correct social diagnosis, therefore, must be tethered to the correct conceptualization of extant verifiable symptoms. Inadequate solutions to social antinomies reflect first the inadequacy of the ...

 I'm sure everyone reading this already knows that our "debt crisis" is a mirage, a canard manipulated by the radical right wing who are theologically devoted to allowing society's rich to become even more so. Our supposed spending problem is nothing more than a "We won't tax the rich no matter what" problem. The media has played along; Pres. Obama and many of the Democrats are also playing along. And the political barometer has taken yet another sharp lurch to the right. But while we don't really have a debt crisis, we do have an empathy crisis and it's the empathy ceiling that has come crashing down on us and desperately needs to be raised.

Recall that in campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush actually advertised himself as a different breed of conservative, a "compassionate conservative". I'm under no illusion that this was anything other than Karl Rove branding "W" solely for the purpose of electability. (I went to high school with Karl ...

 bishopfeed:“I don’t think we’ve lost the marriage issue at all. Even framing the question that way shapes the answer in a wrong direction, because the language of a debate conditions how we think. If we concede the language, we concede the issue. I do think we’ve been allowing ourselves to lose the marriage debate for years, rooted in our confusion about individual and community rights, and our fear of being portrayed as “against” other people. Catholic teaching on sexuality and marriage is for human dignity; it is for human happiness and the virtuous development of family and society. It is “against” only those behaviors that undermine those goals. When people try to frame Catholic belief as an intrinsic hostility for individual persons or groups, they are not being honest.”—Archbishop Charles Chaput (Philadelphia-designate)If the church’s teachings were really for “human happiness and the virtuous development of family and society,” they wouldn’t be against homosexuality. Nothing about loving someone of the same sex precludes a person from being happy (in fact it often goes hand in hand), and certainly nothing about it stops familial development. It is the height of hypocritical deception to say that people pointing this out are the dishonest ones- shame on you, Archbishop Charles Chaput. I’m glad you’re out of Denver- don’t come back.

  The plan includes many odious measures, including changes to Social Security that would cut benefits by $1,300 per year. It would institute caps on discretionary spending through 2015, and lays out the amount by which individual agencies need to reduce their budgets (without identifying particular programs).But according to Coburn, it doesn’t really matter which programs get cut, because, as he told Al-Jazeera English, it’s only people who are “sucking off the program” that are going to feel any change:COBURN: The point is where’s the efficiency in that? The actual service going to people isn’t going to decline, the people sucking off the program are going to be the ones that lose.Tom Coburn, a Republican from Oklahoma, states that the billions of dollars in cuts won’t actually effect the “service going to people”, but will only effect those terrible freeloading poor!

For the last 5 weeks, I’ve lived and worked with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams and my host, Sami Rasouli. Tomorrow I fly back to Minneapolis.It has been an eye-opening and life-changing experience. The many Iraqis that I’ve met have invariably been welcoming, generous, and kind. This despite the fact that the illegal U.S. occupation of Iraq continues, and despite the death and destruction that my country has brought to theirs.My visit was very different than the “visit” of most Americans. I came to Iraq as an unarmed guest seeking to build respectful relationships between people. My American counterparts in military uniforms came to Iraq armed to the teeth, seeking to storm the country into submission.American soldiers are still here and Iraq is still an occupied, “war-torn” country. When Sami and I visited Baghdad, he said, “Look what’s happened to this city. It was such a beautiful place when I visited it growing up.” Now buildings are destroyed or riddled with bullet holes. Concrete walls and military checkpoints divide neighborhoods. Garbage and rubble are everywhere and roads are in disrepair.Among the most frustrating effects of the war and U.S. occupation are the lack of electricity, which comes and goes every couple of hours, and the lack of clean water. The American occupiers and the Iraqi government have not yet been able to restore basic services.Despite the death and destruction of the war (at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, perhaps more than 1 million), daily life continues and Iraqis are working hard to rebuild. In the English class that I helped teach, Sami and I taught the word “resilience” to our students. It was ironic that we were the teachers.As Iraqis work to end the occupation and begin to rebuild, Sami and MPT are doing critical work to help ensure that what is rebuilt is a peaceful, nonviolent civil society. The sectarianism ...

If there’s one general insight that has stayed with me from the IR501 (International Relations and Religion) course I took in grad school, it’s that categories suck. “Christian,” “American,” “Arab,” “Muslim,” “Liberal,” “Friend,” etc. serve an important purpose of helping us order the complex information we process every day, but they also simplify and homogenize that complexity.One example is the category of “Iraqi” in American media. When the majority of printed pictures of Iraqis portray “terrorists” or scenes of death and destruction, “Iraqi”–which is an incredibly diverse category–can be reduced to “violent terrorist” in the minds of those who digest media uncritically.During my month here in Najaf, my host Sami Rasouli has introduced me to many Iraqis who don’t fit the category, “Iraqi” (as it has been defined in America). For the sake of exploding / adding nuance to that category, I’d like to share a little about a few of these people. They have invariably been generous, welcoming, and kind—perhaps better descriptors for the category of “Iraqi”–but they are also diverse. 

Part I – Facing the WorldIt was the Scottish poet Robert Burns who, in a 1786 poem, wrote “O would some power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us, it would from many a blunder free us.” That gift is now ours in the form of modern polling technology but, alas, Burns underestimated our abilities to turn a blind eye to its revelations and continue our blundering ways. Here is a recent example.The respected polling company Zogby International recently conducted one of its periodic “Arab Attitudes” polls measuring, among other things, the popularity of the United States in the Arab Middle East. This one was conducted between the middle of May and the middle of June, 2011 and involved 4,000 face-to-face interviews in six countries: Morocco, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The results are not pretty. As 

 History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme.Last week the inimitably irreverent and openly gay sex columnist, Dan Savage, published an article entitled “Marcus Bachmann’s Big Gay Problem” in which he straightly suggests that “gaydar is for real.” Amid his sauciness, Savage cites a 2008 Tufts University study in which psychologists Nicholas Rule and Nalini Ambady showed 90 faces to 90 participants in random order and then asked them to judge the subject’s “probable sexual ...

The time for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is coming closer. In December of 2008 the Iraqi parliament approved the negotiated Status of Forces Agreement that set a deadline of the end of 2011 for all American troops to leave the country. However, just like someone who starts to beg off a promise when the time for action approaches, U.S. officials are now expressing second thoughts.Back on May 24th outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he “favored extending the American presence, noting that the Iraqi military will need help with logistics, intelligence and defending its airspace and that a continued U.S. military presence will send a ‘powerful signal that we’re not leaving, that we will continue to play a part.’” We will continue to pursue “our role in the region.” Considering that we have known for some time that the Iraq war was waged for false, contrived reasons and thus constitutes the same sort of criminal behavior (the waging of illicit and unnecessary war) that was prosecuted at Nuremberg after World War II, it is difficult to know just how Gates defines “our role.” To date in Iraq, that role has equaled the removal of one dictator (who we once supported) at 

Let's imagine that Wall Street investment banker and long-time Social Security foe Peter Peterson had $1 billion in government bonds (also known as "IOUs"). Suppose that he decided to sell them. According to Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post's fact checker, this would create a burden for the U.S. government.This sale of bonds would displace other bonds that the United States might want to sell in the financial market. This would lead to higher interest rates on U.S. debt. Therefore Mr. Peterson is contributing to our deficit problem.That may seem more than a little silly to readers, which it is. Yet, this is the same way in which Kessler says that Social Security will be creating a fiscal burden. The program has bought $2.6 trillion in government bonds which are part of the $14.3 trillion debt subject to the debt ceiling. It will be relying on the interest from these bonds to pay for some benefits for then next decade, just as Mr. Peterson may use interest from government bonds that he holds to pay for his living expenses or funding his anti-Social Security agenda.After 2022 the program will begin selling off its bonds. This will have the same effect on the market as if Mr. Peterson were selling his bonds. In Peterson's case he will directly sell his bond into the market, in the case of the Social Security program it will sell a bond to the government which will have to get the money by selling a new bond in the market (unless it raised taxes or cut spending to cover the price of the bonds).Kessler also gets wrong the baseline for the projected longer-term shortfall for Social Security. After 2036 the program is projected to only have enough money to pay a bit less than 80 percent of scheduled benefits. However, if the law is never changed, then the program would only pay the ...

Originally posted at the GuardianThe conventional wisdom among the current generation of school reformers is that bad teachers are to blame for the failure of many of our children to learn. Applying this logic to the current debates over the budget and the economy, we should be pointing a big finger of blame at the media.As survey after survey shows, the vast majority of the public are incredibly ignorant of the most basic facts about the budget and the economy. If we treated their teachers in the media the way the educational reformers treat public school teachers, few economics and budget reporters would have jobs.One needs only to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to get examples of thoroughly awful reporting. When we hear pledges to reduce the projected deficits over the next 12 years by $2 trillion or $4 trillion, how many people have any clue how large these reductions are relative to projected spending or projected GDP over this period? (The $4 trillion figure is 8.7 percent of projected spending and 3.7 percent of GDP.)How about that $14.3 trillion figure? That’s a really big number, really scary. So is just about every number connected with the United States budget. We are a huge country with a huge economy. Competent reporters would focus on this being about 90 percent of U.S. GDP.Is that big? Well the debt-to-GDP ratio was over 110 percent after World War II. The United Kingdom had debt-to-GDP ratios of more than 100 percent for much of the 19th century as it was establishing itself as the world’s pre-eminent industrial power.Japan has a debt-to-GDP ratio of more than 220 percent of GDP and can still borrow in financial markets long-term at interest rates of less than 1.5 percent.  So, what’s the problem? ...

Robert Samuelson did one of the great pox on both your houses pieces at which the Post excels. He criticized the right, as personified by Grover Norquist, for being unwilling to raise taxes. Then he trashed my friends at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for refusing to produce a balanced budget, which he argues would have to show large cuts in Social Security and Medicare.Those of us who don't work for the Post, and therefore are free to speak honestly about the deficit, know that the whole long-term deficit problem is the story of the broken U.S. health care system. If the United States paid the same amount per person for its health care as people in any other wealthy country we would be looking at long-term budget surpluses, not deficits.Of course the short-term deficit story is about the downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble, which the Post apparently still has not noticed.

Usually it is the politicians who use euphemisms to try to conceal the impact of their policies. However, the Washington Post decided to help them along in a front page article when it twice referred to Social Security "changes" that could be part of the budget agreement.Of course "changes" don't reduce the deficit unless they are cuts. President Obama and the congressional leadership were discussing plans to cut Social Security. These cuts are likely to be very unpopular, so it is likely that they would rather have the public not realize that they were debating cuts to Social Security.Since the Post's editorial position also supports cuts to Social Security, the paper apparently decided to help the politicians along in this effort. This is why the Post is known as Fox on 15th Street.Interestingly, the Post never once referred to tax "changes," rather than increases. It even allowed Don Stewart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s deputy chief of staff for communications, to refer to "massive tax increases," without pointing out that none [thanks Jim A.] of the tax increases put forward by President Obama would raise taxes above their late 90s level when the economy was adding 3 million jobs a year.Washington Post reporters have the time to look up tax increases and assess their importance. Washington Post readers do not.

Eight years after she went, Strauss-Kahn's French accuser says she didn't know what it meant. If what I have read about the charge of attempted rape now being brought against Strauss-Kahn in France is correct, eight years ago a young French woman agreed to meet Strauss-Kahn alone in an apartment that was not his address. She claims that, despite her protests, Strauss-Kahn persisted in sexually aggressive behavior. She construes, or perhaps misconstrues, his behavior as attempted rape.
If the woman's account is true, there is an innocent interpretation. By agreeing to the meeting, she sent a signal that she did not intend to send and which Strauss-Kahn interpreted, or misinterpreted, to mean that she was sexually available.
If this is the story, a French court would realize that, however frightening it was for the young woman, it was a misunderstanding and not an attempted rape. Strauss-Kahn would be guilty of boorish behavior, but this is not yet a crime.
French skepticism would explain why the charge lay dormant for eight years and came to life on the heels of the New York case, which has now fallen apart. The certainty with which the New York police, prosecutor, and American media initially treated Strauss-Kahn's guilt created credibility for the French woman's accusation. Certainly, the prospect of Strauss-Kahn's conviction on the New York charges would give a French lawyer more confidence in the French woman's story.
I offer this not as an excuse for Strauss-Kahn, who is much too horny for his own good, but as an innocent explanation of an event that also has non-innocent explanations.
For example, according to the French press, Strauss-Kahn predicted that his favorable standing in the election polls would result in Sarkozy, or the interests behind him, paying a woman one million euros in order to bring sex charges against him in order to knock him out of the presidential race.
We also know from press ...

I know we are not supposed to say "lie" in Washington, but this is really get tiresome. There was no report from President Obama's deficit commission. The rules under which the commission could issue a report were very clear. It had to have the support of 14 of the 18 members in a vote that took place by December 1, 2010. There was no vote taken by that date, although 12 of the 18 members did indicate their support for a report produced by the commission co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, on December 2.This means that there was no commission report. Therefore, when Dan Balz tells Washington Post readers about the recommendations of the deficit commission, he either has no clue what he is talking about or he is deliberately deceiving Washington Post readers. If he wants to be honest, he is welcome to refer to it as a report of the co-chairs and to even point out that the report had support of 12 of the 18 commissioners, but it is simply not accurate to describe it as a report of the commission.Btw, the headline of the piece describes the failure to reach agreement on a big deficit reduction package as a "lost opportunity." Those reading through the piece would find that one element of this lost opportunity is the failure to raise the age of eligibility for Medicare. Wow, just think, if only Speaker Boehner and President Obama could have gotten their act together people aged 65 and 66 could now be paying for their own health care. We're all really going to regret this lost opportunity.

Over the last two and a half weeks, my host Sami and I have visited a number of medical facilities in Iraq: the public hospital in Najaf, a prosthetics and orthotics center, and the public hospital in Nasriyyah. All confirmed the disastrous human cost of the Iraq War.Since 2003,  at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the U.S.-led war. Some estimates put the number at over 1 million. Iraq’s “health has deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1950s,” seventy percent of children suffer from trauma-related symptoms, and there are perhaps five million orphans in Iraq–almost half of the country’s children.During my first week in Najaf, Sami and I visited As-Sadr Hospital, the public hospital in Najaf. A number of doctors at the hospital will travel to Minneapolis this fall as part of the Sister City relationship between the two cities. Sami’s brother-in-law, Dr. Amer Majeed, met us at the hospital x-ray room.The hospital was crowded. It is one of 18 hospitals that Saddam built across the country–one in each of Iraq’s 18 provinces. After 2003 it was renamed from “Saddam Hussein Hospital” to “As-Sadr Hospital.” Like all public hospitals in Iraq, treatment at the hospital ...

As Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith points out, the GOP doesn't give a damn about the deficit or the debt ceiling  This is all just political games. See Debt Ceiling Hypocrisy, Naked Capitalism (cross posted from Credit Writedowns) (July 7, 2011). here's an excerpt.During the Bush administration, when a budget surplus tuned to deficit and debt piled up, Republican leaders in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling 5 times, increasing the limit nearly $4 trillion. We’re talking about Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl. Combined, they voted 19 timesfor a debt ceiling increase without complaint or conditions.When the 2001 and 2003 and 2004  Bush tax cuts were passed, the GOP KNEW that the cuts would cause huge record setting deficits.  When they were passed and the war costs for Bush's wars of choice raged on, the GOP KNEW that this would result in huge, unprecedented budget deficits. 

Let me repeat the title.They're bamboozling usAnd Obama is betraying us. Obama is failing to use his bully pulpit to shame the GOP with its ridiculous attempt to double-down on failed right-wing friedmania economic fundamentalism.  See Joseph Stiglitz, The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism, Commentary, Project Syndicate  (July 6, 2011) (Hat Tip, Mark Thoma at Economist's View).  Sitglitz notes what I have often pointed out--that friedmania is a failing ideology, yet the GOP is pushing that failed ideology, based on ridiculous and proven-wrong assumptions about human society, to the brink, arguing for austerity when we need stimulus, tax cuts when we need tax increases (at least on the wealthy), and more military when we need to end our endless wars and get smart.  Says Stiglitz:Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year. ...I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ...

Part I – Civil Society Movements vs. Corrupt Politics

When it comes to the struggle against Israel’s policies of oppression there are two conflicting levels: that of government and that of civil society. The most recent example of this duality is the half dozen or so small ships held captive in the ports of Greece. The ships, loaded with humanitarian supplies for the one and half million people of the Gaza strip, are instruments of a civil society campaign against the inhumanity of the Israeli state. The forces that hold them back are the instruments of governments corrupted by special interest influence and political bribery.

Most of us are unaware of the potential of organized civil society because we have resigned the public sphere to professional politicians and bureaucrats and retreated into a private sphere of everyday life which we see as separate from politics. This is a serious mistake. Politics shapes our lives whether we pay attention to it or not. By ignoring it we allow the power of the state to respond not so much to the citizenry as to special interests. Our indifference means that the politicians and government bureaucrats live their professional lives within systems largely uninterested in and sometimes incapable of acting in the public good because they are corrupted by lobby power. The ability to render justice is also often a casualty of the way things operate politically. The stymying of the latest flotilla due to the disproportionate influence of Zionist special interests on U.S. and European Middle East foreign policy is a good example of this situation.

There are small but growing elements of society which understand this problem and have moved to remedy it through organizing common citizens to reassert influence in the public sphere. Their efforts constitute civil society ...

In 2004, corporate lobbyists successfully lobbied for a doozy of a corporate tax break--after already getting years of tax deferral on their offshore profits (oftenprofits that should have been taxed in the US, for which companies had dreamed up transfer pricing schemes  to move the profits offshore, such as selling IT properties to their offshore subsidiaries at a claimed third-party comparable price, even though they would NEVER really sell it to any third party so it was truly priceless), they got added to the deferral tax break a near-zero 'repatriation' tax break.  As CTJ notes (see below) this was a downright ridiculous reward to the very corporate tax dodgers who had intentionally kept profits offshore to keep from paying tax and then paid an army of lobbyists to get them the tax break they wanted to bring it back. The republicans in control of the House and Presidency at the time claimed it would be a big job booster--they even named the disastrous bill that enacted that and myriad other corporate tax breaks (the wish list that corporations had been vying for going on 20 years) the "American Job Creation Act".  HAH!  The joke was on Congress and the workers who bore the brunt of the job cutting by these same corporate giants.  Of course, the bill did nothing of the sort.  Some of the biggest repatriation dollars went to share buybacks (ie, benefited the wealthiest amongst us that make up the investor class) while tens of thousands of workers were laid off.  Hewlett-Packard was a prime example.Repatriation was a flop,that is,  for everybody except the managerws and wealthy investors who own most of the financial assets in the country and are pushing the corporatist agenda that is dominating the GOP and ...

On Wednesday, June 29th, Fatin al-Jumaily and her husband Wathiq drove from Karbala to Sami’s house in Najaf to pick me up. I met Fatin last August when she came to Minneapolis as a featured Iraqi artist in the exhibit, The Art of Conflict. Her paintings and presentations in Minneapolis focused on the experience of women in the Iraq War. She and Wathiq came to pick me up in Wathiq’s brother’s car, a 2007 Hyundai, because it has air conditioning and their’s doesn’t.

On the way to Karbala we were stopped at one check point. The army officer asked about me and Wathiq said I’m an American Muslim going to visit the shrines in Karbala. I’m not Muslim, but the army officer let us pass without further questions. Later that evening I saw that people from all over the world, including some from the West, come to Karbala to visit the shrines.

We arrived at Fatin and Wathiq’s house around 6 pm. They are poor and have a very humble house, but Fatin prepared snacks (we ate dinner much later) and they had gifts waiting for me–a set of headphones and a planner with a calendar and maps of Iraq. We talked about Fatin’s students (she’s an art teacher at a public school close to their house) and her hope to continue her education in art history. A couple of years ago her students sent letters and art drawings to a school in Minneapolis as part of the Letters for Peace program of the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project.

After about an hour we left the house to visit the shrines. Fatin and Wathiq live about 5 minutes from the shrines by car, but the two neighborhoods are very different. The streets near Fatin and Wathiq’s house, like many streets in Karbala and Najaf, are broken, bumpy, and narrow. Often there are large obstacles in the middle of the road, such as a pile of dirt, that must be avoided. Garbage and rubble line the ...

On May 29, 2003, a group of American peacemakers left Baghdad for Amman, Jordan. In the middle of the desert, they blew a tire and flipped into the ditch, injuring several of the passengers. Weldon Nisly, a Mennonite pastor from Seattle, was one of those injured. He recalls what happened next: “Some Iraqi men in a car speeding the other direction saw us and stopped to help us while U.S. bombers flew overhead. These Good Samaritans quickly put us in their car and took us to a small clinic in Rutba, where an Iraqi doctor and his medical team treated us.

The Americans were in Iraq with the goal of “getting in the way of war.” Weldon says, “We wanted to help the world see the war through Iraqi eyes.” The medical care given by the people of Rutba, a dusty town in western Iraq, did both: their story of generosity is now the subject of an upcoming book and film, called “The Gospel of Rutba,” and their actions “got in the way” of the discourse of the Iraq War. Theirs is an alternative story involving Iraqis and Americans working for peace.

The Americans who were treated by the people of Rutba—Weldon, Shane Claiborne, Cliff Kindy, and others—were deeply moved. Besides working on a film and book, Shane Claiborne and “The Simple Way” raised money to purchase 12 chlorine generators for Rutba, a town with little access to clean water. In May of this year, Sami Rasouli, Director of the Muslim Peacemaker Teams, traveled to Rutba to deliver the chlorine generators. Sami reports that the people of Rutba were happy and grateful for the gift of friendship.

After driving the seven hours from Najaf, a predominantly Shiite town in Iraq, to Rutba, a Sunni town, Sami was welcomed and hosted by local citizens and Mayor ...

The national discussion on budgetary matters and proper expenditures of the federal government is enormously distorted.  The right repeats 'free market' mantras as though they are the answer to all problems, but doesn't acknowledge the very failures of that free market system that landed us in the Great Recession and kept us there out of the right's insistence on tax cuts as a major part of the pitiful economic stimulus package put together in the early days of the Obama administration and refusal to allow tax increases that are required to fund important programs that every American cares about.We are being bamboozled to believe that we "have to" cut Social Security and Medicare and other aid packages, that we 'have to' cut public employees' benefit packages, and on and on.  Brute capitalism is taking over, as corporations are treated as though they were living people with speech rights (tomfoolery that results, under the right-wing activism of Scalia, Roberts, Alito and Thomas, from the foolish original Supreme Court decision equating spending money to support political speech as equivalent to engaging in speech).None of this is true.  So it is worth reading a book by Ha-Joon Chang, "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism" (Bloomsbury Press 2010).  Chang's introduction is a good riff on the problems with Friedmania (free market economic theory) and worth excerpting here.The global economy lies in tatters.  While fiscal and monetary stimulus of unprecedented scale has prevented the financial meltdown of 2008 from turning into a total collapse..., the 2008 global crash still remains the second-largest economic crisis in history, after the Great Depression... [A] sustained recovery is by ...

If I could publicly ask our beloved president one question, it would be this: "Mr. President, in your short time in office you've waged war against six countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. This makes me wonder something. With all due respect: What is wrong with you?"
The American media has done its best to dismiss or ignore Libyan charges that NATO/US missiles have been killing civilians (the people they're supposedly protecting), at least up until the recent bombing "error" that was too blatant to be covered up. But who in the mainstream media has questioned the NATO/US charges that Libya was targeting and "massacring" Libyan civilians a few months ago, which, we've been told, is the reason for the Western powers attacks? Don't look to Al Jazeera for such questioning. The government of Qatar, which owns the station, has a deep-seated animosity toward Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and was itself a leading purveyor of the Libyan "massacre" stories, as well as playing a military role in the war against Tripoli. Al Jazeera's reporting on the subject has been so disgraceful I've stopped looking at the station.
Alain Juppé, Foreign Minister of France, which has been the leading force behind the attacks on Libya, spoke at the Brookings Institution in Washington on June 7. After his talk he was asked a question from the audience by local activist Ken Meyercord:

"An American observer of events in Libya has commented: 'The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent.' That comment was made by Richard Haass, President of our Council on Foreign Relations. If Mr. Haass is right, and he's a fairly knowledgeable fellow, then what NATO has done in Libya is ...

Six days in Iraq and not one Humvee, tank, fighter jet, military escort, or intelligence report. Not one minute inside the Green Zone or between the miles-long walls of American military bases. Hosted by my friend and colleague, Sami Rasouli, I live in Najaf, a city two hours south of Baghdad. At the invitation of Sami, I came here to live and work with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT), a group of Iraqi peacemakers.Sami and I know each other through our jobs at partner non-profit organizations–Sami at MPT and I at the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP). The two organizations are based in the Sister Cities of Minneapolis, USA and Najaf, Iraq. They work together to rebuild peaceful relationships between Americans and Iraqis and support nonviolence in both countries.Since its founding in 2004, MPT has accomplished a lot. It has provided clean water to over 27,000 Iraqi students and promoted national unity through friendly soccer matches across Iraq.  It held community roundtable meetings to discuss the new constitution in 2005 and helped stem the spread of cholera in 2007 through hygiene education. Recently MPT began hosting Americans to live and work in Iraq as an alternative model of peaceful coexistence. This project is small compared to the scope of the American war on Iraq, but it is dissent against the hegemonic discourse of war. It is an affirmation that we are still brothers and sisters and that war does not have the final say.My visit to Iraq is very different from the “visit” of most Americans. I came to Iraq motivated by the principles of MPT and IARP, an unarmed guest seeking to build respectful relationships between people. My American counterparts in military uniforms–while perhaps motivated by misinformed ideals of protecting their country–came to Iraq armed to the teeth, seeking to storm the country into submission.On my first day in Iraq, I met no sergeants or lieutenants. I met a nuclear ...

Society (etymology): 1530’s, “friendly association with others, group of people living together" from Fr. societe, from L. societatem

Progressive cultural and social theorists broadly define neoliberalism as a political project emerging in the 1970’s both consolidating and camouflaging the interests of wealthy white men in the global north by appealing to the supposed value-neutral notions of individual freedom, personal responsibility, the privatization of public services, and the free market. Although helpful, such a construal problematically elides the fraught relationship between neoliberalism and social collectivism. That is, is the dogma of neoliberalism and the social practice of collectivism antithetical to one another? To this end I’d like to explore conceptualizations of neoliberalism from a slightly different, but mutually compatible, angle. For the purpose of this examination I will define neoliberalism as
1) the practice of rarefied socialism for elite white men and
2) a program of the disciplined destruction of collectives organized and inhabited by women, people of color, and the laboring classes who are effectively forced into a situation of authoritarian free-market capitalism.
In this sense, then, neoliberalism constitutes a social agenda intent on uprooting collective structures that may mitigate the realization of pure market logic. Neoliberalism, therefore, is both causative and consequential in that it strategically vitiates any and all collective structures that could be marshaled against it in service of creating a world oriented toward, in the words of Bourdieu, “the rational pursuit of ends collectively arrived at and collectively ratified.” Society and collectives, according to neoliberals, either 1) do not exist (a la Thatcher) or ...

Nuclear power requires “perfection” and “no acts of God,” we were warned years ago. This has been brought home by the ongoing disaster caused by the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Fukushimi Daiichi nuclear plant complex, the flooding along the Missouri River in Nebraska now threatening two nuclear plants, and the wildfire laying siege to Los Alamos National Laboratory, the birthplace of atomic energy.Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, fire—these and other disasters will inevitably occur. Add nuclear power with its potential to release massive amounts of deadly radioactive poisons when impacted by such a disaster, and it is clear that atomic energy is incompatible with the real world.There’s no perfection in human beings or in technology. Accidents will happen. And there will always be natural disasters—we can’t eliminate them. But we can—and must—eliminate atomic energy.Nobel Prize-winning physicist Dr. Hannes Alfven explained in 1972 in declaring his strong opposition to nuclear power: “Fission energy is safe only if a number of critical devices work as they should, if a number of people in key positions follow all their instructions, if there is no sabotage, no hijacking of the transports, if no reactor processing plant or reprocessing plant or repository anywhere in the world is situated in a region of riots or guerilla activity, and no revolution or war—even a ‘conventional one’—takes place in those regions. The enormous quantities of extremely dangerous material must not get into the hands of ignorant people or desperados. No acts of God can be permitted.” Dr. Alfven was writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.“Nuclear power is an unforgiving technology. It allows no room for error,” wrote Carl J. Hocevar of the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1975. Hocevar had earlier been an engineer working on reactor ...

My first day in Iraq was marked by warm welcome after warm welcome. (And not because the temperature was 110 degrees.)I flew out of Amman, Jordan at 1 am on Sunday morning, June 19, and arrived in Najaf an hour and a half later. My host, Sami Rasouli, was waiting for me. The airport staff was polite and curious: Where are you from? Welcome to Najaf, hope you enjoy our city! What are you doing in Najaf? Where did you learn Arabic? Ma’a Salaama (with peace/goodbye)!After I gave the visa officer my documents, it was a quick process to approve my entry into Iraq.Sami’s brother-in-law picked us up and drove us through Najaf to Sami’s house. It was early morning after a sleepless night, but it was a first chance to catch up with Sami (I last saw him in snowy Minneapolis during his visit there this winter). Sami is charismatic and warm with a hearty sense of humour, and I quickly felt at ease. He pointed out new construction, Kufa University (which has an official relationship with the University of Minnesota), government buildings, roads to Karbala and other nearby towns, and places where our mutual friends live. We reached Sami’s home at 5 am.After a few hours of sleep, we woke up for breakfast with Sami’s family. Sami’s wife Suaad had prepared eggs, bread with cheese or honey, rolls, tomatoes and cucumbers, fruit, and tea. Though more reserved than her husband, Suaad also welcomed me with a big smile and impeccable hospitality. She is very patient with my broken Arabic and careful to make sure I have everything I need.Sami and Suaad have two sons, Redha, 9, and Omar, 3. Redha is quiet and can speak good English when he chooses. On my second day in Najaf we played a game of Candy Land that I brought with me as a gift. Almost every card he drew sent him ahead only 1 or 2 spaces or back to Gumdrop Mountain or Candy Cane Forest, but he didn’t complain. Omar is the most energetic 3-year old I’ve ever seen. I made the mistake of ...

Haiti experienced a major earthquake January 12, 2010. Tens of thousands died, estimates range from 65,000 to 230,000 people killed. About 2 million more people were displaced. Haiti was already the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with a per capita income of about $2 a day. Seventeen months later, Haiti remains deeply wounded. The numbers below give an indication of some of the challenges that remain for the Haitian people.

Housing

570,000 people in Haiti have moved back into 84,000 buildings which are heavily damaged and marked by engineers as “yellow” because they may collapse in foul weather or in the event of another tremor. USAID Draft Report 2011. “I see little children sleeping next to the heavily cracked walls every day,” said one of the experts quoted in the USAID report.

465,000 people have moved back into 73,000 buildings that are so terribly damaged they are designated for demolition and are categorized as “red” because they may fall at any moment. USAID Draft Report 2011.

Homeless

250,000 to 800,000 people in and around Port au Prince Haiti are still living under flimsy tents or tarps where water and electricity are scarce, security is poor and people are exposed to diseases. UN Report – January 2011 and USAID Draft Report 2011.

166,000 people living in tents have been threatened with evictions, nearly one in four of the people living under tarps and tents. International Organization for Migration, April 2011.

1000 people were illegally evicted at gunpoint from three tent camps in the Delmas suburb of Port au Prince during one week in May 2011. They are part of a series of illegal evictions of over 50,000 homeless people in Haiti in the last several months. June 16, 2011 human rights complaint filed with the Inter American Commission on Human Rights by IJDH, CCR, BAI and Trans ...

The global nuclear industry and its allies in government are making a desperate effort to cover up the consequences of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. “The big lie flies high,” comments Kevin Kamps of the organization Beyond Nuclear.Not only is this nuclear establishment seeking to make it look like the Fukushima catastrophe has not happened—going so far as to claim that there will be “no health effects” as a result of it—but it is moving forward on a “nuclear renaissance,” its scheme to build more nuclear plants.Indeed, next week in Washington, a two-day “Special Summit on New Nuclear Energy” will be held involving major manufacturers of nuclear power plants—including General Electric, the manufacturer of the Fukushima plants—and U.S. government officials.Although since Fukushima, Germany, Switzerland and Italy and other nations have turned away from nuclear power for a commitment instead to safe, clean, renewable energy such as solar and wind, the Obama administration is continuing its insistence on nuclear power.Will the nuclear establishment be able to get away with telling what, indeed, would be one of the most outrageous Big Lies of all time—that no one will die as a result of Fukushima?Will it be able to continue its new nuclear push despite the catastrophe?Nearly 100 days after the Fukushima disaster began, with radiation still streaming from the plants, with its owners, TEPCO, now admitting that meltdowns did occur at its plants, that releases have been twice as much as it announced earlier, with deadly radioactivity from Fukushima spreading worldwide, and with some countries now changing course and saying no to nuclear power, while others stick with it, a nuclear crossroads has arrived.“No health effects are expected among the Japanese people as a result of the events at Fukushima,” the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry trade group, flatly declared in a statement issued at a press ...

“Remember, we can change the world. Or at least Long Island,” Nora Bredes, former executive director of the Shoreham Opponents Coalition, just wrote on her Facebook page. With her message was a New York Times article about a massive demonstration 25 years ago this month protesting the Shoreham nuclear plant.

“More than 600 protesters were arrested here today after 15,000 demonstrators gathered,” the piece began. The headline noted it was “One of the Largest Held Worldwide” against nuclear power.

Because of demonstrations, legal challenges, political initiatives and other actions by organizations and individuals, and work by Suffolk County, state and local officials, the Shoreham plant was stopped.

Two months before that June 1986 demonstration, the Chernobyl nuclear plant catastrophe occurred in the former Soviet Union clearly showing the deadliness of nuclear power, despite the claims of nuclear promoters—including on Long Island—that it was safe.

Now, the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants in Japan has again proven the lethality of nuclear power. A baseline for how many people will likely die from Fukushima radiation is provided by a 2009 book published by the New York Academy of Sciences, “Chernobyl: The Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.” Using medical data from between 1986 and 2004, a team of eminent European scientists concludes that 985,000 people died worldwide from the radioactivity discharged from Chernobyl. And the Fukushima disaster involved not one but a cluster of nuclear power plants and is ongoing with radioactivity still streaming out and spreading worldwide.

But the nuclear Pinocchios are still at it.

Last week, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the nuclear industry trade group, held a press conference in Washington at which it issued a statement asserting: “No health effects are expected among the Japanese people as a result of the events at ...

I leave today from Minneapolis for Najaf, Iraq, where I will live for a month. After a few days in Amman, Jordan, I’ll stay in Najaf until July 20 to work with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT) and its director, Sami Rasouli. MPT is a non-profit organization supporting human rights and nonviolence in Iraq.I’ll be in Najaf as part of the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project (IARP), where I have worked for the last three years. IARP uses art, education, health, and cultural exchange programs to support reconciliation between Iraqis and Americans. It’s an organization that works to rebuild relationships broken by war.I’ll also be traveling as a Minneapolitan to my Sister City of Najaf, carrying a letter from Minneapolis Mayor RT Rybak to Najaf Governor Adnan Al-Zurufi. Minneapolis and Najaf became Sister Cities in 2009, establishing a city to city friendship and initiating professional and personal citizen connections. Since then, 5 delegations of doctors, city officials, engineers, academics, artists, and others have traveled from Najaf to Minneapolis. I’ll be the 2nd delegation (both 1-person) from Minneapolis to Najaf (you can read about the first delegation here).Many of my friends and relatives have asked why I’m going on this trip. From my limited knowledge, Iraq remains torn by American-led war and sanctions. It has left the spotlight of American media. But I am not going as a “war correspondent” to report on the devastation of war, and I am not (I hope) going with an American-centric perspective. I want to meet in person the Iraqis ...

 Ever since the Great Recession shook the foundations of the U.S. economy, President Obama has been promising recovery.  Evidence of this recovery, we were told, was manifested in the massive post-bailout profits corporations made. Soon enough, the President assured us, these corporations would tire of hoarding mountains of cash and start a hiring bonanza, followed by raising wages and benefits. It was either wishful thinking or conscious deception. The recent stock market meltdown has squashed any hope of a corporate-led recovery.     The Democrats fought the recession by the same methods the Republicans used to create it: allowing the super rich to recklessly dominate the economy while giving them massive handouts. This strategy, commonly referred to as Reaganomics or Trickle Down Economics, is now religion to both Democrats and Republicans; never mind the staged in-fighting for the gullible or complicit media.     When it becomes obvious to even the President that the economic recovery never existed beyond the bank accounts of the rich, questions will have to be answered. Why, for example, did nobody in either political party foresee the disastrous consequences of the bailouts? Not only did the U.S. deficit drastically increase but the same U.S. corporations that caused the recession were given reinforcement for their destructive actions, ensuring that it would continue unabated.     In his book, Crisis Economics, Nouriel Roubini outlines the insane response to the recession by Republicans and Democrats. Because both parties simply threw money at the banks and hedge funds instead of punishing them, a condition of "moral hazard" was created, meaning, that banks would assume another bailout would come their way if they destroyed the economy again -- too big too fail, remember? Roubini explains how the Democrats allowed ...

Ever since the Great Recession shook the foundations of the U.S. economy, President Obama has been promising recovery.  Evidence of this recovery, we were told, was manifested in the massive post-bailout profits corporations made. Soon enough, the President assured us, these corporations would tire of hoarding mountains of cash and start a hiring bonanza, followed by raising wages and benefits. It was either wishful thinking or conscious deception. The recent stock market meltdown has squashed any hope of a corporate-led recovery.The Democrats fought the recession by the same methods the Republicans used to create it: allowing the super rich to recklessly dominate the economy while giving them massive handouts. This strategy, commonly referred to as Reaganomics or Trickle Down Economics, is now religion to both Democrats and Republicans; never mind the staged in-fighting for the gullible or complicit media.When it becomes obvious to even the President that the economic recovery never existed beyond the bank accounts of the rich, questions will have to be answered. Why, for example, did nobody in either political party foresee the disastrous consequences of the bailouts? Not only did the U.S. deficit drastically increase but the same U.S. corporations that caused the recession were given reinforcement for their destructive actions, ensuring that it would continue unabated.In his book, Crisis Economics, Nouriel Roubini outlines the insane response to the recession by Republicans and Democrats. Because both parties simply threw money at the banks and hedge funds instead of punishing them, a condition of "moral hazard" was created, meaning, that banks would assume another bailout would come their way if they destroyed the economy again -- too big too fail, remember? Roubini explains how the Democrats allowed the "too big" banks to get even bigger; how Wall Street salaries based on short-term profits went unregulated; ...

On May 31st Florida's superlative thug, Gov. Rick Scott (R), signed an executive order requiring all adult applicants for cash benefits from Florida’s welfare system to be tested for drugs. The bill impacts over 233,000 Florida residents receiving cash benefits from the state. Those who fail the test on their first attempt will become ineligible for welfare for a year. And a second failed test will render them ineligible for welfare for three years. Gov. Rick Scott, mind you, campaigned on a platform of less government…laughably ironic.Most of the reporting on this issue, as you likely have come to expect, has ranged from vacuous to fatuous with very little intervening substantive analysis. Surprising? No. Problematic? Yes.Scott’s executive order sufficiently confirms the notion that so-called “middle class” Americans (mostly white) are intransigently suspicious of the intentions, merit, intelligence, and cultural practices of poor folk, the overwhelming majority of which are citizens of color. Need proof? Take just one look at the strategies by which Gov. Scott continues to justify his bill. When interviewed by CNN on June 5th Gov. Scott cited studies showing that "people that are on welfare are higher users of drugs than people not on welfare.” Scott's claim is has its "basis" in a study conducting in 2000 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which finds that 9.6% of people in families receiving some type of government assistance reported recent drug use, compared to 6.8% among people in families receiving no government assistance at all. The reliability of this study is dubious because 1)it's over a decade old and 2) the categorical unit of analysis utilized in this study is “families receiving some type of government ...

An April 2011 study conducted by the non-partisan Economic Policy Institute entitled "The State of Working America's Wealth," found that roughly 25% of all American households had zero or negative net worth in 2009. For black households, the figures are, as expected, more bleak. The EPI founds that in 2009 nearly 40% of black households had zero or negative net worth. And finally - and worst of all, in my view - the study concludes with the finding that in 2009 the median net worth of black households reached a devastatingly scant $2,200 (dropping from $10,000 in 2006), while the net worth among white households was $97,900, or 45x that of black households. Stop and think about this figure for a second...$2,200??? Such an illustration, of course, challenges President Obama's soaring rhetorical claims that "there is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America." (Although this phrase originally appeared in Obama's 2004 keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he continues to repeat it to this day.) His lack of targeted policies - policies organized under the banner of mitigating opportunity and outcome disparities premised on race, class, and gender (to name a few)- are simply the political instantiation of a deeply distorted ideological vision. And so we're left with essentially two options: Our president is either 1) diluted by his premature vision of post-raciality or 2) willfully ignoring those who are unlikely to contribute financially to his re-election campaign. I ask you to pick your poison...

Read the study here.

Throughout this brief exploration I endeavor to situate John Rawls’s theory of “public reason” against the conceptual backcloth of Jurgen Habermas’s “deliberative democracy” and Robert Putnam’s “bridging” and “bonding” tactics for group identity formation. I will then apply these aggregate insights to 1) the thorny nettle of web personalization, 2) the problematic of political self-enclosure, and 3) the notion of confirmation bias by assessing their indeterminate roles both in facilitating and forfending coalition building across difference, or, what in my view amounts to the sine qua non for ensuring a healthy democracy premised on the fact of human difference. To this end, I propose two interrelated questions: 1) What is at stake democratically in an era of the self-effacing proliferation of web personalization programming? And, 2) how might we understand the seeming contradiction between the democratization (form) and deep political segmentation (content) endemic to the algorithmic function of political persuasion mapping on the Internet?

In John Rawls’s 1997 article entitled “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited” he contends that “the idea of public reason belongs to a conception of a well ordered constitutional democratic society...and the form and content of this reason--the way it is understood by citizens and how it interprets their political relationship --is part of the idea of democracy itself” (2). Rawls further suggests that the single most basic feature of democracy is “the fact of reasonable pluralism," or the unavoidable presence of a plurality of conflicting “comprehensive doctrines” - religious, philosophical, moral, and therefore, political. Jurgen Habermas appropriates portions of Rawls’s argument to demonstrate that the utilization of public reason in political discourse must always remain in service of ...

In the 2006 satirical science fiction comedy, Idiocracy, the protagonist Joe Bauers, “Mr. Average American", is selected by the Pentagon for a top-secret hibernation program. Forgotten, he awakens 500 years in the future, to discover a society so incredibly dumbed-down that he's easily the most intelligent person alive and their only hope for survival.With the Republicans bullying their way through state and federal legislation, the movie has become prophetic to the point where the only thing that isn't believable is that this devolution will take another 500 years. Idiocracy already has its living, fire-breathing poster child, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), the ranking Republican and former chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.You may remember Rep. Barton as the Congressman who on behalf of the American people apologized to the CEO of British Petroleum, Tony Hayward, for having our Gulf of Mexico get in the way of Hayward's oil spill. "I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong, is subject to some sort of political pressure. [It] amounts to a shakedown, so I apologize."How about Barton’s grasp of CO2 as a greenhouse gas? “It’s odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn’t cause cancer... there’s nobody that’s ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning. Hell, “CO2 is in our Coca-Cola!”Even better is Barton's explanation of how wind power could speed up climate change. "Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming we mandated massive switches to energy, which is a finite resource, which slows the winds down, which causes the temperature to go up? Now, I’m not saying that’s going to ...

Ever since the start of nuclear technology, those behind it have made heavy use of deception, obfuscation and denial--with the complicity of most of the media. New York Times reporter William Laurence, working at the same time with the Manhattan Project, wrote a widely-published press release covering up the first nuclear test in New Mexico in 1945, claiming it was nothing more than an ammunition dump explosion. The Times and Laurence went on to boost nuclear power for years to come (Beverly Deepe Keever, News Zero: The New York Times and The Bomb).

A central concern of nuclear promoters, as Rosalie Bertell writes in her book No Immediate Danger: Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth, has been: "Should the public discover the true health cost of nuclear pollution, a cry would rise from all parts of the world and people would refuse to cooperate passively with their own death." In the U.S., nuclear industry and government nuclear agencies lied after the accident at Three Mile Island. In the Soviet Union, government lies flowed after the catastrophe at Chernobyl. There have been cover-up after cover-up of the smaller accidents in between (Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, Killing Our Own, The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation; Jay M. Gould and Benjamin A. Goldman, Deadly Deceit; Low-level Radiation, High-level Cover-up).

The nuclear enterprise, with its army of PR people, has had little trouble through the years manipulating a largely compliant media, a major component of which it has owned: Westinghouse owning CBS for many years, and General Electric, NBC. And this continues in the still-unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan.

Media coverage of the Fukushima nuclear power facility disaster has ranged from dreadful to barely passable. Much of the reporting about the threats of nuclear power and the impacts of radioactivity has been outrageously poor, as journalists and their talking-head experts have parroted the assurances of Japanese ...

With the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear plant catastrophe having arrived, and with the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear complex still unfolding—and radioactivity continuing to spew from those plants—some people are asking: can nuclear power be made safe?

The answer is no. Nuclear power can never be made safe.

This was clearly explained by Admiral Hyman Rickover, the “father” of the U.S. nuclear navy and in charge of construction of the first nuclear power plant in the nation, Shippingport in Pennsylvania. Before a committee of Congress, as he retired from the navy in 1982, Rickover warned of the inherent lethality of nuclear power—and urged that “we outlaw nuclear reactors.”

The basic problem: radioactivity.

“I’ll be philosophical,” testified Rickover. “Until about two billion years ago, it was impossible to have any life on Earth; that is, there was so much radiation on earth you couldn’t have any life—fish or anything.” This was from naturally-occurring cosmic radiation when the Earth was in the process of formation. “Gradually,” said Rickover, “about two billion years ago, the amount of radiation on this planet…reduced and made it possible for some form of life to begin.”

“Now, when we go back to using nuclear power, we are creating something which nature tried to destroy to make life possible,” he said. “Every time you produce radiation” a “horrible force” is unleashed. By splitting the atom, people are recreating the poisons that precluded life from existing. “And I think there the human race is going to wreck itself,” Rickover stated.

This was Rickover, a key figure in nuclear power history, not Greenpeace.

The problem is radioactivity—unleashed when the atom is split. And it doesn’t matter whether it’s a General Electric boiling water reactor such as those that have erupted at Fukushima, or the Westinghouse pressurized water design, or Russian-designed plants like Chernobyl, or the “new, improved” nuclear plants being ...

Radiation from Japan is now detectable in the atmosphere, rain water and food chain in North America. Fukushima reactors are still out of control and hold 10 times more nuclear fuel than there was at Chernobyl, thousands of times more than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The official refrain is, “No worries here, perfectly harmless.” Our best scientists of the previous century would be rolling over in their graves.

In the 1940s many of the world’s premier nuclear scientists saw mounting evidence that there was no safe level of exposure to nuclear radiation. This led Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb, to oppose development of the hydrogen bomb.

In the 1950s, Linus Pauling, the only two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, began warning the public about exposure to all radiation. This opinion, ultimately endorsed by thousands of scientists worldwide, led President John F. Kennedy to sign the nuclear test ban treaty.

In the 1960s, Drs. John Gofman, Arthur Tamplin, Alice Stewart, Thomas Mancuso and Karl Morgan, all researchers for the Atomic Energy Commission or the Department of Energy, independently came to the conclusion that exposure to nuclear radiation was not safe at any level.

The government terminated their services for coming up with what Dr. Gofman called the “wrong answer,” that is, the opposite of what the AEC wanted to hear. The top Russian nuclear physicist in the 1960s, Andrei Sakharov, also a Nobel Prize winner, and Vladimir Chernousenko, who the Soviet Union placed in charge of the Chernobyl cleanup, are among other international experts who drew similar conclusions.

To distract from the danger of man-made radioactivity, we hear from nuclear cheerleaders that watching TV and airline travel also expose us to radiation. True, although they never mention that flight crews have higher rates of breast and skin cancer. ...

People can now get free copies of my book "Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power" -- with a new updated preface I've written in the midst of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear power disaster.

Just go to www.thepermanentpress.com and you will see the book displayed on the homepage--and a box to click on and have the book downloaded at no cost.

What I emphasized in putting the book together was printing actual documents, as facsimiles, documents from the nuclear industry and government nuclear agencies. I believed that would be a good way to counter the Atomic Pinocchios and their lies -- something we're being intensely hit with now as the nuclear propagandists try to cover-up the consequences of the Fukushima disaster.

For example, in recent days I received an email asking for the source of the line in a government report that a major nuclear plant accident could involve an area the size of the state of Pennsylvania. It is on Page 9 of Cover Up, exactly as it appears in a government report titled "WASH-740-update" -- "the possible size of the area of such a disaster might be equal to that of the State of Pennsylvania." This projection is repeated over and over again in this report about the consequences of nuclear power plant accidents that was done by Brookhaven National Laboratory and kept secret for years. It was written a little more than a decade before the Three Mile Island accident.

By pasting down portions of such reports on the flats from which the book was printed, between narrative, I hoped to empower people by providing them with primary documents and thus make them fully aware of the truth about nuclear power -- and give them tools to refute the snow-jobs and the lies.

Marty and Judy Shepard of The Permanent Press had the guts to put out the book while publishers in New York refused claiming at the time that they didn't think interest ...

Today marks exactly a month since the nuclear power disaster in Japan began. Along with the ongoing discharges of radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear plant complex, there has been a largely outrageous flow of media coverage.

Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News on April 6th asked a good question: “And what about all that water, the many million gallons of it, highly radioactive, dumped in the Pacific Ocean for days on end—and we’ve all been told it will dissipate. But how can this not be harmful?” he queried correspondent Miguel Almaguer.

The question might have been good but the response to it, Almaguer’s report, was far from that. He presented a talking head expert, Luca Centurioni of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who said: “No, there is no immediate danger.” (Centurioni’s background, according to his resume posted on the Internet, reflects no background in radioactivity.)

“The bottom line,” said Almaguer, “experts are in agreement there’s no threat to our water or our food.” He added: “And as you can see Brian, California’s coastline is as beautiful as ever.” Radioactivity, of course, is invisible.

Or consider Charles Osgood on “The Osgood File” on CBS radio on April 1—stressing that there was nothing to fear but fear. Indeed, he played President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s declaration in 1933 that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” That might have been a reasonable reassurance amid the Depression. But here were the first indications of radioactivity having come to the U.S. from Japan.with radioactive iodine being “found in milk in the states of California and Washington,” noted Osgood.

But, he quickly added, “the contamination is described as miniscule, posing no threat to the public.” To bolster that assertion he presented Blair Thompson, “spokesman for the Washington Dairy Products Commission.”

“Radiation can be a scary word, but I think it’s important to remember that actually we live surrounded by ...